Reviews with content warning for Religious bigotry - Sistersong

Reviews tagging 'Religious bigotry'

nightstitch96's review against another edition

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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? Yes

3.75

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kaleidoscope_heart's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional 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? It's complicated

5.0

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TL;DR: Has similar themes to the winternight trilogy (old religion vs christianity, war, evil priest, similar tho different time period and setting). If you liked that, maybe you would like this. Though for me, I loved that and was ultimately bored for most of this book. It just didn’t hook me, and it didn’t help that I only really cared for one pov.

That being Keyne’s. As a genderqueer person I’m always interested in books with trans rep, and even though I don’t believe this is own voices I thought it was done really well. There is misgendering and transphobia from certain characters throughout, but it’s not a trans trauma story, and there are many characters who accept his identity (tho it does take them a minute to catch on), and his transness isn’t his whole character. It is a bit binary though, feeding into stereotypes of what a man should be, but given the time period it makes sense? So idk. Overall decent rep. (Loved chapter 23)

I didn’t care for Riva’s pov because it was primarily focused on the romance, which I didn’t like, and I didn’t like Sinne’s pov because of the jealousy plotline between her and Riva. I did appreciate that the author didn’t go full on ‘I’m gonna steal your man’ with that plotline but it still annoyed me. Especially because this is trying to be a feminist book but the two women’s povs we get are so tied to this one man and their feelings for him and their new dislike of each other because of it.

I’m also both disabled and disfigured (though in different ways than Riva or Os), and I found the rep in this book was neutral overall. Not offensive but not exactly empowering either. Anytime Reva’s scars were mentioned it was often in a negative context, but we were shown through Riva’s pov her struggles with it and how much it hurt when people did say negative things about it, and there were characters who didn’t treat her any differently because of it. Os’s mutism was handled the same I would say. I did like to see Sinne learn to communicate with him, and I thought their friendship was really sweet. I would just like to see a disfigured/disabled character be confident in their body rather than focusing solely on the negatives of it. My scoliosis has negatives; pain and physical limitations, but I also genuinely like how my body looks, and that seems to be a hard concept for some people to grasp.

As for the story, it didn’t feel like a lot happened even though things were happening. It felt slow to me. It focused more on character development and their thoughts and feelings than it did plot, which normally I like but because I only cared for Keyne and a few side characters it didn’t work for me this time.

The ending…

Riva and Cynric’s ending. On one hand I liked that it was so unexpected and atypical for most stories like this, on the other hand… he was never redeemed in any way. And he lied to her, the whole time planning on killing her father and her people, then nearly succeeded at that… so he doesn’t deserve a happy ending at all, and I don’t get why she still loved him through all that.

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lamricke'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? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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mostlyvoidpartiallystars's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious 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

4.75

A beautiful, heartbreaking, but inspiring book. The worldbuilding is rich. I love the combination of magical realism & historical fiction, it felt seamlessly woven in. I appreciated the strong anti-colonial themes. The disability representation is decent - I started out hesitant over how it was being handled, but I loved the progression.

Finally, a recurring section I'm going to be adding to all my reviews going forward: Do they bury their gays?

No. The only queer/queer adjacent characters are a trans man, a bigender person, and the trans man's girlfriend, who isn't queer herself, but is part of a queer romance given her boyfriend is trans. None of these characters die, and no queer romances end tragically

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20sidedbi's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

4.75

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zghutcheson01's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional fast-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

4.5

While I wasn't really interested in Riva or Sinne in the first 150 pages, by the middle and throughout the end all of the siblings had compelling stories and beautiful character arcs. I eas very wary when I recognized the Aurthurian references but it seems to be more references and I wouldn't call it an Arthurian story. I also was very familiar with the ballad "The Twa Sisters" before reading and I think it gave the whole thing a much more tragic lens considering the first few chapters bear little to no resemblance to the song.

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poetsofsweetpea's review against another edition

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adventurous 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

4.5

I enjoyed listening to this book. It had an interesting magic system and I liked the contrast between it and religion. There were three distinct voices in the siblings whose perspectives the story was told. There were a few technical snafus in the audio version and editing and not narration was to blame.

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