Reviews tagging 'Gore'

Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky

7 reviews

maddie_can_read's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

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

4.25

I had a super difficult time getting into this book but I'm glad I powered through because I ended up really enjoying it towards the end. I did find it a bit slow and a bit plodding throughout.

I had a difficult time vibing with the writing style at first. I think it was a combination of it being written in third person but then also being kind omniscient narrator (like they knew everything about past humanity -

like comparing the spider pandemic to the black plague

. 

And I just could not connect with any of the characters until almost the half way point. I don't think the author is great at characterization.

I kept going because I liked the premise and I read all these reviews talking about how weird (in a good way) the book was and just thought I'd keep going and give it some more time. 

And wow, I loved it when things got weird! Having the structure of the book set up the way it is

spanning multiple generations

made it so some really interesting things could occur. Really liked how the two story-lines came to a head. 

Lots of wtf moments

really was not expecting Arvana to turn away the last of humanity, the mutiny, the spiders holding a human captivity for decades, spider sexism, the captain wanting to become the ship and being kept alive by machines, the captain letting people out of some pods and them having generations of children that followed him like a cult leader, really loved the love story between the humans (how it was impacted by one of them staying out of their cold sleep for longer) and then the one between two of the spiders towards the end where the male sacrifices himself, and loved the twist/ fake-out at the end!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: War, Cursing, Religious bigotry, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Violence, Death, and Sexism

Moderate: Confinement, Murder, Pandemic/Epidemic, and Blood

Minor: Suicide, Sexual content, Excrement, and Slavery

SPIDERS, insects

talonsontypewriters's review against another edition

adventurous tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

maybe just the mood I'm in but it never quite clicked for me :( the spiders were cool though

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Genocide, Colonisation, War, Injury/Injury detail, and Body horror

Moderate: Gun violence, Violence, Xenophobia, Death, Murder, Gore, Fire/Fire injury, Confinement, Sexism, Animal death, Cannibalism, and Terminal illness

Minor: Ableism

Spiders, insects. Passing use of cr*pple/d, single use of the R slur.

micheala's review against another edition

This book has a really cool premise, in terms of post apocalyptic SciFi. The set up is that humans had started terraforming the galaxy before a nuclear war destroyed all humans living off planet, and threw Earth into an ice age. 

We then get a ship with a few thousand of the remaining humans centuries later, travelling through space (in stais) in the hopes of finding a new home. 

The planet they do eventually arrive at was supposed to be an experiment to "speed run" evolution and create new humans from monkeys + an engineered virus. However, those monkeys died being sent to the planet, and giant senteant  insects evolve instead. 

Cool right? I had a few quibbles with the spider sections (they don't know what humans/earth is, and they don't know about the virus let alone how it functions, so stop talking about it in the narrative portions of their sections; and I was kinda disappointed that their society also was fundamentally sexist and pretty much a 1:1 of humans in the medial ages in terms of society) 

The humans finally get onto the planet, and we get drop kicked into full on horror, specifically graphic body horror. So I noped out of a story I was otherwise enjoying at 37%

If you're cool with horror, I'm guessing this book is going to continue to play with some really interesting ideas, however as someone who cannot deal with horror, it's a DNF for me.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Misogyny, Death, Genocide, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Slavery, Violence, War, Xenophobia, Colonisation, Gun violence, Blood, Body horror, Murder, and Sexism

nodogsonthemoon's review against another edition

adventurous emotional reflective medium-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Cannibalism, Animal death, Gore, Colonisation, War, Death, Genocide, Gun violence, Violence, and Fire/Fire injury

cookiecat73's review against another edition

slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Gun violence, Murder, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Sexism, Animal death, Blood, Body horror, Confinement, Cursing, War, Xenophobia, Animal cruelty, and Cannibalism

Moderate: Abandonment, Colonisation, Fire/Fire injury, Genocide, Gore, Slavery, Abortion, Injury/Injury detail, Mental illness, Suicide, Suicidal thoughts, Classism, Kidnapping, Physical abuse, and Terminal illness

Minor: Child death, Excrement, Incest, Pregnancy, and Alcohol

pkledgrape's review against another edition

adventurous challenging funny inspiring reflective medium-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Gore, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Colonisation and Xenophobia

spiders

manicpixl's review against another edition

challenging informative reflective slow-paced

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

4.25

Warning: If you have a phobia of

spiders

, be very careful approaching this book (I wrapped the object of the phobia in spoiler brackets, even though it becomes apparent very early on in the book, but if you prefer to go in completely blind, I don't want to spoil that for you).
That said, I have a pretty major case of exactly that phobia, and I managed perfectly fine until one scene towards the end, when

the spiders actually meet and engage in battle with the humans

. The detachement created by the books setting and tone worked very well for me, but please be aware that this might not be the case for you.
And I'm so glad that I took the risk, knowing about the content, and was able to read this book, because it was absolutely worth it!
It wove the science and the fiction together into a very engaging story, and I enjoyed the writing style very much.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement and Death

Moderate: Body horror and Gore

Very large spiders as protagonists