Reviews tagging 'Torture'

Angelfall by Susan Ee

13 reviews

mailuss's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious fast-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: War, Blood, and Cannibalism

Moderate: Torture, Violence, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , and Child death

prashiie's review against another edition

adventurous dark funny mysterious tense medium-paced

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

2.5

“When you're small enough to have to look up at everyone around you, there's no such thing as a dirty fight.”

Basically, the world as we know it has ended, angels are everywhere and humans are trying to survive. An interesting plot! We have angels against angels and Penryn who is trying to survive with her little sister who is in a wheelchair and mother who has schizophrenia and is both intriguing and scary. I didn’t expect her mother to survive and I was surprised to see how self-reliant she was when left on her own. I hope she’ll get a bigger role in the next two books.

The writing felt a little off in the beginning, mainly because of the over-explaining and this made it harder to really get into the book. But I have to say that it got better or maybe I just got used to it. The story also got more interesting later on, so that helps!

Now I’m debating whether to read the other books or not. I didn’t love this book, it was okay but on the other hand

I want to know how Paige ended up in a wheelchair–because I don’t believe it’s their mother’s fault–and why the angels are even on Earth and what is going on with them.

 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Cannibalism, Child death, Fire/Fire injury, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Kidnapping, Physical abuse, Sexual harassment, Torture, Violence, Xenophobia, and Schizophrenia/Psychosis

Moderate: Confinement

Minor: Abandonment, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Death, Slavery, and Vomit

psliz's review against another edition

adventurous tense medium-paced

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

1.0

so beyond ableist i couldn't finish (DNF'd at page 71). but it gave me the opportunity to finally give myself permission to dnf books and the opportunity to get educated on ableist terms/phrases

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Ableism, Misogyny, Sexual harassment, Injury/Injury detail, Blood, Gore, Body horror, Medical trauma, Murder, Gun violence, Physical abuse, and Torture

Moderate: Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Kidnapping, Alcohol, Blood, Cannibalism, War, and Child abuse

Minor: Abandonment and Child death

karaboureview's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious tense fast-paced

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

2.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Gore, Mental illness, Murder, Cannibalism, Death, Child abuse, Torture, Toxic relationship, Child death, Chronic illness, Blood, Body horror, Injury/Injury detail, Slavery, Sexism, and Ableism

Moderate: Sexual harassment, Sexual content, Trafficking, Genocide, Adult/minor relationship, War, and Abandonment

fremzz's review

adventurous dark tense fast-paced

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

4.5

Some 2012 books do deserve rights 😌

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Mental illness, Gore, Blood, and Death

Moderate: Medical trauma

Minor: Drug use, Medical content, Alcohol, and Torture

Content warning clarifications (lightly spoilery): Mental illness: Mc’s mum has schizophrenia. Medical trauma: Mc’s sister is wheelchair bound because of a childhood accident (she isn’t much in the book though). Alcohol: Champagne at a party (can’t remember if there were other types of alcohol). Drug use: Unknown angels smoke at a party.

tinkithesquirelll's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful mysterious sad tense fast-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcohol, Child death, Confinement, Chronic illness, Death, Child abuse, Animal cruelty, Blood, Body horror, Physical abuse, Dementia, Cannibalism, Colonisation, War, Violence, Sexual harassment, Outing, Gore, Murder, Medical content, Vomit, Gun violence, Kidnapping, Grief, Torture, Sexual content, Religious bigotry, Medical trauma, and Abandonment

ava_mussell's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious 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

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Torture, War, Body horror, and Cannibalism

Just. The most disturbing book I have ever read. So be careful.

marallellogram's review against another edition

it had so much potential and was very good in the beginning, it was so addicting that I saw past the warning signs but then I just felt nope- it's too much for me and too bizarre. it's a shame, it had such good banter but then just, nope, no thank you

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Torture, Violence, Gore, and Child death

Moderate: Cannibalism and Blood

Minor: Vomit

jacquibear's review against another edition

dark tense medium-paced

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

3.25

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Violence, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Mental illness, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Sexual content, Torture, Medical trauma, Gun violence, and Blood

madarauchiha's review against another edition

slow-paced

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

0.5

I'll be honest: I only read this because the author is a person of color. As much as I love and demand #OwnVoices, I recognize that we shouldn't be restricted to writing about only our experiences of color. And nor should Black authors be restricted to writing only about Black experiences. I think it's rather detrimental to think Black authors or Authors of Color can't write about anything under the sun if we wanted to. 

That said, sometimes it doesn't always work out that well. Like this book, for example. Oh god, this book. If you liked this book fuck you. You are embarassing, you're ugly, your blood is disgusting, cashapp me 50 million dollars as an apology.

There's a part where the self insert main character meets a female angel [who are super rare for some reason??? Why is there only one sexy bitch??] and we get that evil misogynistic trope of the mc being plain jane and unattractive and this female angel being everything she isn't. Like when will we stop pitting women against each other for the sake of voting male love interests? 

The prose is godawful. This is shitty marvel cinematic universe rip off levels of bad. They banter so wittily and it's nothing like actual real live human conversation. 

Speaking of, there's a love interest? I guess? If you squint, it's there. The author is trying to set it up as a forbidden love but like cmon. This is being telegraphed from 2 inches away from your ear. By the way: the main character is a 17 yo human earth girl. A child. A CHILD. INFANTE. BABY. Are you genuinely telling me this old as fuck, ancienter-than-ent-testicles angel is romantically / sexually attracted to this underage girl child? Disgusting. Fuck you susan ee. [idk if Ents have testicle but Tolkien is dead so I'm taking over lotr canon, tyvm]

I didn't like any of the characters. MC was so flat and boring, a very overdone character we've all seen in ya and even generic, poorly written fantasy. It's like a rip off of that hunger games girl.

The ableism! Oof! What a mess. The little sister character who is essentially the Fancy Lamp plot device [not calling her sexy, she's underage cmon] and the plot kinda tosses her here and there. Does she have a personality? Not really. She's repeatedly called cr*ppled, and that is also used to describe other people. They call her wheelchair bound, as well. Also she magically

becomes no longer disabled due to heinous medical experimentation / torture

so we are graced with that fantastically ableist and ageist trope too.

Oh and the mother character [did she ever get named?] is mentally ill. This unnamed mental illness makes her so violently crazy that 1 she abused her youngest daughter into permanent disability 2 plays with corpses 3 rampantly and randomly murders people 4 hears voices that she calls 'demons' and sometimes obeys them. 

The plot doesn't occur until maybe the last 10 percent of the book. The rest is a walking simulator. The concept of angelic hierarchy is kinda neat, as is the

scorpion children monsters

, and I liked the plot twist with Raffe. I wish someone else wrote this book, with a heavy editor on hand. It could've been interesting. Maybe it was, back in 2011, but in 2021 it's not stale, boring, rehashes the same damn tropes we were already sick of back then.

My moonreader app says this took 0.72 hours to read, and yes I was clicking through the pages at, like, 1 per second. This book gets no respect or attention span.

Content warnings [probably incomplete bc fuck paying attention to this book]:


Minor: whorephobic language, racism in calling a lil white girl the next Dalai Lama what the fuck susan, 

Medium: cannibalism

Major: gore, wing trauma, blood, amputation, child abuse, ableist c slur, dogs, misogyny, sexual harassment, body horror, child death, murder, slavery, medical gore, medical abuse, experimentation, torture,

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Adult/minor relationship, Blood, Body horror, Cannibalism, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Gore, Medical content, Medical trauma, Misogyny, Murder, Physical abuse, Sexism, Violence, Torture, and Slavery

Minor: Pedophilia