Reviews tagging 'Homophobia'

The Hunger by Alma Katsu

42 reviews

price245's review

dark slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated

3.25

---

Content Warnings

Moderate: Cannibalism, Homophobia, Racism, Rape, and Incest

thegayestghost's review

dark tense medium-paced

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

2.75

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Infidelity, Child death, Death, Animal death, Adult/minor relationship, Rape, Homophobia, Alcoholism, Racism, Bullying, Blood, Hate crime, Gore, Incest, Murder, Grief, Pedophilia, and Pregnancy

Moderate: Alcohol, Alcoholism, and Cannibalism

pikapoot's review

dark tense

3.75

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Cannibalism and Murder

Moderate: Homophobia

esterie's review against another edition

dark tense slow-paced

• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

well, there's an interesting story in here somewhere, i guess.

first off, i think historical fiction based on real events, involving real people, really isn't my cup of tea. the fictionalization of real people struck me as kind of.... dehumanizing. as netti90 said in their review (oh how i wish we could like reviews on here!): "I think it just weirds me out when real people are fictionalized because they actually existed."

tamsen being in love with her brother and being a "witch", a tryst between reed and snyder, the romance between stanton and mary

... these were real people, and man.... that just don't sit right with me treating them like characters.

second, the pacing was not great. a fair few great horror elements early on, with large swathes of boring droll in between and unnecessary "backstory" for certain characters, some of which served the narrative literally not at all. after reading up on the true account of the donner party whilst reading this, there's really no reason a book about their journey, even a fictionalized horror book, should be boring. but it was. i kept looking at my percentage read and feeling the sunk cost fallacy more and more. and the sheer number of "characters"! i take notes while reading (memory issues) and even then i kept having to search the book for names thinking 'who tf are you???'. keeping track of who was who, who was married into certain families, who was hired help, etc. was tedious. i know the donner party was large, but damn i felt like didn't know half these people when they were mentioned, they were integrated into the story so poorly.

how i imagined the story to go, before i started, would be to follow a fictional family on this journey, and their observations of the events. i think that would have fit so much better. OR, take this concept of a blood-born disease that fills one with an insatiable rage and hunger, and center it on a (fictional!!!) pioneer family. 10 people max. something stalking outside their cabin, cattle going missing, people acting weird, getting sick. all much smaller scale, but i think it would have been so so SO much more effective!!!

on the horror element btw, i was expecting it to be more of a skinwalker story. one very vicious malevolent entity sneaking into the group, changing appearance, sowing chaos. instead it was an.....

infectious.... rabid..... werewolf?

..... situation. hmm. okay then. the lil bit of gore there was, was good, very visceral and graphic, but just not.... quite what i hoped.

some plot points were just left up in the air? when

elitha started hearing whispers

i thought "oh like those native american stories, this is gonna spread amongst the group!" but no. she's just special like that i guess.

at least from this i heard about "The Indifferent Stars Above", which i've promptly added to my tbr. still jonesing for a good skinwalker horror story, unfortunately.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Homophobia, Cannibalism, Gore, and Sexual violence

narbine's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional tense medium-paced

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

3.5

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Misogyny, Blood, Abandonment, Death, Mental illness, Gun violence, Gore, Grief, Violence, Sexual violence, Fire/Fire injury, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Sexism, Infidelity, Alcohol, Homophobia, Murder, Sexual assault, Colonisation, Animal death, Medical content, and Racism

Moderate: Animal death, Death of parent, and Classism

Minor: Domestic abuse, Incest, War, Child abuse, Pregnancy, Cursing, Suicide, and Pedophilia

smolhandsdan's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-paced

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

4.25

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Cannibalism, Cultural appropriation, Homophobia, and Colonisation

Minor: Pedophilia, Grief, Death of parent, Adult/minor relationship, Domestic abuse, Injury/Injury detail, Religious bigotry, Pregnancy, Murder, Death, Rape, Classism, Animal death, Sexual assault, and Sexual harassment

glassflowrr's review

adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

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

3.5

Solid story with some amazing moments of terror and gore. I really enjoyed the pacing. There are a few too many POV characters to keep track of and some aren't very well-developed as voices, but the good ones are very interesting to be with. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Cannibalism, Death, Injury/Injury detail, Grief, Death of parent, Blood, Homophobia, Body horror, Child abuse, Child death, Cursing, Gore, Racism, Suicide attempt, Violence, and Murder

Moderate: Child abuse, Incest, Medical content, Physical abuse, Sexual content, Sexual harassment, Domestic abuse, Alcohol, and Abandonment

thedemonastagoth's review

dark emotional tense medium-paced

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

4.75

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Death, Cannibalism, Gore, and Violence

Moderate: Murder, Infidelity, Pedophilia, Colonisation, Grief, and Sexual violence

Minor: Physical abuse, Racism, Homophobia, Incest, Xenophobia, Child death, and Sexism

singlier's review

challenging dark informative mysterious tense slow-paced

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

1.5

The Hunger 1.5/5 🐂s by Alma Katsu 

Oh I wanted to enjoy this book and I was so excited to give it a read. The Hunger is a horror retelling of the ill-fated Donner Party expedition during the mid 1800s, weaving real life histories and people with a supernatural twist of horror and fear.

But it just... Didn't hit. There were a lot of narrator characters (around 5: Edwin Bryant, Charles Stanton, James Reed, Tamsen Donner, and Elitha Graves) and I never really got close to any of them or felt a strong connection to them. The way the book is ordered, often something important would happen to a character, but it wouldn't be until the next chapter that it's revealed *why*. 

Also, there are just...a ton of characters and a few chapters in I just gave up trying to keep who's who straight: who was cousins with who, who was the daughter-in-law of who, who was who's son or the servants of who, so on. Rarely so I ask for this, but I really wished to have a family tree in the beginning to keep things straight.

The book struggles most notably with its treatment of Native American practices, quickly falling into the ideas of "Indigenous mysticism" as soon as things turn awry. Maybe it's playing off the beliefs of the settlers, but for once I'd like a horror where there wasn't "an old Native American folktale detailing this exact horror situation" going on, you know? Also, negative a million points for using the s-term to describe the collection of symptoms (cannibalism, violence, etc) of the settlers. Turning them into "creatures less than human" felt like it took away from the horror of the situation of the Donner Party: the scariest thing of all is realizing that even "good" people are not exempt from evil, and will commit atrocious acts to their fellow people in acts of survival or desperation.

---

Content Warnings

Moderate: Homophobia, Physical abuse, Classism, Animal death, Blood, Cannibalism, Child death, Adult/minor relationship, and Sexual assault

Minor: Terminal illness, Incest, Vomit, Suicide, and Toxic relationship

magical_mads's review against another edition

challenging dark tense medium-paced

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

2.75

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Sexual harassment, Racism, Physical abuse, Hate crime, Gore, Misogyny, Death, Cannibalism, Rape, Incest, Pandemic/Epidemic, Infidelity, Child abuse, Pedophilia, Injury/Injury detail, Homophobia, Torture, Sexism, Body horror, Medical trauma, Child death, Suicide, Sexual violence, Sexual assault, Animal death, Violence, Gun violence, Domestic abuse, Blood, and Murder