Reviews tagging 'Torture'

The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner

3 reviews

spinebenderbooks's review against another edition

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adventurous funny mysterious 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

This was a reread for me and I still love this book.

I typically don't take much note of descriptions in books, but the descriptions of the setting in this book were very evocative and brought to mind perfectly the loosely ancient Greek inspired setting. I loved the way this inspiration shows up in the mythology included in the series as well, and how the mythology parallels and informs the plot.

The protagonist, Eugenides, is such a fantastic example of
an unreliable narrator working perfectly to tell a story. Even knowing who his character really is going in, it was fun to pick up on all the places where he's carefully choosing his words to obfuscate the truth without lying.
He is such a clever and well written character and it's a delight to live in his head for bit while reading.

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azrah786's review against another edition

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2.5

 **I was provided with a copy of the book through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review**

CW: violence, blood, injury, murder, death, death of parent, confinement, torture, physical abuse
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You know those moments when you feel like you’ve read a different book to everyone else… this is one of those for me. After seeing so many raving reviews for this series over the years I was really excited to finally get a chance to read it but it was such a disappointment.

To put it short this book is SO SLOW!

The characters are travelling for half of the book but alongside the leading protagonist getting dragged along on this quest he doesn’t do much else other than eating and sleeping. Some history of the world and a couple of folk tales are shared between the characters every now and again but other than that nothing happens?

It took me way over a month to get to the half way point - keep in mind this book is less than 250 pages - and then I took to skim reading the rest even when the slightly better parts kicked in.
I did start to find myself a bit more fond of the protagonist in the second half of the book but I had got to the point where I just wanted to see the end that even the big reveal didn’t wow me. In fact I feel like I half guessed it would be the case.

Debating on whether I should still give the next book a chance so if you’ve read it and would say it’s better than book 1 feel free to convince me.
Final Rating – 2.5/5 Stars 

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myarae's review against another edition

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adventurous funny mysterious tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75


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