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Reviews tagging 'Eating disorder'
Natural Outlaws and Fractured Sovereignty by S.M. Pearce
2 reviews
metaphorsandmisc's review
adventurous
dark
emotional
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? Yes
3.25
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual assault, Emotional abuse, Injury/Injury detail, Suicidal thoughts, Physical abuse, Blood, Child death, Violence, and Sexual violence
Moderate: Self harm, Eating disorder, and Mental illness
Minor: Vomit and Fire/Fire injury
sophiareads_'s review against another edition
adventurous
dark
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
Content Warnings: Violence, death (including child death, animal death, death of a parent), suicide attempt, sexual assault, mind control, homophobia, transphobia, restrictive eating
Blythe and Kalen are caught robbing the Governor's mansion and blackmailed into leading a heist against a rival nation to postpone a brewing war.
This sounded so fun - a queer fantasy heist story - but unfortunately it was a real disappointment for me. This book has a major issue with 'tell' over 'show' writing in almost every aspect, which started off a little boring and got exceedingly irritating as it continued. At it's tamest, this manifests as world building being either underdeveloped (elements such as the 'bestowments' people have are really only mentioned in a very surface level way), or are presented with an inelegant info dump. At it's worst, whole scenes are described to us in two or three sentences rather than... like... actually being written.
Early on, we build to our characters overpowering a crew and taking over their boat, and this is, unfathomably, a fade to black? Of the most interesting scene of the book thus far? This was an absolutely bizarre choice. I was baffled and disappointed by this choice, but was going to mostly overlook it UNTIL IT HAPPENED AGAIN. The author goes out of her way not to write the scene of our characters discovering the location of the vault they'll be robbing, by having a POV character poison herself so that neither of our POV characters can be part of the scene that would actually be interesting to read. I don't know how to interpret this, it's such a bad way to write a book.
Speaking of our POV characters, Blythe and Kalen... I tried to like them, but GOD. For at least the first half of the book, both of their internal monologues are constant self deprecation and 'boo hoo this is all my fault I can't believe any of my friends don't hate me' which gets old SOOOOO fast. Blythe is particularly bad about this, especially because these convoluted self hating thought patterns start causing her to act unfathomably stupid. Like, so stupid I am not even starting to buy that a real person would make these choices. She deliberately jeopardises the group's mission because 'oh, I just can't burden them with this problem'. I was rolling my eyes into space.
All these issues in the 85% of the book which is build up to the actual heist and then... it's over in like 15 pages. Talk about anticlimactic. It was a bummer.
It might not sound like it, but this book did have things I liked! The Viper was easily my favourite, she was really cool and a pretty nuanced, multi-faceted character, and I liked her arc. She was definitely the highlight of the book for me. I also thought it was really cool that the main relationship here was a queer platonic relationship between Blythe and Kalen. Unfortunately, their relationship ended up falling a bit flat for me as I got frustrated by their miscommunication and again, thought we were told rather than shown how close they were, but conceptually, I was a fan! This was also the first book I've ever read with a main character who uses multiple (he/they) pronouns. It was a bit of a learning curve getting used to reading that, but it was really cool to see!
I think ultimately this was a case for me of a great concept and a not-so-great execution, unfortunately.
Thanks to the author for sending me an eARC in exchange for an honest review.
Blythe and Kalen are caught robbing the Governor's mansion and blackmailed into leading a heist against a rival nation to postpone a brewing war.
This sounded so fun - a queer fantasy heist story - but unfortunately it was a real disappointment for me. This book has a major issue with 'tell' over 'show' writing in almost every aspect, which started off a little boring and got exceedingly irritating as it continued. At it's tamest, this manifests as world building being either underdeveloped (elements such as the 'bestowments' people have are really only mentioned in a very surface level way), or are presented with an inelegant info dump. At it's worst, whole scenes are described to us in two or three sentences rather than... like... actually being written.
Early on, we build to our characters overpowering a crew and taking over their boat, and this is, unfathomably, a fade to black? Of the most interesting scene of the book thus far? This was an absolutely bizarre choice. I was baffled and disappointed by this choice, but was going to mostly overlook it UNTIL IT HAPPENED AGAIN. The author goes out of her way not to write the scene of our characters discovering the location of the vault they'll be robbing, by having a POV character poison herself so that neither of our POV characters can be part of the scene that would actually be interesting to read. I don't know how to interpret this, it's such a bad way to write a book.
Speaking of our POV characters, Blythe and Kalen... I tried to like them, but GOD. For at least the first half of the book, both of their internal monologues are constant self deprecation and 'boo hoo this is all my fault I can't believe any of my friends don't hate me' which gets old SOOOOO fast. Blythe is particularly bad about this, especially because these convoluted self hating thought patterns start causing her to act unfathomably stupid. Like, so stupid I am not even starting to buy that a real person would make these choices. She deliberately jeopardises the group's mission because 'oh, I just can't burden them with this problem'. I was rolling my eyes into space.
All these issues in the 85% of the book which is build up to the actual heist and then... it's over in like 15 pages. Talk about anticlimactic. It was a bummer.
It might not sound like it, but this book did have things I liked! The Viper was easily my favourite, she was really cool and a pretty nuanced, multi-faceted character, and I liked her arc. She was definitely the highlight of the book for me. I also thought it was really cool that the main relationship here was a queer platonic relationship between Blythe and Kalen. Unfortunately, their relationship ended up falling a bit flat for me as I got frustrated by their miscommunication and again, thought we were told rather than shown how close they were, but conceptually, I was a fan! This was also the first book I've ever read with a main character who uses multiple (he/they) pronouns. It was a bit of a learning curve getting used to reading that, but it was really cool to see!
I think ultimately this was a case for me of a great concept and a not-so-great execution, unfortunately.
Thanks to the author for sending me an eARC in exchange for an honest review.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse, Misogyny, Death, Violence, and Child death
Moderate: Death of parent, Suicide attempt, Suicidal thoughts, Homophobia, and Eating disorder
Minor: Animal death, Animal cruelty, War, and Transphobia
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