Reviews with content warning for Sexism - Die Zeit der Verachtung

Reviews tagging 'Sexism'

Die Zeit der Verachtung by Andrzej Sapkowski

16 reviews

readbyella_'s review against another edition

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adventurous dark 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? It's complicated

5.0

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lynnloveshobi's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense slow-paced

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

3.25

I feel like it was not bad but not exceptional, besides being very slow, it was particularly full of politics that could have been made less lengthy.. I'm really intrigued about what's going to happen next so i will keep reading, but again some stuff it's waaay too long..

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bookwyrmsam's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense medium-paced

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

3.0

Felt pretty meh about this book to be honest. A lot of the issues this series has with sexism were at the forefront in this one and a lot of the character development felt rushed or happened off page because of events that had nothing to do with said characters???? I can for sure see why some reviewers have said the prefer the short story collections to the novels in this series because that's about where I am right now. Hoping I like the next book more. The first half was way better than the second half in my opinion, but the sudden turn it took in the middle was where a lot of the poor execution of character development came in for me.

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camoo3032's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional tense medium-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

4.25

The author is a genius at choosing which perspective to write from. It's this creative storytelling that makes it so interesting to read

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maissi's review against another edition

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adventurous dark funny mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

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greciamj1958's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny mysterious 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

4.25

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tilo's review

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adventurous dark emotional 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

Wie immer: Unglaublich gute Fantasy und die Story ist fesselnd.
Besonders spannend finde ich nach wie vor wie facettenreich die Charaktere sind, denn hier kommen so viele verschiedene Motive aufeinander, Gruppierungen mit unterschiedlichsten Interessen und trotzdem hat jeder mit jedem irgendwie zu tun, wodurch ein faszinierendes Netz gespannt wurde.

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puzzle_ad's review against another edition

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1.0

So I decided to give this series another shot and boy do I regret it. And the funny thing is I was going to give it 3 stars. Like was it a sexist garbage, yes, but no more so than the previous instalments and I could possibly ignore that for the story right up until the last part and more on that at the end. Overall the structure of this book was really weird. The culmination happened like in the middle and then the rest of the book was weird and downright offensive and disgusting the last 20%, I increased the speed for the audio to like 1.75 for it to be over finally so that I can move on with my life. There was barely any Yennefer or Jaskier in this, and they are mostly the reason I even decided to read the series in the first place. There isn't a single woman in this series that's hasn't been sexually assaulted. Here are my random notes, taken while listening:

• Someone is actually called Fabio lmaoo
• I am at the age where I am very fucking annoyed with stupid teenagers in fantasy, Ciri please everyone wants to kill you be a bit more fucking careful
• The author managing to describe a woman extremely male-gazy from the literal POV of Cirila a child, a talent truly
• Wow the women slut-shaming for the clothes they wear Jesus, and being absolutely disgusting to each other awful.
• The fuck kind of important women obedience is Vilgeforz on about??
• I swear the word contempt is repeated so many times in this book. Like every second page, no I did not fucking forget the book is called Time Of Contempt you can fucking stop beating me over the head with it.
• Wow Ciris entire importance being bottled down to who she marries and her future sons and nothing about her at all is so stupid and sexist.
• The narrator singing is still the most awful thing.
• Oh wow love the "if you rape any women do it quietly" advice simply fucking love that
• This whole spiel about unicorns thinking it's suspicious for older women to be virgins and preferring young virgins is the most ridiculous sexist thing this book has thrown at me yet. Ofc it's female virgins only. Have male virgins ever been offered in sacrifice in any form of media in the world, I am genuinely asking?
• Why the fuck does Ciris crotch hurt?? Uhh I honestly don't want to go back and check anymore, I don't need to know.
• Rapefest in the last 20ish % of the book singlehandedly made this from 3 to 1 star.

So this is what happens in the end:

Spoiler

Ciri is captured by a band of I believe Nifgardian soldiers who threaten to rape her multiple times. She escapes and is rescued by a band of vigilantes. A boy from the band tries to rape her and is stopped by a girl that helped rescue her. And then that same girl proceeds to rape Ciri who finally "resigned" to being raped and even sleeps in the arms of the girl. The next day Ciri is so traumatised she tries to "wash away something that can never be washed away"(this specific part is giving me flashbacks to Mat being raped in Wot) but still she stays with this band. Oh and after that, we are also given a description of how the girl that raped Ciri was also sexually assaulted. Oh and Ciri is fucking 13 this entire fucking time.

Like what the fuck??? What the actual fuck!??! Fuck this book, fuck this series, fuck Andrzej Sapkowski and everything he stands for I am fucking done. I will only watch the show and they can make it as fucking fanfiction and made up as they want I don't fucking care as long as there isn't a sexual assault every 5 min I will be fine.

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ptolemaea's review against another edition

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adventurous medium-paced

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

1.75

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liz_ross's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark tense medium-paced

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

3.75

"But do you know when stories stop being stories? The moment someone begins to believe in them."

I complained about this when I reviewed Blood of Elves, but it wasn't as clear as it will be now, because I wasn't sure if that was the problem and I actually ended up blaming the impossibility to know where the plot was going for not liking the book. Which was absolutely true, but now that I have two books to base my opinion on, I know for sure that the plotline problem is the result of a much bigger one.

Sapkowski's writing style is definitely not the best out there to write a novel. It is quite good if he is writing a short story, but for a novel... it is not a good choice. It makes the story weird. Sapkowski jumps from place to place, character to character, leaving you completly lost on what's going on, which is the reason why you have absolutely no idea where the plot is supposed to be leading you.

The saddest part is that everything about his descriptions is absolutely perfect, no matter if we are talking about people, places or situations. You can perfectly imagine it all, which means that if he wouldn't jump from character to character more often than not, the book would have everything to be amazing, becausd I am 100% sure that if that didn't happen the plotline would be much more clear and therefore easier to follow.

I am not saying it would be a 5 stars book, because that's not the only thing I dislike about this book, but it would get a higher rating. But let's not follow Sapkowski's example and keep jumping from place to place because I know from experience that it doesn't work.

So, confusing plot because we keep jumping from place to place like some mutant kangoroo. It was so frustrating that I felt like giving up after reading only 2 chapters. But the book was so short that it felt like a waste to just give it up. Which turned out to be a quite good decision.

If you ask me to tell you when did the plotline started to make sense, I won't be able to tell you. I have no clue. All I know is that I was reading and suddnely I realized I wasn't jumping from place to place so often and I was starting to actually see the path the plot was taking. Which made things better, sure, but for a while wasn't enough.

And the reason for that was the political intrigue. When I said I wasn't jumping from place to place so often, it doesn't mean it didn't happen sometimes. It did. And some would say that since the reader has to put up with that, then at least the reader should be allowed to get some advantage out of that. Sapkowski doesn't agree. I love political intrigue, but only when it is done right. Having to walk blindly and getting backstabbed by both sides because I have no clue of what's going on is not at all my definition of political intrigue done right.

What does that has to do with the jumping from character to character? It's a smart question. The answer, EVERYTING. You see, this book has this character, which I can't decide if I like or not, because I do admire her, but at the same time it sometimes feels like she only exists so Sapkowski can say his books aren't mysognistic, which pisses me off. Her name is Yennifer and she is right in the middle of the political intrigue that is going on, which would make her Sapkowski's best choice to introduce us to the political intrigue. Instead, everything related to it is presented to us when it's Gerald's story that we are following. The same Geralt who would rather be neutral and doesn't give a damn about politics. It doesn't take a genius to understand why using a character that doesn't care about politics to introduce us to the political intrigue is not a good idea. I WOULD HAVE LIKED TO AT LEAST HAVE ONE CLUE OF WHAT WAS GOING ON. ONE clue and I would have been happy, or at least better than I was walking through all that completly blind.

Of course, that could have been Sapkowski's objective, to make us know as much as Geralt (which was nothing), but for me that doesn't work. Even if the reader doesn't know everything, there's a minimum of information that the reader needs to have access to in order to make some sense out of what's happening.

Eventually, after being backstabbed more times than I would have liked, the political scheme became clear. And that, along with the fact that I no longer felt like a mutant kangoroo, allowed the story to be incredibly good. It got much more action (and trust me, if there's one thing Sapkowski absolutely knows how to do, it is writing an absolutely phenomenal fighting scene) and I found myself fully invested on it.

Truth is, that only happened in the last two or three chapters, but that's the good thing about short books, sometimes two or three really good chapters are enough to make up for all the others. That's the case with this book. I absolutely loved these last chapters and now I can't wait to read the next book to know what will happen to Ciri and Geralt.

But my desire to know what will happen isn't just innocent curiosity to know what will happen next. It's also the need to make sure that important matters are approaced in the right, serious way that they should be. Sapkowski chose to make all that happen too close to the end to give him room to adress those matters in any way, but the way he mentioned them felt way too casual. I am hoping that feeling of casuality is wrong and that adressing it in the end of a book wasn't a mistake Sapkowski made and that he will talk about it again in the next book.

Overall, I still think Sapkowski's writing style is not the best for a novel, but as the story develops and the several characters cross paths, making the jumpings less frequent, things get better and it's even possible to enjoy the story.

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