Reviews with content warning for Violence - Elektra

Reviews tagging 'Violence'

Elektra by Jennifer Saint

100 reviews

ecneils's review against another edition

Go to review page

adventurous dark emotional sad medium-paced

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

3.5

Content Warnings

ccee's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging emotional sad tense medium-paced

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

2.0

Saint’s prose is readable in that she can compose a sentence, yet her imagery relies heavily on ancient turns of phrase that we’ve seen rehashed again and again throughout these retellings. Cassandra and Clytemnestra had depth, yet Elektra, a stunningly tragic figure, lay flat.

Her take on Pylades and Orestes as sworn brothers made me cringe a little, their relationship felt stiff and platonic, and Elektra’s instant attraction to Pylades felt so far out of the realm of the canon of the Tragedians that it blindsided me.

Content Warnings

gabrielleclawson's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark emotional informative sad fast-paced

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

4.0

Content Warnings

loki2's review against another edition

Go to review page

challenging dark emotional sad 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? It's complicated

3.0

This book made me question why it was called Electra. As stated by multiple other reviewers, Electra was the least exciting and most hatable character. I love a POV from the women's point of view, but this book just emphasized all of the extremely creepy parts about the Trojan story while giving no resolution or justification from Helen on what happened in the story. Even in the original mythology events happened for a reason. This book would use events from the original story to push the book forward, while not providing any context or resolution to those pushes. This causes frustration for someone who's unfamiliar with the original mythology and makes you wonder why the author was trying to inflict pain on a character when in fact it's just a copy paste from the mythology without context clues.

Content Warnings

xennial_reader's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark emotional sad medium-paced

3.25

Content Warnings

porktheorc's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark emotional mysterious sad medium-paced

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

3.5

Content Warnings

unfiltered_fiction's review against another edition

Go to review page

dark fast-paced

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

2.5

This is an easy-read retelling, in that the prose is very clean and the story doesn't require much work to follow. Unfortunately I found the character work (arguably the most important aspect of retellings, as this is where something truly new can be offered) quite weak. Cassandra felt somewhat diluted and Elektra was two dimensional, with no real depth added by the bizarre touches of Oedipal thinking in her envy of the women her father abducted and abused. Helen had some interesting moments between her sympathy for Cassandra, touches of witchcraft, and the description of her serenity as consolidating her supernatural beauty was effective, but this was all kept relatively surface-level. Clytemnestra's character was definitely the most developed, but still didn't feel strong enough to hold the book up on its own. Overall, a readable story but not one that gripped me - perhaps because Greek myth retellings are such a flooded sub-genre, and so I tend to feel that a writer needs to really offer something breathtakingly brilliant in order to hold their ground.

Content Warnings