Reviews tagging 'Ableism'

Death Bringer by Derek Landy

1 review

courtneyfalling's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Maybe my favorite book in the series so far in how it tackles trauma, manifestations of trauma down generations, moral greyness, and interpersonal violence
but here I mean Craven's grooming of Melancholia and the conflict between Valkyrie and Skulduggery as much if not more than Caelan's violence against Valkyrie and her romantic rejection of him
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A few tangential thoughts while reading:
  • It occurred to me that you can basically think of Valkyrie, Darquesse, and maybe even the reflection as a DID system... which is maybe accurate to all the trauma Valkyrie has lived through while so young. Would be highly interested to know if any systems have read this series and seen their experiences reflected (or not).
  • This is actually... a surprisingly sweet definition of love from China Sorrows, challenging how Valkyrie is settling for Fletcher.
  • "He's not right in the head," uhhhhh gotta tag ableism again. Same with calling Melancholia a mental case! Yikessss.
  • Very annoyed by Dr. Nye as an evil intersex character where it’s like, it’s not evil because it’s intersex, it’s evil because it runs fucked up, non-consensual medical experiments on people it’s kidnapped! As if that’s not… what’s been done to intersex people… for so many decades???
  • Obsessed with Clarabelle, Scapegrace, and Thrasher just caravanning around in an ice cream truck with no true bearing on the plot.
  • This plot twist with Skulduggery frickin' THREW me, like I think I screamed. Did not remember. Wow.
  • I really do not like that canonically Skulduggery has seen Valkyrie (technically the reflection) naked. Another moment where this series fails to really distinguish what counts as sexual harassment or nonconsensual encounters and feels ~written by a man~.
     
  • This fight against Caelan is absolutely the logical culmination of his stalking and obsession but jeez it is not middle-grade and like Fletcher isn’t a Hero either.
     
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