Reviews tagging 'Murder'

Chameleon Moon by RoAnna Sylver

2 reviews

ritabriar's review

adventurous dark emotional hopeful 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? It's complicated

5.0

I love the way these people support and love each other. Not everyone trusts easily, but everyone will do anything for their people. Each of them has their own voice and personality, and the characters we follow most closely are affected by a heroic culture in Parole of getting everyone through, alive. 

The book is structured with periods of bad things followed with periods of recovery, making it well-balanced pacing-wise. The stakes continuously ramp up as well. 

Definitely be ready to get the next book in the series when this one ends. The cliffhanger is a good one, though I do feel this book delivers on its core promises. Specifically,

Regan gets his memories back and the city falls,

but not everyone

is in a stable and safe place at the end.

All of the named characters

survive, in one form or another.

 

The how and why of this world is revealed in digestible pieces, as knowledge is needed. 

This book might help people survive this world-on-fire, too. 

Queer and poly positivity abound. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Torture, Violence, Grief, and Fire/Fire injury

Moderate: Animal death, Death, Gore, Gun violence, Suicide, Kidnapping, and Suicide attempt

Minor: Chronic illness, Deadnaming, Genocide, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Self harm, Slavery, Suicide, Transphobia, Xenophobia, Police brutality, Medical content, Murder, Outing, Abandonment, Alcohol, Dysphoria, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

There is a lot of possession, controlling another's body, and thought-sharing. Some is consensual, some not. The suicides

aren't what they seem

, but are both clearly described. Methods are

hanging

and

jumping out of a high window

. Arguably, there's also a lot of suicidally high-risk behavior, but I don't think anyone involved in that actually wants to die, at least for long. Animal who is shot is a

mechanical dog

. Later, he is

recovered by Danae, using her powers

. The dysphoria, deadnaming, and transphobia are all dealt with swiftly and appropriately. No one reacts badly to the person who is outed to a small group. Just about everyone in this book has graphic PTSD, but they care for each other and help each other survive and provide mutual care.

bluejayreads's review against another edition

This book has been on my TBR list for literally years. It came across my radar a long time ago and I heard it had polyamory in it, so I put it on my list. And it managed to stay through several years of sorting and culling the list because the back cover information was so sparse on details that I didn't feel like I could make a good decision. And the ideas here are really cool. There's the city itself, slowly crumbling into the cavern beneath that used to be a river and is now an eternal fire, and the violent military/paramilitary group invested in keeping everybody there. There's the people themselves, changed in strange ways by a "miracle drug" that gave fantastic powers, but often with horrible consequences. There's our protagonists, a lizard-man with the power to turn invisible who had his memories stolen by a ghost and a singer with a super-powered voice, plus other characters like the ghost, a person who's been Frankenstein's monster-ed together out of other people, and the singer's two wives, one of whom is mostly made of plants. People just are queer and are polyamorous and use they/them pronouns and nobody thinks anything of it. There's perhaps an underground rebel organization, and there's definitely weird stuff going on. There are so many good things in this book. But there's also a mental illness/trauma angle that was so overwhelmingly heavy-handed. The characters are okay, but the only aspect of them that's really developed is that they have anxiety and/or are traumatized in different ways. The singer and her family are the most "trauma informed" characters I've ever read, and somehow they became that way while still actively living through that trauma. Every few pages someone else has an anxiety attack and someone else has to talk them through it. I'm not saying that the stuff they're going through isn't traumatic, because it is. But the story keeps interrupting what could have been a truly interesting adventure to shoehorn in stuff about trauma and anxiety. It really feels like one of those thinley-veiled Morally Edifying Literature stories from like the Victorian era, except instead of promoting Modesty and Virginity it's promoting Trauma Is Real and Be Compassionate With Anxiety Attacks. These are not bad things to promote, actually. But the way they're done here is so overwhelming and heavy-handed. If you're here for a good fantasy story, it's going to yank you out of the story repeatedly to go back to preaching about anxiety and trauma. If you're actually here for a Moral and Instructive Tale on Trauma and Mental Health, you're probably going to find much of this very triggering. There were really good ideas here and I did want to read the story. I just got so, so fed up with the excessive mental illness and trauma preaching. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Panic attacks/disorders

Moderate: Death, Gun violence, Torture, and Violence

Minor: Addiction, Animal death, Trafficking, Murder, and Fire/Fire injury

Unreality