Reviews with content warning for Death - Station Eleven

Reviews tagging 'Death'

Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel

443 reviews

belgian_fantasy_fan's review against another edition

4.0

dark reflective sad slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

Content Warnings

cort_kaye's review against another edition

4.0

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Content Warnings

gymjam_reads's review against another edition

4.25

adventurous dark reflective medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Took me a while to get into but once I was, it was hard to put down. Beautifully written. It really makes you think about the concept of civilization and how things would be if it was no more. Character's felt real and I loved how well interwoven everything was.

Content Warnings

cepramas's review against another edition

5.0

challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Content Warnings

emmaevns's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous dark 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: Yes

Content Warnings

goodfriendguy's review against another edition

4.25

adventurous dark hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Content Warnings

builtonbooks's review against another edition

4.25

challenging dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Loveable characters: Yes

I read this on Easter weekend, a break from my cultural industries masters program, this somehow made more invested in my program. As a museum practitioner the scenes at the Museum of Civilization moved me so much. I binge read it from Good Friday to Black Saturday 2024 and somehow, as a lapsed Catholic, the timing felt right.

Beautiful uncompromising writing with moments that gave me goosebumps. Reading this in 2024, year 4 post COVID-19 was a wild ride, and I'm glad I waited till now to read it. It also made me miss home, family, and the light and heat of my country.

Content Warnings

larissakoch's review against another edition

4.0

adventurous challenging dark hopeful reflective tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Content Warnings

chersonese's review against another edition

4.75

emotional hopeful inspiring reflective 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: Complicated

I really enjoyed this book, and it's made me realise that i'm much more a fan of multiple POVs in fiction that I first thought. It's something that you don't see too often, it's tricky to get a sprawling cast of characters right, easier to focus on one POV and do it well. In fact it's been said, somewhere by someone, that the optimal range of characters in any given scene that a person can keep track of is around seven. This book not only writes each different POV well, it shows you the ways in which you can play with a cast in scenes and expands on them in all the best ways.

Calling this a post-apocalyptic novel is going to mislead people, because while yes that is true I think it gives reader's certain expectations and leads them looking for an overarching plot, an obstacle to defeat, a villain. The book has those elements but they're not the main focus, this is a character-driven book, and subsequently the characters are driving you, the reader, to keep turning the page. I found myself several times going to a new chapter, seeing who's POV it was and being excited to hear more from a character we hadn't touched on in a few chapters. And I will admit I found myself wanting more of the characters, but (and I want to stress this) not because I feel they were not fleshed out in the writing, I wanted more of these characters because of how fleshed out they were.
I'm not normally in the business of writing long reviews, so i'll leave it with this. This book is about people, if you don't enjoy hearing about their everyday struggles, their seemingly generic highs and lows, their lives. If what you want is a fantastical adventure this book may leave you wanting, but I hope you'll read it anyway.

Content Warnings

podanotherjessi's review

3.75

challenging dark slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I liked it! I think the story itself is told in this really neat way where it avoids a lot of (imo) more interesting narrative, or at least more typical pandemic/post apocalyptic stories - like the actual fall of civilization, or how society started to revive - and the result is this kind of negative space image that I really like. The pandemic itself is done in a way that settles into the uncanny valley. It's got a lot of elements of how that played out in real life, but it's just a little off in a way that makes it more extreme but not quite believable, but in a way that I found enjoyable if off-putting.

Content Warnings

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