Reviews with content warning for Death - When Women Were Dragons

Reviews tagging 'Death'

When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill

31 reviews

kerrygetsliterary's review

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adventurous emotional funny mysterious reflective slow-paced

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

4.0

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sadiaa's review

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2.75

The premise of the book is interesting, women suddenly turning into dragons and societies denial of the existence of dragons. This book took me forever to finish, I kept picking it up and putting it down. I found myself skipping pages at a time, I was only interested in Alex and Beatrice's story. I found myself angry at the misogyny Alex faced, "no point getting an education when you'll just become a wife and mother", it was infuriating and testament to how women deal with adversity.
I loved the female rage aspect of the book,

when the dragons attack the abusive men in their lives, I wish Alex got her revenge on her teacher, he was insufferable.

It just failed to hold my interest and I struggled through this book, determined not to dnf

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arthur_pendrgn's review

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challenging emotional tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

A novel rich in allegory and capable of being interpreted through various social lenses. Barnhill isn't shy about her agenda, but then neither were Orwell, Atwood, Heller, Vonnegut, or Huxley. And of those, only Atwood gave her characters depth. Barnhill's characters are as flat as Orwell and Vonnegut's. This book burns, but the reader can select the burning issue.

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machenn's review

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adventurous emotional medium-paced

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

4.5

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esknight89's review

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challenging emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad slow-paced

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

3.75

I agree with other reviews saying that it was hard to get into the story. I remembered hitting the 50% mark in my audiobook and still waiting for the story to pick up the pace. I had been led to believe that this novel was in the same genre as Max Brooks's "Devolution" and "World War Z", a fantasy genre that takes place in the 'real world' and features both solved and unsolvable mysteries about the fantastic elements featured in the book.

That was not what I found here. For the first few chapters I kept thinking the dragons were euphemisms for society's evils and that I had been misled. Eventually I accepted that they were actually real for the characters in the book.

The story never went in the direction I wanted it to, which was somewhat disappointing and somewhat entertaining despite it.

The allegories that the dragons represented in various parts of the story was fairly heavy-handed, in my opinion. Sometimes it seemed like the author was bludgeoning me with them.

Other reviews of this book have mentioned thinking that Alex, the main character, seemed rather slow to realize what was actually happening around her, however I didn't feel that way. Maybe it's because I'm autistic and/or trauma-informed but when someone is literally taught by their society to ignore & suppress thoughts on certain subjects, it's not much of a stretch to know that it can figuratively blind someone to the obvious.

Overall, I enjoyed reading this book. It didn't wow me but it was entertaining. It was a good palate cleanser for me after I finished reading N.K. Jemison's Broken Earth Trilogy.

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