Reviews tagging 'Hate crime'

Die Verräterin by Seth Dickinson

13 reviews

omniscienttrees's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-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? Yes

5.0

One of the best depictions of imperialism i've ever seen in fiction. This book also served as the best inoculation against the pain of 'bury your gays' tropes in media ever, and kind of cured me of the pain of a lot of films growing up.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Death, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Gore, Hate crime, Homophobia, Mental illness, Misogyny, Racism, Sexism, Torture, Toxic relationship, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Xenophobia, Medical content, Kidnapping, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, Lesbophobia, Fire/Fire injury, Cultural appropriation, Gaslighting, Colonisation, War, Injury/Injury detail, Classism, and Pandemic/Epidemic

likeopomp's review against another edition

challenging dark informative inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

The Baru Cormorant series could be my favorite fantasy series, despite having read plenty of fantasy more epic in scope, cast, stakes and prose.

The premise is haunting and unforgiving and the main character is molded by what she has been exposed to. The setting is much more imaginative, grounded, elaborate, natural and intellectually interesting than most without any reliance on magic of any sort.

Also the plotting and set-up is absolutely incredible.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Body shaming, Death, Hate crime, Homophobia, Grief, and Colonisation

dragonslayerz's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective tense medium-paced

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

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Homophobia, Colonisation, and War

Moderate: Genocide, Hate crime, and Classism

Minor: Police brutality

liokamino's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional inspiring mysterious sad 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

perfect fucking book

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Addiction, Alcoholism, Body horror, Body shaming, Child abuse, Child death, Chronic illness, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Fatphobia, Genocide, Gore, Hate crime, Homophobia, Misogyny, Panic attacks/disorders, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Rape, Self harm, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Slavery, Suicidal thoughts, Torture, Toxic relationship, Transphobia, Xenophobia, Blood, Vomit, Grief, Religious bigotry, Medical trauma, Death of parent, Murder, Lesbophobia, Outing, Alcohol, Sexual harassment, Colonisation, War, Injury/Injury detail, Classism, and Pandemic/Epidemic

thesunthesunthesunthesun's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional mysterious reflective tense medium-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? Yes

5.0

I'll try to write a proper review later, when I've recovered. This book killed me, revived me, and then killed me again. Everything fits perfectly it just,, had to happen like that there was no escaping this.

My partner thrust this book in my hands yesterday with the request to read "just chapter one, and then let me know what you think :)". I finished it in 2 days (mostly because general life got in the way). I'm still reeling. This book is etched into my brain now.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Alcoholism, Biphobia, Death, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Hate crime, Homophobia, Suicidal thoughts, Torture, Violence, Blood, Trafficking, Medical trauma, Death of parent, Murder, Lesbophobia, Cultural appropriation, Alcohol, Colonisation, War, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Child abuse, Child death, and Cannibalism

abbyschalupa's review against another edition

challenging dark slow-paced

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

2.5

I struggled with this book far more than I thought. There were such great reviews, and it’s grouped with books and genres that I love. I was really hoping to have found a new favorite. I’m so disappointed that this was quite the opposite. It dragged on for an exceptionally long time. This book did not need to be as long as it is. The action truly only began happening by the last 1/4 of the book. 

The first set of chapters hooked me. Baru’s childhood is raw, detailed in rich prose and the wounds are eminent there on the page. Immediately, I was rooting for her. So what happened? 
Unfortunately, the writing. Everything from there on fell. While the beginning brought the lens to focus on Baru, showing her experiences and all she endured, it felt like the writing style switched. Maybe that was the intention. 

However, the writing no longer gave a lens into Baru’s world. It wrote from an outsider’s view, in black and white tone, as though a script were documenting all that occurred. There became an extreme lack of detail, we are no longer shown Baru’s world but instead told about it. The color went away and all became black and white. The rest of the book read like text for socioeconomic studies, detailing who said what, and what that meant, and what Baru must now do. All told, never shown. 

Everything here is detached. I no longer cared for any of the characters, or Baru herself. She skyrocketed through the ranks, in ways that felt incredibly unrealistic, becoming arrogant, ruthless, and coldhearted. Although repeatedly called a savant, she ended up putting herself into multiple bad situations that were entirely avoidable. There were several situations I saw solutions to, but this savant never saw coming, and gave stern replies to people she supposedly cared about, only to never see them again before they died. It became incredibly frustrating. 

I debated quitting halfway. Instead I skipped through chunks of chapters, glad to not have tried reading through them. It felt more like dragging through socioeconomic dense text compared to reading. Far more detached telling then showing. I ended the book disappointed that with such a great start, I never could get hooked back into the story or the character again. Unfortunately, the writing took such a detached and reporter like stance that I found no possibility of drawing further into the story, caring about the characters, or getting further invested. A huge bummer for me. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Hate crime, Homophobia, Misogyny, Sexual content, Medical content, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, Gaslighting, Abandonment, and Colonisation

Moderate: Gore, Violence, Blood, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Ableism

noetherian's review against another edition

adventurous dark tense medium-paced

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

A book that paces along the fence between depiction and glorification of imperialism's abuses. There are interesting ideas, compelling characters, and a world with history, but it's all chaff for the machinery of whatever may happen in the sequels. If the ends justify the means, how is one to determine whether to keep reading this series? I suspect fans of economics and war will love her better than I could.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Homophobia, Death of parent, Lesbophobia, and Colonisation

Moderate: Ableism, Child abuse, Hate crime, Misogyny, Racism, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Violence, Murder, Sexual harassment, War, and Classism

Minor: Torture, Blood, and Fire/Fire injury

Eugenics

iellv's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious tense slow-paced

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

4.0

Beautiful, stunning, gut-wrenching writing. Brutal and unflinching and yet still painfully human, for all of that talk about machines and scalpels. I didn’t expect to love this book as much as I did; I’m hilariously terrible at math and accountancy, but I do have a weak spot for buff women, pathetic men, and geopolitics. The book is so much more than these things, because it focuses on the horrors of empire, and the impossible choices it might present you. Terrifying and intoxicating. The illusion of control and freedom and all of that in the face of omnipresence—the hand that moves all. IMO the book EXCELLED when it came to these things where it obviously fell flat in others (pacing, lesbianism, women, emotion, introspection, consistency, even etymology and the usage of certain words—although these were lacking, they didn’t bother me so much… but you can already tell from my rating. If you come into this remembering Seth Dickinson is a cishet? white man, I think you’ll find this to be a pretty solid effort lmao. Seriously. Consider other similar works written by cishet white men. This was great compared to those! It’s not even white mediocrity; I do genuinely still believe the book is often brilliant.)

Gosh I wish I had more to say and I wish I could be more articulate about it, but this book ripped my heart out and made me swallow it and laughed at my expense, probably. Maybe I’ll post a better review when I reread it.

KINDLY HEED ALL CONTENT WARNINGS.

RIP Muire Lo, Unuxekome, Lyxaxu, and Oathsfire, my nerdy/disappointing/cringefail men. I would have liked to give Muire Lo a little kiss, plague and all. Sorry you ended up being secretary to the worst girlboss to ever girlboss. RIP Ihuake and Nayauru, baddest bitches. RIP to all the horses bc I definitely did not like reading abt animals dying in so much detail. 
Lastly… nvm I don’t even want to think about Xate Olake and Tain Hu. Damn you Seth Dickinson.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death, Genocide, Hate crime, Homophobia, Racism, Sexism, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Xenophobia, Medical content, Medical trauma, Lesbophobia, Colonisation, and War

mspym's review against another edition

Grimcore is not for me. The colonialisation stuff was interesting and convincingly portrayed but I don't want to spend so much time in an explicitly pro-eugenics worldview where the main protag must be complicit in, let's call them war-crimes, as part of the overall story arc. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Genocide, Hate crime, Racism, Lesbophobia, and Colonisation

jjjreads's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative sad tense fast-paced

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

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Biphobia, Confinement, Death, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Hate crime, Homophobia, Mental illness, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Racism, Sexism, Slavery, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic relationship, Transphobia, Violence, Police brutality, Trafficking, Kidnapping, Grief, Religious bigotry, Stalking, Death of parent, Acephobia/Arophobia, Murder, Lesbophobia, Outing, Cultural appropriation, Gaslighting, Abandonment, Alcohol, Sexual harassment, Colonisation, War, Classism, and Deportation

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Child abuse, Drug use, Gore, Mental illness, Pedophilia, Sexual violence, Blood, Medical trauma, Sexual harassment, and Injury/Injury detail