Reviews tagging 'Racism'

American Gods by Neil Gaiman

31 reviews

eni_iilorak's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

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

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cursing, Gore, Grief, Gun violence, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Physical abuse, Sexual content, War, Alcohol, Blood, Child death, Death, Infidelity, Kidnapping, Torture, and Car accident

Moderate: Slavery, Colonisation, Fire/Fire injury, Homophobia, and Racism

usually_sleep_deprived's review against another edition

dark fast-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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cursing, Police brutality, Toxic relationship, Violence, Alcoholism, Blood, Bullying, Gaslighting, Gore, Alcohol, Car accident, Death, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Physical abuse, Racism, Slavery, Toxic friendship, Suicide, and Torture

giannacolo's review

adventurous challenging dark mysterious slow-paced

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

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Sexual content, Murder, Violence, War, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Racism, Alcohol, Infidelity, Slavery, Cursing, Death of parent, Car accident, and Gore

Minor: Adult/minor relationship

purlhaggard's review against another edition

adventurous dark funny reflective 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

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism and Cultural appropriation

corriejn's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

4.5

I thought most of this book was great, but certain sections (no spoilers) dragged out far too long. I did listen to the ~12k words longer, original author's cut edition, so maybe those were some of the sections that were cut down a good bit for the original publishing.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Rape, Animal death, Sexual content, Violence, Death, Drug abuse, Murder, Child death, Gun violence, Alcohol, Gore, Grief, Infidelity, Injury/Injury detail, Slavery, Sexual assault, Torture, Drug use, Sexual violence, and Racism

Moderate: Religious bigotry, Kidnapping, Excrement, Confinement, Fire/Fire injury, Body horror, Xenophobia, Suicidal thoughts, Sexual harassment, Racial slurs, Car accident, Cannibalism, War, Colonisation, and Animal cruelty

marthadude's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful mysterious reflective 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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Mental illness, Gaslighting, Grief, Alcohol, Body horror, Car accident, Child death, Fatphobia, Gore, Infidelity, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Slavery, Vomit, War, Blood, Death, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic friendship, and Violence

Moderate: Animal death, Addiction, Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Colonisation, Slavery, and Racism

Minor: Incest, Pedophilia, and Adult/minor relationship

444christina's review against another edition

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Colonisation, Death, Racial slurs, Misogyny, and Racism

veganecurrywurst's review against another edition

adventurous funny mysterious reflective tense slow-paced

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

3.5

I did enjoy this book. It had so many interesting concepts and I learned something. However I think that this book could be shorter some parts of the story just seemed dragged out. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Blood, Cursing, Emotional abuse, Gaslighting, Gore, Mental illness, Murder, Physical abuse, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, and War

Moderate: Animal death, Car accident, Child death, Colonisation, Cultural appropriation, Racial slurs, Racism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual harassment, Sexual violence, and Slavery

Minor: Car accident, Child death, Domestic abuse, Gun violence, Infidelity, and Police brutality

skudiklier's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective slow-paced

3.0

This book was really weird, and though I liked it, I'm not sure I would recommend it. I also don't think I would have liked it as much if I hadn't been listening to the audiobook; I may have given up if I were reading a physical copy. 

For most of this book, I couldn't really tell you what it was about, or what the main plot was. Not that that's always a bad thing, but still. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Car accident, Death, Forced institutionalization, Infidelity, and Murder

Moderate: Fatphobia, Misogyny, Racial slurs, Racism, Sexual assault, and Sexual content

Minor: Pedophilia

Anti-Romani slur (g slur) Predatory relationship between older man and young girl who may be underage Body horror to do with corpses, maggots, etc

vulturetime's review against another edition

3.0

I don’t know if it’s the weird phase I’m in right now with reading or this book, but I was less interested in the story and more in the implications. But with the implications come a lot of questions that remain largely unanswered and frankly, I cared more about those questions than the plot. 

For example, the gods in America include versions of the gods of immigrants (Norse, Egyptian, Indian are the most common ones). There are also a few entities from various Native American tribes mentioned, the biggest one being the thunderbirds. Considering this set up, I was interested in how it worked at all, because there are definitely people who believe in the aforementioned pantheons outside of the US. An answer got hinted at at the end but it really doesn’t cover the question. 

Additionally, the fact that God was not present was a bit... interesting. With the implications of the book, the God of Christianity versus the God of Judaism versus the God of Islam would all be different entities, in a sense. How does that account for different branches of these religions, is what I wonder. Is the reason no monotheistic God was mentioned was because there were enough believers so that didn’t include them in the “war”? Then that implies that Hinduism doesn’t have enough followers, since iirc Kali was one of the “American” gods in the book that was facing decline. Like there are a lot of logistics that I wish had been fleshed out a bit more instead of a so called war that... didn’t really happen? 

Oh and also

there are many trickster gods across many cultures and the fact that it was Loki (and technically Odin) who tricked them all is a bit weird to me? There are a lot of gods that feed on chaos so why was it just these two? And I think a missed opportunity was examining how media changed the perception of gods. We saw it with Easter but with not much else.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Sexual content

Minor: Antisemitism, Genocide, Racial slurs, Racism, Suicidal thoughts, and Slavery

There are a few scenes in which there’s sexual content (esp in the beginning) though they are longer scenes; The n-word is used twice by one person in the beginning; the racism and anti Semitism comes with a character who only appears once, and it’s just by the description that that character is “scared” of black people and Jews; anti Semitism is also brought up because there’s a paragraph about the Holocaust and concentration camps; suicidal thoughts and language only appears twice iirc, and there’s one part where someone gives himself up to supposedly die; there’s also a part in one paragraph where a character is flirting with a waitress and is told “C’mon. She looks barely legal” and that character replies with “I’ve never been overly concerned about legality”; genocide is for the mention of the Holocaust and the Trail of Tears; there’s an interlude chapter that follows a pair of siblings sold into slavery. It also includes mention of rape and underage sex.