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linblythe_pub22's review
- 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
4.75
Moderate: Violence and Grief
Minor: Child death, Medical content, Drug use, Injury/Injury detail, Death, Suicide attempt, War, Terminal illness, Xenophobia, Sexual content, and Blood
plantdonut's review against another edition
- 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? It's complicated
5.0
Graphic: Police brutality
Moderate: Animal death and Cursing
Minor: Alcohol, Racial slurs, Violence, Xenophobia, Terminal illness, War, Medical trauma, Genocide, Drug use, Suicide attempt, Racism, Medical content, Injury/Injury detail, and Grief
loxeletters's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
3.0
First off, there were a few things I liked quite a bit: the sort of "mixed media" approach of including emails and news articles was fun, the world and cultures the author had created were interesting, and the writing style was simple and binge read-able.
That being said, I had some major gripes and for the first 80% I thought it was gonna be a 2.5 star at best. Most prominently, while I enjoyed the prose itself (except for some genre-typical infodumps), the storytelling decisions made in this book baffled me. Most of the conflicts, relationships, and arcs set up for the characters developed and resolved quickly and/or off-page, whereas I found myself annotating over and over again: "This would have been impactful if it had been properly set up" for the conflicts that actually were explored on-page.
The time skips seriously took me out of the story multiple times, especially since there is no in-text discussion of time passing.
Since we spend so little time getting to know the characters, I was unable to connect to most of them on any deeper level, especially the (intentionally) unlikeable ones, and this eliminated any emotional impact the first 3/4s of the book should've had. It was still a fun read! But I could tell in many scenes the author was trying to make things emotional or tense, while I just did not care. Certainly not enough to read pages worth of "tragic" backstory for a character that was supposed to be unlikeable less than ten pages ago. This really irked me.
The last 20% or so did kind of throw me for a loop, in that I suddenly did really connect with one emotional event, which I didn't expect. That is what made this book 3 stars for me, in the end. I did also appreciate the final ending, which wrapped up some ties very neatly.
Tldr: while this was an enjoyable and fun read, the narrative structure was bizarre and undermined the emotional impact of many scenes. However, the final conflict and ending surprised me positively in this regard.
Graphic: Death and Grief
Moderate: Drug use, Suicide attempt, Violence, Terminal illness, Confinement, War, and Xenophobia
arthur_ant18's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.25
Graphic: Chronic illness, Death, and Medical content
Moderate: War, Terminal illness, Confinement, Grief, and Xenophobia
Minor: Physical abuse, Suicide attempt, Violence, Genocide, and Sexual content