Reviews tagging 'Sexual content'

The Book of Joan by Lidia Yuknavitch

4 reviews

readingelli's review

challenging dark reflective slow-paced

3.0

It was well written, and thought provoking, but I don’t think I liked it. Not really my cup of tea. Very body horror. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual violence, War, Sexual content, and Body horror

Post apocalypse, discussion of genitalia, reproductive horror, climate horror

romajstorovic's review against another edition

I cannot express how weirdly uncomfortable this book was. Everything is too much about biological sex, and it was just very crass. It seemed very TERF-y to me.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual content and Sexism

davyjones's review against another edition

dark reflective tense 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? No

1.5

Don’t even know what to say because I did not like it. It sucked. The story barely had any footing, not even the Jeanne d'Arc "retelling" did, except for her birth place. There was so much pointlessness in half of the words, it was so unnecessarily vulgar sometimes, there was really no point to be made with the choice of words and on top of everything the very end was transphobic. Great. Well done. Round of applause.

1.5 stars because the second part looked like it was going to improve (which led me to falsely believe something good was coming up. Meep. It got worse than the first part.) plus the potential there was.

Like I guess I get it, it's a bit of a commentary on climate change, the pointlessness of war, we barely matter, love is important, we shouldn’t only and constantly look for and at leaders, etc. I get that. Sure. But it sucked anyway. There are better words for it and better stories.

And maybe, just maybe, I'm not iNteLLeCtuAL enough to see the brilliance of this book but if you can’t appeal or get through to less fortunate readers, what's your story really worth.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Body horror, Child death, Confinement, Death, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, Gaslighting, Genocide, Gore, Grief, Infertility, Murder, Physical abuse, Self harm, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual harassment, Sexual violence, Torture, and Violence

Moderate: Cursing, Excrement, Kidnapping, Medical content, Rape, Slavery, and Transphobia

Minor: Alcohol

alylentz's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark mysterious reflective slow-paced

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

1.0

 Read for a grad school class and I understand how this fits into the conventions of science fiction, but I don't think it's of value. The arguments it's making in regards to gender are convoluted, reductive, and harmful, in my opinion, not to mention the fact that

the ultimate villain who is flaying people alive and mutilating people turns out to be--surprise!--a trans man!

. Also, this author's style gets praised for being so elevated but there were multiple examples of sentences or comparisons made that were so over the top I had to roll my eyes. I also don't think the narrative was well-crafted: it really lacks momentum and if I wasn't reading this for school I absolutely wouldn't not have finished it. But maybe I'm too stupid for it! I don't know.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Self harm, Transphobia, Torture, Violence, Vomit, Sexual violence, Sexual content, Sexual assault, Sexism, Rape, Racism, Physical abuse, Medical trauma, Homophobia, Hate crime, Forced institutionalization, Genocide, Body horror, and Blood