Reviews tagging 'Fire/Fire injury'

The City of Dusk by Tara Sim

9 reviews

maregred's review

adventurous dark mysterious tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Animal death, Grief, Toxic friendship, Chronic illness, Confinement, Death, Death of parent, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Violence, Xenophobia, Blood, Body horror, and Fire/Fire injury

iforgotilivedhere's review

adventurous dark mysterious sad tense 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? It's complicated

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Emotional abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Self harm, Child death, Classism, Cursing, Sexual content, Violence, Child abuse, Suicidal thoughts, Vomit, Death, Abandonment, Body horror, Death of parent, Xenophobia, Cannibalism, Gore, Grief, Mental illness, Murder, Panic attacks/disorders, and Physical abuse

msradiosilence's review

adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious sad 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? It's complicated

4.5

Tldr; Taesia is the best, and I’m really looking forward to book 2.

Read my full review at: https://www.rainyreader.com/single-post/the-city-of-dusk.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Domestic abuse, Body horror, Cursing, Racism, Police brutality, Sexual content, Torture, Violence, Emotional abuse, Injury/Injury detail, Alcohol, Blood, Cannibalism, Child death, Fire/Fire injury, Gore, Grief, Hate crime, Murder, Physical abuse, and Toxic friendship

anxiousnachos's review

dark slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix

4.25

The vibes in this book are absolutely IMMACULATE. Truly spectacular, I am here for the goth metal fantasy about death gods and shadow gods and skeletons and spirits and a bisexual rogue who slowly descends into an absolute monster of a human and the monster hunter she is kind of falling for and the knives-to-throat-hair-grabbing relationship they have. Spectacular. It is like this book was made for me. 

But the first 150-200 pages are so dense. The worldbuilding is so heavy, in that “I need to explicitly and directly tell the reader all these things about the world” way. It’s such a complex and dense set up, and thus the pacing is very slow and I agree with other reviewers that this could easily have been cut 100 pages and the pacing would have flowed a lot better. 

In saying that, I say push the fuck through because the pay off is excellent, the characters and their relationships are wonderful and I support bisexual shadow dagger-wielding monster girls who want to tear the world apart and the boys they fancy. 

Content warnings: blood and gore, murder, dead bodies, cannibalism, self-harm, burns/burn injury, animal cruelty and torture, animal death, possession, sex, sex work, violence 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder, Cannibalism, Violence, Animal cruelty, Self harm, Gore, Blood, Animal death, and Grief

Moderate: Fire/Fire injury

Minor: Sexual content

_teoeo's review

adventurous dark emotional mysterious 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

3.75

All in all it was a good book!

Pros:  

• I loved the world building 
• A lot of LGBTQ* and POC characters
• Taesia!!!!
• Liked the plottwists!!!
• The story was really interesting and I will totally read the second book

Cons:

• It took me reeeeaaaaallyyy long to read the book
• A lot of text on the pages, was a pain in my ass to read that
• didn't liked the part where Angelica was at a brothel, thought that is problematic because it was portrayed as kind of normalised and there wasn't a word about the suffering that can be involved with prostitution
• The last 100 pages there was a lot going on, that overwhelmed me a bit

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief, Addiction, Cannibalism, Child abuse, Death, Emotional abuse, and Self harm

Moderate: Fire/Fire injury

Minor: Suicide attempt

allisonwonderlandreads's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious tense slow-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

3.0

The City of Dusk is an intricate political fantasy where four warring aristocratic families try to curry favor with the king and leverage their unique god-given magic for power and influence. Our main characters are the heirs and spares of these illustrious families, born into a world that is fading at an accelerated rate, cut off from the other realms and their magic. With all four families eyeing the crown, the youngest generation has more on their minds. Separately and together, they have ideas for how to save their world. But there is much they don't know about magic, about each other, and about other powerful forces on the move, all who would use them as pawns in a terrifying, high-stakes game.

What I enjoyed most about this book were the twists and turns, the queer cast, and the reflections on power and privilege. While the relationships were a bit surface level and trope-y for my tastes (especially the romantic plots were predictable and rushed), the political power games were fascinating and kept many surprises until the very end. In terms of queer representation, there are both sapphic and mlm romances brewing among the main cast at the end of this first installment, and an important side character is a trans girl. There is also an established sapphic couple as one of the main character's mom and stepmom. It seems to be a queer-norm society. I appreciated how the characters struggle throughout the book to come to terms with their own power in a magical and political sense. They have to consider their duty, the future of their world, and what role they should play in it. They also have to consider what greater powers are meddling in their lives and those of everyone, powers that perhaps shouldn't be revered once viewed in a more honest light.

Beyond relationships that took a back seat to plot, the main deterrent keeping me from being fully immersed in this story was the drawn-out pacing. I lost motivation at several points throughout because I felt sluggish moving through the plot. I think it's always a risk having a book this long, and it takes a special connection between reader and book to keep interest up throughout. That didn't happen for me here, but I still found a lot to admire and enjoy.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cannibalism, Murder, and Violence

Moderate: Body horror, Grief, Gore, Self harm, Emotional abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Addiction, Blood, Classism, and Suicide attempt

Minor: Sexual content, Death of parent, Domestic abuse, Police brutality, Animal death, and Confinement

d_totman's review

adventurous dark mysterious 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? Yes

4.25

An interesting read. I got into it quickly but found it didn’t quite hold my attention all the way through— I think probably because there is a lot of plot to keep straight. 

I liked the characters, the heirs were equally compelling which is hard with multiple POVs. The plot kept me guessing right until the end and the payoff in the final chapters was satisfying. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death

Moderate: Violence, Fire/Fire injury, Murder, and Cannibalism

kilic's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional 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

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Fire/Fire injury, Gore, and Violence

caseythereader's review

adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious tense slow-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? Yes

4.75

Thanks to Orbit Books for the free copy of this book.

 - Y'all, I loved THE CITY OF DUSK! I was nervous because it's been awhile since I've read a 500+ page fantasy novel and my concentration has been shot recently, but I could not put it down.
- The world of this book is quite complex, and only keeps gaining layers as the heirs learn more about themselves, history is uncovered, people are double crossed, and more, so do know that going in.
- Each of the heirs was messy and headstrong in their own ways, and I loved and rooted for them all, even when they were at odds with each other.
- This is also a lowkey queernorm world. Everyone was at least a little queer, but it doesn't matter to anyone and it's great.
- All that said, I do think this will probably be a divisive book, given that it's so long and complicated, possibly a bit overstuffed, and yes, some plot developments do get confusing at times. I'm all in, though. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Cursing, Grief, Kidnapping, Child death, Death, Gore, Confinement, Fire/Fire injury, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, and Violence

Minor: Sexual content