Reviews tagging 'Sexual violence'

The Lady of the Lake by Andrzej Sapkowski

17 reviews

chamm_chamm's review

adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense slow-paced

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual violence, Torture, and Violence

starsfall's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Rape, Alcohol, Xenophobia, War, Violence, Torture, Suicide attempt, Sexual violence, Sexual harassment, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexism, Self harm, Racism, Murder, Misogyny, Injury/Injury detail, Gore, Death of parent, and Colonisation

Moderate: Pedophilia

Okay wow this book was a lot. There were many plottwist that left me quite confused. I really loved how there were so mant different povs, so many characters. Although sometimes I was a bit lost with so many names and places.

Spoiler

So that's that, the end of the witcher series, in hindsight I should have read season of storms after this one but i'll just reread the epilogue now. The ending kinda broke me, I feel like it was incredibly sad and depressing. And I know that the whole mood of the series should have indicated that there wasn't gonna be a perfect happily ever but still, I was a bit dissapointed. So many characters died.

camoo3032's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, War, Xenophobia, Gore, Rape, Sexism, Racism, Sexual violence, Slavery, Torture, Confinement, Murder, Death, Sexual assault, Blood, Fire/Fire injury, Medical trauma, and Suicide attempt

Moderate: Abortion, Drug use, Incest, Infidelity, Physical abuse, Vomit, Animal death, Pregnancy, Sexual harassment, Suicide, Alcohol, Classism, Misogyny, and Sexual content

Minor: Alcoholism, Infertility, Homophobia, Kidnapping, Cursing, Slavery, Child abuse, Child death, Colonisation, Death of parent, Excrement, and Bullying

geordirr's review

adventurous dark 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

0.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Rape, War, Sexual violence, Blood, Adult/minor relationship, and Sexual assault

Moderate: Misogyny

Minor: Incest and Antisemitism

Spoiler

if you haven’t figured it out by now the entire plot of the series revolves around the attempted forced impregnation of a teenage girl by multiple parties. It’s particularly bad in this book as we get to read graphic descriptions of people attempting violent physical rape, coercive rape and medical rape on Ciri. Oh and one of the last things yennifer does before dying is to call Triss a slut for sleeping with Geralt back in book 3

saltylane's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

3.0

Like all the other books in the Witcher series, this one jumps back and forth between perspectives, and gives a lot of information that isn’t completely necessary or interesting. The writing style is descriptive but not necessarily excessively so. The story itself has a lot of twists and turns and mysteries. I’d say the ending was rather bittersweet. Also, there were a lot of things that didn’t really make too much sense for the characters that have developed over the past handful of books. There were also just a handful of times whenever an action was starting to peak, and then it just dropped down because there was some kind of intervention that just happened to happen at that moment.

I didn’t necessarily expect a happy ending for everyone… But at least an ending that actually had conclusions that really mattered or that made sense would’ve been nice. 

Overall, I rather enjoyed the series, despite its many flaws. With the switching perspectives, it did get confusing as to what was going on and what character was doing what. It often went to characters that I wasn’t really sure why they were even included… Unless they were just trying to close up plot lines? I don’t know; they didn’t really matter. It didn’t really seem very important that So-and-So died in such a way or succeeded in XYZ. Sure, sometimes it was nice to see what older characters that we hadn’t seen in a while were doing… But overall it wasn’t really important to the plot what was going on in their lives. 

The reader for this audiobook is very talented! He really knows how to manipulate his voice to the different characters and stick with it consistently. The voice acting  was also very good with emphasized emotions relevant to the scenes.

I’m really interested in seeing how the series on Netflix adapts all of the storylines. Hopefully it’s a little bit less convoluted…

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Gore, Sexual content, Body horror, Violence, Blood, and War

Moderate: Drug abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Confinement, Drug use, Genocide, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Racism, Torture, Xenophobia, Medical trauma, Rape, Sexual violence, Alcohol, and Grief

Minor: Pregnancy, Self harm, Colonisation, Animal death, Classism, Fire/Fire injury, Infidelity, Homophobia, Incest, Medical content, Excrement, Adult/minor relationship, Panic attacks/disorders, Pedophilia, Sexism, and Vomit

pensandpicks's review against another edition

adventurous mysterious medium-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

2.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Violence, Sexual violence, and Rape

tilo's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-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

4.75

Der letzte Teil der Hauptreihe ist wie alle anderen Bücher in der Reihe genial. Der Anfang ist sehr kurios und ich war etwas skeptisch, aber der Subplot

Spoiler

mit Nimue und Condwiramurs

hat dann alles in ein spannendes Licht gerückt. Einige der Höhepunkte des Romans haben mich jedoch nicht so stark bewegt wie die Vorgänger, was einerseits daran lag, dass ich durch die Videospiele einer der größten Plottwists schon kannte und andererseits fand ich einige Momente sehr abgestumpft geschrieben und die Reaktionen der Charaktere haben mich teilweise verwundert. Das ist aber auf hohem Niveau angemerkt.
Das Ende ist sehr sonderbar. Man mag darüber denken, was man möchte, aber speziell zu diesem Teil hat es schon gepasst.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Child death, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Misogyny, Alcohol, Blood, Cannibalism, Death, Fire/Fire injury, Murder, Racism, Sexism, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Violence, and War

Moderate: Classism, Cursing, Excrement, Grief, Incest, Medical content, Slavery, and Torture

Minor: Ableism and Colonisation

aangi16's review against another edition

adventurous dark tense slow-paced

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

1.5

I wanted to like this series so much and I kept reserving judgement and thinking "maybe it'll get better after this book" but no it really is just that boring and flat.

I can appreciate that some things just weren't to my taste. For example, I'm sure other people enjoyed the overly complicated politics but personally I didn't care for it. But some things were just objectively bad, or at least questionable, decisions.

Spoiler

Like introducing a group of interesting characters (Regis, Milva, Angoulême) only to unceremoniously kill them all off in one of the laziest ways possible because they've served their purpose of getting Geralt to Ciri. Not to mention the reasons they each agree to help Geralt find Ciri in the first place are tenuous (don't even get me started on Cahir's reason/obsession with Ciri).

Character motivations were something I consistently struggled to understand throughout the series, but especially near the ending.

Spoiler

You're telling me Duny waged wars with nations and is responsible for the deaths of millions of humans, dwarves, elves etc because he wanted his offspring to rule the world but changed his mind at the last second because Ciri cried a little? And Geralt and Yennefer after finally getting her back were prepared to just let her go without a fight and kill themselves (after having sex first because of course) instead?

Other issues I had with the series as a whole:
- Why does every woman geralt comes across either fall in love with him or want to have sex with him? He's canonically unattractive and he doesn't have a very charming or likeable personality. 2 or 3 women sure, but not every single woman he has a conversation with
- Sapkowski's obsession with Ciri repeatedly either getting SA'd, almost SA'd, or being used as a breeding machine is weird and creepy
- The sex scenes were hilariously bad (I even read a couple passages to friends)
- The writing was terrible in some places (though this may be an issue with the translation, rather than Sapkowski himself)

Now for the good stuff:
- The books are actually quite funny in some places
- Geralt's crew in this book (Regis, Milva, Angoulême and Cahir) were interesting and fun and I wish we'd gotten to see more of them
- Ciri's character and story arch is really interesting, even more than Geralt's imo
- The world and lore are genuinely interesting and have a lot of potential (which is why I love the games and I'm looking forward to seeing what the show does)
- The characters have flaws and personalilty traits that make them feel more like real people (most of the time)
- I loved Ciri's relationships with Geralt, Yennefer, Triss and the other witchers

In summary, it wasn't worth reading the whole series just for the little nuggets of enjoyment I got every now and then, especially considering how disappointing I found the ending to be.

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Content Warnings

Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Incest, Suicide, and Sexual violence

anabananaz's review against another edition

adventurous dark fast-paced

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

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual violence, War, and Xenophobia

streetmuseums's review against another edition

dark slow-paced

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

2.5

the rage that filled me upon finishing this book.... i should have stopped after the 3rd one i'm fuming 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence and Murder

Moderate: Sexual violence and Sexual harassment