Reviews tagging 'Death'

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

443 reviews

challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious sad slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

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bookybeckyboo's review

4.75
adventurous dark mysterious reflective medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

<3 
It's a look at an ensemble of characters who have in one way or another, for the main ones, have a link to this one actor in the book, and how their lives intersect and connect thanks to this person they have in common. 
It makes you think of the butterfly effect, really, the unknown effects we have on people we meet for a short or long time. And this, set in a pre+during a society collapse. 

Something I didn't expect is that half the book is flashbacks, context for all the connections to make sense to us. It's not written in chronological order, you get pieces of context as you go, even up to the end. So it's quite cool to figure out where the links are as the story progresses and you go back and forth in time. 

It's a soft and realistic look at what a collapse could be like. It's about community, people being there for each other, and also not. Loss in big and small ways. It's very very rich in detail in these characters' lives so you feel for each of them. 

I went in for the pandemic content, was confused as to why we were spending so much time on one guy at the beginning, then started to understand as the book made its direction clearer. I wasn't disappointed, in the end.

It's the kind of book that's a little heartbreaking, but in a soft way. In a "we've lived through painful times, but we're still here, and there still exists beauty in the world somehow. People to hold on to, memories to share and cherish, and the future to meet, and make."
It's truly a beautiful story about humans in relationship to each other. A little gem. 

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adventurous challenging reflective medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

This book is about a flu epidemic that causes most of civilisation to collapse and become corrupt. The book starts with a tragic situation concerning the protagonist, and then jumps the timeline to the period before the tragedy happened, and then at the end of the book it circles back to the death. This novel is a full circle story, it isn't left on a cliffhanger. The main themes were tragedy, civilisation, survival, and death. Death and survival were very common themes throughout the novel.This is because of the epidemic causing citizens to die hastily, also causing a lot of society survival instincts to kick in. Society had to make a lot of important decisions concerning their life and well being. The beginning was the most interesting when the epidemic and flu were being talked about, but shortly after that the novel became a little too slow paced for me. I enjoyed reading about Jeevans preparations for the epidemic, liked how many trips he had to make to the food store while snow was falling and the store was about to close. 

I like this book because it goes into depth about the characters relationships with one another. The characters change throughout the book because a lot of friendships and relationships often do not last, for many reasons. For me 1984 is similar to this because of the dystopian fiction, but it differs because Station Eleven jumps back and fourth, and it has different timelines. The one piece of symbolism that stuck through the whole book with me was the cloudy paperweight, I always thought it resembled the setting of the book because of the flu that spread. The point of this book shows survival between life and death. The take away message is that there is a chance of survival. A trigger warning may be useful before the protagonists death, because they died from a heart attack. I recommend this book if you like a novel that jumps around a lot, because there are quite a lot of storylines. My favourite part of this book was the dinner party. " There are ten guests here tonight, an intimate evening to celebrate both the anniversary and the opening weekend figures." The dinner party was full of drama thats why I liked it. A part of the book I didn't enjoy was the story of the Traveling Symphony I felt that it was very slow paced and kind of unnecessary. "There were moments around campfires when someone would say something invigorating about the importance of art, and everyone would find it easier to sleep that night." This shows basically what the Traveling Symphony would be doing and I just think that this storyline is unimportant to the book, we don't need to know about their campfire stories.

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challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes

So a few years ago I read Sea of Tranquility, not knowing three of her novels were connected. So I've now gone back to read Station Eleven, and I'll continue on and reread the last one. I took this one camping, and it was a great atmosphere for this book. The writing is beautiful and thought provoking, and I loved how the jumping time periods and perspectives kept you guessing for how everything was going to converge. 

And it was a really satisfying ending too! I think this one is going to stay with me, and I'll be ruminating on it for a long time. I may even bump it up from 4.5 to 5 stars if it really sticks. 

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adventurous challenging dark emotional sad tense fast-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: Yes

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challenging emotional hopeful inspiring medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: No

I had heard nothing but amazing things about this book...so unfortunately I had very high expectations and ended up feeling a bit let down. I think if I wasn't spending the whole time wondering, "When does it get as good as everyone said it is?" I would've enjoyed it a lot more.

However! About halfway through I did start to really dig my teeth into it. As with a lot of the books I've read recently, once things started to fall into place and I started to see the connections, I got a lot more interested.

The concept is certainly interesting, the characters were fine, I just wanted...more.

I wish it had been two books. One about "the before" and one about "the after," but I understand that you can't predict success and if you aren't sure you'll get a second book deal, you might as well put both stories in one.

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
dark emotional reflective medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: No

Expand filter menu Content Warnings