Reviews tagging 'Death'

Gearbreakers by Zoe Hana Mikuta

70 reviews

bree_h_reads's review against another edition

DNF 18%

I was really enjoying this book, but I was just having a hard time finding the motivation to listen to it.

It had a good intro, it didn’t feel like the world building was being info dumped, I liked the narrators. So much of the world is implied. The POVs felt so different and distinct. Each character had a unique tone from the narrators. I just couldn’t find the want to listen. I’ll probably come back to it when I’m in the mood for this type of story.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Colonisation, War, Death, and Xenophobia

Moderate: Blood and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Child abuse

building_a_bookdom's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny 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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death of parent, Death, Torture, War, Violence, Grief, Fire/Fire injury, and Blood

Moderate: Child death, Body horror, Murder, Alcohol, Confinement, Self harm, Panic attacks/disorders, Grief, Medical trauma, Injury/Injury detail, Gore, Genocide, and Fire/Fire injury

thewillowwood's review against another edition

adventurous 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

4.0

This book was pretty good! It was charming, and the love story and world were interesting. I do think it suffered a bit from dialogue/speeches that erred on the side of being overdramatic and cheesy, but for the first published book of a writer it’s really nothing aggregate. Good fast paced sci fi action read; it’s “gay pacific rim” as my roommate described it.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Murder, Blood, Death, Death of parent, Grief, War, Torture, and Violence

Moderate: Gore, Gun violence, Fire/Fire injury, Injury/Injury detail, and Panic attacks/disorders

Minor: Child death, Vomit, and Physical abuse

spaghettii's review

adventurous 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

5.0

Cyberpunk lesbians, need I say more?

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Child death, Confinement, Torture, Toxic relationship, Vomit, Blood, Bullying, Grief, Suicidal thoughts, Fire/Fire injury, Violence, Body horror, Body shaming, Gun violence, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, War, Death, Death of parent, and Genocide

emerentina's review

adventurous dark inspiring sad tense medium-paced

• 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: Violence, Torture, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, War, Blood, Death, Physical abuse, Murder, and Grief

Moderate: Gun violence, Vomit, Alcohol, Genocide, Medical trauma, Kidnapping, Child death, Body horror, Colonisation, Confinement, Death of parent, and Fire/Fire injury

Minor: Sexual content and Misogyny

deb_is_reading's review

adventurous 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

2.5

 So I would say this isn't bad and I truly feel split down the middle about this.

Has a lot of themes and elements I would normally love and I did like seeing them put to paper.

I do wish there was more grounding of the setting and lead up to the start of the story. We only got some really vague notions about how this authoritarian regime came to be but I would have preferred more. Same with the Gearbreaker camp, I wanted to know how this society structures itself having seen a terrible Gondolia.

Some of the dialogue was cringey or slightly bothersome but nothing to completely make me hate the book. Just a little lackluster overall. But the 2nd half was much better and there was one character that I thought had a emotional breakthrough which I appreciated. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Death, Death of parent, Panic attacks/disorders, and Torture

Minor: Fire/Fire injury

kananineko's review

adventurous dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective 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

I enjoyed this book!! However, it also made me realize that YA scifi/fantasy isn't really my thing anymore... In short, read this if you like character-driven stories focused on relationships (romantic and otherwise), and don't mind a typical YA writing style and plot. 

So, I loved the characters in this, especially the two main characters. I felt really connected to them, felt they were distinct, easily rooted for them, and loved their relationship and all of its developments. I also loved pretty much all of the side characters even though they weren't very fleshed out (I thought that was okay because this book really focused on the two MCs). The found family dynamic in this was amazing as well. 

The atmosphere of this book was really cool and I enjoyed the idea of the Windups (mechas) and Gearbreakers. But I will say that the worldbuilding was... kinda bad tbh. I didn't really understand the whole thing with the Windups being gods but also not really, and there was a lot of worldbuilding infodumping early on in the book that didn't really make logical sense... 

And this leads me to my point about this book making me realize that maybe I need to stop reading YA scifi/fantasy. The iffy worldbuilding and teenagers-overthrowing-an-evil-government plot strongly reminded me of all those YA dystopias that were really popular back in the 2010s. Don't get me wrong, not all of those were bad, and I think this is leagues better than a lot of them (especially relationship/character-wise) but I'm starting to realize that I'm finally tired of those types of books. 

And the writing style was the worst offender in terms of YA typicality. The author is definitely talented and I'm sure a lot of people will love her writing, but to me it just felt so... overdone. Overdramatic. Dare I say... "I'm 14 and this is deep"? Even when I empathized/agreed with things the characters were feeling or thinking, I couldn't stand the way the author phrased them. And there were so many one-line paragraphs! 

So. 

Many. 

Why? Just why?

And this is coming from someone who loves flowery, metaphor-heavy writing (ex. Laini Taylor). It wasn't done well here in my opinion. It wasn't unreadable, but did make the story a bit clunky at times, especially during fast-paced action scenes. I just think that the writing style and the plot and world are so deeply YA, which is totally okay! Just not something I am super into anymore. 

You're probably wondering why, after that rant, I'm giving it 4/3.5 stars, but it's because, despite my complaints, I had a lot of fun reading this! I really enjoyed the characters, their relationships, and the found family dynamic. I found it relatively easy to read and fun. I'm also hoping that the worldbuilding will get a little more solid in the sequel, which I will be reading because I want to see the characters get a happy ending (hopefully). 

However, no matter how enjoyable I found this book to be, I don't think I want to read any more fun but shallow YA dystopian/scifi/fantasy stories anymore. This very well may be my last one. Actually, that will probably be the sequel to this book, but oh, well. Point still stands. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder, Torture, Violence, Death, Injury/Injury detail, and Blood

Moderate: Child death, Grief, Self harm, Fire/Fire injury, Death of parent, Classism, Gore, Gun violence, Toxic relationship, War, Body horror, and Suicidal thoughts

Minor: Alcohol, Cursing, and Kidnapping

drtx_bwt's review against another edition

dark emotional tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? N/A
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Injury/Injury detail, and Death

Moderate: Murder, Death of parent, Violence, and War

Minor: Torture, Child death, and Genocide

ella7211's review

adventurous 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? Yes

2.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Torture, War, Kidnapping, Violence, Murder, Gore, Death of parent, and Death

talonsontypewriters's review against another edition

adventurous tense medium-paced

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

1.5

I was really looking forward to this since I'm a huge mecha fan and have heard great things, but perhaps my expectations were too high. The worldbuilding is... virtually nonexistent; the side characters are all forgettable and interchangeable, and Eris and Sona aren't much better; their relationship is poorly developed and unconvincing; the pacing is very disjointed, rushing through the opening only to screech to a complete halt for the majority of the book and then seem to remember there's a main driving plot only in the last like 5 chapters; the writing is simultaneously painfully purple and dry as hell, managing to say in two paragraphs what could be achieved in a sentence while also frequently not really saying anything at all. The heavy helping of classic YA dystopia melodrama also made me roll my eyes so hard and so often I thought I was going to give myself a headache.

The ideas behind Gearbreakers aren't bad at all, but their execution left a lot to be desired for me -- I kind of wish I had just rewatched Evangelion or a Gundam series instead. I'll hesitantly keep an eye on Mikuta's future releases, though, as the flaws may even themselves out with age and experience.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Body horror, Child abuse, Classism, Colonisation, Death, Child death, Confinement, Kidnapping, Murder, Gore, Gun violence, Injury/Injury detail, and Torture

Moderate: Genocide, Medical content, Xenophobia, Bullying, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, Medical trauma, Panic attacks/disorders, and Grief

Minor: Alcohol, Sexual content, and Vomit

Eye trauma/gore.