Reviews with content warning for Emotional abuse - Raybearer

Reviews tagging 'Emotional abuse'

readandfindout's review against another edition

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adventurous medium-paced

5.0

Style/writing: 5 stars
Themes: 5 stars
Characters: 5 stars
Plot: 5 stars
Worldbuilding: 4.5 stars

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chloenrogers's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional hopeful 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

5.0

A lush exploration of character, plot, and the world.

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akvolcano's review

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective slow-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

3.75

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thatenbyisisreads's review

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adventurous challenging emotional hopeful reflective sad 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

3.5

Tarisai's journey makes a lot more sense once you learn about her mother's backstory. However, her mom grew up with the wrong mentality and affected everyone around her, including her daughter. She is very manipulative and uses things against others in order to help herself in the long run. I appreciated the conversation Tarisai and her mother had at the end, it showed that her mother was regretful of the things she did and actually sympathetic towards her mistakes. I'm excited to see Tarisai as a Redemptor persuading the eleven vassal leaders to not only join her council, but to love her as well. I loved seeing the asexual representation with Ekundayo! I'd love to see more of that representation in more books! Although, I did find it extremely weird and unnecessary to have Woo In, who is about 5-9 years older than Kirah, to have a romantic relationship. Overall, this was a great fantasy and I'm excited to start the second book!

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taylor_perry's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This book blew me away. And listening to it vs reading it was nothing short of beautiful and magical. This book covered things I wish the YA of my generation had. I devoured this book and cannot wait to read the second one.

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tigger89's review

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adventurous emotional 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

I loved the worldbuilding here, particularly the depictions of the lands we got to visit and the themes of embracing unique cultures vs assimilation. There's a darker edge to many of the systems in this world, which I also appreciated. While the protagonist was rather unquestioning of some things that should have thrown red flags(basically everything about the council), this is only the first book of a duology, so those aspects might be examined later.

The central conflict is, of course, Tarisai's struggle to break free of her mother's command. I initially got some Ella Enchanted vibes from this setup, but the resolution wound up being so much more. It wasn't enough for her to merely want to disobey, or even to desire to protect the prince with her whole heart; to break a curse of this magnitude, it would take much more than that. I also appreciated how her mother was handled in the narrative. She wasn't purely evil, but she wasn't misunderstood either; she was a complicated, wounded character who committed great harms.

Overall, I enjoyed this a lot more than I'd expected to. It helped that the romance was firmly a subplot, and there was no love triangle. I'll say that again for those in the back: this YA title has no love triangle! It was so refreshing to see a depiction of platonic love develop between two characters. There was even a prominent character who was explicitly asexual. As mentioned, this is the first book in a duology, and I intend to pick up the sequel, Redemptor, whenever I manage to find a gap in my TBR(lol).

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