Reviews with content warning for Drug use - Terminal Boredom

Reviews tagging 'Drug use'

Terminal Boredom by Izumi Suzuki

11 reviews

pran's review

dark reflective 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? It's complicated

5.0

I wasn't sure what to expect from it, but I really enjoyed it. The writing style felt much more blunt than what I usually read, but there were some really beautiful sentences in there, and they often caught me by surprise, which made them all the more punchy. I loved the ideas Suzuki played with in the stories, and the ambivalence she feels towards the developments in technology in her stories. So much of what she wrote was prescient, in an almost scary way. I am excited to read around this book, as I know there has been some interesting criticism and theory around it. The influences of Suzuki's own life on her stories were really interesting to read and I have never seen the sexual/romantic relationships between men and women explored in quite the same way in any other speculative fiction I've read. Interesting to compare and contrast the ideas in Octavia Butler or Margaret Atwood's work with this, and the differences between the American second-wave feminist sci-fi and this Japanese work.
I'm also looking forward to reading her other book Hit Parade of Tears.

If you are interested, there is a very good article about Terminal Boredom on LitHub.

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sarah984's review against another edition

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challenging dark reflective

Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

A really interesting collection of bleak, prescient sci-fi stories. Aside from the pop culture references it's hard to believe they were written around the 1970s. Overall 4 stars, but I knocked it down to 3 because I really hated the first story.

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courto875's review

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dark funny slow-paced

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

4.25

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mlewis's review

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challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

4.0

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fox_at_the_circus's review

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challenging dark emotional medium-paced

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

3.5

It took me a while to get into the book. I felt like the later stories were better than the earlier ones, but maybe I just got used to the writing style.
I liked all the setups and ideas for the story, but it often felt like it didn't go far enough. I wished the worlds and society of them got explored ore broadly and without a focus on just 2 or 3 people, but that is definitely personal preference.
The characters on the other hand were very unlikeable or at best very hard to understand, which also made reading more difficult for me. Especially because for longer dialogues there are no indicators of who's speaking, so I always had to read them 2 or 3 times to make sense of it. But that could also me a concious choice of the author.
The book definitely made more sense to me, when I found it was written in the 70s/80s and the author died young, it also explains all the very heavy depressive undertones. It definitely stayed on my mind for a long time after finishing it and made me think about the themes of the book, so for that I appreciate it.

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