danifueck's review against another edition
I never DNF a book, but I just couldn’t go further in this one. The set up sounded so promising - a quest through a plague stricken European countryside with a peculiar saintly girl? Sign me up! But the writing style and way of story telling just wasn’t for me. The “horror” in this book was mostly: look how gross this plague victim’s body is. The monsters described didn’t quite do it for me. The narrative was choppy, and felt like there was one story chapter, one horror chapter, story, horror, etc and it got uninteresting. I really wanted to enjoy this especially since it seems everyone else loved it, but I couldn’t do past 60%.
Graphic: Body horror, Medical trauma, Excrement, Gore, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Homophobia
Minor: Sexual violence, Sexual assault, and Pedophilia
seanml's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
funny
mysterious
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Not always perfectly coherent, Between Two Fires is still one of the most original and unique horror novels there is. Taking place in medieval France during the sweep of the Bubonic Plague, the book mirrors a classic chivalrous Christian knight’s tale: a journey fraught with varying perils and moral trials to test the knight’s renown. But in this rendition our knight is excommunicate from the church and our perils are Lucifer’s second crusade, continuing on from Paradise Lost’s original war. Recommended if you want an original horror novel, with the caveat that the components of medieval Christianity (Sexism, antisemitism, Islamophobia, homophobia) are still part of the setting. 7.5/10.
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Injury/Injury detail, Terminal illness, Violence, Death, Gore, Animal death, Medical content, and Murder
Moderate: Alcohol, Antisemitism, Self harm, Alcoholism, Child death, Cursing, Infidelity, Outing, Blood, Body horror, Grief, Homophobia, Medical trauma, Physical abuse, Rape, Xenophobia, Islamophobia, Religious bigotry, Sexism, Sexual assault, Pedophilia, Torture, and Vomit
Minor: Cannibalism, Incest, Kidnapping, Death of parent, and Genocide
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