Reviews tagging 'Emotional abuse'

Girls of Fate and Fury by Natasha Ngan

16 reviews

cass_ward's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional hopeful sad tense medium-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? It's complicated

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Torture, Physical abuse, Violence, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Blood, Domestic abuse, War, Emotional abuse, Grief, and Kidnapping

Minor: Pregnancy

sofiacazares's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring lighthearted mysterious sad 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

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual violence, Sexual harassment, Sexual content, Child abuse, Sexual assault, War, Emotional abuse, Chronic illness, Death, and Sexism

ms_sarah621's review against another edition

dark emotional hopeful 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? It's complicated

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Violence, Emotional abuse, Murder, Pregnancy, Rape, Sexual violence, War, Blood, Death of parent, Mental illness, and Torture

sammysamsam's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional hopeful inspiring 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? No

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder, Violence, Racism, Kidnapping, Death, Injury/Injury detail, War, Suicide, Child death, Gore, Torture, Suicide attempt, Fire/Fire injury, Emotional abuse, Racial slurs, Grief, Gaslighting, and Blood

Moderate: Panic attacks/disorders, Rape, Sexual assault, Mental illness, Self harm, Medical content, Sexual violence, Toxic relationship, Sexual harassment, and Adult/minor relationship

Minor: Homophobia

noyastan's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective tense slow-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: War, Violence, Death, and Murder

Minor: Toxic relationship, Suicide attempt, Ableism, Emotional abuse, and Sexual violence

spellygirl's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional hopeful 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

5.0

Loved this one, as I did with the two before. There's rough topics, sadness and death, but there's also love, hope, friendship and healing. I also love the disability rep in this. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Gore, Self harm, Suicide attempt, Body horror, Emotional abuse, War, Blood, Confinement, Grief, and Murder

Moderate: Rape, Sexual assault, and Classism

elizajaquays's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional 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

5.0

This was such a beautiful conclusion to the trilogy. I’d struggled to get through the second book but had absolutely loved the first so I was a bit hesitant heading into this one. So glad that those concerns were unfounded! I think this might be my favorite of the trilogy!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Violence, Emotional abuse, and War

Moderate: Rape, Sexual assault, and Sexual violence

prettynerdy3's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring 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? It's complicated

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual assault, Torture, Death, Emotional abuse, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Misogyny, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Self harm, Gore, Slavery, Toxic relationship, Murder, Pregnancy, Racism, Rape, Blood, Genocide, Medical trauma, Sexism, Suicide attempt, Violence, and War

katrin_loves_books's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional 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

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Physical abuse, Emotional abuse, War, and Death

natcat's review against another edition

dark emotional hopeful medium-paced

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

2.25

I do honestly wish I'd liked this book more, I think there were a lot of good things about it, and it is much better than the second book in the series! I think it's unfortunate that this book wasn't a duology. And an Asian-inspired world, written by an Asian author, with multiple queer characters and several disabled ones? Excellent! And I also do respect the ambition of this book, even if it didn't achieve a lot of what I think it was trying to do. I am, generally, very conflicted about how I feel about this book, and very much working through my thoughts as I write this review.

I didn’t find the elements of the book related to the war very convincing, which is a little unfortunate given that is a large chunk of the book, partly because several conundrums brought up in this book were as a result of things that annoyed me about book two

(namely the killing of Eolah by Wren, which was sort of wrangled with as a moral conundrum for Wren, but which no-one ever suggested was just a straight up incredibly stupid tactical decision, which stopped them from gaining an ally (and then ultimately the White Wing not being on their side... turned out not to really matter? So there were no real consequences to this stupid decision either)

. I appreciated what the book was trying to do with its themes of war and people suffering and the ends justifying the means, and at which point do the ends not justify no means, and how do you cope with having blood on your hands, but I’m really not sure what it was trying to say about any of those things. The ends justify the means as long as you feel bad about it afterwards? The ends justify the means when your girlfriend forgives you? 

I didn’t necessarily need the characters to come to any conclusions, but I did want a slightly more nuanced discussion of everything related to this, and one that didn’t just… let our main characters off entirely. The last minute reveal that

Lova had been responsible for the death of Wren's mother was absolutely bizarre to me and then also didn't really have any consequences, so what was the point of that?! There was, generally, a lot of murder of non-combatants by our heroes which the narrative didn't seem to be terribly interested in considering as real moral hurdles, just as a light sprinkling of extra angst for our heroes and not as, you know, war crimes, but neither was the setting and writing of the book such that I believed this was a world in which they would not be war crimes

. In general, I thought the morality of the whole series swung weirdly from 'very 21st century' to 'very much not that', without a great deal of worldbuilding for why this was. 

I very much thought there was a lack of actual consequences for things our characters did in the name of winning the war, which I wouldn't have objected to except that the book also seemed to be having a theme about the costs of war and what committing morally dubious acts does to the people who commit them, and so it was an odd choice to me to pull one's punches on that front.

Wren's apology to Aoki for the Hannos having killed her parents and then blaming it on the King happened entirely off-stage, despite the epilogue being multiple chapters long, and there wasn't even a hint at the potential consequences might be if the supporters of the Hannos had discovered that they were going around burning villages and blaming it on the king in order to get support! I'm prepared to go with the fact that this was a political necessity, but given how the murdering of Eolah panned out, you'd think someone might be a little concerned about what would happen if all the rest of the dirty laundry got aired. But both moral and practical consequences were just kind of... ignored.

It left a lot hanging, thematically speaking, and ultimately I thought it muddled its point so much I have no idea what it was trying to say about any of these things. 

I did really like Lei in this book, and particularly the bit where she is in the Palace with the other Paper Girls; actually in general the Paper Girls being back in this book was such a great move. And I thought giving us Wren’s perspective was an interesting and effective technique, both from a storytelling perspective and a character perspective. I really liked that the main relationship in these books is between two women, and how focused this entire series has been on trauma and how people cope. And I was invested enough to read all three books, so I did care about where the characters ended up and what would happen to the

and the death of the king was incredibly satisfying given his audacity in surviving the end of book one haha.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Sexual violence, Violence, War, Emotional abuse, and Sexual assault