Reviews tagging 'Medical content'

The All-Consuming World by Cassandra Khaw

10 reviews

talonsontypewriters's review against another edition

dark tense medium-paced

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

1.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Medical content, Toxic relationship, Injury/Injury detail, Gore, Emotional abuse, Blood, Violence, and Gun violence

Moderate: Body horror, Suicide, Death, Murder, and Grief

Minor: Deadnaming and Vomit

remibaker's review

adventurous fast-paced

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

3.0

Good read. Pretty faced pace. Quite descriptive in the environment - it can be a bit overwhelming/confusing trying to keep track of everything going on, but I enjoyed the plot 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Suicide, Gaslighting, Toxic friendship, Toxic relationship, and Suicidal thoughts

Moderate: Body horror, Injury/Injury detail, and Medical content

ofbooksandechos's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark mysterious tense slow-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

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Toxic relationship, Violence, Gore, and Emotional abuse

Moderate: Medical trauma, Toxic friendship, Death, Gun violence, and Medical content

Minor: Slavery and Deadnaming

almostqualified's review

adventurous dark emotional tense medium-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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Emotional abuse, Gore, and Violence

Moderate: Medical content, Gaslighting, and Gun violence

amandadevoursbooks's review

challenging dark mysterious 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? Yes

4.25

Ok so this book. Goodness gracious, I'm glad I read it. It has scenes it that make my teeth hurt and make me cry thinking about them. Check the trigger warnings carefully. I likely will read it again. 

In this book we follow a group of outlaws who separated 40 years ago after a job went wrong. They are getting back together to find their comrade who is missing in action.

 
There's AIs the size of ships with fascinating culture and uncertain intentions.  There's cloning. there's cyborgs. There's queer relationships. It's delicious and disgusting all at the same time. 


The only thing: the author used a ton of obscure words. I have a pretty good vocabulary, and I looked up over 70 words. At times, the big words were repeated, and it felt forced. It didn't distract from the story. If you lived for 200 years or were an AI, of course you'd pick the best weird for each occasion. 

I'll be reading more from this author.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Emotional abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Medical content, Physical abuse, Domestic abuse, Gore, Violence, Gun violence, Body horror, Medical trauma, and Toxic relationship

Moderate: Transphobia

booitsnathalie's review

adventurous dark medium-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

4.5

A defiant scream into the universe; a refusal to become only pain, bodies without self; poetry born of love and death and comic spite. Hope is so hard to find in this bloodied, fragile existence, but it's there, beating at the bruises and concrete that could never bury us. Whispers turning to cries in defiance of anyone arrogant enough to think they get to choose when we die.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Emotional abuse, Cursing, Toxic relationship, and Toxic friendship

Moderate: Blood, Gun violence, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Gore, and Violence

Minor: Deadnaming

storieswithbee's review

dark tense

2.0

Argh, I really try to enjoy sci-fi but I’ve never been a huge fan. I thought the book sounded interesting so I wanted to give it another go but the genre just doesn’t sit well with me. I think there is definitely readers that will enjoy the book. The story was intense. There is some trigger warning to be aware of

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Body horror, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Medical trauma, Physical abuse, Self harm, Suicide, Suicide attempt, Torture, and Violence

yavin_iv's review against another edition

adventurous dark 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

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Cursing, Death, Emotional abuse, Gaslighting, Gore, Gun violence, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Medical trauma, Toxic relationship, and Violence

Moderate: Body horror, Fire/Fire injury, and Suicide

Minor: Slavery and Deadnaming

booksthatburn's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional reflective fast-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

5.0

*I received a free review copy in exchange for an honest review of this book. 

THE ALL-CONSUMING WORLD is a beautiful mess of broken people here to fuck shit up and probably die trying at least once or twice. 

The world-building is marinated in sci-fi vibes and queer longing, generated though hyper-dense jargon alternated with declarations of laser-focused loyalty backed up by gore and plasma. It even takes the time to show a brief glimpse of how ordinary person would conduct life in this space, all without stopping the action. It's fragmented like a glass vase you drop on purpose while making smoldering eye contact with a nemesis you want to fuck. Most beautiful as it shatters but useless afterwards. Turns out the vase is Maya, and Rita is prepared to drop and rebuild her a hundred times to get what she wants. 

There are several narrators who each have their own styles, it made them pretty easy to tell apart which was helpful when the story is revealed through the combination of their perspectives and they're apart for most of the book. 

I loved Maya's meeting with Reha. It's this moment to breathe and contemplate, something it feels like Maya has never had the time nor space to do. The tone is distinct from the rest in the book in a way that complements the whole by being a different texture from the rest. It's such an important conversation for a character whose only mentor so far is Rita (who on her best days is indifferent and most of the time is actively manipulative). My favorite moment deals with the paradox that exiting a queer "girl power" space can be needed to figure out one's own queerness. 

The prose is fantastic, densely syllabic, unafraid to pack in adjectives, to verb nouns and noun verbs. It makes language feel like a game, like the quickest way to the essence of a thought was to make the words scream and twist. This is especially fitting in a story filled with psychological manipulation and loyalty past reason. Anyone who spends their time loyal to Rita ends up needing twisted words just to keep track of their own thoughts. The main characters are complex and generally unlikeable, but fascinating and really great to read. Maya is a beautiful broken wreck of a person, managing to eke out a small piece of personal growth towards the very end when everything totally goes to shit. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief, Cursing, Emotional abuse, Blood, Gore, Medical content, Violence, Gun violence, Suicide, Murder, and Death

Moderate: Vomit

CW for eye trauma, major character death (graphic).

kaisermatthias's review against another edition

adventurous dark tense medium-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

2.5

Imagine that Michael Bay wrote an NC-17 action movie focused exclusively on the equisite suffering of eternal life gained by constantly killing a clone and waking up in a new, slightly degraded, body that required surgical reconstruction into a half-machine, always hurting horrorshow of an existence. Then imagine that you're plotting a heist, but to do so, you have to get together a group of personalities destabilized by centuries of trauma and mutual murder. Now, disassemble all the pieces of that narrative to a point that they cannot be followed except as a series of explosion-fuck-agonizing detail of a microsecond of pain rendered in pornographic detail-technobabble especially featuring the constant use of the attosecond as time marker-remembrance of love from a time long ago-smash cut to present-fuck you-fight scene. And you have the all-consuming world. 

If you're looking for action without reason, grit, gore, and more f-bombing than the Die Hard trilogy, head on in. 

I would love to see this as a TV show. It's written like media, and would absolutely shine as the skeleton of a script. As a novel? It's a bit of a slog. There's some really excellent writing that gets absolutely buried under repeteated phrasing, profanity-as-personality, and a steadfast refusal to explain anything about the world except how the current POV character suffers from the state of it. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Violence, Toxic friendship, Torture, Mental illness, and Medical content

Minor: Fire/Fire injury