Reviews tagging 'Dysphoria'

Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James

3 reviews

vedpears's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

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

2.25

What a challenging read - not because of the writing style, but because of the content. 
Abundant run on sentences took some getting used to, but I managed to navigate that just fine. 
I enjoyed how the story was written in such a way that it was like viewing a large photo by zooming in, then zooming out a bit, zooming in somewhere nearby, zooming out again until the whole picture is revealed.
What I did not enjoy was the overwhelming number of elements that would warrant trigger warnings: sex, rape, child abuse, pedophilia, slavery, bodily harm, mutilation, murder, combinations of all of those at once with a gratuitous serving of explicit language. 
The overarching story is intriguing. The characters and concepts borrowed from African history and mythology were woven in very well. If this were written to be less corrosive on the psyche, I would have rated it higher.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Sexual assault, Sexual harassment, Toxic friendship, Trafficking, Biphobia, Blood, Body horror, Classism, Cursing, Gore, Misogyny, Vomit, Abortion, Adult/minor relationship, Alcohol, Animal cruelty, Death, Death of parent, Kidnapping, Murder, Pedophilia, Sexual violence, Ableism, Addiction, Slavery, Stalking, Abandonment, Child abuse, Child death, Homophobia, Incest, Infertility, Injury/Injury detail, Torture, Cannibalism, Emotional abuse, Dysphoria, Excrement, Physical abuse, Pregnancy, Rape, Sexism, Infidelity, Miscarriage, Sexual content, Transphobia, Violence, and Xenophobia

It basically has all the trigger warnings, including infanticide.

fox_at_the_circus's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark sad medium-paced

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

4.25

I really enjoyed this book. Tracker is a great main character and I love how sarcastic and cheeky he is. It makes the dialogues very funny. I liked the other characters, too. They're all well fleshed out and I like that we get a backstory for (almost) everyone.
The world this book is set in is super cool! With the main characters travelling all over the continent, we really get to see all the different cultures and cities and the differences between them. I also like how many different ways there are for people to gain some special abilities, magic, white science,.. some people, like tracker, just have a special ability and it never gets explained. It adds to the fantastical feeling of the world.

The ending really hurt me. Tracker got his nice life and a resolution and a family and it's only shown in a poem/song and then the last part takes it all away. I had tears in my eyes.

This book deals with a lot of heavy topics (see the trigger warnings), and in my opinion it does it pretty well, but it is definitely not for everyone.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gore, Violence, Sexual violence, Rape, Animal death, Blood, Body horror, Death, Grief, Homophobia, Misogyny, Murder, Toxic friendship, Vomit, Kidnapping, Physical abuse, Sexism, Sexual content, and Torture

Moderate: Cannibalism, Confinement, Dysphoria, War, Child abuse, and Pedophilia

Minor: War and Xenophobia

rubyellen95's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional sad tense slow-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

4.25

Trigger warnings for most things that could be triggering so proceed with care. A dark tale of a man who was hired to find a missing boy ten years ago and tells his story to an inquisitor after that same boy has died.

Magic, myth, mystery and graphic psychological horror abound wrapped in a queer romantic adventure about love, family, found family, masculinity, and pride.

There's also misogyny but it's explored as a character flaw of the character that most displays it.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Blood, Body horror, Body shaming, Child death, Confinement, Death, Dysphoria, Genocide, Gore, Grief, Incest, Injury/Injury detail, Kidnapping, Misogyny, Murder, Rape, Sexual content, Slavery, Torture, Violence, and War

Beastiality takes place but there wasn't a content warning for that. I've put all content warnings as graphic as you're very invovled with the characters that experience them and the writing is very blunt so it can be shocking but for most content warnings and readers I would suggest it's more around the moderate warning but better safe than sorry