Reviews tagging 'Police brutality'

The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty

13 reviews

macknificent's review against another edition

adventurous funny lighthearted mysterious medium-paced

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

3.0

It's not a great book but there was some fun to be had.  Very much high fantasy with training wheels, especially entertaining if the reader is coming from a romance background. 

I was fine with only reading one of the books until I got to the very end, now I'll need to read the next entry in the trilogy. I'm not mad it's just a rather cliche trick to pull. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Classism, Xenophobia, War, Slavery, Sexism, Religious bigotry, and Misogyny

Moderate: Abandonment, Alcohol, Blood, Body shaming, Bullying, Cursing, Death, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, Genocide, Infertility, Injury/Injury detail, Islamophobia, Medical content, Murder, Physical abuse, Sexual violence, Police brutality, Pregnancy, Racial slurs, Racism, Sexual content, and Toxic relationship

Minor: Grief, Infidelity, Islamophobia, Cancer, Confinement, Kidnapping, Medical content, Mental illness, Rape, Religious bigotry, and Sexual content

emilyplun's review

adventurous emotional mysterious 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? Yes

3.5

(warning for very general spoilers, nothing specific)

I loved the world/setting, but the book overall left me frustrated. The whole story is full of "mysteries," but half of those are the main character just not knowing the basic workings of the magical world or its society, or an event in magical history that every other character is aware of. There are a lot of "who's behind this event?" mysteries too, but it's hard to get into that when the reader is only given a tiny trickle of info about how anything works. The ending was frustrating-- many mysteries weren't solved (which is fine) but a few that were solved weren't satisfying, and then more questions were introduced. I felt like I was drowning in things I didn't understand. As a reader, I wanted to know at least the basic facts that are relevant to a situation (like how x magic works, what happened during x event that everyone keeps referring to), even if the main character doesn't know.
This is really unfortunate since I love the world-building and the basic plotline. I might have to read the plot somewhere and intentionally spoil myself so I can read the sequels.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Death, Hate crime, Medical content, Murder, Police brutality, Racism, Slavery, Torture, Violence, and Xenophobia

Moderate: Alcohol, Kidnapping, Racial slurs, Religious bigotry, and Trafficking

Minor: Rape and War

achingallover's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional 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? Yes

4.0

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Child death, Death, Fire/Fire injury, Grief, Genocide, Police brutality, Racial slurs, Racism, Religious bigotry, Slavery, and Violence