Reviews tagging 'Death of parent'

The Battle Drum by Saara El-Arifi

13 reviews

mj_86's review

adventurous dark emotional 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: Miscarriage, Blood, and Death

Moderate: Death of parent, Alcohol, Addiction, Gore, and Violence

Minor: Sexual content and Animal death

nekopersona's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional inspiring mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• 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: Classism, Domestic abuse, Blood, Death of parent, Slavery, and Sexual assault

Moderate: Addiction

Minor: Animal death, Alcoholism, and Alcohol

fernanda_o's review

dark emotional 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? It's complicated

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Rape, Blood, Domestic abuse, Child abuse, and Gore

Moderate: Child death, Alcohol, Addiction, Animal death, Fire/Fire injury, Death of parent, Miscarriage, and Drug abuse

porcupine_girl's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense slow-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

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Religious bigotry, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Rape, Sexual violence, Ableism, Genocide, Alcohol, Gore, Pregnancy, Self harm, Sexual assault, Violence, Miscarriage, Kidnapping, Physical abuse, Terminal illness, Trafficking, Classism, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, War, Body horror, Cursing, Alcoholism, Child death, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Death, Medical content, Torture, Blood, Colonisation, Confinement, Abandonment, Medical trauma, Murder, and Police brutality

Moderate: Addiction, Toxic relationship, and Gun violence

Minor: Sexual content, Infidelity, and Animal death

kathyreadsalot's review against another edition

adventurous dark tense 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? Yes

4.5

I just.. whew. This plot got thicker and more twisty in all the right ways! I need Book 3 to hurry up and come out. Took off half a star because Anoor’s character development I wish would have not been so painful at times.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Torture, Murder, Child death, Gore, Violence, Fire/Fire injury, and Death of parent

Moderate: Misogyny, Confinement, and Miscarriage

lisacanteven's review

adventurous challenging emotional informative 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

I'm a pretty visual person, so seeing stories play out in my head as I read isn't a new thing. However, this book was probably the clearest I could ever see a story in my mind. I still gave the first book, The Final Strife, 5 stars but somehow the sequel was leagues above even that book. You learn so much about the politics of this world in the first book, but the second is such an exciting and thrilling adventure. If it wasn't for my Lexapro I would have bawled in several places in this story. Alas, my Lexapro has a lockdown on my tears. 

The last line of the book?!? I read an ebook from the library, so my last line was italic. However, my partner read a Kindle version and the final line was in quotes. I checked a US hardback and it's in quotes too. This makes a huge difference in the ending, so I need to know why my copy was wrong!!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Blood, Body horror, Torture, Injury/Injury detail, Fire/Fire injury, Classism, Confinement, Death, Death of parent, War, and Colonisation

Minor: Addiction, Drug use, and Drug abuse

caseythereader's review

adventurous challenging dark mysterious tense slow-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

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death of parent, Grief, Miscarriage, Classism, Domestic abuse, Alcohol, Colonisation, Death, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Addiction, Cursing, Murder, Torture, Blood, Gore, Child death, Slavery, and Violence

Minor: Sexual content

samusc's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious tense fast-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

I was incredibly excited for this book as The Final Strife was my favorite read of 2022, and this absolutely delivered!
Saara El-Arifi took a bunch of risks with this title, and executed them flawlessly:

• Anoor and Sylah are apart for the entire book, and yet their love for one another still drives their decisions. 
   
•  
  Sylah is knocked out from a severe injury for a decent amount of the book, providing opportunity for strong character moments from Jond and the mysterious old man Niha. 
   
•  
  Anoor 's paranoia increases as she accuses nearly everyone in her inner circle of murder, which has heavy consequences. By the end of the book, she's made some truly awful decisions. While emotionally hard to read about, it makes sense given everything she's been through. She's a young traumatized women who's entire worldview has been rocked; she's ripe for manipulation.
• Locations and cultures of people new to our main characters were revealed masterfully. By the end of the first book in the series, Sylah didn't have much to go off of beyond a map showing land beyond the sea and Loot's yellow blood. In comparison, by the end of this title, both the reader and characters of a much larger understanding of the world. This includes one of my favorite aspects of worldbuilding, also seen in the Roots of Chaos series, when groups of people have different explanations for similar religious phenomena, largely due to migration.
• A big theme in The Battle Drum is sacrifice. Unfortunately, we lost many characters on this journey in brutally detailed ways. However, these heartbreaking moments are presented alongside hopeful ones, as is necessary in any fantasy (in my opinion). It's a joy to read about Hassa and Kwame's growing relationship, as well as Jond's adoption of a sand kitten. 

This installment in the Ending Fire Trilogy is a perfect example of what a second book in a fantasy trilogy can be, akin to The Oleander Sword by Tasha Suri.
Once I got to the last third of this book last night, I had to finish it, there was just so much happening! It then took me over an hour to fall asleep because my mind was buzzing with everything these characters had gone through and predictions for the third book. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Death, Torture, and Death of parent

barda's review

adventurous challenging dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

2.75

I'm very frustrated by having to rate this book so low, but I definitely didn't enjoy it as much as the first book.

The first book had some flaws, but I still broadly enjoyed the characters, the setting, and the worldbuilding. While this second book fixed my biggest pet peeve of rapidly switching POV's (this one had the more standard format of a chapter only having one character's POV), it felt like this one was actually more confusing than the first one, and that the author lost plot momentum from the first book.

The characters just weren't as likeable in this book. I still really enjoyed Hassa and she's easily a stand-out character, but Jond was just boring and Sylah was not in the book enough for me to judge her characterisation. Anoor, however, I was the most disappointed in. Like Sylah, it feels like she barely has any screen-time in this book, but most egregiously she seems to regress in all of her character development that she gained in the first book. I hate to criticise characters who make seemingly stupid mistakes, as oftentimes they'll be realistic mistakes that you might expect one to make, but Anoor keeps making mistakes over and over and doesn't seem to learn from the negative impacts of these. She's incompetent and seemingly regains her naivety that she grew out of in the first book. This makes the twist

of her being the Child of Fire also come out of left-field, as she goes from being exceedingly naive and sad to suddenly angry and wanting revenge over the space of a chapter

.

The plot certainly had some interesting bits, particularly with the Academy and how the cultures of the mainland work. I did also broadly enjoy the plot reveals towards the end of the book; however, they were all suddenly shoved into the end of the book leaving little room for the characters to breathe, and many of the plot twists could have been revealed and solved earlier if characters simply communicated with each other (

for instance, with Jond not telling Sylah that the other disciples were Sandstorm - what was his reasoning for not telling this to Sylah in the first place? It's not really explained in the text

). 

Broadly, this book's usually interesting plot was dragged down by its characters and overall characterisation. I still might pick up the next one when it comes out as I think the mysteries that have been set up are worth reading, but I do hope that the author can figure out where they want their characters to go. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Domestic abuse, Blood, Self harm, Miscarriage, Physical abuse, Sexual violence, Rape, Religious bigotry, and Sexual assault

Moderate: Death of parent, Drug abuse, Injury/Injury detail, Slavery, Child death, Drug use, Violence, Classism, Grief, Murder, Sexual content, Colonisation, and Death

Minor: Cursing

hailstorm3812's review

4.25

I think this was an interesting second installment in the series. The twists and turns had me on the edge of my seat. I audibly gasped at the end. The development of 3 of the POV characters was so good.

I hate to admit it, but especially Jond. Anoor on the otherhand is being manuevered to have interesting developments in the next book so made a lot of not good choices now.

Excited for the next book!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Miscarriage, Blood, Emotional abuse, Physical abuse, and Death of parent

Moderate: Cultural appropriation, Death, Addiction, Fire/Fire injury, Genocide, Grief, Hate crime, Injury/Injury detail, Toxic relationship, War, Sexism, Xenophobia, Ableism, Colonisation, and Rape

Minor: Child abuse, Suicide, Abandonment, Child death, Animal death, and Animal cruelty