Reviews tagging 'Racial slurs'

Fledgling by Octavia E. Butler

78 reviews

corriejn's review against another edition

2.75

The plot/world-building just isn't creative or novel enough to get over all the explicit and accepted pedophilia. I'm used to expecting some potentially challenging content in Butler's novels, but yikes.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Pedophilia, Adult/minor relationship, Racial slurs, and Toxic relationship

angreadseverything's review against another edition

dark mysterious reflective medium-paced

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

0.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racial slurs, Blood, Adult/minor relationship, and Racism

dominiq_ec's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

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

3.0

My first vampire book, but with a very confusing set of sociocultural circumstances, which ultimately go uninvestigated. Honestly, this was about as good as a young adult vampire novel could get, with a dash of racism and pedophilia-adjacent relationships added. The issue is: this isn't a young adult novel, and sociocultural circumstances need to be investigated more than just being there. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Animal death, Injury/Injury detail, Blood, Fire/Fire injury, Genocide, Death, Hate crime, Adult/minor relationship, Murder, Racism, and Racial slurs

Moderate: Stalking, Violence, Physical abuse, and Toxic relationship

buttercat42's review

dark mysterious tense medium-paced

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

3.75

Left me wanting to know more about the world and the characters, although I preferred the first half to the second half

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racial slurs, Violence, Murder, Death, Adult/minor relationship, Animal death, Biphobia, Blood, Cannibalism, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, Racism, Sexual content, Pedophilia, and Injury/Injury detail

shansreadsbooks's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious

• 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? It's complicated

3.25

i enjoyed this book, it kept my attention but wasn't intriguing in the way i wanted it to be. butler's writing just lacked the style to draw me in to the story, it was too factual :(

but the idea of putting our main character in a ten year old's body (while she is 53, but that's still considered too young to mate in their species) definitely did its job of making me very uncomfortable throughout this book.

but the plot was very interesting and gripping, and i really enjoyed this new take on vampires and how much we get to learn about their species!!

probably not her best work but ily octavia <3

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Racism, Violence, and Sexual content

Minor: Racial slurs

swaldman's review

challenging dark emotional fast-paced

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

4.75

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Murder, Racism, Sexual content, Violence, Death of parent, Xenophobia, and Death

Minor: Gun violence and Racial slurs

another_dahlia's review

dark medium-paced

3.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Slavery, Rape, Death, Pedophilia, Child abuse, Sexual assault, Adult/minor relationship, Toxic relationship, and Xenophobia

Moderate: Injury/Injury detail, Biphobia, Child abuse, Colonisation, Racial slurs, Racism, Classism, Fire/Fire injury, Death of parent, and Murder

Minor: Sexism, Animal death, and Child death

nixter's review against another edition

dark mysterious reflective slow-paced

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

3.0

I’m kind of let down by this novel to be honest. I saw so many great reviews that led me to believe this was going to be a life changing read, and honestly, a whole bunch of nothing happened for a majority of the book. Nothing about this book was groundbreaking or revolutionary like i was expecting. I was intrigued enough to keep going, hence the 3 stars but it’s more like a 2.5 rounded up because I wanted to DNF at one point. 

The vampires very much fit established vampire lore in some capacity. The experimental part of it wasn’t well explained, in my opinion. I didn’t connect with any of the characters or have any affection for them, which includes our MC, Shori. She was just bumbling around clueless the whole book, which tracks because she suffered from amnesia, but for once, I wanted her to be in the know or have some clue as to what the hell is going on. There were also too many complicated relationships and dynamics to keep track of in such a short period of time, and I often found myself confused and having to think back and remember who is who in relation to someone else. 

Finally, my biggest issue was the most glaring part of the book for me — the thing I could not simply get over — which is the fact that she is a literal child, engaging in these sexualized behaviors with adults. Not only is she child appearing to humans, but even by vampiric standards, she’s a kid. So the whole thing made me uncomfortable from the beginning, which may have been a goal of Butler, but I didn’t enjoy it. There were multiple times when I had to put it down and take a break because reading it forced me to imagine a 10 year old appearing person in these compromising situations when I simply rather not.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship

Moderate: Pedophilia and Adult/minor relationship

Minor: Racism and Racial slurs

readingwithcoffee's review against another edition

hopeful sad 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? It's complicated

1.75

I think you can tell what vampire tropes Butler is trying to explore or invert but I found the trail aspect tedious and not very fulfilling frankly and I don’t think the age of the vampire served a real narrative purpose or was a good choice versus a teenage vampire even. So I think you can tell what she is exploring or inverting here but the execution is frankly below what I expect from butler and the pay off is not really there at all. I did really like Brooke and Celia though I thought they were neat 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder, Sexual violence, Racism, and Racial slurs

antitheticaldreamgirl's review against another edition

dark mysterious tense fast-paced

• Strong character development? 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

Moderate: Racism

Minor: Racial slurs