Reviews tagging 'Body horror'

The Cipher by Kathe Koja

16 reviews

sapphire_mayo's review

dark emotional reflective tense slow-paced

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

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Gore, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Toxic relationship, and Murder

Moderate: Addiction, Suicidal thoughts, and Suicide attempt

wyabook234's review

dark mysterious medium-paced

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

3.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Body horror, Sexual content, Toxic relationship, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Violence and Suicide attempt

Minor: Gore

stephanieluxton's review against another edition

dark mysterious slow-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

2.25

Let's start with what I liked: the premise was great. A mysterious hole appears in a storeroom and anything that enters the void changes. Love it. The possibilities felt endless. Some of the writing felt incredibly poetic and the writing did a great job at making you feel the depressed, grey, bleak atmosphere of the story. This book started out with a pretty fast pace so I thought it would be a wild ride. Then it came to a screeching halt. 
The middle of this book is so boring. I felt like nothing that happened in the entire bulk of the book meant anything. There was extra characters we didn't need. The spooks basically stop entirely til the end. Then it ends and I didn't appreciate the level of ambiguity there was. It felt anticlimactic. This book could have been way shorter.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Sexual content, Toxic relationship, and Alcohol

Moderate: Body horror, Bullying, Confinement, Death, Gore, Mental illness, Suicidal thoughts, Blood, Excrement, Murder, and Injury/Injury detail

The animal cruelty involves bugs and a mouse being deformed and killed by going through the hole. There's a lot of alcohol. The relationship between the main characters is very toxic. There's a few weird sex scenes. There's some body horror in the form of a hand wound that kind of mutates and spreads. A character gets their ankles broken and is killed. Overall I wouldn't consider this story to be that graphic.

lady_bountiful's review against another edition

challenging emotional tense slow-paced

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Body horror, Gore, Sexual content, Toxic relationship, Violence, Vomit, and Injury/Injury detail

ghast's review against another edition

dark mysterious tense slow-paced

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

3.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Domestic abuse, Sexual content, Blood, Suicide attempt, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Addiction, Alcoholism, and Vomit

jan_coco_day's review

dark emotional sad tense 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

5.0

The Cipher opens with Nakota and Nicholas discussing the Funhole: a mysterious hole that has appeared in the storage room at Nicholas's apartment complex. The first line of dialogue in the novel is almost a challenge from Nakota to Nicholas: "You know it. The big black-hole thing, right?" This sets the stage for the most fucked up desire triangle in history: Nicholas wants Nakota. Nakota wants the Funhole. The Funhole wants Nicholas. 

Many stories in the horror genre describe a terror that disrupts the routine lives of normal people, putting a strain on relationships that the characters need to overcome in order to save themselves and each other. But there is nothing to save between Nakota and Nicholas from page one. "Nakota would rot differently from other people; she would be the first to admit it," is a *loving* description from Nicholas. Their relationship is about as toxic as you can get. The Funhole doesn't work on normal people like it works on the already depressed, anxious, narcissistic, and suicidal.

 The temptation for any review is to try to describe the Funhole. But it defies description because, while it is *something*, it is not a thing. It is an absence. Does it give anything? Does it take anything? It certainly wants ("want you") but its desires are incomprehensible. Nakota describes the Funhole as "a process." It is neither creative nor destructive, but both at the same time: transformative with no end product. And its medium is people. All the characters are crustpunk artists, but the narrator and focus of the novel is Nicholas, a noncreative entity who considers himself a failed poet--one who either never writes, or destroys what he is written while drunk so that he (or the reader) can read what he has written. Thus begins a downward spiral over what will destroy Nicholas first: the Funhole, or himself? 

Ultimately, the story offers no answers to the questions it arouses--as a novel with a hole at its center should be.</spoiler)

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body horror, Confinement, Cursing, Emotional abuse, Gore, Mental illness, Physical abuse, Self harm, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic relationship, and Medical trauma

Moderate: Blood