Reviews tagging 'Toxic relationship'

Blackfish City by Sam J. Miller

3 reviews

snowhite197's review against another edition

adventurous dark hopeful fast-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? No

3.5

The ending was very abrupt and themes were suddenly heavy handed at the latter portion of the book. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Chronic illness, Confinement, Death, Gun violence, Mental illness, Toxic relationship, Xenophobia, Blood, and Injury/Injury detail

marmaladereads's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• 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

3.5

This book is 50% vibes, set in a dystopian futuristic city that is run by crime syndicates with extreme income inequality and in a post climate catastrophe world where most world governments have collapsed. The book follows 5ish seemingly unrelated characters and their varied perspectives of the city - some are rich, poor, criminals, government workers. Most of the characters are queer, and the book is incredibly queer normative despite taking place with a background of a sexually transmitted and fatal pandemic reminiscent of HIV (which the government ignores). So the setting is incredibly interesting and the vibes and atmosphere established dominate the book. 

However the plot is quite thin. It took probably 60% of the book for the plot to truly emerge, and when it did finally all come together, I found it somewhat underwhelming. Characters that were pretty interesting as individuals in earlier chapters kind of fell apart in terms of character depth and personality when they were thrown into group situations in later chapters, and a lot of the relationships lacked the emotional charge that should have come with long awaited reunions and the revelations that came with them. A lot of the big mysteries set up throughout the book also fell kind of flat for me when they were finally revealed. 

Overall I would rate this book 5 stars for vibes and 2 stars for plot.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Genocide, Gore, Gun violence, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic relationship, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Xenophobia, Grief, Religious bigotry, Medical trauma, Murder, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Colonisation, Injury/Injury detail, Classism, and Pandemic/Epidemic

Moderate: Police brutality, Abandonment, and Deportation

sarah984's review against another edition

dark mysterious reflective slow-paced

• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

This is kind of a conflicting one for me to review because I liked the overall story but I didn't really like the book. The setting was interesting, sort of an arctic-themed cyberpunk city run by AI with a few rich human "stakeholders", where organized crime is everywhere and people are on the streets losing their minds to an illness called the breaks that no one in power will deal with because of optics. The story of a strange woman and her entourage of animals sweeping in to turn this upside down is compelling.

I just really didn't like the writing. A few of the plot twists were things that annoy me in any narrative, the language is pretentious and weird, and the author uses the word orgasmic to describe way too many things. It's not inherently a bad book, but it definitely didn't work for me.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Confinement, Death, Genocide, Gore, Gun violence, Rape, Self harm, Sexual assault, Suicidal thoughts, Terminal illness, Torture, Forced institutionalization, Blood, Police brutality, and Religious bigotry

Moderate: Ableism, Genocide, Homophobia, Toxic relationship, Xenophobia, Police brutality, and Medical content

Minor: Vomit

My rape tag is for a scene where a character feels pressured into sex but technically consents (and sees themselves as having consented later). The perpetrator in this scene also transmits a fatal sexually transmitted infection to the victim without prior disclosure.