Reviews tagging 'Death'

The Outside by Ada Hoffmann

11 reviews

mossgoblins's review

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adventurous hopeful mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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avilareads's review against another edition

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

3.75

an epic cosmic horror novel with complex gods, a strong autistic main character, and some great philosophical questions brought up in the mix. enjoyable ride!
if i read the next book it will be because i’m fascinated by the fucked up, love-hate, complicated relationship dynamic between elu and  akavi. 
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talonsontypewriters's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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booksthatburn's review against another edition

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maelstrom712's review

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adventurous 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? No

4.5

The first few chapters were slow; they built up the world and laid the groundwork for the plot but this was very obvious and resulted in a monotonous introduction to the book. However, the story became very intriguing around chapter 4 and was enjoyable to read. The ending lays the groundwork for a possible sequel if the author wanted to continue the story with the side characters (like the angels), but the story is complete. 4.5/5, a slow beginning and sometimes the story was very obvious with its writing choices at times but overall a great story.
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readingelli's review

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

4.5

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wardenred's review

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dark emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective 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

To fight a lie, you didn’t have to use guns. Just the truth.

Wow. This was an amazing wild ride, and I'm so happy to learn there's a sequel—I need to get it ASAP, because while the story doesn't feel unfinished, there's a definite set-up for powerful things to come.

The characters here are simply brilliant. All the humans are wonderfully human. All the angels... well, let's say I loved to hate every single one of them, for different reasons. My favorite part, though, was the worldbuilding. The book is as lovecraftian as the cover promises, and all the eldritch horrors are as beautifully weird and terrifying as they should be. However, they're far from the most terrifying thing in this book. Compared to what some of the characters get up to while combating them, the eldritch horrors are downright comforting, and that's probably the most impactful part of the story for me. I'll refrain from elaborating on it, because that would mean sharing way too many spoilers. I'll just go back to talking about the setting. The entire thing with humanity creating its own gods by experimenting with AI and then making their continued existence and nearly unlimited power possible by simply agreeing with it? There's so much here that resonates deeply with my currently frequent thoughts of power structures and shared responsibility and how blurry the lines get sometimes between victims and accomplices—perhaps even victims, accomplices, and culprits. I also find it so important that in this world of gods and monsters, it's the most human choices that make the biggest difference.

The book was structured neatly, too, with epigraphs from in-universe books, journals, and documents before each chapter embedding some important details with little explanations first, and then the narrative itself picked up those threads and spun them into a wider picture. The genre-appropriate tension held up nicely throughout the whole story, although I'll admit there were a few hiccups near the middle, pacing-wise. I also suspect that some parts of the setting and plot may have gone over my head a bit because I'm very much not an expert on quantum physics. However,  none of that retracted from the enjoyment I got from this novel. I guess my overall rating for it lies somewhere between 4.75 and 5 stars. I'll round it up.

Oh, and I finish with the obligatory mention of this being a totally queernorm world, which I'm always here for. I also enjoyed the representation of neurodiversity and following a queer autistic heroine whose arc isn't about being queer or autistic, although those parts of her character definitely inform a lot of her journey. 
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mar's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes

5.0

YES YES YES YES YES YES
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st_ender's review

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challenging inspiring slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

I had so much fun! It has messy religion /and/ space opera so the two buttons that make me work were hit but then on top of that I got queer rep neurodivergent characters and posthuman angels? I'm losing it. 
To be fair I didn't really care for the technical stuff. I was in it for the world building and therefore I cannot tell you much about whether the science part checks out or makes sense. 
There was a part where the tempo slowed down a bit and then sped up again at the end which was a bit of a rough patch but it's quite common in debuts and still didn't really matter on a big scale. Bought the sequel immediately and have big hopes for my boy Akavi (sorry).
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sarah984's review

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

4.0

I really enjoyed this book. The characters live in a world of AI gods and their agents, cybernetically enhanced human "angels". The main character is a physicist who is thrown into a world of plots, counterplots and Lovecraftian horrors after an energy source she creates destroys a space station. Rather than being immediately executed as a heretic, she is pressed into service to locate her mentor, the source of the equations that led to the disaster.

I wouldn't call most of the characters "likable" per se, but they were interesting and dynamic. (Though unfortunately I found the love interest kind of bland) The horrors that Yasira comes into contact with are described in an engaging way and it’s interesting to see her thought process changing over time.
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