Reviews with content warning for Gore - Truth of the Divine

Reviews tagging 'Gore'

Truth of the Divine by Lindsay Ellis

22 reviews

_shaybiebaybee's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional 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

4.25

This book isn't really for the faint of heart, and I wasn't sure if I liked the two-character-perspectives thing because I had an immediate hate-on for Kaveh. He did eventually grow on me.
As someone who has gone through

somebody extremely close to me dying

, the end of this book is very raw and painful, even though I saw it coming.
The portrayal of mental illness and post traumatic stress by Lindsay Ellis is meaningfully done, and well executed. It puts to words just how awful that kind of experience can be while you're going through it without the right help. I truly felt for Cora. My heart broke for her.
I have a lot of love for this series so far and I'm looking forward to reading book three after being eviscerated by book two.

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li_st's review against another edition

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emotional mysterious reflective 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

4.5

Bad book. Made me cry

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bean_7088's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful reflective sad tense slow-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

Oof... that was a rough one.
Wanna be sad about the human race? Wanna feel fairly hopless? This one is for you!

It does end on a hopeful note... but like that hopefulness is somewhat undercut by the way the character speakin treated.

This one had a lot of tense scenes I wanted to hide from. I had to stop a lot and explain what was going on to my roommate so I could get those jitters out. Like, a televised "discussion" between two different sides of the alien personhood debate. A hearing where unknown evidence comes up.

Anyways, it was still really good.

I'm not sure how I felt about Kaveh. And I'm not sure if it was how he was written or just his voice actor 😅 I'm sure the guy is normally fine, but the main voice actor Stephanie Willis is so incredible that switching to him is quite jarring.

Waring that Cora goes through a lot, this poor kid traumatized over and over. And Stephanie Willis will make you feel it. Listening to Cora's Panic attacks was very distressing.

The ending left on such a wild note I am excited to see where the 3rd book will go. Now I just have to wait 7 months 🥲

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kanonkita's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

4.75

Very well written. I had some issues with the slow pacing of the first book in this series that I felt this one largely managed to avoid. Some aspects of the main character were a bit grating at times, but in one sense that was the point. She was struggling with trauma and mental health issues related to that, and I think Ellis did a good job portraying how these things can make someone difficult to deal with or be around.

That being said, maybe avoid the audiobook unless you really enjoy listening to tremulous female voices shouting "No no no" over and over again ever few minutes. The computerized sound effect that was put over the Amygdalans' voices in the audiobook could also be grating at times and made it difficult to hear them if there was any background noise while I was listening.

Overall, I would recommend it, but do pay attention to the content warning Ellis provides at the beginning of the novel.

Also, a note that I have not seen this book listed as LGBTQ+ in many places, which I can only chalk up to bi erasure. Cora is bisexual, and it seems unfair that this gets overlooked just because she has a heterosexual romance, especially given that it occurs alongside her very queer relationship with an alien who only uses he/him pronouns out of convenience.

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seullywillikers's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

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

4.0

This was much darker than "Axiom's End," and as such, a bit harder to read. I love the premise of Extraterrestrial personhood being debated on the American political, and world stage. The new characters were interesting and I really got invested in them. Towards the end, I was feeling like "okay geez, how much more is there actually" but I'm pleased with where the ending takes us. I'm hoping there's another installation in this series.

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gyascutus's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense fast-paced

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

3.5

Everyone a hot mess out here. THE AUTHOR IS RLLY NICE AND PROVIDES A CONTENT WARNING DESCRIPTION AT THE BEGINNING bc it gets real hefty in the book.
I have a lot of grievances with

relationship between cora and kaveh. And the death of kaveh. Like damn. But it ended so nicely with his article?? I wanted to cry ???

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