Reviews tagging 'Abortion'

Autumn Thorns by Yasmine Galenorn

1 review

maeverose's review

slow-paced

2.0

TL;DR: This was my first urban fantasy, and it felt a lot like a cozy urban fantasy/mystery to me. I decided to just search on libby for something autumnal, and this came up (yes I literally just searched ‘autumn’ lol). I’d never heard of it before and decided to give it a try even though it isn’t a genre I’d usually go for. About 70% of the book was info dumping, 20% was slice of life and 10% was graphic sex scenes. I did appreciate the autumnal and spooky atmosphere, since that was the main thing I was looking for, and it was somewhat cozy. But the actual plot, storytelling and characters were lacking for me and I was very bored by the end. It felt a little like a 90s urban fantasy tv show. I haven’t watched Buffy and it’s probably completely different plot wise but it kept making me think of that.

The world building was excessive and clunky. There was a lot of info dumping, usually through the dialogue which always felt unnatural, like people wouldn’t talk that way irl. It was repeated a lot too. There were too many elements to the world building, it felt unnecessary.

It’s messy storytelling and some weird choices were made. Very minor spoiler as an example:

the initiation ritual that her grandmother was performing involving a violent orgasm……..? Tf was that added for?

. As well as the main character just conveniently forgetting things so they could be revealed later as plot twists

the end reveal about her grandfather’s change of heart, that was mentioned at the very beginning, and that other people can see ghosts, even though we saw other people react to ghosts earlier.

.

The romance was a bit dubious at times and moved waaay too quickly for me. There is kind of an in-story reason for it, but still.

The hero also mentions that his daughter is twice as old as the heroine (he’s non human and over 100), which from his pov feels gross. And later in the story they fuck right after the mc finds her murdered mother’s remains, so….

There’s also mention of a grooming romance from some side characters (they try to justify it but it’s still very much grooming/pedophillia). Idk if you don’t mind instalove/instalust plus some dubious things you probably wouldn’t care but it’s not for me.

I’m not Native and I’m not that knowledgeable on shamanism, but the use of the word ‘shaman’ throughout the book made me a bit uncomfortable. It’s a term that’s typically used within Native cultures, and it’s often appropriated in spiritual/witchy communities. In this book it’s a fantasy sort of ability, and they explain spirit shamans originated in Ireland, so clearly not tied to Indigenous culture. From a quick google search it doesn’t look like there were ever any shamans in Ireland irl, or if there were they were called something else. It felt a bit disrespectful to use it that way imo. The author could’ve made up a completely new term rather than taking from another culture (assuming the author isn’t Native herself, considering if she was she probably would’ve made it an Indigenous thing in the book too). There was also a tiny bit of racial stereotyping with one Native character in the book.

The characters also seemed to have a borderline pro-guns stance and that makes me wonder about the author’s political opinions..

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Body horror, Death of parent, Gun violence, Murder, Violence, and Sexual content

Moderate: Terminal illness, Self harm, Domestic abuse, Blood, Child abuse, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Mental illness, Car accident, Cultural appropriation, and Rape

Minor: Abortion, Abandonment, Pedophilia, Cursing, Infertility, and Pregnancy

Death in child birth, lots of mentions of food that could potentially be triggering for some people.