Reviews tagging 'Torture'

The Book of Joan by Lidia Yuknavitch

6 reviews

esskaysquared's review

challenging medium-paced

• Loveable characters? No

I really did not like this book at all. The writing was very good, but I found the story confusing and hard to follow. I listened to the audiobook, and I couldn't tell if there were multiple narrators or what. I know that one reason I was so confused was that the book was just gross. I wasn't expecting body horror, but I can handle that. This was, of nothing else, more body horror than I could stand. Someone else said that the book was too vulgar and I thought, "I love swear words." It wasn't just swear words though (although there were a lot of swear words). The ideas were vulgar.

I also found the storytelling convoluted and confusing. There were definitely times when I was literally not able to follow the story because I was too distracted by some gross details about worms and stuff, but I also couldn't follow how this apocalyptic distopia came about in only twenty or so years. It was all very "somehow Palpatine survived" to me.

My sibling also tried to read this book around the same time I did, and they liked one of her earlier books. They couldn't make it even halfway through and said "it feels very MFA." I would agree with that.

Not only would I not recommend this book to people, I even told a friend not to read it.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, Torture, Gore, Self harm, Cursing, Acephobia/Arophobia, Body horror, Body shaming, Confinement, Sexual violence, Transphobia, and War

jaimc's review against another edition

dark reflective medium-paced

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

3.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Blood, Body horror, Torture, Death, Violence, and Infertility

Moderate: War, Suicidal thoughts, and Gun violence

sadie26w's review

challenging dark emotional hopeful reflective tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes

3.25

Biological essentialism and a transphobic "twist" really ruin what could have been a fun and interesting book

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Violence, Gore, Torture, Child death, War, and Genocide

Moderate: Transphobia and Medical trauma

johnawickline's review against another edition

dark sad tense medium-paced

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

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Torture, Body horror, and Child death

Moderate: Murder

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