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bites_of_books's review against another edition
- 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
5.0
This is set in a future where climate change has completely changed the way that humans live. Focused on a young woman, this book explores the ideas of responsibility for one's self and the duty one owes to family and community. It's a bit of a coming of age story but in a very dark context.
Please check content warnings for this novella, while short it's quite impactful.
Graphic: Animal death, Body horror, Chronic illness, Death, Gore, Infertility, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Violence, Blood, Grief, and Suicide attempt
mar's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
3.0
Graphic: Animal death
Moderate: Death, Gore, Vomit, Medical content, and Suicide attempt
Minor: Pedophilia
aakhil's review against another edition
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
3.75
Graphic: Gore and Suicide attempt
adancewithbooks's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Graphic: Animal death, Death, and Suicide
Moderate: Gore
Animal Huntinglucystolethesky's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body horror, Child abuse, Death, Emotional abuse, Gore, Mental illness, Self harm, Suicidal thoughts, Blood, Vomit, Medical content, Suicide attempt, Gaslighting, Abandonment, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail
talonsontypewriters's review
- 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? It's complicated
3.0
Graphic: Animal death, Chronic illness, Death, and Terminal illness
Moderate: Body horror, Gore, Violence, Blood, Medical content, Suicide attempt, and Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Ableism, Pedophilia, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Abortion, Death of parent, and Colonisation
Parasitic infection.foremmarightnow's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Loveable characters? No
3.0
Moderate: Gore and Suicide attempt
josiewrites's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Moderate: Gore and Violence
Minor: Vomit
mossybean's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
I loved the idea of Cad, the maybe-intelligent parasitical fungus. I got really invested in the outcome of Reid's struggle with Cad, as she finds it worsening over the course of this novella. I also loved the idea of this community that functioned off everyone's equal participation in working, but that wasn't a focus of the book sadly.
I think there were a lot of different ideas that could have been expanded into a longer novel, and in some ways I felt cheated that there wasn't more. Reid is struggling with a decision- whether or not to leave her community, her family, to go to this university in the Domes. Most of the book though, the consensus remains equally divided on whether or not this university is even real, and this contention isn't really resoved by the end.
I really disliked this one chapter,
Graphic: Animal death and Gore
brogan7's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
3.0
Set in the indefinite future, the book depicts a colony of humans, a girl who is accepted to "university" in a part of the city that has sheltered itself from the ravages of climate change and poverty. She has a hereditary disease that is increasingly more common and that has odd, variable effects, some of them psychological.
The story rollicks along, there is always something happening, but sometimes the action changes are so fast, it's hard to keep up with the rhythm of it.
The disease is supposed to kill people very painfully in some cases, and the author describes one of the effects being that people lose their voice from screaming in pain. I thought this was a really strange description, actually, because it doesn't seem like a likely symptom, or the part that one would worry about. It sounds more like an author trying to be superlative about a situation she's just barely imagining--she's trying to make it sound bad--but it comes off as not believable.
I wonder why the narrative was so rushed (just a slim little book--it could have taken more room to find suitable pacing) and why some ideas were just grafted on there (like the sexual interest between the two main characters, which feels tacked on and then just not...on point, emotionally).
In the end I was disappointed in this book, which skirted around some interesting issues (loyalty, separation, dreams, what "away" can bring that "here" cannot, and what the privileged have done to insulate themselves from the consequences of their choices and privilege)--but she doesn't actually go there... So while the book makes gestures towards what it wants to say about privilege and oppression, it doesn't actually show anything about that, other than that it's a notion, that there are some fictional "haves" to the "have-nots"...but in fact we don't know at all what the "have" world could offer the "have-not."
Strangely, it feels like the more awful things happen in this book, without any feeling of actual danger or caring that the outcome could truly be terrible for individual characters, the more the book tells of another kind of privilege: the privilege of not knowing suffering, not understanding loss, wanting to be entertained by it as "action" as opposed to...open emotionally to it. (What was the POINT of the whole animal hunt scene?)
Graphic: Gore
Animal hunt