Reviews with content warning for Sexual content - Dief van de nacht

Reviews tagging 'Sexual content'

Dief van de nacht by Holly Black

56 reviews

becaronytony's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious fast-paced

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

3.75

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speckledstars's review against another edition

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adventurous dark medium-paced

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

3.25

I found the beginning of the book rather slow. The world building is subpar, and the characters don’t have much depth. At times, the plot was confusing and I found myself looking back to what I’d read. If I hadn’t bought the book, I likely would’ve DNFed.

I only started to be interested in the last half of the book. The plot twists were well done and all the right details were left out until the end. It redeemed itself to a point, but there is definitely a layer missing to this book.

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eleanorrae's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious reflective medium-paced

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

4.5

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pvbobrien's review against another edition

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dark mysterious 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

2.5

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lizgriffinwords's review against another edition

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tense slow-paced

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

2.75

Overall, a little better than I expected (my expectations were really low).

Barely anything happens until the 45% mark. Several critical emotional beats are sabotaged by being “revealed” after the fact instead of experienced by the MC. And the overall emotional shallowness makes the MC come across as a sociopath, though I don’t believe that was the intention.

And the worldbuilding/lore is nothing but squandered potential. Is it open world or isn’t it? How recently? Nothing was explained, which watered down any supposed “cool” or “unique” behavior of certain shadows.

Also, the audio narration was somewhat… bland? No distinguishing between most voices aside from the Hierophant and Salt.

So… pretty much what I expected. Not sure this cliffhanger ending will be enough to entice me to read more.

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keepcalmblogon's review against another edition

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dark 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

5.0

Holly Black has been an auto-buy author of mine for close to two decades. I have literally grown up with her books, so of course, at 32, I had to read her debut adult fiction novel. Leading up to the release, ARC readers did not seem to jive with Book of Night, but I firmly believe in establishing my own opinions and remained wildly excited for the book release. When I finally cracked the spine on Book of Night, I met Charlie and was immediately intrigued by her morally grey character and related to her broken sense of self-worth. Honestly, Book of Night was five stars for me.

The idea of shadows quickening and having, essentially, minds of their own, in a world that was basically ours before this magic was discovered, comes at a time when our world seems to be overflowing with shadows: the shadows of impending disaster, between wars, genocides, polution, climate change, etc. It struck me that this book released around the same time as another prominent author’s that also explored shadows in her book. Deep beneath the visage of fantasy fiction, we have artists calling out to the world to address our shadows.

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sharonrose's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.75

Spiritually similar to Black's earlier CurseWorker series, <i>Book of Night</i> provides a well developed Urban fantasy with conmen, criminals and light romance for a more adult crowd. <i>White Cat</i> is so very close to my heart that it's hard not to compare these books, but BoN has some solid character work, decent twists, and a cool (though pretty "dark") magical world.

Some nitpicks: Posey felt less like a full realized character and more like a prop to give Charlie more of a life and I wish there were more concrete supporting characters beside Charlie and Vince (though I did love them)--the lack of them made the world feel a little thin, which is a shame. Also, I wish we saw a little bit more how gloaming just casually effected life. One of the things I love most about Black's writing is her casual world-building and I didn't see as much as I have in her other books.

However, this really was a fun, engaging read with lots of elements I loved so I'm not actually complaining. And if Black writes more in this world it'll probably fix my nitpicks anyway since I always tend to look at the Curseworker books as a whole entity not individual titles.

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