Reviews

Heroes and Villains by Angela Carter

jacobcracknell's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.75

wisteriaweird's review against another edition

challenging dark medium-paced

2.0

I generally enjoy the dark & lurid and liked both other Carter novels I've read, but felt like this one didn't do anything interesting enough with its premise to justify the overly edgy content. Moments of brilliance, but overall missed the mark for me. There's some certified sixties moments in there RE: race which, for some reason, caught me off guard, but probably should have expected.

katiejugg's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

• 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

5.0

james92's review

challenging dark reflective medium-paced

• 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? Yes

3.75

coco_lolo's review against another edition

4.0

Another banger from Angela Carter. Although not one of her most recognized novels, Heroes and Villains felt more plot-driven than Several Perceptions and more easily digestible than The Passion of New Eve. It wouldn't be Carter if there weren't a focus on time, mirrors and mirroring, reality versus unreality, the shift in power dynamics, and of course that overindulgent prose (which was actually toned back here, I felt). I enjoyed seeing how both Marianne and Jewel embodied elements of barbarism and feared one another for different reasons based on each other's society. There was demonizing of disability, as well as some linkage between Jewel as a potential person of color being a Barbarian—unfortunate, though not surprising since this was written in the 1960s. The ending was a little unclear to me

Spoiler

in that I couldn't quite figure out why Jewel was so ready to die and tried killing himself before walking into a trap knowingly

, but the ambiguous nature of the conclusion itself left plenty of food for thought as to whether Marianne ould stay among the Barbarians on not.

izzy_ibrahim's review

1.0

marghe_volpato's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional reflective medium-paced

5.0

trin's review against another edition

1.0

A post-apocalyptic story, which is a genre I really like. This one didn't quite do it for me, however: I found the world fascinating, but the characters who inhabited it remained strangers to me (and the anti-climatic climax didn't help much, either). A book I didn't so much enjoy as find occasionally interesting.

phoebe912's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark mysterious reflective medium-paced

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

2.5

jlwilson's review against another edition

adventurous dark medium-paced

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

3.25