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logfan's review against another edition
- 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
5.0
Graphic: Ableism, Addiction, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Blood, Body horror, Bullying, Cannibalism, Child abuse, Child death, Colonisation, Cursing, and Death
heyjaycee's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
Graphic: Violence, Murder, Body horror, Slavery, and Bullying
Moderate: Sexual violence, Sexism, Torture, Animal death, and Rape
Minor: Cannibalism
This whole book is a content warning. It's very violent, often quite graphic. The rape is only discussed and alluded to, not shown, which is something.justcallme_d's review against another edition
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Graphic: Gore, Blood, and Body horror
Moderate: Animal death
Minor: Rape
shaybro1728's review against another edition
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
I have been thinking about how I want to structure this review. I should start by saying I loved a lot of this book. I think the action scenes were dynamic. I thought the main character of Darrow was amazing. His character arc just in this first book was beautiful. But I hated the discussions of rape and the characterization of the women in this book.
In one of the first major battles of this book, our main character heard one of Titus's side characters sexually assault a woman. For me, I do not like it when authors use sexual assault as a narrative tool. Those discussions need to be done thoughtfully, carefully, and provide some direct and thoughtful justice to the character. In this first instance, I thought that the author brought up a good point. Darrow's main character asks the group what he should do and if they would care about the assault of the victim was not gold (the highest-ranking race in this world). And I think that does point to some important problems when we talk about sexual assault. We only care about it when it is against someone we deem worthy of grieving. However, there is another scene in which a sexual assault happened. The assaulter receives 20 lashes, and Darrow makes his troop give him 25 lashes saying that any wrongdoing he will share in the punishment. And the assaulted gets to be a ranking member, and the victim fades more or else into the background for me. There was no justice. Yes, the author talked about how the assault was about power. But he didn't take away power from the assaulted. Everyone moved on, and all was forgiven. This issue is still a large barrier for me in reading the next book in the series.
But second, the female characters in this book felt like props. The male characters definitely had more in-depth personalities. For example, all we know of EO is that she is pretty, she picked who she wanted to love, and she sang a death song. But we don't know anything else about her. Darrow constantly talks about how pretty Eo was. But nothing about her personality. Nothing about her character. Mustang, the new love interest, we know, is smart, pretty, and is wealthy. But she lacked any depth for me. It was just so frustrating to see Darrow have such a deeply thought-through personality and story arch, and all the women were merely props to motivate his next moves.
Graphic: Kidnapping, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Slavery, Suicide, Torture, Violence, Grief, Gore, Genocide, Excrement, Emotional abuse, Death, Cursing, Child death, Cannibalism, Body horror, Blood, Animal death, and Animal cruelty
sheilajenn's review against another edition
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
The premise is that the highest caste, the Golds, educates their children through a bloody war game. Our hero, who is a member of the lowest caste (Red) but masquerading as a Gold, has to do well in this game to destroy the caste system.
So, basically, it's The Hunger Games meets the Iliad. The problem is that watching teenagers kill each other to survive isn't fun for me at all. I don't want to downrate the book for that, but I won't be reading the next one.
Allll the trigger warnings.
Graphic: Violence, Torture, Slavery, Medical content, Gore, Death, Body horror, and Blood
Moderate: Rape and Cannibalism