Reviews tagging 'Death'

The Final Strife by Saara El-Arifi

67 reviews

sillevanhoof's review

dark reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

3.0

6/10

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Body horror, Confinement, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Hate crime, Physical abuse, Slavery, Torture, Violence, Kidnapping, and Classism

Moderate: Fatphobia and Abandonment

raynelib's review against another edition

dark emotional funny 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

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Death, Drug use, Gore, Self harm, Torture, Violence, and Vomit

Moderate: Ableism and Death

Minor: Death of parent

isopod_lover's review against another edition

fast-paced

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

4.5

I adore this book. I have to wait 10 weeks for the next book because my library only has one copy

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Gore, Physical abuse, Sexual content, Slavery, Violence, Blood, Alcohol, and Classism

maresuju's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional funny hopeful mysterious 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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Drug abuse, Violence, Blood, and Classism

Moderate: Death, Slavery, Death of parent, and Murder

Minor: Sexual content

lisztaffe's review against another edition

did not like the writing, found the exposition poorly done, questionable premise 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence

Moderate: Addiction, Death, Drug abuse, Physical abuse, Slavery, Torture, Blood, and Alcohol

aiirglow's review against another edition

adventurous dark 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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Drug abuse, Violence, Blood, and Classism

Moderate: Emotional abuse and Sexual content

Minor: Death, Fatphobia, Suicidal thoughts, and Vomit

simonmh's review against another edition

adventurous hopeful mysterious fast-paced

• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.25

I really enjoyed this book. It has some interesting mysteries, political maneuvering, and world building that I like, but is a few steps less bleak than something like Game of Thrones (though I still wouldn’t recommend it if you want something light/without violence).

I have a few quibbles:

• The technology of the world just doesn’t feel quite right to me. Like, they have carriages and items seem to be produced by artisans rather than factories, but they have healers who talk about neurotransmitters, pneumatic tubes to send things over long distances, and latex is a big part of their economy. Maybe this is just my imagination not visualizing it properly, but it just felt a little incongruous.
• This is a book that’s more-or-less about trying to end a caste system, but the people in the lowest caste have the least representation and the book makes their perspective the least central. I’m hopeful the sequel will make up for that, but it felt like we were told how poorly this group was treated while simultaneously having the narrative minimize their presence as much as possible. I think some of that was for the sake of the mystery, but it was still kind of a bummer.

I still enjoyed the book quite an bit and am planning to read the sequel, but those two things just rubbed me the wrong way as I read it.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Child death, Death, Torture, Death of parent, and Murder

emk5's review against another edition

slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No

3.0

I think 3 stars is pretty generous. I wish more of this book focused on Hassa. I don't think Sylah needed to be likeable, and...she very much wasn't... 

The world building was good but frankly not enough for me to want to read the other books in this series. At some point I wrote down a note of "I'm supposed to dislike Sylah and Anoor right???" Anoor was a more believable(?) character than Sylah but still extremely naive and cliche! Verbatim from Anoor: "the prison she would build would be bigger" after being horrified by the size of a cell??! 

Sylah was frankly really immature and selfish?? For a lot of the book she kept being like "she (name redacted for spoiler) stole my life from me/that should've been mine etc" even though the Sandstorm carried out the BABY SWAP! They were babies!!! Or if this was trying to show that her "upbringing" didn't give her "the heart of a Duster" I dunno, it didn't land. Maybe the author is playing 3D chess and I was reading checkers...

One of my main gripes is it was really unclear how Sylah and Hassa are "friends" (Sylah is not a friend to Hassa!!!!!)

ALSO NONE OF THE ROMANCE WAS BELIEVABLE. I did think it was funny that we got a fairly thorough sex scene between Sylah and (redacted) but basically faded to black for Sylah and (redacted)!!!!!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Drug abuse, Slavery, and Torture

Moderate: Child abuse

Minor: Fatphobia

katerinovaaa's review against another edition

medium-paced

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

2.5

It took me 9 months to finish this book and if I could, I would've given up within the first 50 pages. The characters annoyed me sooo much I just couldn't read more than 10 pages a week. The changes of POVs were super chaotic and hard to follow (like 3 changes within 2 pages, help). The beginning was painful.
2.5 stars because I see the world-building must've been time-consuming, the plot made sense, and there was loads of representation.

Trigger warnings / Tropes
🗡mild sexual content
🗡murder, blood, war, poverty, discrimination,...
🗡drugs (a lot, MC; also drugging other people)
🗡alcohol
🗡cruel punishment of children (physical and psychological)
🗡mention of SA at the end (not MC directly)
🗡death of loved ones

🔮3rd POV
🔮w/w relationship
🔮betrayal
🔮love triangle, jealousy
🔮strong bisexual MC
🔮elements of feminism and marxism
🔮competition (multiple challenges)
🔮appreciation of curly hair and curvy body (fat-shaming mentioned)
🔮zero tension between the characters😔
🔮detailed glossary, map

I'm really proud of myself for finishing it. I read the last 300 pages in a week because I had a deadline and FINALLY there was some plot.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Body horror, Death, Drug abuse, Violence, Police brutality, Grief, Murder, and Classism

Moderate: Child abuse, Fatphobia, and Sexual content

Minor: Body shaming, Fatphobia, Slavery, Torture, and Kidnapping

scifi_rat's review against another edition

adventurous dark tense medium-paced

3.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Racism, Sexual content, Slavery, Violence, Grief, and Gaslighting

Moderate: Alcoholism, Child abuse, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Suicidal thoughts, Torture, Blood, Death of parent, Murder, Abandonment, Alcohol, Colonisation, and Classism