Reviews with content warning for Sexual assault - Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea

Reviews tagging 'Sexual assault'

Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea by Rita Chang-Eppig

16 reviews

jmichaelw28's review against another edition

adventurous 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

2.25

The premise of Deep as the Sky, Red as the Sea was quite enjoyable, and the overall plot structure was strong. However, the writing style really focused on telling, rather than showing. The book would have benefited from being much more deeply fleshed out - I would have loved a series of books more slowly and richly covering the same plot. At times, the book felt like readint a summary of a really engaging story.

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ad1t1s's review against another edition

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adventurous dark medium-paced

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

3.5

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culpeppper's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional medium-paced

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

3.0

The plot of this story is pretty straightforward and simple on the surface: a pirate captain dies, the world is changing due to aggressive colonial actions, and a tired woman is just trying to survive all the shit that happens between it all. There's a lot going on in the in between. Shek Yeung is a complex character, someone who spent most of her younger life isolated, brutalized, and/or controlled by abusers but soon has a chance at a kind of freedom when her first husband dies in the beginning of the book.

Her agency, or lack therof, sticks out to me amongst all the other topics Chang-Eppig covers in the story. Shek Yeung's whole life is controlled by others, their specters hanging over her and shadowing almost every choice she makes. Her husbands, living and dead, give reasoning for her choices she makes. Notably when she makes choices that harm others, she may recall with a pride and maybe a little guilt that she choices she made would have been the same choices her dead husband would have made. It cheapens her actions; just once, I wanted her to say she wasn't making a choice regarding the fleet without checking it against what He would have done.

Her relationship with Yan-Yan feels particularly imbalanced throughout the narrative in a way that isn't really explored.

This is solidified at the end when Shek Yeung leaves a now implied to be disabled Yan-Yan to live a life she has expressed she didn't want previous to her doing this. Though she maybe feels conflicted about it, there's no real interrogation of what Shek Yeung (and Dawa but she's hardly a character) is actually doing by choosing this life of motherhood over employment for Yan-Yan, who has little to say after getting injured for the sake of Shek Yeung's child until she is forced into her new life. Kinda weird.

There are a lot of things that I'm just taking as fictionalized elements of historical reality (as I have very little knowledge on this particular part of time and space) but the lack of meaningful interrogation on what it means for Shek Yeung to have this power, and the continued lack of agency, means a lot of the other elements fall a little short of what I think Chang-Eppig was going for.

On the surface, if you don't look too deep, it's a fine book. Pacing can be weird, there's time jumps back and forth, there's some interesting mythical interludes that add a little depth to the world, side characters are all kinda one dimensional, the lines of leading questions made me roll my eyes, and I don't think it dug as deep as it thought it did— but overall, I eventually got invested and liked the attempts at serious conversations, even if I would have liked it do have gone a little deeper.

Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Death, Misogyny, Slavery, Terminal illness, Torture, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Trafficking, Kidnapping, Grief, Death of parent, Pregnancy, Colonisation, War, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Drug abuse, Emotional abuse, Physical abuse, Racism, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Suicide, and Gaslighting

Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Islamophobia, Cannibalism, and Abortion

Takes place just prior to the start of the Opium Wars, at the end of the height of piracy. All the topics are what are to be expected, more or less, from reading the inside flap and having a general understanding of how brutal we can be as a species. There are multiple battle scenes, which include blood, injuries, and death. Multiple accounts of sexual violence, including rape, not overly graphic but frequent. Colonization hangs heavy on the narrative. Sexual slavery:

The main character is captured by pirates as a teenager, raped, and eventually sold to a Madam who runs some "flower boats" (floating brothel.) During this time, the character is a teenager, aging to young adult. The physical, verbal, sexual, and emotional abuse is mostly alluded to rather than described explicitly, in most cases. She is eventually "freed" from this slavery by marrying her first husband, the older pirate captain, who is taken in by her brains and beauty. While consensual and happening when Shek Yeung is a young adult, there is still a sense of ownership and power imbalance. The main male lead was taken as an adolescent and implied to have had relationships with much older pirate captains.

Familial Death, and Illness:

Father and brother dead or presumed dead because pirates, mother died from some illness *I think* when main character was young. Main character's best friend is sick during the beginning of the story and dies from some illness off-page.

Imprisonment:

Captives are taken multiple times through the book. The main characters are all captives in one way or another, forced mostly by circumstance and hard choices, and there are multiple times where that slavery/imprisonment is described or recounted. There are multiple captives taken, and sometimes tortured, in the story with a main or side character's order or action. Torture not graphic but frequently mentioned, or used subtly.

Pregnacy warnings: Main character spends multiple scenes and a period of time pregnant in the story.

There are two different traumatic birth scenes. One is at the end of her high risk pregnancy.

mari_library's review against another edition

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adventurous informative reflective slow-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? It's complicated

4.0

This is was not what I was expecting. But it was still enjoyable and a great read. It had the perfect blend of information and intrigue. While I wasn't itching to pick the book back up every time I put it down, I still felt compelled to read it and never felt a dull moment. It takes a bit of time to get into it but it is worth it.

I don't think this book was trying to be revolutionary, it said what it was going to do and it did it flawlessly. I loved the conversations on womanhood, girlhood, and motherhood with the cultural implications. Coming from the west, the difference and similarities in the conversation was interesting to hear. I loved the commentary on the complex relationship women have with the culture of Imperial China at that time, and how a woman who breaks away from it also has a complex relationship with themselves regarding the way they grew up. I do wish some more aspects were delve in deeper, but since this was not a plot-focused book and instead character-focused, everything that happened felt organic to the character we were following. To be frank, I could probably have read 100 more pages of it and not have gotten tired. Shek Yeung is such an interesting characters and up there as one of my favorites.

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mylittlefootnotes's review against another edition

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slow, not what I was in the mood for, didn’t connect with the characters

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jinmichae's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional tense medium-paced

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

3.5

It's really well written, and an interesting story of the main character warring with her identity and what she's become. But it just wasn't for me. I'm too much of a romantic who wants happy endings after succeeding against the odds, and this is a tale of how cruel reality can be. There isn't always a happy ending, and sometimes the sum of all your scheming is just emptiness and a polite defeat.

My main problem I should have seen coming: it's hard to feel sympathy for or connected with a main character who's a fairly ruthless pirate, even if she internally struggles with her actions, or isn't as terrible as others she nonetheless allies with. She wants to fight against the emperor's stranglehold on the country, but what does that mean to the individual peasants? They either die of the emperor's famine, or the ones caused by her raids.

I guess that's part of the book's message about the cruelty of society and fate, so go into the book expecting such. It was my own hope for something more like Robin Hood that disappointed me, not the actual story.

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poemsandponds's review against another edition

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dark reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
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

I felt like I was expecting something different than what I got. I expected a lot more action and adventure in the story, and it was much slower paced and more introspective than I expected. The plot or the characters never fully hooked me. I enjoyed the book, but I never felt a strong connection with where the story was going or with the characters, since the main character has been through so much trauma that she is very numb and closed off to any form of human connection. She can’t feel, so it makes it hard for you to feel too. It was such an awesome premise but I felt like the execution (or at the the way the book was marketed) fell short. It was interesting to learn more about this period in time, about pirates, and to see a women leader’s perspective and experience as a fearsome pirate fighting for survival. Overall, it was ok.

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vonya45's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

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

3.5

"Grief had the quality of a cast fishing line sometimes. In hand at the start, reaching the zenith only once it was in the distance and not subsiding until even farther out, until it had traversed so much space as to have lost its force. Sometimes it never truly subsided."
I'm glad I got this as an audiobook instead of reading it. I might have gotten bogged down in trying to keep track of the quick action scenes or understanding the military maneuvers and pirate politics. Instead I was able to catch glimpses of bloody battles and complicated strategems, and see past them into what the story was really about.
The view into the mind of a pirate queen is a striking one. How does a intelligent but regular girl become a master tactician and a cold blooded killer? The author did a marvelous job at answering this question without making the main character into a caricature of a murderous pirate, or on the other end of the spectrum, a one-dimensional "strong female character" with no flaws who is somehow always morally upstanding despite being a dangerous warlord. Shek Yeung enjoys killing those she believes deserves it, in the midst of battle or otherwise. When she slits the throat of suspected spies, she never gets confirmation on those suspicions, and neither does the audience. She makes choices based on what is best for her and what keeps or gains her power. She even becomes a wife and mother in order to keep that power. Yet she still has relateable feelings about her motherhood, wanting what's best for her children and feeling inadequate to care for them. She shows tenderness and care towards her husband despite their marriage being a strategic decision. She is a strong and powerful figure, but still shows empathy and compassion toward strangers. She is looking out for her best interests but she cares about her friends. She uses the patriarchal system to her advantage but her reflections on womanhood are incredibly impactful feminist perspectives.
The book does not give easy answers on any of its themes, but its deep dive into the main character's psyche is to be admired. I gave it a 3.5 because it is not really my kind of book, I am not a fan of having this much darkness or callousness in a story, and I don't like pregnancy/motherhood themes. Yet the book was well written and an enjoyable listen.

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olma's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious medium-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

3.5

This story is primarily a character study with a historical fiction plot occurring in the background. I found it interesting, but I probably wouldn’t read it again. The other characters (besides the main character) are all very thinly written. They occur only as how the main character sees them in their limited interactions. That said, I wish there had been one more chapter, just an epilogue, because I wanted to know the answers posed at the end of the story. That’s mostly personal preference though.

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sydapel's review against another edition

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adventurous dark reflective 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

Less of a fantasy adventure than I was expecting, but deeply interesting all the same. While there's a lot of action in this book, the heart of it focuses on how the main character navigates her leadership position in a deeply misogynistic and dangerous society, trying to hold on to the only power she's ever held while still attempting to do right by her fleet. I was especially impress with how the author presents the grey morality of Shek Yueng decisions - punishment is swift, harsh and often shocking but she's constantly trying to save the most people she can. The story leaves so much open for discussion about femininity, violence, revenge, motherhood, power, etc not just through the lens of these characters and this time, but in ways that are still relevant today.

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