Reviews tagging 'Gore'

Confessions of the Fox by Jordy Rosenberg

13 reviews

stormagedon's review

adventurous challenging emotional funny informative inspiring mysterious sad fast-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: Confinement, Drug use, Gore, Homophobia, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Slavery, Suicidal thoughts, Transphobia, Blood, Police brutality, Medical content, Grief, Medical trauma, Suicide attempt, Alcohol, Dysphoria, and Injury/Injury detail

ecster's review against another edition

adventurous emotional funny tense fast-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

4.0

Super enjoyed this weird book in a book, the pages and pages of footnotes and the hopeful revolutionary ending.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual content and Medical content

Moderate: Gore and Torture

infinite_harness9030's review

challenging reflective tense slow-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? It's complicated

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Cursing, Death, Emotional abuse, Gore, Blood, Excrement, Medical content, Medical trauma, Colonisation, Dysphoria, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Racial slurs, Racism, Self harm, Sexism, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Slavery, Suicidal thoughts, Transphobia, Violence, Vomit, Police brutality, Religious bigotry, Suicide attempt, and Classism

Minor: Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Alcoholism, Child abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Abandonment, Alcohol, and Pandemic/Epidemic

opossumble's review against another edition

adventurous emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring 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: Confinement, Gore, Racism, Sexual content, Transphobia, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Blood, Police brutality, Medical content, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Cursing, Drug use, Slavery, Excrement, Vomit, Murder, Alcohol, Colonisation, Classism, and Pandemic/Epidemic

cosypuck's review

4.5

I much preferred the narrative about Jack & Bess to the footnote narrative about Dr Voth, but the latter didn't spoil the book for me and in some places did add to it. I didn't like that

the collective group of queer editors

wasn't expanded on - for the sake of how much it was touched on it could have been left out, for me.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Confinement, Death, Drug use, Gore, Blood, Medical content, and Dysphoria

Moderate: Suicidal thoughts and Transphobia

singlier's review

adventurous challenging dark funny mysterious fast-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? Yes

4.0

Confessions of the Fox by Jordy Rosenberg 4/5 🦊s 

This book is weird--part memoir, part unhinged rambling footnotes, part collective memory. It reimagines the life of famous Victorian thief, Jack Sheppard, as a transgender man, exploring the intersections of his identity with period-accurate racism, incarceration, destruction of land, government corruption, and colonialism. It is also a story-within-a-story: told in the footnotes of the memoir is the story of Dr. Voth, a transgender man and college professor, currently grappling with the loss of his love and his debilitating OCD, who imprints onto Jack and uses the footnotes as the pedestal for self-reflection and anti-academia rhetoric. 

At the end of the novel, I can't say I understood everything. It is committed to its appearance as an authentic 18th century text, which means it is dense and difficult to parse. The footnotes only add to its difficulty: calling upon a vast array of knowledge from Marxism to queer theory. The plot too, often feels scattered: caught between a mysterious conspiracy of government corruption and Jack's unquestionable love for his partner. But, with all this, I still found myself thoroughly enjoying it. I could not predict where it would lead me, but I enjoyed the journey there. 

Minus points for a lot of mentions of piss, even though it does (eventually) become plot relevant.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Gore, Racism, Sexual content, Violence, Blood, Excrement, Vomit, Police brutality, Medical trauma, Colonisation, Injury/Injury detail, Classism, and Pandemic/Epidemic

caseythereader's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny 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? No

4.5

Thank you to One World Books for the free copy of this book.

 - CONFESSIONS OF THE FOX is one of the strangest, most fascinating books I’ve ever read. I loved the structure, with the body of the book being the “lost manuscript” and the footnotes being the professor telling his story alongside the manuscript.
- There is so much going on here, I hardly know where to start. Everything from the historical erasure of trans people to the prison industrial complex is pinpointed and torn down in a frenzy.
- For me, things got a bit muddled at the end of the book, but overall this book is well worth the trip there. Do pay attention to those content warnings though, as it’s pretty grossly graphic throughout. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Confinement, Cursing, Deadnaming, Death, Gore, Gun violence, Racial slurs, Racism, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Transphobia, Violence, Xenophobia, Blood, Excrement, Vomit, Police brutality, Medical content, Grief, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Alcohol, Colonisation, Dysphoria, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

katiewhocanread's review against another edition

challenging funny fast-paced

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

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gore, Sexual content, Forced institutionalization, Police brutality, and Medical content

Moderate: Deadnaming and Racism

Minor: Mental illness and Racial slurs

wildeflower's review

adventurous mysterious reflective 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

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gore and Sexual content

Moderate: Genocide, Racial slurs, Racism, and Transphobia

jameslyons's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense fast-paced

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

4.75

This is not a fun historical romp and those approaching this book with any expectation of a Nice Time will be disappointed/horrified. It's visceral, confronting, disgusting, and uncomfortable; romantic, riotous, hilarious, and very fucking trans.

Ambitious and almost overwhelming at times. It took a lot of faith in the author for me to get through the wilder parts that didn't make sense until everything Did. Thank god it all pulled together in the end. I remain annoyed at the heavy academic bent, but that's a personal pet peeve, and scholarly sycophants will likely adore that aspect. Everyone else, my advice is to just ignore and skim at will. The rest of the story contains So Much aside from that.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Body horror, Body shaming, Child abuse, Confinement, Death, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Gore, Physical abuse, Racism, Sexism, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Torture, Transphobia, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Blood, Excrement, Police brutality, Medical content, Grief, Religious bigotry, and Medical trauma

Moderate: Animal cruelty, Genocide, Slavery, and Vomit

Content found within, which storygraph doesn't have specific tags for yet: graphic descriptions of public executions (hangings), murder, corpse multination, a VERY graphic surgical scene (which could be skipped by the reader), and medical abuse. That would normally be enough for me to give this just 1* or not finish, but in the context of this book, I valued all of the nasty bits as much as the rest of the story.