Reviews tagging 'Alcoholism'

Tess of the Road by Rachel Hartman

16 reviews

abookwormspov's review against another edition

adventurous challenging 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

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Pregnancy, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Sexual harassment, and Suicidal thoughts

luckylulureads's review against another edition

adventurous challenging hopeful medium-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Child death, Colonisation, Pregnancy, Adult/minor relationship, Child abuse, Emotional abuse, Grief, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Vomit, Misogyny, Alcoholism, Alcohol, Gaslighting, and Physical abuse

cameronmh's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense slow-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

4.0

This book ruined me emotionally. It really has it all, when it comes to trauma and damaged characters. Catholic guilt? Check. Alcoholism? Check. Abusive family? Check. Complicated past, where the main character thinks they ruined their own life and everything is their fault? Check. Definitely read the CWs if you have any content you’re sensitive to. This is definitely the last book I’m reading without checking the list… it’s very good, though.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Body shaming, Classism, Colonisation, Confinement, Dementia, Injury/Injury detail, Kidnapping, Alcoholism, Emotional abuse, Gaslighting, Sexism, Sexual assault, Abandonment, Ableism, Addiction, Alcohol, Child abuse, Cursing, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug use, Grief, Religious bigotry, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Violence, Vomit, Medical content, Misogyny, Pregnancy, Racism, Rape, Sexual harassment, Suicidal thoughts, and Toxic relationship

Minor: Mental illness and Incest

There is a LOT of elder abuse, and it’s BAD abuse, and

Spoiler

one of the elderly people who suffers this abuse also is victim to a pretty horrific “accidental” death

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emperor_aj's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional reflective 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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism

Moderate: Child death, Rape, and Sexual assault

smitinghedgehog's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional funny hopeful reflective 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

4.75

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Emotional abuse, Grief, Toxic relationship, Suicidal thoughts, Misogyny, Sexual violence, Sexual assault, Pregnancy, Alcoholism, Miscarriage, Death, Child death, Child abuse, Rape, and Sexism

Minor: Animal death

eetishmeh's review against another edition

adventurous emotional inspiring reflective slow-paced

• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

[This review was written after reading the 2nd book in this duology.]
Tess is a compelling character whose self-deprecating thoughts I relate to. My past isn't the same as hers, yet the way we deal with our problems internally is extremely similar. I love how Rachel Hartman wrote her struggle, weaved together with amazing vocabulary and detailed worldbuilding as Tess put her boots on and walked the endless road. 
Her journey of self discovery begs one to look inwards and wonder—could I do the same?
If you're asking that, well, that's already the first step, isn't it?

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Pregnancy, Suicidal thoughts, and Misogyny

Moderate: Animal death and Child death

Minor: Cursing, Rape, and Sexual assault

Please look up content warnings before reading the book! I may have missed a few things

elle_dee's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional reflective 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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Animal death, Injury/Injury detail, Violence, Adult/minor relationship, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Abortion, Blood, Body horror, Child abuse, Child death, Grief, Kidnapping, Medical content, Medical trauma, Miscarriage, Misogyny, Panic attacks/disorders, Rape, Religious bigotry, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, Vomit, Body shaming, Bullying, Classism, Colonisation, Dementia, Domestic abuse, Dysphoria, Emotional abuse, Excrement, Gore, Mental illness, Pregnancy, Self harm, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual harassment, Sexual violence, and Toxic relationship

natashaleighton_'s review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional slow-paced

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

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Rape, Miscarriage, Body shaming, Sexism, Emotional abuse, Alcoholism, Misogyny, and Physical abuse

bisexualwentworth's review against another edition

• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

I have a lot of complicated feelings about this book. I’m going to attempt to untangle them in this review.

I reread Seraphina and Shadow Scale a couple months ago, and I very much felt like they held up. I still really enjoyed and appreciated them and recommended them both to people. So I was very excited when I learned that Rachel Hartman had written another book in the same universe.

Tess is very different from Seraphina, but you really need to have read those books to understand what’s going on in this one. Part of that is because none of the worldbuilding gets explained here, and part of it is because most of the enjoyment I got from this book came from references to the other two.

It’s not that I thought this book was bad. It was very ambitious. It was messy and even clumsy at times in its handling of certain topics. Tess was a deeply frustrating main character.

But there were a lot of things I liked, so let’s start there.

I loved the confirmation that Seraphina is definitely in a relationship with both Kiggs and Glisselda and everyone knows but people just kind of ignore it. That was fun.

The linguistics nerd in me loved all the stuff about contradictory case in Quootla. That was a super cool worldbuilding detail and evidence of all the work Rachel Hartman put into crafting this universe.

I liked how episodic this book was. There were a lot of self-contained little adventures, and whenever I didn’t like one, Tess would soon move on to something else.

I really enjoyed the beginning of the book. I liked how Tess’s relationship with Jeanne was established, as well as her relationships with both of her parents. Duchess Marga’s introduction was perfect. I was obsessed with her from the first sentence. 

And Tess was relatable in that deeply flawed way that characters sometimes are.

I was reading passages out loud to my roommate, and we were having a great time with it all.

And then the book ruined it.

The specific scene where I realized that the rest of the book was going to be a slog and wasn’t going to deliver any of the things I wanted was when Tess and Pathka spent about three pages messily explaining quigutl gender. Why was this necessary? Why was it so messy? Why was it SO LONG? We may never know.

I think this book was trying to get at some really interesting things about misogyny and double standards and internalized misogyny in particular. Tess’s early flaws, like the fatphobia and the slut-shaming, are there to give her a lot of room to grow over the course of her adventures. I just don’t really think she did.

Pathka was a frustrating character in all the wrong ways. I’m still not sure I understand the whole World Serpent thing. I did try, but it felt weirdly underdeveloped for something that took up so much of the book. 

Why did Tess, a minor at the time, have to be in a sexual relationship with a man ten years older than her who had previously had a thing for her sister? I was actually okay with his character in general, including with the treatment of his disability, but their relationship was very yikes. He could have been younger or she could have already been eighteen or they could have just not had a sexual aspect to their relationship, and the overall result would have been the same. So what was the reason for that?

Unfortunately, that was one of the better sections of the book after the beginning (Tess’s brief mining job was also fun).

Honestly, I didn’t dislike this book. I’m just confused about the directions it took. I had issues with certain decisions it made. And I don’t think it really accomplished its goals. I’ll be reading the sequel soon, and there’s really a lot riding on my hopeful enjoyment of it because if it’s bad, it’ll probably ruin this whole universe for me, but if it’s good, it could redeem this whole mess at least somewhat.

Additional content warnings for childbirth, religious trauma, underage sex, drowning, misgendering, and general fantasy bigotry.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcohol, Alcoholism, Misogyny, and Pregnancy

Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Child death, Death, Emotional abuse, Fatphobia, Sexual assault, Suicidal thoughts, and Transphobia

Minor: Blood

glenfleskie's review against another edition

adventurous emotional hopeful medium-paced

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

5.0

The reason I was up til two reading: 

This series has: a three person loving main relationship, a gender non conforming main character, a main character with ptsd, dragons, gay people(men?) accepted by society, a character that chooses to continue on every day, dragons that turn into people, a sex worker teaching a really important lesson on self acceptance, a woman as the boss of a road fixing crew, magic talking devices, a disabled character who is not portrayed as broken, gender neutral pronouns, giant magic snakes, mighty fine redemption arcs, and a character that grows as the book does.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Alcoholism, Emotional abuse, Miscarriage, and Rape

Moderate: Toxic relationship, Suicidal thoughts, Sexual content, Sexism, Pregnancy, Misogyny, and Medical trauma