Reviews with content warning for Alcohol - Temporada de Caça

Reviews tagging 'Alcohol'

Temporada de Caça by Stephen Graham Jones

125 reviews

niddy's review against another edition

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challenging dark mysterious reflective medium-paced

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

4.0

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refrejarator's review against another edition

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dark emotional 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

4.25

The first I've ever read by Jones. Holy hell. It was devastating, it was brutal, and painted a horror story vastly different from any I'd ever read before. Had me freaked out from the first chapter, which is very rare for me!

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heynonnynonnie's review against another edition

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dark tense slow-paced

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

3.0

A decade after a hunting transgression, a supernatural entity haunts a group of Blackfeet men and starts taking them and their loved ones out one by one.

This was very meh for me. I love the concept. I mean, indigenous supernatural karmic war sounds metal as hell for a horror book, and the first chapter smashed my expectations. It's a perfect combination of concept, style, and pacing. But the next 100 or so pages moves at such a slow pace before giving the reader sporadic moments of action. The voice takes some effort to fully appreciate and can be cumbersome during the slower parts of the story. I didn't care for the basketball scenes and their inclusion left me confused. I'm holding out hope for this author's other works because there were several chapters that were 5 star standalones for me, and I'm so in love with the concepts from his books.

TW: Animal death (hunting and pets), animal cruelty, murder, gore, violence, racism

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ahopper7's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious medium-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

4.0

This was my first Stephen Graham Jones book, and overall I really liked it. I love a good revenge story, and with the culture and themes blended throughout this story, and that ending!! - made for such a horror novel that I think will stay with me.

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mnstarr's review against another edition

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dark reflective 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

5.0

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zozibelle's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark mysterious tense medium-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

3.25

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fallknitt's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad tense fast-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? It's complicated

5.0

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voxvenati's review against another edition

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mysterious sad tense slow-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

4.0

This was a refreshing experience. It was tense, gruesome (at times), and full of heart.

Two things I was not really expecting going in, that there was quite a lot of: basketball and animal death - specifically

lots of dogs and elk

.

I was not a huge fan of the pacing. Front bit was good, middle dragged, end was good. Perhaps contributing to this, the early parts of the book set up like it was going to be something like four short stories tied together by this vengeful entity, but the second half of the book was not split up. It was all one story at that point.

Quite a lot of descriptions of gore, some really tense scenes, but just didn’t hit that scary vibe. Unfortunate it couldn’t hit all three points, but I did like SGJ’s style. It flowed quite naturally.

I liked the entity. I thought she was neat. I wish I had been more on her side, but I just liked some of the characters too much to agree with her.

Really solid read despite me not knowing or caring about basketball. Not scary, but a little graphic, so maybe check trigger warnings if you use them.

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stephanieluxton's review against another edition

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dark mysterious sad tense slow-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

2.0

A lot of dogs die or are injured in this book. They don't all die at the same time to it's not like ripping off a bandaid. It's actually pretty upsetting.

Without giving too much away, this book is about a few native american friends who broke a rule while hunting 10 years ago and now an entity/elk/person/vengeful spirit is hunting them down for revenge. This book follows each of the four friends as they encounter the vengeful spirit.

Something this book did well was giving a unique perspective into the characters lives. It haven't read many books about modern day native americans/indians but I felt the characters were written well. Nothing felt super political.

The story starts off with mysterious things happening to Lewis and it's a lot of fun watching his paranoia grow. Then the story gets dark and something crazy happens.

Basically all the main characters are killed violently. I actually enjoyed how shocking this part was.

T

The second half of the story introduces Lewis's old friends in more detail. Some of the pacing gets weird here. This is when I stopped having fun reading. Theres a lot or time spent talking about basketball even though it's not very relevant. When we start to see the spirit, what I was imagining in my head while reading was so goofy that I couldn't feel scared or appreciate any tense moments.

The spirit is described as a woman with an elks head and I kept picturing a woman wearing one of those goofy plastic horse masks chasing the characters.

My biggest problem with this book that is

that I didn't feel like there was any justice. None of these characters deserved to die.

Now to spoil the general story so that I can elaborate on my previous sentence:

Four indian friends go into the woods 10 years ago to hunt elk but all the elk are in an area of the woods that is restricted to them. It's near the end of the season so they decide t go and find a large herd. They kill multiple elk and Lewis kills one that has eyes that almost look human to him. She fights to live but he kills her and finds out the elk was pregnant. He vows to use evey part of the elk as a sign of respect and remorse. They are discovered and kicked out of the woods, forbidden from hunting ever again by the elders on the reservation. 10 years later the spirit of the elk (disguised as a human or elk/human hybrid depending on the day, begins hunting them and killing them one by one. She doesn't just kill Lewis, who was her killer. She (directly or indirectly) kills Lewis, his dog, wife, and his friend from work. They she kills the other men who were on the hunting trip as well as their dogs and basically anyone else they care about or who just happen to be in the area at the time. None of these people were evil. Most of them were just living their lives the best they knew how to. It's not a satisfying tale of revenge.

In the end, I have no idea what exactly this book was trying to say. I also have no idea why it's named what it is.

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spinebreakr's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious sad 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

3.5

I was enthralled with this right up until

elk head woman transformed into a human.

which unfortunately is pretty early on in the book.
The writing was tense and emotional. You could really feel the weight of generational trauma resting on the shoulders of the main characters. The way it informs all their actions is raw and drawn from a very real place. The character work is super well done. But ultimately, the monster in the story is not nearly so scary as what the men do to the ones they love.

Once we started getting chapters from the perspective of the monster, I had such a hard time being scared of her. I came to this book expecting horror and I just wasn't gripped at any point. The gore was pretty visceral at times. Very graphic, and overdone in some spots. For example

Scalping Shaney with a motorcycle??

Yeah it was horrific, but also so wildly over the top, it immediately pulled me out of the story.

Overall, I feel like it started off strong but lost direction a little as it went.
I still recommend. But only If when you read this book you treat it like a Halloween-esque slasher film. Do that and you'll have a great time.

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