Reviews tagging 'Blood'

Her Majesty's Royal Coven by Juno Dawson

48 reviews

emilywrayburn's review

challenging 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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Transphobia, Blood, Injury/Injury detail, War, and Murder

Moderate: Death and War

Minor: Sexual content and Animal death

cumminsn's review

adventurous dark emotional tense medium-paced

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

3.0

It is honestly sort of difficult to put into words my exact feelings on this book. Parts of it I liked quite a bit, while others had me physically rolling my eyes. The magic is very fun, and the lore of witches and how they connect to the earth and to each other I found compelling and interesting. But, once the conflict of the story started to come to a head, I found myself enjoying the book less and less. The villains almost become… cartoonish, in a way? It felt like the author was really trying to push home how terrible the antagonist is by just repeatedly having her state her transphobic viewpoints to the point where it was very irritating and tiresome even for me, a cisgender woman. 

While there is very positive transgender, and LGBT in general, representation here, there is also rampant transphobia that I could see being very triggering to some. Also, the overuse of swearing and pop culture references took away from my immersion as well. For a book that has different characters that it switches perspectives between, I sometimes found myself having a hard time remembering who was who, with no very large differences in tone from one character to the next. Other than the antagonist, of course. The fact that she was evil was about the most obvious thing in the whole book. 

I guess what disappointed me is that there wasn’t quite enough Fantasy to balance out the in-your-face politics that were constantly surfacing. I was more interested in the lore of the world, but the story seemed to stumble over itself to try and include as much political-correctness as possible that some of the characters didn’t even feel like genuine characters and more like just stereotypes being included for the sake of it, which was sad to read. Some of the language used, particularly internet-type wording and references, will likely not age well either. 

I forced myself to finish this one. I was invested enough to want to do it, but I don’t know that I’ll be reaching for the sequel right away, if it all. In the end, I felt underwhelmed.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Hate crime, Blood, Car accident, Transphobia, Cursing, Kidnapping, Misogyny, Sexism, and Toxic friendship

Moderate: Alcohol and Body horror

Minor: Death of parent, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Gaslighting, Medical content, and Outing

emmajh91's review against another edition

challenging tense medium-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief, Transphobia, Death, and Murder

Moderate: Violence, Cursing, Injury/Injury detail, Infidelity, Hate crime, Car accident, Forced institutionalization, Kidnapping, Dysphoria, Confinement, Alcohol, Sexual content, Blood, Vomit, War, and Toxic friendship

styx_the_gremlin's review

adventurous emotional hopeful 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? No

4.0

Solid witchy novel with tons of relatable issues and really cool characters. If you know Juno Dawson you'll see the midway 'twist' coming from 300 miles away but it's still such a good read. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Deadnaming and Transphobia

Moderate: Blood

Minor: Eating disorder

blewballoon's review against another edition

dark emotional sad 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

Gonna get a bit more "political" than I typically do, since this is a quite "political" book. If you are the type of person who asks yourself "I don't know, I feel like the stuff JK Rowling says in her tweets isn't that big a deal?" and you are genuinely curious to know why it is a big deal, then this might be a good book to help explain it to you. If you are a TERF, you will hate this book. I didn't like this book either, but not for that reason. I didn't like this book in the same ways I didn't like The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin: dwelling on the power that racists/sexists/homophobes/transphobes/etc have just bums me out. I know things suck. I read to remind myself that sometimes people don't suck. I read to keep myself from falling into a pit of despair about the state of the world. Apart from Niamh, Theo, and Holly, I didn't really like any of the characters. I absolutely hated the ending. I felt like I knew what was coming the whole time and just wanted it to be over. I gave it 3 stars because of the intention, the world-building, the setting, and there were some funny lines. I don't think this is a bad book, it just didn't suit me even though I agree with its message. The narrator for the audiobook was really fantastic, I'll be looking for more books narrated by them. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Transphobia, Death, and Animal death

Moderate: Child abuse, Injury/Injury detail, Alcohol, Blood, Grief, and Racism

Minor: Drug use, War, and Sexual assault

rivercat0338's review

challenging dark emotional funny 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? Yes

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Kidnapping, Forced institutionalization, and Transphobia

Moderate: Death, Bullying, Car accident, Cursing, Blood, Confinement, Fatphobia, Alcohol, and Infidelity

Cliffhanger ending

shottel's review

emotional tense medium-paced

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

3.0

Shock ending that does great damage to the rest of the book. Stop reading after page 417. Cut it off exactly at that page and I’d bump it up a star. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Death, Gaslighting, Outing, Transphobia, Child abuse, Cursing, Dysphoria, Emotional abuse, Blood, and Drug use

chanlo1994's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional hopeful inspiring 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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Transphobia, Kidnapping, and Animal death

Moderate: Violence and Homophobia

Minor: War

readwithria's review against another edition

dark emotional 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? Yes

4.0

Her Majesty’s Royal Coven was the political, witchy-sisterhood book I didn’t know I needed.

I really enjoyed this book, and the characters took the cake. The POV characters, their children and wards, their partners, and all of the side characters felt so fleshed out and real. Their relationships were so fun to read about, even the bad ones.

I will say that it wasn’t until well into the book that I felt like I understood how the magic system worked. The delineation between the different types of witches and what they can do, plus the elemental aspect of witchery, made for a lot of information that I still don’t fully grasp.

I’m very excited to read The Shadow Cabinet! 4 stars.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Outing, Transphobia, Murder, Violence, Toxic friendship, and Cursing

Moderate: Blood, War, Kidnapping, Alcohol, Car accident, Forced institutionalization, and Animal death

Minor: Fire/Fire injury

wallflovver's review

dark emotional funny hopeful medium-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

4.75

after i got over the hurdle of switching povs, i really fell into the rhythm of the story

i loved these characters, bar one of course. i really enjoyed them together and seeing their sisterly bond. 

the magic system was also so interesting to get into! i liked the lore that made this magic it's own thing, and the reliance on nature was a lovely aspect that gets any magic system points from me!

this did feel like a very direct response to joanne revealing herself as a terf, and i revelled in that! very very enjoyable to me!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Death, Fire/Fire injury, Animal death, Blood, Hate crime, Injury/Injury detail, Kidnapping, and Transphobia

Minor: Car accident, Child abuse, Alcohol, and Bullying