Reviews tagging 'Alcohol'

She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan

75 reviews

sporemiette's review

adventurous dark emotional medium-paced

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

4.5

sometimes the prose was really good and sometimes it felt clumsy. the dialogue especially was a toss up, although i think it got better as the book went on. one thing that i wasn't a fan of was the cursing in the narration, although that's something i don't like in any book. there were times when i felt like the crass nature of swearing contradicted whatever was going on in the actual scene. other than that the story was good and i especially like how the author handled gender identity and dysphoria ^^

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Death of parent, Child death, Violence, War, Fire/Fire injury, Colonisation, Cursing, Dysphoria, Gore, Murder, Blood, and Body horror

Moderate: Alcohol, Child abuse, Sexism, Misogyny, Homophobia, Outing, and Sexual content

Minor: Pregnancy, Pedophilia, and Excrement

wrenxavier's review

adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

4.75

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Alcohol, Blood, Colonisation, Cultural appropriation, Cursing, Death, Dysphoria, Genocide, Grief, Gore, Misogyny, Murder, Racial slurs, Racism, Sexism, Sexual content, Slavery, Violence, and War

Minor: Bullying, Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Death of parent, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Gaslighting, Medical content, Sexual harassment, and Toxic relationship

emilywasbored's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional tense medium-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Death, Murder, and Violence

Moderate: Alcohol, Death of parent, Misogyny, and Child death

Minor: Animal death, Slavery, and Cannibalism

sugarpal's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional tense slow-paced

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

4.25

This book gave me pretty much everything I wanted. The main character was power-hungry, morally grey, and gender non-conforming. (Also, if you saw my update about starting the book… Yeah, I take it back, Zhu has plenty of red flags. Yay!) The plot was excellent, the writing was beautiful. Everyone was gay. Amazing.

Just a couple of quibbles: the pacing felt slow at times, maybe because I wasn’t really invested in Ouyang’s plotline, and there were some times when I was confused by the writing. Maybe I’m dumb, but I just needed the genius plans and intrigues explained more fully for me, instead of implied. Also, I wanted to see a couple of semi-important events that were kind of glossed over? But oh well. 

As I said, this book has a lot to recommend it. The characters are excellently handled, even though like I said I didn’t care much for Ouyang. The depiction of Chinese culture was excellent, fascinating, and I thought the magic was an interesting way of playing with the concept of the Mandate of Heaven. This book definitely gave me some Poppy War vibes, although it’s set further back in history and has to do with the Mongolian colonization instead of the British. It’s also more focused on politics than war, and I felt it was a bit lacking in action. But there is some in there, and this book has a lovely (steamy, queer!) romance to make up for it. (Be aware, it is VERY explicit.)

I’m definitely going to be reading the next book!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Child death, Colonisation, Death, Death of parent, Misogyny, Sexism, Sexual content, and Violence

Moderate: Alcohol and Slavery

dorakathryn's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional slow-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Death, Murder, and Violence

Moderate: Grief, Homophobia, Infidelity, Misogyny, Sexism, Sexual content, Transphobia, and Death of parent

Minor: Alcohol, Child death, and Vomit