Reviews tagging 'Death'

The Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley

17 reviews

caseythereader's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious 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? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Child death, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Gore, Gun violence, Torture, Violence, Blood, Vomit, Medical content, Grief, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Alcohol, War, Injury/Injury detail, Classism, and Pandemic/Epidemic

Moderate: Sexual content

tsunni's review against another edition

dark mysterious tense 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? It's complicated

4.25

This is like a mix of Cyberpunk, Full Metal Jacket, Old Man's War, and time travel; a deliberately confusing mix of the horrors of war and jumping through time and obedience to too-powerful all-surveilling corporations manufacturing reality for their own gain. Expertly written in easy to read prose and bluntly disturbing imagery, the story viewpoint follows the main character Dietz, a poor nobody subcitizen who enlists in a corporate army for a chance to be a privileged member of society in some impossibly distant timeframe, and we watch her go completely mad (or go completely sane) over the course of the book as it jumps between a discordant number of timeframes, scifi tech horrors, and brutal scenes of war.

I didn't find the jumping and out of order timeframes too confusing to follow, but I also think we're not entirely meant to be able to keep up with it; it's not what the book is about. Instead I was hit harder by how much Dietz's world was an extension of our own, how reality was whatever the powerful wanted it to be, how dehumanized and mindless she was deliberately trained to become, how class warfare and misinformation was weaponized, how people are broken down and seen as disposable by the powerful. I think this story emotionally resounded with me because I see so many parallels with the directions the US and other parts of the western world has been going lately (especially today, a day after the US Supreme Court struck down the Chevron Doctrine).

Unlike Starship Troopers, which is the obvious direct novel comparison and a book I'd never liked, the clear message here in The Light Brigade -- one given in an almost direct author-to-reader plea in a forgivable deus ex machina ending -- is that the power to change all this for the better resides in the people, and reality is what we can make it; if we could scrape together the willpower to do it. Whether that's the right answer or not to our societal woes (and I don't expect Hurley or anyone else to have a simple answer, because there isn't one), I really enjoyed this novel and what it tried to do, and I think it's one I'd reread at some point.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Death, Gore, Gun violence, Mental illness, Torture, Violence, Murder, and Classism

athnyx230's review against another edition

dark mysterious 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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Gore, and War

Minor: Death of parent

lizzielemon's review against another edition

adventurous challenging mysterious tense medium-paced

• Loveable characters? No

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Torture, Blood, and War

Moderate: Vomit and Fire/Fire injury

nittiotvaan's review against another edition

challenging dark reflective tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• 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

Graphic: Body horror, Child death, Death, Gore, Gun violence, Suicide, Violence, Xenophobia, Blood, Fire/Fire injury, and War

Moderate: Torture, Police brutality, Colonisation, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

Minor: Animal death, Panic attacks/disorders, and Pandemic/Epidemic

nekoshka's review against another edition

adventurous dark tense fast-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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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Child death, Death, Gore, Gun violence, Violence, Vomit, War, and Injury/Injury detail

Moderate: Animal death, Chronic illness, Mental illness, Suicide, Torture, Xenophobia, and Death of parent

Minor: Panic attacks/disorders, Sexual content, and Classism

vanamo's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Gore, and War

Moderate: Suicide

Minor: Panic attacks/disorders and Vomit

jessthanthree's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious fast-paced

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

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Gun violence, and War

Moderate: Classism

Minor: Animal death

bleepbloop's review

adventurous dark medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.0

Starts really slow and bleak but gets really exciting!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death and War

anxiousnachos's review against another edition

challenging dark slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes

3.5

This was a really cool concept: sci-fi war between Mars and corporations on Earth with soldiers who are turned into light to beam them across the galaxy, but sometimes that results in them experiencing the war differently. It raised such interesting questions around culpability in war, power structures, and how people can change cycles of violence. But the writing was a little detached for me and so I didn’t feel very strongly about any of the characters. But very cool premise! 

Content warnings: extreme and graphic depictions of war (inc use of both biological and chemical weapons), torture, blood/gore, violence (inc against civilians and children), death

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Gore, Gun violence, Torture, Violence, Blood, Police brutality, and War