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jenna_justi2004's review
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Graphic: Bullying, Cancer, Classism, Fire/Fire injury, Gaslighting, Murder, Sexism, Violence, Blood, Medical content, Colonisation, Death, Panic attacks/disorders, Racial slurs, Terminal illness, Misogyny, Miscarriage, Slavery, Toxic relationship, War, Alcohol, Death of parent, Grief, Hate crime, Police brutality, Racism, Rape, Gore, Gun violence, Medical trauma, Pregnancy, Suicidal thoughts, Abortion, Body horror, Forced institutionalization, Cursing, Torture, Confinement, Drug use, Physical abuse, and Suicide attempt
puttingwingsonwords'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? Yes
5.0
Graphic: Child death, Confinement, Death, Death of parent, Grief, Suicide attempt, Violence, Gun violence, Hate crime, Miscarriage, Murder, Police brutality, and Racism
Moderate: Racial slurs, Blood, Cancer, Medical content, Panic attacks/disorders, Terminal illness, Cursing, Mass/school shootings, Medical trauma, and Misogyny
Minor: Drug use and Sexual violence
vonni's review
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
Graphic: Blood, Racism, Self harm, Miscarriage, Medical trauma, Injury/Injury detail, Police brutality, Violence, Terminal illness, Suicide attempt, Forced institutionalization, Cancer, Medical content, Gun violence, and Domestic abuse
Moderate: Body horror, Death of parent, Child death, and Fire/Fire injury
Minor: Toxic relationship, Drug use, and Gore
thesaltiestlibrarian's review
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
Ella and Kev are siblings in a harsh world similar to our current Earth. Kev is born right when the 90s LA Riots really take off, thus landing him the nickname Riot Baby. Ella has a superpower that does a whole bunch of stuff and doesn't seem to have well-defined, if any, limits. When Kev ends up serving time for an attempted robbery, Ella comes to visit him on the astral plane while he's incarcerated and showing him the things that she's seen. The hope she has for a brighter future for black society.
Sounds good, right? Sounds really interesting and like a home-run. It's not.
The biggest drawback in this book is that Onyebuchi couldn't decide what he wanted it to be. It doesn't feel at all like science fiction until 2/3 of the way through, and it's not even 200 pages. Ella's powers do bring about that fantasy element, but there's no limit to what she can do and no real repercussion to her using her powers. Magic has drawbacks. It has boundaries. It has a price. Ella learns to control her anger, which teaches her control of her magic, and then there's no more problems she has to face with it. It turns her hair silver, but that's it. She can touch people and see their entire life, feel what they felt. She can see the future in multiple timelines. She can fly and transcend space-time, feel the future of the entire Earth as she walks it, teleport...
It's kind of exhausting. Being overpowered needs to have a setback, or your character becomes impossible to connect with.
Now Kev...Kev is in prison for a lot of the book. Then at that 2/3 mark I mentioned, he's sent somewhere out west where he and other parolees are given the opportunity to work for a company that specializes in robotics. There's a chip inserted in his thumb that has his identification, but can also control him. Global warming is a thing that's happening. Kev's storyline feels like a mess, honestly. The technology isn't clear, the science-fiction mechs and cyborg parts show up out of literal nowhere, and the chip in his thumb somehow has the capacity to release chemicals to sedate him without having been filled with them or needing to be re-filled.
You can't just slap the label "science fiction!" on a book and have it be so. It's like Onyebuchi put a bunch of ideas on a target, blindfolded himself, and just went bananas throwing darts at it. Then used every single thing that the darts hit. Superpowers? Yes, please. Mechs and super-tech prostheses? Check. Racial issues that lightly connect to the plot somehow? Gotcha. LA Riots? Climate change? Incarceration of black boys? Police brutality and racial profiling? Maybe-nuclear holocaust? Single mother-hood? Astral projection???
Throw it in, hit pulse, boom. Done.
The reason other sff titles work when dealing with heavy topics is because they don't try to be everything. ALL SYSTEMS RED deals with personhood and sapience, but it doesn't reach beyond to try and include every problem that revolves around why humans left Earth. THE EMPRESS OF SALT AND FORTUNE covers ground like misogyny, the ethics of revolution, and political corruption, but doesn't ask us to envision the entire planet it takes place on. THE ECHO WIFE tackles the seriously close-to-home for me topic of domestic abuse survivors, how that leaves scars on people, but it lets us decide for ourselves whether or not we believe clones are people.
A book can't do everything, especially in under 200 pages. And we the readers really aren't asking them to do everything.
Graphic: Police brutality, Racism, Racial slurs, Pregnancy, and Gun violence
Moderate: Death of parent, Drug use, Grief, Murder, Suicidal thoughts, Terminal illness, Cancer, and Blood
alas_aly's review
- 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
That being said, its not wrong. We do live in a world where violence is perpetrated on Black people constantly. You can't individualize yourself out of it by being good or learning to see what is good about your life. I believe that the system is bad and that violence may be the answer to that. I guess I just don't love reading about it?
The writing was excellent. It was vivid like this was a movie being told to you very well. I could clearly picture everything that was happening in the story. I think that even if the characters weren't super well-realized, the archetypes were very clear to me. I think their motivations were spot - on and clear.
This leaves me in a somewhat muddy place. Did I like this book? I don't think so. Or not very much. Is it a good book? I think it is even if it wasn't right for me.
Graphic: Racism, Suicidal thoughts, Confinement, Police brutality, Miscarriage, Medical trauma, and Child death
Moderate: Cursing, Grief, Gun violence, Medical trauma, and Terminal illness