Reviews tagging 'Bullying'

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr

27 reviews

mariawjw's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional hopeful inspiring reflective slow-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Slavery, Death, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Bullying, Body shaming, Child death, Injury/Injury detail, Physical abuse, Grief, and War

Minor: Miscarriage

breaklikeafish's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional inspiring mysterious 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? No

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Vomit, Animal cruelty, Gun violence, and War

Moderate: Bullying

justdiana's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• 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: Slavery, War, Violence, Torture, and Death

Moderate: Confinement, Animal death, Animal cruelty, and Bullying

spookyaz's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful reflective sad 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

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Bullying, Violence, Gun violence, Body shaming, Animal death, Confinement, Forced institutionalization, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, and War

Moderate: Homophobia

puntifexmaximus's review against another edition

adventurous mysterious reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated

4.75

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Death, Violence, Child abuse, Child death, Classism, Pandemic/Epidemic, War, and Xenophobia

Minor: Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Misogyny, Animal death, Blood, Bullying, Rape, Alcohol, Body shaming, Slavery, Animal cruelty, Death, Death of parent, and Islamophobia

miller8d's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring mysterious reflective sad 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

4.5

Changed my relationship to books and reading. One of the best books I have ever read. I highlighted so many passages that the Kindle highlight collection was literally 26 pages long.

Cried several times both out of happiness and sadness. Beautifully captures the actual sensations of love and loss and grief, and the gorgeous nature of children and animals and family, queer love and neurodivergent pain, and so much more. Refreshing poetry and ridiculously beautiful world-building in such intricate historical contexts. Addressed so many different issues and experiences with such flair and emotion. Delivers anarchist / anti-establishment / leftist values from the optimistic perspective that to be human is to be a part of the problem, and yet, we must love one another and love the Earth in order to power through the pain of life in order to radically experience the love, because that’s why we are here.

 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Religious bigotry, Suicidal thoughts, Classism, Trafficking, Xenophobia, Racism, Physical abuse, Genocide, Domestic abuse, Misogyny, Homophobia, Sexism, Abandonment, War, Slavery, Gun violence, Colonisation, Mass/school shootings, Violence, Torture, Panic attacks/disorders, Murder, Mental illness, Child death, Child abuse, Suicide, Chronic illness, Terminal illness, Grief, Medical trauma, Animal death, Forced institutionalization, Death of parent, Death, Confinement, Racial slurs, Bullying, Kidnapping, Suicide attempt, Injury/Injury detail, Excrement, and Animal cruelty

I am very sensitive and I LOVED this book and found it deeply emotionally uplifting despite these very severe content warnings

clairew97's review against another edition

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief, Mental illness, Murder, Pandemic/Epidemic, Terminal illness, Death of parent, Bullying, Medical content, Pregnancy, Animal death, Body horror, Death, Gun violence, Injury/Injury detail, War, Violence, Blood, Homophobia, and Panic attacks/disorders

carla20's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad 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? It's complicated

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Colonisation, Confinement, Death, Hate crime, War, and Gun violence

Moderate: Bullying, Injury/Injury detail, Racism, and Mass/school shootings

jayisreading's review against another edition

emotional reflective slow-paced

2.0

Doerr was far too ambitious with this novel and bit off more than he could chew. I really wanted to like this one, especially as someone who enjoys sprawling novels with different plotlines and characters that all come together in a unique fashion. In addition, there was something akin to a love letter to books and environment that existed in this novel, which… yes, I also love. And then, there’s the fact that Doerr writes beautifully, and as someone who loves lyrical prose, you would think all these components would result in me singing about how wonderful of an experience it was to read Cloud Cuckoo Land.

It took me a little over a month to get through this tome, which I thought was at least 300 pages too long. As much as I love beautiful writing, I need things to happen to really appreciate that beautiful writing. When things happened in Cloud Cuckoo Land, it was wonderful. Other times, though, it made reading feel like an absolute chore. I felt like there was a little too much self-indulgent writing that was happening. Relatedly, Doerr barely—and I cannot emphasize “barely” enough—pulled off the intertwining stories at the end. Each timeline and their respective plotlines had their flaws, but I thought the one that took place in the present was by far the strongest and most interesting. The plotlines that took place in the past were somewhat engaging but not all that interesting. Meanwhile, the plotline that took place in the future was interesting but not at all engaging. (This is to say, Doerr should not venture into sci-fi writing, because I don’t think he would be very good at it.) All of them had beautiful writing, but your mileage varied on how much impact any of it had on the story (raising the question, what actually was the story). And, speaking of impact, I found the codex excerpts at the start of chapters rather tiring after a while. It didn’t leave much of an impression on me, especially because it rarely tied to the actual chapter content.

Something else to scrutinize about this book is how an autistic character is represented. While it is not explicitly stated by Doerr that Seymour is autistic (and I don’t know why he shied away from this…), the fact that he is vilified and turned into a bit of a "troubled child” caricature left a bad taste in my mouth.

This is making me realize that I may have to revisit All the Light We Cannot See, which I enjoyed when I read it way back when. I wonder if something changed or it just ended up that Cloud Cuckoo Land was a miss. Whatever the reason, I just know I won’t be getting many hours back that was spent reading this book. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Pandemic/Epidemic, War, Death, Violence, Confinement, and Ableism

Moderate: Bullying and Animal cruelty

Minor: Rape and Homophobia

erinwolf1997's review against another edition

adventurous reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• 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: Animal death, Blood, War, Mass/school shootings, Death, Gun violence, and Pandemic/Epidemic

Moderate: Death of parent

Minor: Ableism and Bullying