Reviews tagging 'Sexual assault'

Tentacle by Achy Obejas, Rita Indiana

10 reviews

rigeloutinspace's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective tense fast-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

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual assault, Mental illness, Drug use, Drug abuse, Classism, Animal death, Racial slurs, Child abuse, Abortion, Incest, Racism, Colonisation, Rape, Sexual content, Toxic relationship, and Animal cruelty

This book is a challenging read and tackles a lot of challenging stuff, but i found it educational, thoughtful provoking, and inspiring. Was hard to put down once I was in it.

full_of_flowers's review against another edition

challenging mysterious fast-paced

3.0

If you appreciate The Tempest, Emily St. John Mandel's Sea of Tranquility, or Philip K. Dick's VALIS trilogy, you may enjoy the shifting and strange structures here. Many interesting thoughts on identity, disaster, and the battle between our agenda and those chosen for us, among other themes.

I was uncomfortable with the book's use of slurs; although this gets some context as the book unfolds, it doesn't feel justified or like it's accomplishing anything. Through such language, it exhibits characters' hateful attitudes without challenging them in a meaningful enough way. Additionally, there are moments that delve into very difficult topics, such as sexual violence and the treatment of marginalized communities, without proper acknowledgement or care. I do wonder if some of these issues read somewhat differently in the original Spanish, and may be interested in reading that version at some point.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Homophobia and Racial slurs

Moderate: Sexual assault, Sexual violence, and Transphobia

clara_ward's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional reflective fast-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? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism, Bullying, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Homophobia, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, and Transphobia

Moderate: Animal death, Animal cruelty, Antisemitism, and Biphobia

mackenzi's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective medium-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Medical content

Minor: Sexual assault

vegetablemathematics's review against another edition

challenging dark slow-paced

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

2.5

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Sexual violence and Sexual assault

Minor: Rape, Racism, and Violence

valpal77's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious medium-paced

• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Racism, Sexual content, Suicide, Addiction, Drug abuse, Lesbophobia, Mental illness, Murder, Racial slurs, Drug use, Homophobia, Misogyny, and Death

Moderate: Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, and Dysphoria

femmenova's review against another edition

challenging

• Loveable characters? No

For full disclosure: I DNF-ed it at 42 pages and I only got that far into the book because I was trying to make sense of what I was reading. There's just so much exposition dump and sexual and racial violence casually mentioned for the sake of.. shock? To show how post-apocalyptic the state of the world is? The writing is dense and convoluted for the sake of introducing many different stories to understand a character more but I don't see it. The book boasts that it is genre-bending but that phrase feels like a catch-all to pretend that this book was something more than what it was which was: clunky writing, bad pacing, the awkward transition between characters that I thought it was a collection of short stories instead, and bad character studies.

Between that and finding out that the author is a whole ass non-Black person, which immediately made me reading the work uncomfortable because of the casual N-word being thrown around and how every Black supporting person in the book is hated by the main character(s). 

Listen, I have read a lot of dark literary books that does not have a single redeeming character in them. Books like The Black Cathedral are of a similar tone to this one but the writing was far more simplistic and the millions of characters that were written were developed in a Show-Not-Dump way.

Not for me at all which sucks because I was excited to read this! 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Pedophilia, Homophobia, Addiction, Fatphobia, Sexual assault, Racial slurs, Sexual violence, Murder, and Drug use

glassmoon's review against another edition

2.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism, Sexual assault, and Racial slurs

jelka_theclimatereader's review against another edition

challenging dark hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective 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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Sexual content, Racism, and Homophobia

Moderate: Sexism and Sexual assault

Minor: Animal cruelty, Deadnaming, Drug use, and Murder

morebedsidebooks's review against another edition

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Child abuse, Murder, Sexual assault, Racism, Drug use, and Animal death

This book also features sex work, slurs and religious cults.