Reviews tagging 'Child abuse'

The Genesis of Misery by Neon Yang

10 reviews

talonsontypewriters's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

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

2.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Religious bigotry, Violence, Gore, Death, Murder, and War

Moderate: Confinement, Medical content, Body horror, Torture, Death of parent, Classism, Xenophobia, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Terminal illness, Sexual content, and Child abuse

Minor: Vomit and Drug use

leaflit's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious reflective 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

Not really my jam. Bulk of the book is from Misery's perspective and they are frustratingly obstinate and casually violent. I think that was the point but it got frustrating for me to read. Narration a bit heavy handed. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Chronic illness, Violence, War, Mental illness, Religious bigotry, Toxic relationship, Confinement, Child abuse, Body horror, Death of parent, Torture, Domestic abuse, and Hate crime

Moderate: Drug use, Sexual content, and Alcohol

Minor: Physical abuse, Medical content, and Adult/minor relationship

scifi_rat's review

adventurous dark mysterious tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gaslighting and Religious bigotry

Moderate: Death of parent, Mental illness, Xenophobia, Medical content, Chronic illness, Death, Confinement, Murder, Sexual content, Terminal illness, Violence, and War

Minor: Panic attacks/disorders, Drug use, Physical abuse, Grief, Body horror, Child abuse, Injury/Injury detail, Genocide, Alcohol, Blood, Gore, and Pandemic/Epidemic

mynamebymistake's review

Main character is simply unbothered by any form of trauma, work makes so much of an effort to be inclusive that it’s clunky (I’m saying this as a nonbinary lesbian). After describing a character and using their pronouns in a text, you do not need to include a literal pronoun tag, it’s just weird and feels awkward. I was promised mechs and so far there have only been two references to mechs :(

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse

bailey_the_bookworm's review against another edition

challenging dark fast-paced

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

2.75

There are so many things about this book that I liked (mech fights! Weird magic rocks! Intrigue!) and it’s a vast, compelling universe. I would have DNFed but there was enough good stuff that I was willing to read the whole thing. 

That said. There were also many things about this book that I found frustrating. Plot-wise, Misery becomes much less interesting as a character partway through the book—she’s a murderous, abusive liar and it’s difficult for me to get on board for that in a POV character. I don’t think you’re supposed to get on board for it, to be fair, but it was a slog. 

At the writing level: certain words were way overused (various forms of “comprise” are major culprits here). The Extremely Online tenor of the writing also didn’t land right for me, especially given the world-building—it doesn’t make sense and ended up breaking immersion. 

There were also some editing issues: random tense changes (present to past for two sentences for no reason), little stuff that individually wouldn’t be bad but over the course of the book became aggravating. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death of parent

Moderate: Religious bigotry, Torture, Toxic relationship, Physical abuse, Medical content, Child abuse, Gaslighting, Confinement, Classism, Emotional abuse, Murder, and War

northernzephyr's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional tense fast-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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence

Moderate: Child abuse

displacedcactus's review against another edition

I would have DNFed this book a lot sooner if I'd had anything else to read. It just really, really, really dragged on. If it was going anywhere, it was taking way too long to get there. It doesn't help that the character Misery holds everyone at an arm's length and then some -- for good reason, given their background -- which means there's not a lot of character interaction. Mostly we're just in Misery's head as she reacts to events and tries to ignore the delusion in their head. Honestly even if she'd just bantered a bit with the delusion, it would have broken up the constant self-reflection.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence and Death of parent

Moderate: Child abuse and Cursing

anxiousnachos's review

adventurous

3.0

Devastated I didn’t love one of my most anticipated books as much as I wanted to. Whilst there is such strength in the concept and queernorm world and Yang’s worldbuilding, I think it really struggled with the character development and language. There was just such a lack of characters? Every one was so sidelined to Misery it just felt really lacking but also very repetitive because everything was so Misery-centric. 

I also deeply, deeply struggled with some of the language choices. Big pet peeve for me is using modern day internet language in SFF, every time it happened it totally took me out of the novel. Perhaps trying to make a Gideon-esque character? But it just didn’t work alongside the very religious-preachy sermoning that often occurred. 

Very sad about this!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: War, Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Death of parent, and Violence

pvbobrien's review

dark mysterious 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

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Religious bigotry, War, Death, and Schizophrenia/Psychosis

Moderate: Chronic illness, Genocide, Grief, Murder, Terminal illness, Violence, Xenophobia, Body horror, Drug use, Confinement, Death of parent, Gore, and Mental illness

Minor: Child abuse, Medical content, Pregnancy, and Sexual content

rheah's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious

• Strong character development? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

5.0

 The Genesis of Misery is a story within a story, a Joan of Arc tale set in a science-fiction world with spaceshups and mecha figts

As the Jeanne d'Arc story goes, Misery (she/they) - note that in this universe everybody is introduced with pronouns and names the same way that we simply introduce ourselves with names- is from a nowhere town but has certain abilities which are only attributes of saints or voidmad. It's clear that Misery isn't a saint but she fears that she is succumbing to voidmadness like her mother before her. Misery starts seeing a spirit, Ruin, trying to guide her towards her destiny. They are brought to the capital to convince everyone that they're the destined Ninth Messiah and save the Empire from the conflict with the Heretics.

I have compared this book to Gideon the Ninth before, especially when it comes to the writing style a mix of gorgeous complex prose and humor and memes. There are more similarities: complex plot which definitely necessitates a reread to fully get what is going on, a Christianity-like religion in a powerful Empire with our protagonists being a sort of Messiah [i am weak for the exploration of religious themes in queer speculative fiction].

Without spoiling too much, Misery does exactly what you expect out of a character who is suddenly an all-powerful Messiah and who falls victim to her religious righteousness and hubris. Anyway, something something perfect handling of Christian-like religious themes and this is my weakness.

A little word about lady Alodia Lightning who was introduced as your enemy/haughty princess but who will 100% be a love interest and turned out more complex than that.

People will be interested to know that most of the characters introduced are queer and use different pronouns (in this world the neutral pronoun is zie/hir) such as she/they , xe/xem, zie/hir, they/them, he/they. But while this is the norm Misery has a small conversation about their pronouns with another character which I think will resonate with some readers.

I realized afterwards it was going to be a trilogy and I am so excited because I thought it was a standalone and I was curious about some loose ends (but I think the ending wraps things up enough that it can be read as a standalone)
Thank you to Netgalley for sending me a copy of this book. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Death of parent, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Religious bigotry, Sexual content, Violence, and War

Moderate: Grief

Minor: Child abuse