Reviews tagging 'Murder'

Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi

10 reviews

jenna_justi2004's review

adventurous challenging emotional funny hopeful reflective sad tense fast-paced

• 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

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Content Warnings

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

salemander's review

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cancer, Suicide attempt, Police brutality, Death, Panic attacks/disorders, Medical trauma, Miscarriage, Murder, Pregnancy, Slavery, Hate crime, Racism, Child death, and Gun violence

lexihworth's review

challenging dark emotional informative inspiring reflective tense 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? It's complicated

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gun violence, Drug use, Death of parent, Racism, Racial slurs, Violence, Police brutality, Panic attacks/disorders, Injury/Injury detail, Hate crime, Alcohol, Slavery, Death, and Cancer

Moderate: Abandonment, Violence, Blood, Medical trauma, and Murder

Minor: Miscarriage

puttingwingsonwords's review against another edition

dark emotional tense 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

5.0

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Content Warnings

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

cutlet's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

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

4.25

This was my first audiobook and it was incredibly powerful to listen to the author read their story. This feels like it should be mandatory reading for all white people, to better understand Black history in the US and the intergenerational trauma it carries with it. The main characters absolutely pulled me in, but it was at times difficult to keep track of when and where something was happening.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Injury/Injury detail, Racism, Violence, Grief, Gun violence, Medical trauma, Police brutality, Racial slurs, Suicide attempt, Confinement, Death of parent, Mental illness, Murder, and Pregnancy

Moderate: Colonisation, Murder, Slavery, Cancer, Classism, and Racial slurs

decie's review

challenging emotional medium-paced

4.5

pick this up when you want raw, heavy, rage-filled poetry. if you're primed for a fantasy plot you'll be disappointed. that's not what the author is doing here. it's better.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, Miscarriage, Murder, Violence, Grief, Classism, Medical content, Medical trauma, Death, Forced institutionalization, Mental illness, Suicide attempt, Child death, Death of parent, Gun violence, Hate crime, Pregnancy, Racism, Police brutality, and Suicidal thoughts

Moderate: Drug use and Confinement

Minor: Animal death

amberinbookland's review

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Miscarriage, Racism, Racial slurs, Murder, Death, and Death of parent

mzynda's review

challenging dark emotional sad tense 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? It's complicated

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Police brutality, Violence, Hate crime, Gun violence, Confinement, Medical trauma, Suicidal thoughts, Racism, and Murder

ejimenez's review

challenging dark sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death of parent, Grief, Confinement, Racial slurs, and Suicide attempt

Moderate: Excrement, Murder, Pregnancy, Police brutality, Rape, Sexual assault, Violence, Addiction, Death, Drug use, Medical content, and Racism

thesaltiestlibrarian's review

challenging emotional slow-paced

• 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

 Let me clarify that I'll be the first to stand up and defend science fiction/fantasy as being more valuable to society than straight-up literary bullshit. You learn more about sentience and sapience in a novella by Martha Wells than you do in a 500-page manifesto by Ian McEwan. (gag.) Setting your story in a world apart from ours, even if it's removed by how the timeline and history progressed, is a fantastic way to explore themes that are difficult to look at, or may be too close to home otherwise. For this reason, I really wanted to like RIOT BABY more than I did.

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. 

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Content Warnings

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