Reviews tagging 'Drug use'

The Final Strife, by Saara El-Arifi

29 reviews

catgnome's review against another edition

challenging dark tense medium-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcohol, Blood, Drug abuse, Bullying, Confinement, Cursing, Hate crime, Violence, Body horror, Child abuse, Child death, Death of parent, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Physical abuse, Sexual content, Addiction, Cultural appropriation, Police brutality, Racism, Self harm, Classism, Colonisation, Death, and Drug use

Moderate: Vomit, Torture, Excrement, Grief, and Kidnapping

kat42'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
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Drug abuse, Drug use, and Addiction

Moderate: Classism, Slavery, Blood, and Child abuse

antonique_reads's review against another edition

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Slavery, Blood, Colonisation, Classism, Death of parent, Drug use, Violence, Torture, Grief, Death, Drug abuse, Physical abuse, Murder, Medical trauma, Gore, and Addiction

hattieosha's review against another edition

adventurous tense medium-paced

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

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Confinement, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Genocide, Violence, Police brutality, Racism, Slavery, Addiction, Blood, and Child abuse

Moderate: Classism, Alcohol, Colonisation, Sexual content, and Body shaming

sarahholt's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring 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

Even the characters I hated, I loved for what they brought to the story. I can't wait to read the rest of this series, it's everything I was looking for in a fantasy series. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Drug use, Blood, Torture, Racism, and Classism

matildah's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional tense medium-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? Yes

4.25

This book is a fantasy novel in which colour of your blood dictates the class you are in within society. Those with red blood  are the embers “the elites” of society, then are those with blue bloods who are the dusters and below them are those who have translucent blood who are called ghostings. The story follows our main protagonist Sylah as she enters a competition called the Aktibar a competition that takes place every 10 years. Due to a series of unfortunate events she gets sidelined and it’s forced into training a Duster raised by an Ember called Anor.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Drug use, Addiction, Drug abuse, Emotional abuse, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, and Physical abuse

Moderate: Injury/Injury detail, Alcohol, and Death

Minor: Excrement

kcmg710's review against another edition

adventurous hopeful 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? It's complicated

5.0

I DONT UNDERSTAND HOW THIS BOOK ISNT MORE POPULAR!? 

I’ve been on booktok for a while now (as I know many of us have) and I’ve only seen this book on there twice maybe? (That could be just my booktok I guess but still). 

I’m so engrossed in the world that El-Arifi has created that I don’t want to go onto another book, I’m struggling to bring myself to do it 😂. I literally put off reading the last 2 chapters for 2 weeks just so I didn’t have to say goodbye to the characters that I’ve grown to love. 

I feel like when I first started The Final Strife I was abit overwhelmed by everything going on and trying to remember all the different names and places ect. (if I wasn’t a dummy and had realised there was a glossary in the back the whole time I wouldn’t have had this struggle 🤦🏽‍♀️ I don’t know if other editions have it, sorry, but I’m assuming so) but I quickly became so immersed into everything; the action, the people, the politics going on and I soon fell in love. 

This book is slept on, I’m so gutted that I can’t jump straight into the next one in the series (the battle drum) and that I have to wait until May.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Drug use, Addiction, Child death, Violence, and Drug abuse

Moderate: Fatphobia

Minor: Body shaming and Blood

bookswhitme's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional informative mysterious tense slow-paced

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

3.25

Definitely a solid start to an epic fantasy trilogy. I’ll admit to took me awhile to be invested. A lot of this book seems to spend time introducing us to characters and getting us acquainted with them by learning about their personalities and motives. There little hints of action here and there but the last 20%-25% was where the most action happened. The world building was very intriguing and once I really started piecing together where this was headed and making real life parallels, I realized just how well the story was set up.

My only thing was the relationship that eventually developed between Sylah and another character. I didn’t have a problem with it but for most of the book the romantic feelings seemed one sided. So to find out that Sylah felt that way too was a little jarring. I expected the friendship, but not the romance between them. I just think if that’s where Sylah’s feelings were headed, it could’ve been developed/demonstrated a bit better.

All in all, I’ll definitely check out book two once it’s released. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Colonisation, Death, Death of parent, Genocide, Grief, Addiction, Blood, Body horror, Drug use, Slavery, and Violence

thatenbyisisreads's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark hopeful mysterious 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? No

5.0

This fantasy was so captivating from start to finish. Even though I expected one of the plot twists, the other ones fully made up for it. Overall, the message was a powerful one and I'm so excited for book 2 to come out this may!! :)

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Toxic friendship, Death of parent, Drug abuse, Drug use, Violence, and Slavery

khall123's review against another edition

adventurous relaxing 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

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Drug use

Moderate: Violence

Minor: Child abuse