Reviews tagging 'Police brutality'

Dawnhounds by Sascha Stronach

10 reviews

sophiesmallhands's review against another edition

adventurous emotional mysterious 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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder, Violence, Gun violence, Death, Police brutality, and Body horror

Moderate: Religious bigotry, Classism, Sexual content, Vomit, Sexism, Lesbophobia, Blood, and Misogyny

Minor: Suicidal thoughts, Outing, War, Alcohol, Addiction, Forced institutionalization, Drug use, Death of parent, Drug abuse, Pregnancy, and Grief

bibliomania_express's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

The Dawnhounds by Sascha Stronach mixes fantasy, murder, political intrigue, and mythology to create a unique world. 

This book sucked me in, confused me, intrigued me, and made me keep reading. Yat is a bisexual constable living in a world where any queerness is punished. She is demoted and drugging herself to dull the pain and protect herself from her own memories. Then she ends up stumbling upon a sinister plot, murdered, resurrected by a god, and given new powers to see and interact with life threads. But there's still that sinister, government corrupting, spore-wielding plot to stop, so she doesn't have much time to figure anything out. 

At times I found myself confused by exactly what was happening. The narration became purposefully disjointed, with snippets of dialogue breaking in. This was something Yat was experiencing, but since it was so hard to know what was happening, it pulled me out of the story. 

I did like that the narrative moved betwern Yat and Sen, with a bit from Ajet and Sibbi to give some of the broader scope. There are also some direct-to-reader style chapters from one of the gods, which were intriguing but also mystifying. This book explores systems of power, corruption, sexism, homophobia, religious zealotry, police brutality, poverty, and what it means to be a hero. It's not subtle about its themes, but it weaves them together well. 

I do wish there had been a bit more of Yat and Sen working together, and a bit more of the worldbuilding, especially the religion/magic system, explained up front. A lot of the book rushes along at a breakneck pace, so that coupled with the narrative style made it hard to absorb all the worldbuilding. 

The setting, however, was fantastic. I loved the whole botanical engineering aspect, and how it tied into the Weaving magic and the dangerous spores. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Classism, Violence, Gaslighting, Drug use, Addiction, War, Xenophobia, Pandemic/Epidemic, Slavery, and Police brutality

Moderate: Child death, Bullying, Religious bigotry, Transphobia, Blood, Animal death, Gun violence, Suicidal thoughts, Animal cruelty, Child abuse, and Biphobia

Minor: Sexual harassment, Ableism, Medical trauma, Death of parent, and Self harm

jessereadsthings's review against another edition

adventurous dark medium-paced

• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Police brutality, Gore, and Body horror

Moderate: Ableism, Homophobia, Xenophobia, Transphobia, Misogyny, Racism, and Sexism

Minor: Animal death and Suicide

onegalonelife27's review against another edition

adventurous challenging mysterious

• 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

4.0

Now this is a different book than my usual taste, but I was intrigued by the premise of bio-based technology and someone coming back to life.

Yat is an former street kid turn officer, trying to help make her town a better place yet finds herself demoted for “life style choices” aka being bisexual when the head religion says no to that-bleh. However, encountering a dead body and two strange officers leads to her death and subsequent resurrection with new magical powers. Now Yat finds herself involved with pirates, ancient gods, and a conspiracy that may just lead to the destruction of her home.

The characters are all intriguing and combined with the interesting world building make for a more surreal mystery that keeps you going. I was satisfied with the end and intrigued by the epilouge given, making me eager to see how the rest of the series goes.

I do have to admit, there were some parts of the plot I’m not sure were necessary since they didn’t really move Yat’s story along. However, given that this is actually part a series, it might be setting up for things to come. I also had a bit of a hard time keeping track of the countries/factions mentioned in the series and one reveal felt a bit off since it contradicted something said earlier and there’s no information to explain the contradiction.

Also somehow I managed to read two books about corrupt police departments in the same week. Funny how that happens.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Police brutality, Body horror, War, and Biphobia

Moderate: Gun violence, Transphobia, Violence, and Death

Minor: Death of parent and Religious bigotry

kell_xavi's review against another edition

adventurous hopeful mysterious medium-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder, Body horror, Police brutality, and Homophobia

Moderate: War

fox_at_the_circus's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark mysterious 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

4.25

I loved the world and setting in this book! the idea of alchemy and botanics mixing and just having plants instead of mechanical machines was so new and interesting and with the "magic" system in this book makes for so many cool opportunities. and especially in later chapters this also leads to some really cool and creepy body horror.
in general this book has a lot of really cool and new/rare story elements; the mythology and the way the gods and minor deities interact with the world is something i've never read before, and there were some nice twists on genre tropes like "coming back from death" and the heroine coming into their power and changing/growing though that.
i really liked the heroine. we get thrown into the story and this world without knowing anything and there's this great feeling of "what the eff is going on here?!", but since the heroine, too, feels that way and is learning and discovering new things, as a reader i never felt left behind and it was just a mystery to solve together. 
i also really enjoyed the short inbetween chapters, where someone obviously more knowledgeable is talking. it adds to the sense of mystery and a bigger story line / backstory to it all. and some of them are just so poetic and rip your heart out.
also the representation and social commentary in this book is amazing. there is a super queer pirate found family and also a cat, that helps safe the day/heroine. and really what more could you want from a book?

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Religious bigotry, Violence, Death, Police brutality, Body horror, Biphobia, Death of parent, Drug use, Homophobia, Injury/Injury detail, and Misogyny

Moderate: Drug use, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Grief, Suicide attempt, War, and Transphobia

augustar14's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark 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? It's complicated

4.25

I loved the characters and their connections. I loved this world built with life itself, yet lacking fundamental connections to life and other. That was intriguing and well developed. The bin chicken insult- delightful. The characters and their relationships are well established. The world building is well done. 
Spoiler: The only thing I didn't get was

why Sibby was so mad at the main character for going back, as if the antagonist wouldn't have started releasing the spores and killing the city if she hadn't (cause he already was).

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death of parent, War, Gun violence, Injury/Injury detail, Classism, Death, Murder, Violence, Drug use, Gore, Police brutality, Sexual content, Stalking, Homophobia, and Body horror

Moderate: Addiction, Biphobia, Sexism, Suicide, Blood, and Religious bigotry

Minor: Mental illness, Outing, and Suicidal thoughts

kumquats87's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious 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? It's complicated

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Homophobia, Injury/Injury detail, Classism, Gore, Outing, Physical abuse, Death of parent, Body horror, Child death, Police brutality, Violence, and Lesbophobia

Moderate: Sexism, Self harm, Transphobia, Torture, Suicidal thoughts, Religious bigotry, Addiction, War, Medical content, Gaslighting, Cancer, Misogyny, Gun violence, and Drug abuse

emmjay's review against another edition

adventurous mysterious reflective slow-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? It's complicated

2.5

An interesting world that I think was held back at times by the writing. The writing isn’t bad, just a bit confusing. There were a lot of elements here:

pirates and biotech and fungi and magic and zombies and Gods and immortality and a religious maybe-cult and a rigged election and homophobia and police brutality

that I think the world building suffered a bit from being a little too scattered. I don’t feel like I really got a good sense of any one element of the world because there were so many. I found Yat’s pieces of the story much more compelling than Sen’s though Sen as a character was far more competent and seemed to have stronger motivation. Several of the descriptions, particularly of the magic use, became a bit repetitive while remaining a bit unclear in terms of what was actually going on in the scene. Interesting premises, I wish it had been refined and focussed so the unique world could have shone.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Gore, Body horror, Homophobia, and Police brutality

jazhandz's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

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

3.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Homophobia, Police brutality, and Body horror

Moderate: Death, Drug use, Sexual content, and Gun violence

Medical experimentation - there’s discussion of willing/intentional body modification and of medical experiments as punishment.