Reviews tagging 'Cursing'

The Book of Life by Deborah Harkness

6 reviews

torturedreadersdept'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? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Child abuse, Child death, Cursing, Death, Misogyny, Torture, Violence, Blood, Medical content, Kidnapping, Grief, Murder, Pregnancy, Sexual harassment, Dysphoria, and Injury/Injury detail

gillian_aftanas's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Child death, Cursing, Death, Gore, Mental illness, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Torture, Violence, Blood, Vomit, Medical content, Kidnapping, Grief, Medical trauma, Murder, Pregnancy, War, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Confinement and Alcohol

Minor: Animal death, Drug use, Genocide, Homophobia, Antisemitism, Death of parent, Lesbophobia, and Classism

joey_paige's review against another edition

adventurous emotional mysterious tense slow-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Torture and Violence

Moderate: Confinement, Cursing, Death, Infertility, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Blood, Medical content, Medical trauma, Stalking, Death of parent, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Rape and Murder

micaelamariem's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious tense slow-paced

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

3.0

This series started out so strong but it gradually got worse, in my opinion. I don’t think the book needed to be as long as it was, as a lot of the detail seemed to be just deliberation on how to handle their problems. There were action scenes but these seemed few and far between. I also am a little biased as I hate the pregnancy trope, so I was doomed to hate this part of the series. I also felt like this Matthew De Clermont I fell in love with in the first book was not here; I get that characters change but I did not like this new Matthew. I did like the themes of fighting for change and learning about new and strange things versus fearing them. It’s a very important theme, especially today, so I admired that’s what the characters were fighting for: loving and embracing difference. That being said, I’m glad this series is done. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Cursing, Death, Drug use, Rape, Sexism, Sexual violence, Torture, Violence, Blood, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, Pregnancy, Fire/Fire injury, Abandonment, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail

lucyatoz's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

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

5.0

Diana and Matthew. Witch and vampire. Their love has brought conflict and hope. But only together can they learn at last what the witches discovered so many centuries ago. And it will have consequences for all...

The Book of Life is the last novel in a trilogy which tells the story of Diana, a witch, and Matthew, a Vampire, coming together (Book 1, A Discovery of Witches) and their time living in Elizabethan England in 1590-1 (Book 2, Shadow of Night), picking up their tale now that they have returned to the present day. 

The final book in this trilogy brings in the wider De Clermont family and is a much darker story compared to the first two novels. It also does brings nicely to an end the story of the couple's troubles with the Congregation and their violation of the Covenant. I do hope that further novels are written about some of the other characters in the story, such as Gallowglass, Matthew's nephew, and their children Phillip and Rebecca.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Death, Rape, Sexual content, Torture, Violence, Blood, Kidnapping, Grief, Murder, Pregnancy, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Cursing

camilleemcl's review against another edition

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Cursing and Sexual content