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Reviews tagging 'Sexual violence'
A Broken Blade (The Halfling Saga Book 1) by Melissa Blair
13 reviews
sasclostchild's review against another edition
dark
sad
tense
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.25
So the first third of the book was very depressing, focusing on our protagonist living the American dream: doing a shitty job they don't like to barely live and to drown their sorrows in alcohol, all while harming a lot of people.
She then turns her life around by quitting alcohol (good for her) and siding with a rebellious group to eat the rich.
This is all accompanied by a very icky straight romance which is not icky because it's straight (although that is a sad part because i was hoping for a sapphic romance but that only exists in a short flashback) but because the dude forces himself on her all the time and the only chemistry they have is some weird interaction between their types of magic that acts as an aphrodisiac making them horny for each other.She still somehow falls in horny because idk if you can call drug addled make outs love
Then the book also fails to close its main arc during the book but fuck I'm not buying the second book.
Still 2.25, because the unfinished story got kinda interesting in the second half
This is all accompanied by a very icky straight romance which is not icky because it's straight (although that is a sad part because i was hoping for a sapphic romance but that only exists in a short flashback) but because the dude forces himself on her all the time and the only chemistry they have is some weird interaction between their types of magic that acts as an aphrodisiac making them horny for each other.
Then the book also fails to close its main arc during the book but fuck I'm not buying the second book.
Still 2.25, because the unfinished story got kinda interesting in the second half
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual violence, Sexual harassment, Physical abuse, Trafficking, Alcoholism, Racism, Murder, Self harm, Sexism, Sexual assault, and Slavery
Moderate: Genocide, Emotional abuse, Hate crime, Drug abuse, Suicidal thoughts, and Toxic relationship
silence_underrated's review against another edition
Triggering. I can’t stand rape by a figure in power that isn’t punished.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Sexual violence, Xenophobia, Rape, and War
Minor: Rape
staygold91's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
I read this book and its sequel over the course of one weekend. The world is rich and well-developed. The characters feel like real people, and I love the FMC. Keera’s adventure of loss and rediscovering hope is something many could relate to.
I would recommend this book (and series) to anyone who enjoys reading about political intrigue and liberation, and love in the face of overwhelming odds.
I would recommend this book (and series) to anyone who enjoys reading about political intrigue and liberation, and love in the face of overwhelming odds.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual violence, Colonisation, Addiction, Self harm, and Sexual content
sunrae17's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
fast-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
4.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Alcoholism, Violence, and Slavery
Minor: Sexual violence and Suicidal thoughts
ninjatrombonist's review against another edition
dark
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
Content Warnings
Graphic: Self harm
Moderate: Sexual violence, Sexual harassment, Xenophobia, Torture, Suicidal thoughts, and Alcoholism
moodreadererin's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
tense
slow-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? It's complicated
4.0
A Broken Blade follows Keera , the king's blade . She is given a mission to find the new enemy of the crown: the shadow . We go on this journal with her find the shadow and everything that precedes/follows . This is a story of addiction , loss , love , revenge , and violence .
Things I liked :
-enemies to lovers execution was fantastic
- one bed trope
-bipoc representation
- exploration of loss , addiction, recovery in face of violence .
-found family
Things I didn't like :
- the pacing was slower than I liked . I didn't like it until the end /last part of the book.
With that said , I still recommend this book. I am looking forward to the sequel .
Things I liked :
-enemies to lovers execution was fantastic
- one bed trope
-bipoc representation
- exploration of loss , addiction, recovery in face of violence .
-found family
Things I didn't like :
- the pacing was slower than I liked . I didn't like it until the end /last part of the book.
With that said , I still recommend this book. I am looking forward to the sequel .
Content Warnings
Graphic: Addiction, Sexual content, Alcoholism, Alcohol, Violence, Murder, Grief, Suicidal thoughts, Slavery, Vomit, and Kidnapping
Moderate: Sexual harassment and Stalking
Minor: Sexual assault, Sexual violence, and War
bisexualwentworth's review against another edition
adventurous
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? Yes
3.0
Disclaimer about how I read this book:
I bought the original self-published version back in 2021 and have a copy of that edition on my bookshelf. However, I ended up getting the traditionally published version as an ebook through the library, so all of my critiques are on the most polished version of the story, not the anonymous 2021 version.
I have a LOT of very lovely friends and mutuals who LOVE this book and for whom it means a lot. I am so happy that all of you have this book and that it gave you so much of value. I am also not going to hold back on any of my critiques simply because people I like and respect are going to disagree with them.
A Broken Blade by Melissa Blair is a quick, easy read. I breezed through it in a couple of days during my less-busy moments at work.
I've followed Blair on TikTok for several years, and I appreciate a lot of what she was trying to do with this book. In particular, she aimed to breathe diversity and an indigenous perspective into the very white-dominated (and frequently very racist) fantasy romance genre. I think she mostly succeeded in that goal.
I enjoyed some of the dialogue, and several characters had interesting moments. Killian was probably the most compelling character for me, but I also look forward to seeing more of Syrra and several others.
Blair's creation of the Shades was clearly inspired by a deeply personal knowledge of colonization and the horrors it inflicts on indigenous women in particular, and I look forward to a deeper exploration of their situation in the sequel.
The book is fast-paced, and the mystery is structured very competently, if also very obviously.
My first, and possibly biggest, issue with this book is the lack of depth to the world. I think that good fantasy writers ground their worlds in inspirations drawn from real-world cultures and real-world history. And this book has the IDEA of that inspiration, but it's not grounded in anything.
Basically, the entire aesthetic of this book is a renaissance faire. People wear corsets and cloaks and have leg slits in their dresses. I have no sense of the geography of this world beyond what is given in the map at the front. I have no sense of the agriculture or trade or economic system. I have no visuals of anything other than clothing, weapons, and some of the characters' faces. And I don't think that authors have to give us all of that, but it's very jarring to get these very in-depth descriptions of Keera's outfits and then have very little sense of the world at large.
"What if a basic fantasy world with a ren faire aesthetic was an evil colonialist power that enslaves and commits genocide against its magical creatures and we actually confronted that?" is a VERY compelling question to ask and a very compelling setup for a book. I just don't feel like A Broken Blade explores that question below the surface, and that's a problem that starts with the worldbuilding and continues through every single other aspect of the book.
I've heard many people point to Keera's character as a highlight of the book, and while I understand why other readers would like or relate to her, she simply did not work for me as a character. I did not feel like her alcoholism was handled very well. The balance of showing and telling was totally off (as with a lot of things in this book, honestly), and I felt like "oh yeah she takes this magical drug and it gets rid of her alcoholism and then her body looks better" was very much a cop-out of what could have been a fascinating and harrowing character arc about her struggles with addiction.
I honestly think Keera might have worked better as a third-person point-of-view character than she does as a first-person narrator. Her motivations all come to us in dialogue or in flashbacks, and a lot of her choices felt hollow to me because of that. Part of my frustration might be that I read this book shortly after The Unbroken by C. L. Clark, which features a main character who heartbreakingly deconstructs the colonialism that has shaped her upbringing and then does some really powerful things afterward, and maybe I was unfairly hoping for a similar arc for Keera, but regardless, Keera's choices and motivations fell flat.
And that is SO FRUSTRATING to me because, like I said earlier, the Shades are SO CONCEPTUALLY COMPELLING, and there is so much potential to explore so many issues there, both through metaphor and through the implications that Melissa Blair has created in her own world. If only Keera ACTUALLY cared about the other Shades the way she claims to. If only the narrative afforded them the agency to make their own decisions or question their situation.
I truly felt like Keera cared more about NIkolai, someone she barely knows, than she does about the Shades, her own people. Yes, she SAYS that everything she does is for the Shades, but her actions say the opposite.
My other big issue with this book is that it feels like it was constructed around popular tropes in order to have a marketable story—and that's because it was. It was written using tropes that BookTok loves so that BookTok would read it. And that's fine. But I can tell when I'm reading it that despite the author's passion about colonization and indigenous issues, this book was written less out of a desire to explore those themes in a fantasy setting (though that desire was certainly present) and more out of a desire to write something that would sell. That is a totally understandable motivation. We all have it, as writers. It just makes for a less compelling story with less substance to it.
Another issue I had with this book is that the way it talks about gender is very shallow. I think there's some sort of attempt at a critique of cisnormativity, but it's happening through the lens of fantasy metaphors, and it doesn't really work. Hopefully the sequel will either do a better job of exploring that issue or will ignore it completely.
Keera is bisexual and has a past relationship with a woman (though I hate that said queer woman was essentially fridged to further Keera's character development, and I would have been a lot less frustrated with that choice if there had been another sapphic couple on-page) , and people who apparently read certain parts of the text more closely than I did assure me that several other characters (most of the main cast, in fact) are stated to be queer in some way as well (I somehow missed most of this, but I do trust my sources very much on this one). So it is a queer book. And the main romance is fun. I didn't care about it much because again, it felt like it was constructed more around the tropes than it was around what made sense for the characters, but I understand why other readers would like it, and I do look forward to seeing where it goes in the sequel.
A few weeks ago, I sent a pretty rough draft of the first couple chapters of a fantasy novel to beta readers, and a lot of the feedback I've gotten back is about the overall indistinctness of the world in those opening chapters. People aren't sure what's going on or what anything looks like. There's nothing tethering them to the world. There's nothing making them care. There are seeds of compelling ideas and maybe even compelling characters, but the thing itself is not yet compelling, or in fact very good.
This sort of feedback is not fun to get from people you like and respect. It hurts. Of course it does. Because in your mind, as the writer, as the creator of this world, the visuals sparkle. The ideas are THERE. The characters are fleshed out to perfection. But that's all in my head, and that's why I have those beta readers—to tell me what gaps they’re seeing, so that I can work on actually executing those ideas I have.
A Broken Blade reads like that first draft I sent out. The seeds of something compelling. Some moments that are genuinely interesting or good or fun. But it reads as though it never got serious content editing. Like the author didn't have someone look at it in the early stages and say, "I can't really visualize what this world looks like beyond some clear ren faire inspirations, and I feel like you're really interested in exploring these specific themes, but they’re not coming through in a very clear way."
And that's why I'm actually excited to read the sequel. Because maybe with more editing, not just of the text but of the CONTENT and the IDEAS and the WORLDBUILDING, this has the potential to be a story that I really enjoy and become really invested in. The execution just really was not there in this one.
I bought the original self-published version back in 2021 and have a copy of that edition on my bookshelf. However, I ended up getting the traditionally published version as an ebook through the library, so all of my critiques are on the most polished version of the story, not the anonymous 2021 version.
I have a LOT of very lovely friends and mutuals who LOVE this book and for whom it means a lot. I am so happy that all of you have this book and that it gave you so much of value. I am also not going to hold back on any of my critiques simply because people I like and respect are going to disagree with them.
A Broken Blade by Melissa Blair is a quick, easy read. I breezed through it in a couple of days during my less-busy moments at work.
I've followed Blair on TikTok for several years, and I appreciate a lot of what she was trying to do with this book. In particular, she aimed to breathe diversity and an indigenous perspective into the very white-dominated (and frequently very racist) fantasy romance genre. I think she mostly succeeded in that goal.
I enjoyed some of the dialogue, and several characters had interesting moments. Killian was probably the most compelling character for me, but I also look forward to seeing more of Syrra and several others.
Blair's creation of the Shades was clearly inspired by a deeply personal knowledge of colonization and the horrors it inflicts on indigenous women in particular, and I look forward to a deeper exploration of their situation in the sequel.
The book is fast-paced, and the mystery is structured very competently, if also very obviously.
My first, and possibly biggest, issue with this book is the lack of depth to the world. I think that good fantasy writers ground their worlds in inspirations drawn from real-world cultures and real-world history. And this book has the IDEA of that inspiration, but it's not grounded in anything.
Basically, the entire aesthetic of this book is a renaissance faire. People wear corsets and cloaks and have leg slits in their dresses. I have no sense of the geography of this world beyond what is given in the map at the front. I have no sense of the agriculture or trade or economic system. I have no visuals of anything other than clothing, weapons, and some of the characters' faces. And I don't think that authors have to give us all of that, but it's very jarring to get these very in-depth descriptions of Keera's outfits and then have very little sense of the world at large.
"What if a basic fantasy world with a ren faire aesthetic was an evil colonialist power that enslaves and commits genocide against its magical creatures and we actually confronted that?" is a VERY compelling question to ask and a very compelling setup for a book. I just don't feel like A Broken Blade explores that question below the surface, and that's a problem that starts with the worldbuilding and continues through every single other aspect of the book.
I've heard many people point to Keera's character as a highlight of the book, and while I understand why other readers would like or relate to her, she simply did not work for me as a character. I did not feel like her alcoholism was handled very well. The balance of showing and telling was totally off (as with a lot of things in this book, honestly), and I felt like "oh yeah she takes this magical drug and it gets rid of her alcoholism and then her body looks better" was very much a cop-out of what could have been a fascinating and harrowing character arc about her struggles with addiction.
I honestly think Keera might have worked better as a third-person point-of-view character than she does as a first-person narrator. Her motivations all come to us in dialogue or in flashbacks, and a lot of her choices felt hollow to me because of that. Part of my frustration might be that I read this book shortly after The Unbroken by C. L. Clark, which features a main character who heartbreakingly deconstructs the colonialism that has shaped her upbringing and then does some really powerful things afterward, and maybe I was unfairly hoping for a similar arc for Keera, but regardless, Keera's choices and motivations fell flat.
And that is SO FRUSTRATING to me because, like I said earlier, the Shades are SO CONCEPTUALLY COMPELLING, and there is so much potential to explore so many issues there, both through metaphor and through the implications that Melissa Blair has created in her own world. If only Keera ACTUALLY cared about the other Shades the way she claims to. If only the narrative afforded them the agency to make their own decisions or question their situation.
I truly felt like Keera cared more about NIkolai, someone she barely knows, than she does about the Shades, her own people. Yes, she SAYS that everything she does is for the Shades, but her actions say the opposite.
My other big issue with this book is that it feels like it was constructed around popular tropes in order to have a marketable story—and that's because it was. It was written using tropes that BookTok loves so that BookTok would read it. And that's fine. But I can tell when I'm reading it that despite the author's passion about colonization and indigenous issues, this book was written less out of a desire to explore those themes in a fantasy setting (though that desire was certainly present) and more out of a desire to write something that would sell. That is a totally understandable motivation. We all have it, as writers. It just makes for a less compelling story with less substance to it.
Another issue I had with this book is that the way it talks about gender is very shallow. I think there's some sort of attempt at a critique of cisnormativity, but it's happening through the lens of fantasy metaphors, and it doesn't really work. Hopefully the sequel will either do a better job of exploring that issue or will ignore it completely.
Keera is bisexual and has a past relationship with a woman
A few weeks ago, I sent a pretty rough draft of the first couple chapters of a fantasy novel to beta readers, and a lot of the feedback I've gotten back is about the overall indistinctness of the world in those opening chapters. People aren't sure what's going on or what anything looks like. There's nothing tethering them to the world. There's nothing making them care. There are seeds of compelling ideas and maybe even compelling characters, but the thing itself is not yet compelling, or in fact very good.
This sort of feedback is not fun to get from people you like and respect. It hurts. Of course it does. Because in your mind, as the writer, as the creator of this world, the visuals sparkle. The ideas are THERE. The characters are fleshed out to perfection. But that's all in my head, and that's why I have those beta readers—to tell me what gaps they’re seeing, so that I can work on actually executing those ideas I have.
A Broken Blade reads like that first draft I sent out. The seeds of something compelling. Some moments that are genuinely interesting or good or fun. But it reads as though it never got serious content editing. Like the author didn't have someone look at it in the early stages and say, "I can't really visualize what this world looks like beyond some clear ren faire inspirations, and I feel like you're really interested in exploring these specific themes, but they’re not coming through in a very clear way."
And that's why I'm actually excited to read the sequel. Because maybe with more editing, not just of the text but of the CONTENT and the IDEAS and the WORLDBUILDING, this has the potential to be a story that I really enjoy and become really invested in. The execution just really was not there in this one.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Alcoholism, Death, Self harm, Violence, and Colonisation
Moderate: Sexual violence and Sexual assault
alilab14's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
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
4.75
This is written by an Indigenous Women (Anishinaabe-kwe) and this fantasy world has some Indigenous influences into its story. So Keera reflects the damages from colonialism and intergenerational trauma that Indigenous people still face. The main character suffers from alcohol abuse and self harm and after reading others reviews, from assuming non-Indigenous reviewers, I will like to say an an Indigenous reader this is not written to be harmful or romanticized but actually very hopeful and I’m very glad Melissa gave Keera a very deeply human internal battle. But I will also say it is hard to read so if you may be sensitive to these topics, especially if you have been affected by colonialism, question if you can read it, but Keeras journey is full of hope. There is a content warning in the front of book and on this website
Content Warnings
Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, Grief, Alcohol, Addiction, Violence, Self harm, Murder, and Alcoholism
Moderate: Colonisation, Sexism, Suicidal thoughts, and Genocide
Minor: Sexual violence
el393way's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
In the moment of reading this book, I enjoyed it enough to finish it with ease. After finishing, I thought about some things a bit more and started to change my opinion. I can see why people have overall rated this book so high. It was easy to get through, had some quick pacing at times, and had lots of the tropes people really like.
The representation of different types of people (I assume comparing to different races) was probably the most consistently well-done part of this book. It would make sense as this topic is important to the author and she is able to give an own-voice perspective to it. Some of the divisions of the different fae, humans, halflings, and elves was a bit confusing, but mostly well done.
After learning the origin of this book, the over abundance of tropes makes sense. However, it feels like checking off tropes was more important than a cohesive plot. The book tried to stay lighthearted in some ways but also tackled some very sensitive subjects. It didn't feel like the author had personal experience with any of these tough topics, so the portrayal of them (alcoholism and self-harm) were very poorly done compared to the topic that did have importance to the author. It was a bit frustrating that the idea of self harm felt very surface level and then was completely abandoned by the time it was finally revealed to the love interest. In fact, it became something that made her more attractive. The internal thoughts of the character regarding her alcoholism were somewhat accurate but the outward portrayal was so unrealistic. Her addiction was given a literal magic potion to make it go away.
The pacing of the book was so strange. Some things like travel and visits to elsewhere, that had potential for so much to happen, were quick and seemingly unimportant. But then whole chapters were devoted to planning things and discussion of crop economics. It was bizarre.
I think this author has the potential to make a good second book considering it would be impossible to release it in the same way they did the first. I would hope that the author takes note of the critiques received because there really is potential for this world to improve.
The representation of different types of people (I assume comparing to different races) was probably the most consistently well-done part of this book. It would make sense as this topic is important to the author and she is able to give an own-voice perspective to it. Some of the divisions of the different fae, humans, halflings, and elves was a bit confusing, but mostly well done.
After learning the origin of this book, the over abundance of tropes makes sense. However, it feels like checking off tropes was more important than a cohesive plot. The book tried to stay lighthearted in some ways but also tackled some very sensitive subjects. It didn't feel like the author had personal experience with any of these tough topics, so the portrayal of them (alcoholism and self-harm) were very poorly done compared to the topic that did have importance to the author. It was a bit frustrating that the idea of self harm felt very surface level and then was completely abandoned by the time it was finally revealed to the love interest. In fact, it became something that made her more attractive. The internal thoughts of the character regarding her alcoholism were somewhat accurate but the outward portrayal was so unrealistic. Her addiction was given a literal magic potion to make it go away.
The pacing of the book was so strange. Some things like travel and visits to elsewhere, that had potential for so much to happen, were quick and seemingly unimportant. But then whole chapters were devoted to planning things and discussion of crop economics. It was bizarre.
I think this author has the potential to make a good second book considering it would be impossible to release it in the same way they did the first. I would hope that the author takes note of the critiques received because there really is potential for this world to improve.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Alcoholism and Self harm
Moderate: Sexual violence and Death
tessa_b's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Alcoholism, Physical abuse, and Torture
Moderate: Sexual violence
Minor: Genocide