Reviews tagging 'Toxic relationship'

Kings Cage by Victoria Aveyard

24 reviews

ameydireads's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious relaxing sad tense slow-paced

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

4.0

"He caught me back then, ensnaring me in a prince's trap. Now I'm in a king's cage. But so is he. My chains are Silent Stone. His is the crown."

As Mare has been kept as a prisoner, there is not a lot that she can do. So the first part of the story felt very slow. But actually a lot of things were happening in the background. Sometimes doing nothing is just as powerful as actively trying to fight your enemy. Slowly we see the cracks in Maven’s court and how he is struggling to keep his crown. He makes new alliances and breaks his promises, much to his court’s annoyances. After all, he is just a lonely boy trying to survive and that scares the shit out of him. The only thing we can really count on in this world is Maven’s obsession with Mare.

But Mare doesn’t see that she also has a weakness for Maven.
“In spite of myself, I feel the familiar longing for a boy who does not exist.”

I mean, it has become boring by now. He showed you who he really is and still she goes on and on about who you thought he was.
“How many times does one wicked boy have to betray you people before you learn?”

Even though the book started a bit slow, near the end it got very exciting. I think it portrayed the changing dynamics well.

I was shocked to see how it ended with Cal and Mare!! At this point I don’t see how they will ever get back together, but I do hope so…

 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Emotional abuse, Toxic relationship, Violence, Xenophobia, Kidnapping, Fire/Fire injury, War, and Classism

Moderate: Death, Torture, and Death of parent

Minor: Grief

ale24's review against another edition

emotional reflective slow-paced

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

3.0

This isn’t a popular opinion, but I actually liked this book more than the previous two books. It might be because it was finally warm enough to go outside to read, so I had a better time reading. However, I also feel like the action scenes in this series weren’t well written and/or just plain boring, and

Mare spent the majority of this book unable to use her special abilities. Which I think did a good job at keeping action scenes to a minimum and grow her character in this particular book. Plus I don’t really love her character so I didn’t mind seeing her go through a tough time (don’t judge me lol)

Maven seems like an interesting character and I was excited to see his character develop,

“Maven Calore is not his own self. He told me as much. He is a construct, a machine, soulless and lost”

but imo the author might have a small issue of telling over showing (I’ll admit that I think Maven and Evangeline are mostly written alright; They just are a little cheesy at times).  

Edit: I wrote the following before I read the next book (which fixed a couple issues and questions I had with King’s Cage), although I don’t feel some of it is true anymore I don’t want to get rid of it since it’s what I felt at the time. Just keep in mind that some of my opinions change in the following book, War Storm.

Credit where credit’s due,

I liked that the author included a male bisexual (or at least a multi sexual person) with a female main love interest and a potential lesbian (her only love interest is a woman so I can’t be sure, the author doesn’t say their sexualities explicitly) since authors usually default to including one gay guy to their books when adding LGBTQ+ characters (in my experience). The only thing is that these characters, as much as I like them, are some of the main antagonists in the book series. This is reminiscent of a pretty negative trope, although I suspect one of them may go through a redemption arc in the next book. While homophobia is not directly referenced, the coded lesbian character is unable to marry her love and has her brother marry her girlfriend instead  so that they can still stay with each other. I’m not sure I like this because the above situation resembles someone living in a homophobic society, meanwhile the text stays somewhat vague about how sexuality is thought of or treated in general. According to her character, her parents treat her surprisingly well despite not allowing her to marry a woman. Even so, when I was reading it I wondered if the reason they had to have heterosexual marriages (it’s unclear if that’s the case for everyone including Reds) was only so they could  produce offspring and not exactly for homophobic reasons. This leaves me conflicted because I can’t point out exactly what I don’t like about the situation, I just wish the book was more explicit in what it was trying to do.

There are many diverse characters, although I get the impression this is set in a color blind setting as there’s no mention or indication of racism. There’s also little mention of sexism or homophobia. Which some people may like or find it unrealistic/not well done (since the princess trials I still don’t know if they live in patriarchy because I guess they could still have a male version of that technically?). 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Toxic relationship, and Classism

julienicole1106's review against another edition

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? It's complicated

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Emotional abuse, Gun violence, Infidelity, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Torture, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Vomit, Kidnapping, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, Pregnancy, Fire/Fire injury, Gaslighting, Alcohol, War, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

Minor: Sexual content

stitchof's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense slow-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? No

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Genocide, Gun violence, Hate crime, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Slavery, Torture, Toxic relationship, Violence, Xenophobia, Blood, Medical content, Kidnapping, Grief, Mass/school shootings, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Gaslighting, Colonisation, and War

limleylom's review against another edition

dark reflective tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character

2.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Physical abuse, Torture, Violence, and War

Minor: Toxic relationship and Pregnancy

kingspite618's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious 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

5.0

man do I enjoy seeing a bunch of fucked up insane and incredibly mentally ill teenagers and young adults make a bunch of incredibly problematic and questionable choices repeatedly like their lives depended on it for a whole series straight!!
5 stars cause everyone ate and slayed and delivered and served cunt. also relate to some of these characters on a spiritual level. they are just like me fr. also YASS

evil queer villains/spoiler> we love to see it!!
The character developments and arcs and overall construction of the characters is also incredible. Go read it right now!!!

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Child abuse, Confinement, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Homophobia, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Sexism, Torture, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Kidnapping, Grief, Abortion, Murder, Lesbophobia, Fire/Fire injury, Outing, Gaslighting, War, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

anniereads221's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark medium-paced

4.0

The only thing I love about these books is Maven. He is such a complicated character and I love him dearly.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Gore, Physical abuse, Sexism, Torture, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Vomit, Kidnapping, Grief, Murder, Gaslighting, Abandonment, War, and Injury/Injury detail

PTSD

ishouldbereading's review against another edition

dark slow-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? Yes

2.0

Maven once again saved this horrible abomination.

Tell me why does Mare end up with Cal? He chose THRONE over HER TWICE!!! If a man does that he should be glad he doesn't have red mark on his face from my hand

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death and Violence

Moderate: Torture, Blood, Fire/Fire injury, War, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Panic attacks/disorders, Toxic relationship, and Pregnancy

sarahsheppard23's review against another edition

slow-paced

• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement and Toxic relationship

Moderate: Torture

kinsportch's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional tense medium-paced

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

4.0

King’s cage was definitely a better read than Glass Sword, but does not quite add up to Red Queen. Mare Barrow is consistently an unlikable character focused primarily on herself the majority of the book.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Torture, Kidnapping, Murder, and War

Moderate: Confinement, Toxic relationship, and Violence

Minor: Cursing, Sexual content, Pregnancy, and Lesbophobia