Reviews tagging 'Blood'

Sistersong by Lucy Holland

30 reviews

agooding's review

dark emotional hopeful mysterious sad tense medium-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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood and Violence

Moderate: Pregnancy, Transphobia, and Vomit

Minor: Deadnaming

fifix's review

adventurous dark emotional medium-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

5.0

This was the most enjoyable retelling I have ever read, I absorbed it like it gave me life. It was a perfect blend of a folk story retelling, magic, and historical setting.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Blood

Minor: Deadnaming

kaleidoscope_heart's review

adventurous emotional medium-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gore, Religious bigotry, Blood, Fire/Fire injury, War, Death, and Injury/Injury detail

maeverose's review against another edition

medium-paced

3.0

TL;DR: Has similar themes to the winternight trilogy (old religion vs christianity, war, evil priest, similar tho different time period and setting). If you liked that, maybe you would like this. Though for me, I loved that and was ultimately bored for most of this book. It just didn’t hook me, and it didn’t help that I only really cared for one pov.

That being Keyne’s. As a genderqueer person I’m always interested in books with trans rep, and even though I don’t believe this is own voices I thought it was done really well. There is misgendering and transphobia from certain characters throughout, but it’s not a trans trauma story, and there are many characters who accept his identity (tho it does take them a minute to catch on), and his transness isn’t his whole character. It is a bit binary though, feeding into stereotypes of what a man should be, but given the time period it makes sense? So idk. Overall decent rep. (Loved chapter 23)

I didn’t care for Riva’s pov because it was primarily focused on the romance, which I didn’t like, and I didn’t like Sinne’s pov because of the jealousy plotline between her and Riva. I did appreciate that the author didn’t go full on ‘I’m gonna steal your man’ with that plotline but it still annoyed me. Especially because this is trying to be a feminist book but the two women’s povs we get are so tied to this one man and their feelings for him and their new dislike of each other because of it.

I’m also both disabled and disfigured (though in different ways than Riva or Os), and I found the rep in this book was neutral overall. Not offensive but not exactly empowering either. Anytime Reva’s scars were mentioned it was often in a negative context, but we were shown through Riva’s pov her struggles with it and how much it hurt when people did say negative things about it, and there were characters who didn’t treat her any differently because of it. Os’s mutism was handled the same I would say. I did like to see Sinne learn to communicate with him, and I thought their friendship was really sweet. I would just like to see a disfigured/disabled character be confident in their body rather than focusing solely on the negatives of it. My scoliosis has negatives; pain and physical limitations, but I also genuinely like how my body looks, and that seems to be a hard concept for some people to grasp.

As for the story, it didn’t feel like a lot happened even though things were happening. It felt slow to me. It focused more on character development and their thoughts and feelings than it did plot, which normally I like but because I only cared for Keyne and a few side characters it didn’t work for me this time.

The ending…

Riva and Cynric’s ending. On one hand I liked that it was so unexpected and atypical for most stories like this, on the other hand… he was never redeemed in any way. And he lied to her, the whole time planning on killing her father and her people, then nearly succeeded at that… so he doesn’t deserve a happy ending at all, and I don’t get why she still loved him through all that.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Injury/Injury detail, War, Ableism, Blood, Body horror, Body shaming, Gore, Medical content, Misogyny, Murder, Religious bigotry, Violence, and Transphobia

Moderate: Animal death, Dysphoria, Lesbophobia, Pregnancy, Sexual content, Vomit, Classism, and Fire/Fire injury

Minor: Excrement and Rape

The worst of the gore is in chapter 40, but it’s moderate here and there throughout the book.

alexsartifacts's review

dark tense 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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Blood, Death of parent, Pregnancy, Gore, Sexism, Death, Fire/Fire injury, and War

rain_bellin's review

dark inspiring mysterious sad tense medium-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? No

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Fire/Fire injury, War, Blood, Death, Gore, and Transphobia

h_sloan's review

adventurous challenging dark mysterious sad medium-paced

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

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: War and Blood

tashtasher's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional sad tense 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? It's complicated

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, War, Gore, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Blood, Death, Fire/Fire injury, and Religious bigotry

Moderate: Death of parent, Medical content, and Transphobia

Minor: Chronic illness, Murder, Body shaming, Pregnancy, Sexism, Medical trauma, and Misogyny

kalmia31's review against another edition

adventurous emotional mysterious medium-paced

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

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Religious bigotry and Transphobia

Moderate: Fire/Fire injury, Pregnancy, Body shaming, Suicide attempt, Violence, Blood, Death of parent, Dysphoria, Bullying, Emotional abuse, Colonisation, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Ableism, War, Animal death, and Deadnaming

lady_moon's review against another edition

challenging emotional mysterious reflective sad slow-paced

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

3.5

Rep: trans masc MC, bigender side character

To be honest I'm not sure I'm satisfied with the path each sibling had. S was annoying for the better part of the book but she didn't deserve this sort of ending. Riva started out well, I liked her in the beginning. And then came Tristan 😐 After they got together, Riva became insufferable. Her whole ending was definitely not what I wanted it to be. 
K was fine the whole time <3 In the beginning he was less interesting the his sisters but as the novel progressed, he was honestly the only POV character who hadn't annoyed the hell out of me. 

I'm not a fan of

siblings torn apart

kind of stories. I really didn't enjoy that. The author tried very hard to leave each of them in some sort of hopeful note but for me it's not hopeful when

sibling relationships are destroyed in such a way

.

I didn't quite get the ending with K. Like,

so he's immortal now? He had lived through the centuries? Or it was just him after many decades?

Anyway, I have certain opinions (obviously) but I'm really not feeling that strongly about any of that for it to matter to me. I'm happy how stuff turned out for K (I guess?) and that's the most important thing. Historical fiction with trans characters will never be not fun. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Deadnaming, Transphobia, and War

Moderate: Pregnancy, Misogyny, Religious bigotry, Confinement, Death of parent, and Fire/Fire injury