Reviews tagging 'Animal death'

The Thirty Names of Night by Zeyn Joukhadar

19 reviews

shugentobler's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad tense slow-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

4.75

This book was beautifully hard. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Xenophobia, Islamophobia, Death of parent, and Self harm

allisoncc's review

emotional hopeful inspiring 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? No

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Death of parent, Islamophobia, Fire/Fire injury, Miscarriage, Injury/Injury detail, Grief, Dysphoria, and Medical content

Moderate: Outing, Miscarriage, War, Racism, Pregnancy, Animal death, and Dementia

Minor: Chronic illness

purlewe's review against another edition

emotional sad medium-paced

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Religious bigotry, Animal death, Body horror, Grief, Blood, Death of parent, and Fire/Fire injury

sydneyl23's review

emotional informative inspiring mysterious reflective 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? No

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death of parent

Moderate: Xenophobia, Dysphoria, Fire/Fire injury, Grief, and Islamophobia

Minor: Child death, Animal death, and Sexual content

zombiezami's review against another edition

emotional hopeful informative mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Xenophobia, Grief, Misogyny, Pregnancy, Injury/Injury detail, Animal death, Medical content, Blood, Gaslighting, Sexism, Violence, Death, Death of parent, Dysphoria, Fire/Fire injury, and Medical trauma

Moderate: Sexual harassment, Police brutality, Suicidal thoughts, Bullying, Sexual content, Sexual violence, and Transphobia

Minor: War, Mass/school shootings, Colonisation, and Dementia

Colorism

displacedcactus's review against another edition

emotional hopeful reflective sad slow-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

This book has a very slow start, but once I got into it, I was really sucked into the dual timelines and finding the parallels and connections between them. It's definitely literary in its scope and tone, but with some fantastic elements. It's a bit of a ghost story, but in a sad way rather than a scary way. It's a bit of a coming of age story, a reminder that sometimes we don't get the chance to truly come into ourselves until sometime in adulthood. It's about family, both blood and chosen. And it's also about birds and art and race and gender and religion and so many important things.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood and Dysphoria

Moderate: Homophobia, Islamophobia, Animal death, Death of parent, Transphobia, Sexism, and Racism

The main character is frequently misgendered, since he is not "out" for most of the book, but his deadname never appears on the page. Most of the transphobia is of the "I don't get it" sort from clueless but loving family members, rather than acts of hate and violence. The story also deals with the displacement of immigrant communities to make way for "progress" in the form of infrastructure that "has" to run through their neighborhoods.

singlier's review

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

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

4.5

The Thirty Names of Night 4.5/5 🪶s

Oh my goodness. I loved this book. It is beautiful: a reflective mingling of past and present explored through alternating POVs of a two Syrian artists: one, a sapphic immigrant who fled Syrian during the French/Syrian war and the other, a closeted trans man struggling under the grief of his mother's death. It is a story about loss, which means it is a story about love: lost loves, familial love, love of our communities, love of ourselves. On the five-year anniversary of his mother's death, the man finds the journal of the Syrian immigrant and discovers his life and her life are irreparably intertwined through their shared obsession of a rare bird: a bird his mother died before she could prove it was real. What follows is a parallel narrative between past and present, unfolding the lives of both artists as they attempt to unravel their own identities admist the complex and varied social pressures of their varied eras. 

The only reason this book isn't a full five stars for me is that, despite how beautiful it is to read, it is SLOW.  It's a very reflective piece, and I loved the real-world history that went into the creation of this book, but even I at times found myself skipping ahead to get to the next piece of the mystery. I still do highly recommend it.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death

Moderate: Dysphoria, Grief, Blood, Classism, Deadnaming, Death of parent, Sexual assault, and War

hmstaab's review

challenging dark emotional inspiring mysterious sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Xenophobia and Death of parent

Moderate: Deadnaming, Dementia, Dysphoria, Animal death, and Death

noah_silver's review against another edition

challenging emotional inspiring reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.75

I liked the two interwoven timelines, the development and growth of the two main characters & their different voices, the different kinds of queerness coming up during the story - and the focus on & omnipresence of birds in the lives of the characters.
However, at some points I found it a bit slow and am still confused about some turns of the story. It might be due to listening to it as an audio book and maybe not catching everything. I was also not completely convinced of the audio book narrator's styles.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Fire/Fire injury, Islamophobia, Racism, Animal death, Grief, Death of parent, and Dysphoria

Minor: Miscarriage, Homophobia, Child death, Transphobia, and War

Description of menstruation; gyn appointment

mscalls's review

challenging emotional hopeful mysterious reflective 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

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death of parent, Dementia, Medical content, Body horror, Islamophobia, Xenophobia, Animal death, Body shaming, Hate crime, and Injury/Injury detail