Reviews tagging 'Injury/Injury detail'

Her Majesty's Royal Coven by Juno Dawson

47 reviews

g_monaghan's review against another edition

adventurous emotional tense fast-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

4.5

Hocus pocus witches, HMRC makes me laugh every time. Love this book so much! Not usually one for real life settings but this story was so clear in my mind and I loved the found family trope with trans and queer representation, some parts were incredibly infuriating and triggering, however, a page turner I need to read the next one immediately. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Deadnaming, Death, Transphobia, Toxic friendship, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

Moderate: Kidnapping, Fire/Fire injury, Outing, and Abandonment

Minor: Eating disorder, Infidelity, Sexual content, and Grief

jaynovara's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional 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? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body shaming, Deadnaming, Transphobia, Religious bigotry, and Murder

Moderate: Animal death, Body horror, Bullying, Child abuse, Confinement, Death, Emotional abuse, Infidelity, Violence, Xenophobia, Blood, Medical content, Kidnapping, Grief, Car accident, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, Outing, Abandonment, Dysphoria, War, and Injury/Injury detail

fourhand13's review against another edition

medium-paced

• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

Not too bad by any means, I felt engaged throughout and this was a pretty easy read.

I feel like a lot of people are jumping the gun to be like "thing bad so that means book bad >:(" with any of the iffy things depicted (e.g.

gender essentialism, prison and punishment system

etc.) and it's like this is only book 1. I have a good bit of faith that some of those things will be tackled in the following installments of the series, bit hard to deconstruct every systemic issue in 450 pages.

The dialogue comes across as quite cheesy and stereotypical at times and I do think the writing quality went down a touch towards the end with the action scenes but over all, not the worst read.

I beg the next person who has sex in this series uses lube

Aside from the openly noted content warnings I will say that if you have an aversion to animal death skip chapter 1 (niamh's first one) at least and possibly parts of chapter 21.

Also if you're susceptible to paranoia about having people read your thoughts, this might be a miss too cos there's a LOT of that.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Transphobia, Forced institutionalization, Car accident, Murder, and Outing

Moderate: Child abuse, Infidelity, Misogyny, Violence, Grief, and War

Minor: Injury/Injury detail

tw for mind reading/ invasion of thoughts,

strangulation and near drowning, execution

danajoy's review against another edition

dark mysterious tense

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Transphobia, Violence, Medical trauma, Toxic friendship, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Death, Infidelity, Misogyny, Grief, Fire/Fire injury, and War

itsy719's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny mysterious tense fast-paced

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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Child abuse, Death, Infidelity, Sexism, Transphobia, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Blood, Kidnapping, Car accident, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Outing, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Body shaming, Homophobia, and Vomit

shae_purcell's review against another edition

adventurous dark tense medium-paced

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

3.75

I didn't like this book as much as I thought I might. I enjoyed the multi-POV chapters and the diverse representation. I liked a lot of the characters and relationships. I don't know what it is. It fell a little flat for me, like the characters could have been fleshed out more maybe.

A word of warning: Don't go into this expecting a tidy ending. It ends on a huge cliffhanger. I was ready to start the second book until I was halfway through that last chapter. Now I'm really irritated and thinking about taking a break. I'm sure as an author you want readers to be so excited for the next book that they'll run out and pick up a copy immediately. This ending didn't make me excited for the next book. It makes me dread reading it, even though I still kind of want to hang out with the characters a bit more. I may pick it up eventually but I'll feel sour about it.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Sexual content, Transphobia, Blood, Medical content, Outing, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Misogyny, Murder, and Fire/Fire injury

Minor: Drug use, Eating disorder, Emotional abuse, Homophobia, Incest, Racism, Self harm, Suicide, Torture, Islamophobia, Lesbophobia, Alcohol, Sexual harassment, Colonisation, War, Classism, and Pandemic/Epidemic

There is a lot of intentional misgendering in the chapters told from the

anti-trans character's

POV.

emilywrayburn's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional medium-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

4.0

I started this book in audio format, but I am finding lately I haven’t had a lot of time to invest in listening to books, so I decided to switch to the paperback. I’m so glad I did, because after taking at least a couple of weeks to listen to the first 40%, I read the other 60% in a matter of days, and I’m pretty sure I enjoyed it all the more for being able to properly absorb myself.

HMRC draws on a lot of English witchy folklore, with references to Pendle Hill and such, but also examines the ways in which witchcraft narratives have developed over the years to favour certain types of stories. The four main characters are bound by childhood oaths but they are now very different people, hardened by a war that made them grow up too quickly, with different values and different attitudes to the world around them.

I was impressed with Dawson’s ability to handle the different POVs in this book, particularly those who are in opposition to her own values. Niamh was definitely my favourite character, though I enjoyed Leonie and Elle’s perspectives too. Helena is a compelling character to read even though she is an absolute piece of work. Seeing her transformation from “Well, she’s wrong but maybe we could sit her down and explain why she’s being unreasonable” to “wow, she went completely off the rails” made for some compelling reading.

I know that some people are going to say that Dawson was “heavy-handed” because I found myself thinking that, too, before reminding myself that discussions of issues affecting marginalised people are allowed to be there on the page. An author doesn’t have to seamlessly weave their exploration of issues into the story and never explicitly mention it for it to be acceptable.

The cliffhanger ending does feel a little cheap or unearned, but I am keen to see where the next volume takes us! I already had it on hold at the library before I had finished this one and I’ll be diving into it soon! 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Transphobia, Violence, Blood, Murder, War, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Death and War

Minor: Animal death and Sexual content

cumminsn's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional tense medium-paced

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

3.0

It is honestly sort of difficult to put into words my exact feelings on this book. Parts of it I liked quite a bit, while others had me physically rolling my eyes. The magic is very fun, and the lore of witches and how they connect to the earth and to each other I found compelling and interesting. But, once the conflict of the story started to come to a head, I found myself enjoying the book less and less. The villains almost become… cartoonish, in a way? It felt like the author was really trying to push home how terrible the antagonist is by just repeatedly having her state her transphobic viewpoints to the point where it was very irritating and tiresome even for me, a cisgender woman. 

While there is very positive transgender, and LGBT in general, representation here, there is also rampant transphobia that I could see being very triggering to some. Also, the overuse of swearing and pop culture references took away from my immersion as well. For a book that has different characters that it switches perspectives between, I sometimes found myself having a hard time remembering who was who, with no very large differences in tone from one character to the next. Other than the antagonist, of course. The fact that she was evil was about the most obvious thing in the whole book. 

I guess what disappointed me is that there wasn’t quite enough Fantasy to balance out the in-your-face politics that were constantly surfacing. I was more interested in the lore of the world, but the story seemed to stumble over itself to try and include as much political-correctness as possible that some of the characters didn’t even feel like genuine characters and more like just stereotypes being included for the sake of it, which was sad to read. Some of the language used, particularly internet-type wording and references, will likely not age well either. 

I forced myself to finish this one. I was invested enough to want to do it, but I don’t know that I’ll be reaching for the sequel right away, if it all. In the end, I felt underwhelmed.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cursing, Hate crime, Misogyny, Sexism, Transphobia, Blood, Kidnapping, Car accident, and Toxic friendship

Moderate: Body horror and Alcohol

Minor: Medical content, Death of parent, Murder, Outing, Gaslighting, and Injury/Injury detail

emmajh91's review against another edition

challenging tense medium-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Transphobia, Grief, and Murder

Moderate: Confinement, Cursing, Hate crime, Infidelity, Sexual content, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Blood, Vomit, Kidnapping, Car accident, Toxic friendship, Alcohol, Dysphoria, War, and Injury/Injury detail

sulaasg's review against another edition

adventurous dark 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

4.5

I love this book. Absolutely one of the best witchy books I've ever read. The magical lore feels tangibly real. The female power focus is compelling, the smaller consequences of power (such as most sentients being veggie/vegan). I appreciate that the female characters are proper three dimensional people, each with their own flaws and blind spots, though they're still lovable. The author doesn't shy away from the characters responsibility for their own actions and fate. 
The development of each character from their first introduction to where the end the books feel believable. 
Thank god I came to this book after the second had already been released, otherwise I'd be furious at the wait. 
I know some people have found the book politically 'in your face' but I actually enjoyed that about this book. It's feminist, and about female empowerment from an international standpoint and it made the book all the more enjoyable and empowering for me.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Sexism, and Transphobia

Moderate: Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Racism, War, and Injury/Injury detail

There are several chapters written from the point of view of a TERF. This is unpleasant reading, but crucial to the story. It's worth reminding yourself the book is written by a trans woman.