Reviews tagging 'Alcohol'

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik

16 reviews

lira_the_recluse's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional inspiring mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

An expanded fairy tale. It was a treat to see the Slavic folktale inspiration. All the characters had believable and complex motivations. 

A couple minor things. I wish there were fewer point of view characters, but I don't mind that as much as th second point. I wished there was an audio marker or something to let you know when a POV switch happens mid chapter. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death of parent, Injury/Injury detail, Fire/Fire injury, Alcohol, Antisemitism, and Child abuse

jalexpulliamkepler's review against another edition

dark emotional slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Loved the themes, the characters, and the story. A perfect winter read!

CW: mentions of SA, sexism, anti-semitism, violence, alcohol abuse, child abuse, death of parent, death of child, mentions of infidelity, hunger, poverty, animal cruelty, horse death

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Antisemitism, Child abuse, Addiction, Sexism, and Alcohol

Moderate: Genocide

Minor: Sexual assault

sinceraly's review against another edition

adventurous mysterious tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Ideally, I'll write a longer, more well thought out review at some point, but for now:

Spinning Silver is an excellent adaption/retelling of Rumpelstiltskin that does a great job of setting itself apart from the original. The book is excellently written with some of the best prose I've read all year, and Novik is so incredibly skilled at describing things so well you really can picture them all in your head.

The only thing stopping me from rating the book 5 stars is the amount of perspectives the book gets written through, and the nonsense order of how they happen. At first it's as simple as Miryem/Wanda/Irina, but then you toss in perspectives from the tsar, from Irina's handmaiden, from Wanda's brother, and they all happen randomly, it feels like. Though I loved the switch in perspectives at first, eventually it led to the middle section of the book feeling disjointed and not as cohesive as it could have been. Maybe on a second read, I'd feel like it's worth it, but it was a big enough negative for me to keep the book from 5 stars.

Also wish the book would have given me an epilogue if only because I wanted to see more of the Staryk king post "you fight good" moment. I'm a sucker for proud bitches and a redemption arc.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Physical abuse, Death, Emotional abuse, Kidnapping, Child abuse, and Blood

Moderate: Abandonment, Animal death, Fire/Fire injury, Antisemitism, Domestic abuse, Alcohol, and Miscarriage

starlit_pathways's review

adventurous hopeful medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Sexism, Domestic abuse, Violence, Confinement, Injury/Injury detail, Torture, Antisemitism, Death of parent, and Death

Moderate: Alcohol, Alcoholism, and Grief

Minor: Sexual violence and Rape

blewballoon's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

I had a hard time with the first half of the book. It reads very much like a fairy tale, and I found it hard to connect with the characters despite the multiple points of view, because it felt like there was more focus on plot than character. Towards the end though, it became a lot more compelling and I really enjoyed watching all the plot threads weave together into the ending. It's a very a well crafted story, I just wish I could have felt more connection with the characters sooner. While the story is dark, it never crossed the line for me to where I'd be too uncomfortable, but please check the content warnings. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Injury/Injury detail and Blood

Moderate: War, Antisemitism, Death, Domestic abuse, Physical abuse, and Violence

Minor: Alcohol, Animal death, Child death, Miscarriage, and Rape

raquelrose's review against another edition

adventurous emotional hopeful mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Antisemitism, Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Physical abuse, Violence, Death, Death of parent, and Religious bigotry

Moderate: Alcohol, Kidnapping, Blood, and Fire/Fire injury

Minor: Animal death, Rape, Child death, and Sexism

andromeda_1998's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcohol, Violence, Kidnapping, Blood, Miscarriage, and Alcoholism

readwithde's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional inspiring tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death of parent, Toxic relationship, Injury/Injury detail, Body horror, and Misogyny

Moderate: Miscarriage, Antisemitism, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Torture, Violence, Blood, Classism, Alcohol, Child abuse, Alcoholism, and War

Minor: Gaslighting, Kidnapping, Gore, and Confinement

haley49's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

This was such an intricate and beautiful fantasy. All the povs fit together so well and told a story that was masterfully done. There were some skimmable parts, too many povs, some pacing issues, and a need (in my opinion) for more side character character depth. However, in the end the world building and continuous story was so well done I couldn’t help but enjoy it. I liked how the MC was Jewish as I hadn’t seen that in fantasy and you can really see how it effects her life. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Antisemitism, Child abuse, Religious bigotry, Grief, and Domestic abuse

Moderate: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Dementia, Alcoholism, Injury/Injury detail, Physical abuse, Sexism, Sexual violence, Classism, Death of parent, Death, Emotional abuse, Alcohol, and Abandonment

Minor: Suicidal thoughts, Rape, Violence, and Torture

maeverose's review against another edition

slow-paced

3.0

TL;DR: I’m sad because I really liked some aspects of this and it had the potential to be a favorite, but it needed to be shorter, have less povs, and have the romance not be toxic, and then make it a little more of a focus. I also don’t care for the gratuitous violence…

The toxic romances. First I should say that this isn’t a romance book. I went into this with the expectations of it being a fantasy romance and it’s definitely not. That’s my bad, I thought I’d heard people talk about it as if it was. There’s only a tiny tiny bit of romance at the very end, but the way the two male love interests treat their eventual partners is incredibly toxic. I made some lists to illustrate the point (spoilers, obviously & tw for rape and sa):

The Staryk king threatened to kill Miryem if she didn’t complete his tasks, threatened to kill her family, forced her to marry him, was physically aggressive with her, nearly raped her, trapped her in her room with no food or water for a day, used her to lengthen winter in turn harming people from her world, generally treated her like shit, it’s also made clear that his people killed and raped innocent people in the sunlit world for centuries, and he had no problem with it. Mirnatius scared Irina as a child by leaving her dead squirrels, clearly had no issues with the demon trying to kill her, touched her sexually without her consent and might’ve raped her if she hadn’t stopped him, generally treated her like shit

And it’s so sad because both of those relationships could have been really fun if they hadn’t been horrible to each other. I love a good enemies to lovers but this is not how you do it.

Gratuitous violence. Mostly from Wendy and Stepon’s povs, where they had to bring up at every opportunity that their father abused them. It felt like the author was just throwing it in there to keep the book feeling dark and gritty but there was no real purpose to it. We already know from the first few chapters that their father is a despicable human being, it didn’t need to be mentioned repeatedly every single time it switched to one of their povs.

The multiple povs. I only cared about Miryem’s and Irina’s a little bit towards the second half of the book. However I wouldn’t say the others were unnecessary (well, Magreta’s maybe) or couldn’t be interesting to other readers. I felt that it was usually pretty clear who’s pov it was right away, but the book does switch povs multiple times in every chapter, so it could get annoying.

Bad autism rep? I wanted to talk about one of the perspectives in particular: Wanda’s younger brother Stepon. His narrative voice is especially different from the others and I can’t tell if it’s just supposed to be that he’s young, abused and had a very isolated upbringing, or if he’s autistic coded. He has sensory issues with noise too, which could be a trauma response from his abuse, I’m not sure, but it felt like an attempt at a very stereotypical representation of autism, and if it was I don’t like that. It’s a very narrow minded interpretation of autism, not to mention it was just so tedious to read.

It’s overwritten. It definitely could’ve (should’ve, imo) been at least 100 pages shorter. Maybe its just because I wasn’t enjoying it that much but it felt like a drag to get through. I was bored for a lot of it.

The writing. Her style just doesn’t work for me. I liked the winter descriptions, and the folktale style of it, but I found certain sentences to be worded awkwardly to where I’d have to read them multiple times to get what she meant. It was the same with Uprooted for me. Like she’s trying to make it sound pretty but it’s just awkward to read. Could just be me. I did find some sentences that were actually grammatically incorrect though…

Homophobic?? This one was easy to miss, but the only - very minor side character - that’s gay has a crush on his own cousin. I feel like I don’t need to explain how that’s problematic.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Child death, Fire/Fire injury, Violence, Gore, Physical abuse, Vomit, Child abuse, and Misogyny

Moderate: Alcohol, Animal death, Domestic abuse, Antisemitism, Blood, Death of parent, Alcoholism, Body horror, Rape, Sexual assault, Terminal illness, and Toxic relationship

Minor: Classism, Incest, and Miscarriage

Graphic: Eye trauma Moderate: mentioned child rape