Reviews tagging 'Chronic illness'

Tarnished Are the Stars by Rosiee Thor

1 review

reina's review

emotional hopeful inspiring reflective tense fast-paced

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

3.75

This book has loveable characters. It started a bit blandly, but it picks up. I really enjoyed the f/f romance more than I expected to. I had no expectations for Eliza, and she wound up being my favorite. My biggest criticism is in the trigger warnings section and has a spoiler. It's why I can't recommend for disabled rep or give a full 4 stars. I would still recommend this book in general and for lgbtia/ queer readers specifically.

It was more scifi than steampunk. I was expecting more steampunk themes, since it had a character with a clockwork heart. I did enjoy the themes of reluctant friendships, plus the health and politics of planetary settlements. The world building wasn't very complex. It was steampunky in the sense that science is hand-waved away (and maybe the anti-establishment themes lol.)

I'm not marking queer themes as spoilers because it's not really a reveal, and there's too little rep:
For ace or asexual rep; I was glad to see it, but I wish there was more than one mention of Nathaniel's feelings and thoughts on it, after he realized he wasn't alone or 'broken'. It would have been nice for his thoughts in the wrap up, when we got a hint that the f/f relationship wasn't hidden. I appreciated that it was explicitly stated under terms of asexual and aromatic.

I also appreciated that the author didn't have him go through with a marriage of convenience anyway.

I wish there was some racial diversity, but I didn't pick up on any, if it was there. Both women are coded as white.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death

Moderate: Blood, Chronic illness, Death, Emotional abuse, Medical trauma, and Physical abuse

Minor: Xenophobia

I wasn't prepared for the child death. It seemed to be the turning point for Nathan to decide to do the right thing. I don't disagree that it was effective, but the turning point could have been him seeing how affected even children were by the actions of his father. Proof of Anna's claim that he was complicit in their sickness. Roman could have still lived but needed medical attention for that. He was fridged. We could have had more rep with a happy child, who happened to be missing an arm, but instead he just moved the plot.