Reviews tagging 'Physical abuse'

The Lady of the Lake by Andrzej Sapkowski

7 reviews

timmytunter's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional 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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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Death, Drug use, Gore, Incest, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexual assault, Torture, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Kidnapping, Grief, Cannibalism, Murder, War, Injury/Injury detail, and Pandemic/Epidemic

Moderate: Infidelity and Classism

ladywhiskers's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Genocide, Gore, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Rape, Self harm, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Slavery, Violence, Kidnapping, Suicide attempt, Murder, War, and Injury/Injury detail

opinkb's review against another edition

dark emotional sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Gore, Physical abuse, Violence, Blood, Medical content, Grief, Medical trauma, Murder, and War

Moderate: Cursing, Torture, and Fire/Fire injury

Minor: Slavery, Vomit, Colonisation, and Deportation

marinaxanna's review

slow-paced

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

1.0

Love to hate it, hate to love it—thank god its over, because this is where the honeymoon phase with the series finally ended for me. It’s like Sapkowski just gave up and I, too, stopped believing in this story.

Three books of build up, interesting characters, interesting cultures and worlds—only to have it end like this, with the lackluster that is the Tower of the Swallow and the Lady of the lake.

Reducing strong, intelligent women who had compelling narratives into mindless Geralt simps while throwing around misogynistic takes.

Oh and not to mention more vile, completely unnecessary SA scenes/tropes for Ciri. Seriously what the fuck was up with that Gramps BS?

And all that for an anti climactic, cliché as fuck ending that leaves more questions than answers. It felt incredibly unsatisfactory.

Mila, Regis and Cahir deserved better. And I mean that as in, their deaths were incredibly underwhelming, with happening in the same 4/5 pages apart and with the bare minimum of impact. I didn’t even take it seriously. They went from all OP/skilled to dropping like flies in the last book.

Geralt and Yennefers characters were just butchered. Both of them felt 2D as hell by the end of the book and it seemed like the author just wanted to be done with the series. 
Well, so did I—Almost dnf. Reading this was just not enjoyable for me at all. I forced myself to finish it since its the last part. Skipped the entirety of chapter 7 when it was clear it was another senseless subplot with Men Being Men TM with a bunch of characters i would never read about again. Seriously, who needs so many detours and timejumps to shape a plot???? 

Anyway. Goodbye to this series. This book has killed any love I had for these characters. I’m done.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Emotional abuse, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Rape, Sexual assault, War, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Incest

camoo3032's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Death, Gore, Racism, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Slavery, Torture, Violence, Xenophobia, Blood, Medical trauma, Suicide attempt, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, and War

Moderate: Animal death, Drug use, Incest, Infidelity, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Sexual content, Suicide, Vomit, Abortion, Pregnancy, Alcohol, Sexual harassment, and Classism

Minor: Alcoholism, Bullying, Child abuse, Child death, Cursing, Homophobia, Infertility, Slavery, Excrement, Kidnapping, Death of parent, and Colonisation

saltylane's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

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

3.0

Like all the other books in the Witcher series, this one jumps back and forth between perspectives, and gives a lot of information that isn’t completely necessary or interesting. The writing style is descriptive but not necessarily excessively so. The story itself has a lot of twists and turns and mysteries. I’d say the ending was rather bittersweet. Also, there were a lot of things that didn’t really make too much sense for the characters that have developed over the past handful of books. There were also just a handful of times whenever an action was starting to peak, and then it just dropped down because there was some kind of intervention that just happened to happen at that moment.

I didn’t necessarily expect a happy ending for everyone… But at least an ending that actually had conclusions that really mattered or that made sense would’ve been nice. 

Overall, I rather enjoyed the series, despite its many flaws. With the switching perspectives, it did get confusing as to what was going on and what character was doing what. It often went to characters that I wasn’t really sure why they were even included… Unless they were just trying to close up plot lines? I don’t know; they didn’t really matter. It didn’t really seem very important that So-and-So died in such a way or succeeded in XYZ. Sure, sometimes it was nice to see what older characters that we hadn’t seen in a while were doing… But overall it wasn’t really important to the plot what was going on in their lives. 

The reader for this audiobook is very talented! He really knows how to manipulate his voice to the different characters and stick with it consistently. The voice acting  was also very good with emphasized emotions relevant to the scenes.

I’m really interested in seeing how the series on Netflix adapts all of the storylines. Hopefully it’s a little bit less convoluted…

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Child death, Death, Gore, Sexual content, Violence, Blood, and War

Moderate: Confinement, Drug abuse, Drug use, Genocide, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Racism, Rape, Sexual violence, Torture, Xenophobia, Grief, Medical trauma, Fire/Fire injury, and Alcohol

Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Animal death, Homophobia, Incest, Infidelity, Panic attacks/disorders, Pedophilia, Self harm, Sexism, Excrement, Vomit, Medical content, Pregnancy, Fire/Fire injury, Colonisation, and Classism

luciawolfie's review

adventurous dark 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? It's complicated

3.5

The way women are portrayed in this book make me very uncomfortable. Also the ending makes no sense...

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body horror, Child death, Death, Drug use, Gore, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Racism, Rape, Sexual assault, Kidnapping, Grief, Cannibalism, Abortion, Suicide attempt, and Murder