Reviews tagging 'Medical trauma'

Geisterbrigaden by Bernhard Kempen, John Scalzi

2 reviews

eliaa's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny mysterious reflective tense fast-paced

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

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body horror, Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Genocide, Gore, Gun violence, Physical abuse, Self harm, Sexual content, Suicide, Terminal illness, Torture, Violence, Xenophobia, Blood, Vomit, Medical content, Kidnapping, Grief, Medical trauma, Death of parent, Murder, Gaslighting, Toxic friendship, Colonisation, War, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Ableism, Bullying, Infidelity, and Pandemic/Epidemic

angelbabe_cj's review against another edition

adventurous challenging tense medium-paced

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

4.0

As the second book of the Old Man's War series I was pleased with how well this book prompted my 'read it in a day and the details are fuzzy' memory of the first book without being overly info-dumpy. 
I enjoyed getting to know the few recurring characters better (they generally only appeared as minor characters in OMW#1). And the new aspects of the universe were completely fascinating and allowed the necessary details and new information to be wrapped up in the character building experience. 

There were plenty of twists and turns along the way of this plot, with some background details clearly building for later parts of the series. Some twists were somewhat predictable, others took me by surprise. Overall a compelling read and I'm putting the next one on my TBR.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Gun violence, Violence, and Grief

Moderate: Body horror, Child death, Gore, Blood, Medical content, Cannibalism, and Medical trauma

Minor: Torture

The context of the book and whole series is extra-terrestrial warfare so most graphic and moderate warnings come up in that context. Their severity is mostly about how regularly they come up/how much detail there is. Specific things: Cannibalism -

Technically not cannibalism, but humans are being used (by aliens) for food. Descriptions of the preparation of such is moderately detailed and was personally distressing.

Child Death:

No description of death (at least not the repeatedly mentioned one) happens. SPOILER in fact the child is not dead, but they are repeatedly assumed to be so and this distresses a point of view character for large portions of the book.

Medical Trauma: Few to none of the medical procedures performed are considered traumatic by the characters they happen to, but they may be traumatic sounding to readers or mentioned as such by other characters.