Reviews tagging 'Violence'

Die, Vol. 1: Fantasy Heartbreaker by Kieron Gillen

7 reviews

maybephasing's review

dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Death, Gore, Violence, Blood, Murder, and War

Moderate: Cursing

Minor: Bullying, Homophobia, Infidelity, Medical content, Grief, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail

cheye13's review

adventurous dark tense medium-paced

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

5.0

The execution lives up to the premise. Beautifully drawn and evocative, it hits all the right story beats at a great pace. I wanted the next volume instantly.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Violence, and Blood

Moderate: War and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Animal death, Death of parent, and Fire/Fire injury

moderate eye horror

booksdogsandcoffee's review

adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad fast-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? It's complicated

4.0

An amazing first volume of this graphic novel. If you love DnD, Jumanji and The chronicles of Narnia this one is for you.

Six teens in 1991 set out to play an rpg game at a birthday party. Upon picking the die up they are sucked into the game. Two years later 5 out of the six kids show up after the mysterious disappearance. For some reason (explained later) they can't talk about why or what happened while they were gone. 

25 years down the line, the die of Sol, their friend who didn't come back with them, randomly shows up. And the five friends upon reconvening are sucked back into the realm to play again.

I loved this so much and now need to go grab the other 3 volumes. There was bipoc, disability and queer rep in it!

cw/tw
violence
death of a parent
trauma
gore
death
War

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Gore, Violence, Death of parent, and War

Moderate: Gun violence

indydanniejones's review

adventurous dark 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? It's complicated

4.5

Dungeons and Dragons to the max. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Violence

taylizart's review against another edition

adventurous dark tense medium-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence and Blood

bibliofox's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny informative mysterious reflective 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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death and Violence

Minor: Addiction

thevampiremars's review

adventurous dark hopeful 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

4.5

I enjoyed this even more than I thought I would. Hans’s painterly art style is gorgeous and Gillen’s worldbuilding is fantastic. The meta aspects of the story are handled really well. The classes (Dictator, Neo, Godbinder, Grief Knight, Fool) are all really interesting, both mechanically and in terms of what they tell us about the characters.

Ash was already my favourite character, but “This is the point where, if this was a different kind of story, I’d come out with a simple answer” made me love her. It’s great to see a character who is definitely queer but whose queerness isn’t taxonomically categorised. I suspect her identity will be pinpointed later on, but I appreciate the angst-free ambiguity she exists in at this moment. You love to see it.

I do have a few complaints but they’re relatively minor and nitpicky. I felt this volume was a little too exposition-heavy, for example – a lot was explained via Ash’s narration rather than being shown and demonstrated. I needed more time to get to know the characters before the action started, and some characters (eg: Matt) were underused and sidelined.

But still, the things I like greatly outweigh any criticisms I may have. I will definitely be checking out the rest of the Die series.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death and War

Moderate: Body horror, Cursing, Gore, Homophobia, Violence, Blood, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, and Alcohol

Minor: Addiction, Animal death, Child death, Drug use, Genocide, Gun violence, Medical content, and Death of parent