Reviews tagging 'Animal death'

When the Moon Hatched by Sarah A. Parker

39 reviews

crybabybea's review against another edition

dark mysterious slow-paced

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

1.0

This book is a great light entertainment romantasy in the same vein as ACOTAR or Fourth Wing. I, however, feel duped because it was being sold as a high fantasy with romance and incredible world-building. If you love love love fleshed out fantasy, political strife, and detailed magic systems, you probably will not like this book. It falls apart once you look at it too closely. Fun for what it is but I have to rate it low because it's not what I look for in a fantasy. If I were rating this just solely as a romantasy I still wouldn't rate it very high. I felt ACOTAR was even written better than this which is a very low bar.

 I wrote a 3,000 word essay for how much this disappointed me, so here are the bullet points: 

• Shallow world-building. There are cool, unique things that happen but they serve no purpose for the world (such as the dragons turning into moons). 
  • World building is lazy and the author relies on you reading a 20 page glossary to understand rather than fleshing out the world herself
• Dragons are part of the world but don't serve any purpose beyond transportation.
• No political strife, except for the FMC telling you how awful the king in her region is, despite having a crazy cool premise with a dragon mythology-based elemental magic system whose users are denoted by their colorful beaded earrings.
• Nothing happens in the plot except the very slow burn romance which doesn't pay off at the end
• Magic doesn't really serve any purpose except to sound cool
• The conlang is messy and doesn't work well
• The writing itself is clunky, full of heavyhanded metaphors that don't land
  • Writing repeats itself multiple times with the same cadence and word usage
• Characters with no real personality beyond the tropes they represent, could be replaced with any other romantasy main characters and it would make no difference
• Poor LGBTQIA+ representation (despite it being praised in multiple reviews)
• Because of all these issues, the book is 250 pages longer than it needs to be.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Death of parent, Injury/Injury detail, Pregnancy, Rape, Alcohol, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Blood, Classism, Fire/Fire injury, Grief, Kidnapping, Medical content, Medical trauma, Miscarriage, Murder, Physical abuse, Stalking, and Torture

vanessaedwards1882's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

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

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Sexual content, Violence, Blood, and Animal death

elntastic's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny sad medium-paced

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

4.5

I was pleasantly surprised by this book! I had no expectations, which I believe is always a good start, and was definitely not expecting such a good book. The story and world-building is truly amazing and original. I love how everything was explained thoroughly and that there were so many different unique creatures. Definitely nice to finally read something completely new. What made me read this so fast was mostly the urge to finally understand the full story behind Reave. Although most was explained there are still a lot of questions and I‘m really looking forward to finding their answers in the second book. 

One thing I did not really enjoy (hence only 4.5 stars) were the sex scenes between the MC and FC. It was just too physical and there was no kissing or romance in it. Just wasn’t for me. But I do love the story between Kaan and Elluin and I hope that Raeve will go back to him.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Blood, Death, Physical abuse, Injury/Injury detail, Kidnapping, Torture, Fire/Fire injury, Gore, Grief, Murder, Sexual content, and Violence

Moderate: Sexual harassment, Death of parent, Medical trauma, Deadnaming, Pregnancy, Cursing, Child death, Grief, Kidnapping, and Torture

localjoy34's review against another edition

adventurous emotional mysterious medium-paced

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

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty

Minor: Animal death

taobooks's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional hopeful mysterious sad tense slow-paced

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

4.75

The romance plot got very competitive and the story slowed down too much in the middle for this to get 5 stars.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Blood, Animal cruelty, Fire/Fire injury, Misogyny, Body horror, and Death of parent

Moderate: Emotional abuse, Cannibalism, Child abuse, Confinement, and Domestic abuse

spatterson7's review against another edition

emotional mysterious tense fast-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: Torture, Violence, and Sexual content

Moderate: Murder, Injury/Injury detail, Fire/Fire injury, Death, Blood, Grief, Gore, Cursing, and Alcohol

Minor: Animal cruelty, Vomit, Pregnancy, Death of parent, and Animal death

jrp618's review against another edition

adventurous emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? N/A

4.0

The prose was absolutely brilliant. Vibrant world. Perfect MMC. The book has a glossary and it was so helpful when I wanted to search something on my kindle. The only thing I wish was that there was another chapter to end the book of Kaans POV. Also the spice was spicin 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Fire/Fire injury, Death of parent, Murder, Alcohol, Torture, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Alcoholism, Blood, Death, and Sexual content

wannabe_lee's review against another edition

adventurous emotional hopeful mysterious medium-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Confinement, Murder, Death, Death of parent, Grief, Kidnapping, Pregnancy, Torture, War, Emotional abuse, Miscarriage, Violence, Animal death, Gaslighting, and Physical abuse

Minor: Animal cruelty

thissmoi's review against another edition

Enjoyed the first half but the second half got so trope-y it lost me, and it was so long I didn’t want to power through. A LOT could have been edited out. Also, I am begging fantasy authors, please stop making up words purely for the sake of it. If an animal is functionally a cow, you can call it a cow. I promise it won’t take away from the world building. Or a day. Or mother and father. Or morning and evening. The story takes place across multiple years (I THINK??) but I didn’t want to keep going back to the glossary to translate words, which is the only place anything is given context, so I never had a clear sense of how much time was passing. I’m pretty sure she was hiding behind a wall for 10 hours but it also could have been 10 days. I really couldn’t tell you.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Gore, Blood, and Animal death

Moderate: Pregnancy, Fire/Fire injury, Death of parent, Torture, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , and Death

doahdancer's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Torture, Grief, Confinement, Death, Death of parent, Emotional abuse, Vomit, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Panic attacks/disorders, Fire/Fire injury, Blood, Physical abuse, Sexual content, Violence, Animal death, and Murder

Moderate: Pregnancy, Cursing, Domestic abuse, and Suicidal thoughts

Minor: Rape and Cannibalism