Reviews tagging 'Racism'

Hell Bent by Leigh Bardugo

94 reviews

hippievamp's review

dark funny mysterious tense medium-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Misogyny, Police brutality, Racism, Blood, Murder, Confinement, Death, Gore, Grief, Violence, Panic attacks/disorders, and Classism

Moderate: Drug use, Cancer, Fire/Fire injury, Stalking, Bullying, Gun violence, and Medical content

Minor: Chronic illness, Medical content, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Child abuse, Suicide attempt, Torture, and Rape

leexpenandpages's review against another edition

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

4.75

📝 SYNOPSIS:
I love you to Hell and back. Immersed in a world of occult magic, Alex vows to return her mentor from Hell with the help of her friends and a magical gift that is hers alone.
👩‍🏫⛪️👻📜💀🐇😈🧛‍♂️🎩

👍🏻 RECOMMENDATION:
💚 READ it! 

💬 FAVORITE QUOTES:
[PENDING]

👓 FORMAT: 
🎧

📑 COMMENTS:
• Um, this is a sequel? LOL I jumped in here, and it works fine.
• In the contemporary fantasy setting, Bardugo captures the dark academic aesthetic well. When it comes to the real-life setting, the northeast and California are believable (but I haven't spent enough time in Connecticut specifically to judge that). The magic system is convoluted, but the loose logic does fall apart at the end.
• The characters are complex, three-dimensional, and flawed. Their races and genders influence them in meaningful ways. Some are more lovable than others, but they are all understandable. Mercy & Turner are my personal favorites! The antagonists are rounded, too. 
• Apt imagery and metaphors flow into the prose. There's plenty to dissect if that's your thing. (It's mine!) I'd love to see it on the page, particulaely to see the tome excerpts.
• Why did they switch audiobook narrators so late into the story? It was jarring, and it pulled me out of the story! The character's voice is defined, but I also hate it. It adds nothing to the story. Overall, Part Two lags.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death of parent, Grief, Classism, Blood, Sexism, Racism, Murder, Rape, Death, Drug abuse, and Violence

Moderate: Animal cruelty, Mental illness, Gun violence, Animal death, and Sexual content

Minor: Cursing, Colonisation, Body shaming, Drug use, Alcohol, Confinement, Forced institutionalization, Suicide attempt, Self harm, Slavery, and Vomit

itsheyfay's review

adventurous dark emotional funny 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

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gore, Body horror, Animal death, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Suicidal thoughts, Grief, Death, Death of parent, and Abandonment

Moderate: Stalking, Vomit, and Gun violence

Minor: Child death, Slavery, Drug use, Racism, and Suicide attempt

dearhaleynicole's review

adventurous dark emotional tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I LOVED this sequel to Ninth House! The eerie setting was still there but Leigh really built on what she did with the first book. I thought the stakes were there and big fan of more Darlington in this book. For obvious reasons if you read Ninth House. 

Had no idea there was set to be a sequel  but that makes me so happy because I need more!! 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, Murder, and Death

Minor: Animal death, Sexual assault, and Racism

rainyghost's review

adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Bullying, Death, Emotional abuse, Animal death, Gaslighting, Violence, and Toxic relationship

Moderate: Racism, Vomit, Torture, Murder, Injury/Injury detail, Suicidal thoughts, and Sexual assault

saucy_bookdragon's review

dark emotional 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

4.0

Hell Bent is an absolutely wild sequel to Ninth House, so much so there's literally a glowing demon dick and its just a minor thing. It's not even for smut its just there!

In this sequel, the crew is trying to figure out how to get into hell. Its an overall improvement on the first book! Its got a more intriguing and unhinged plot, Alex and the side characters have a lot more personality and development, and this is more solidly dark academia (especially with a focus on mythology and theology, we also finally find out what Alex is majoring in it's English). And where I found Ninth House to have inconsistent pacing and a disappointing answer to the mystery, I was m0re engaged with Hell Bent and the ending had me gagged!

Though I do wish this had addressed some of the other problems from book one. In particular, Alex still has some stereotypes tied to her Latina identity and Hellie is still not a character outside of Alex's own trauma. Though this book doesn't make these problems worse, it could have improved them.

Also Alex and Dawes are definitely in love I don't care if Darlington is also in love with Alex and probably endgame Dawes has more chemistry.

TWs: this book is about the same level of triggering as the first one, a little less so actually since there isn't any on page sexual assault. That said, there is a scene with animal death (a rabbit) that was gory and difficult to read. Other TWs are violence, gore, death, horror elements, murder, drug use, mentions of racism including slavery and police brutality, misogyny, spiders. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gore, Murder, Death, and Animal death

Moderate: Racism, Misogyny, Drug use, and Drug abuse

Minor: Sexual assault

wemilyebb's review against another edition

challenging dark funny 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? It's complicated

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence

Moderate: Sexual assault

Minor: Racism and Slavery

joensign's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Body horror, Death, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Violence, Murder, and Stalking

Moderate: Gun violence, Animal death, Misogyny, Animal cruelty, Rape, Sexual violence, and Racism

Minor: Abandonment, Toxic relationship, Suicidal thoughts, and Confinement

katemarie99's review

challenging dark emotional funny sad tense fast-paced

5.0

Was considering a 4.5 at first but no -- it deserves the whole five. That destroyed me 🙃🙃🙃

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Gore, Sexual harassment, Suicidal thoughts, Blood, Sexual assault, Injury/Injury detail, and Bullying

Moderate: Sexual content, Addiction, Racism, Sexual harassment, Adult/minor relationship, Slavery, Blood, Gun violence, Body horror, Hate crime, Police brutality, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, and Suicide attempt

laurenzokro's review

adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious 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

3.0

Conflicted on what to rate this one, but overall I can say I enjoyed it. It definitely was an easier read than the first book given that the world building was out of the way - which made for a more gratifying reading experience. That being said, there was a lot that still confounded me - making for a pretty bumpy first 3/4 of the book, and a pretty solid last 1/4 of the book.

I think this book’s primary strength is in its ability to capture intense emotion and explore deep rooted histories/traumas, both of which helped to construct a very visceral reading experience. However, there were too many instances where the tone of a given scene would do a complete 180 - oftentimes throwing your focus off entirely, Additionally, while there were lots of intense and interesting moments, it felt as though there were too many ideas being crammed into the one book -

from the reintroduction of Darlington’s parents to their deaths pretty quickly after their introduction, to Michelle being a double agent, to Mercy for some reason now being part of the squad? It just felt like so much of it, frankly, didn’t make sense. Especially the ending - why have them go through all of that, closing off the passage between world only for it to suddenly still be open anyways?

All in all, good story and great investigation of the core casts’ character arcs, but definitely tried to take on a bit too much.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Blood, Murder, and Violence

Moderate: Police brutality, Racism, and Vomit

Minor: Suicide attempt, Gun violence, and Sexual harassment