Reviews with content warning for War - The Ones We Burn

Reviews tagging 'War'

The Ones We Burn by Rebecca Mix

19 reviews

fallen_angel1002's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring mysterious reflective 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? Yes

5.0

What happens when the life you want to lead and the life you have to lead are two different paths?

Mix has created an epic tale of love, loss and trust that follows as a young witch has to fight against her destiny whilst also fighting against a rebellion and a mutated virus. Throughout the story, protagonist Ranka has to make a lot of hard choices as the ones she loves and trusts betray her, finding a new path to follow as her magic and her heart begin to change. The tale of the Bloodwin witch is amazingly written. There are so many twists and surprises in this book that it keeps you hooked till the very end, and the characters are completely gripping as you want to see how their stories end. I had to give this the highest rating I could. Definitely worth the read, I cannot recommend this enough for people who love YA fantasy; it is one of the best books of our age.

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kiaras's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful sad 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

4.0

A truly excellent cabbage cart reference/joke. Tonally out of place? Yes. Enjoyed it anyway? ALSO YES.

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monicajaylynn's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional slow-paced

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

3.0

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styxx's review against another edition

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adventurous 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

3.0

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skylarkblue1's review against another edition

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adventurous dark medium-paced

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

2.0

So, you're probably reading the reviews because of the controversy. I didn't know about the controversy prior to reading the book, but heard about it right as I started reading so I read it with that knowledge.

The controversies:

1) The book is racist because the POC twins are ruling the country with an iron tyrannical fist killing loads of white people and oppressing them.
2) The book is antisemetic because it's got blood libel in it due to "blood-witches"

I genuenly saw neither of those throughout the book. The twins don't even rule, they're children who where scared of their white father who murdered loads of people and was really tyrannical. Here's a quote describing the father:

What had Galen thought of his father in those moments? Had he watched his father's pale hands call down storms and prayed his own would never do the same?

And the answer is yes, Galen was and still is terrified of his father. He does not want to be him in any manner. His sister, Aramis, is a self-taught medical scientist who's been working incredibly hard (off-page, before the start of the book and throughout it) to save lives, make a cure to the disease and help treat blood-witches, aka literally just wanting to progress science to benefit all.

How the fuck are these 2 tyrannical rulers oppressing all the white people. Genuenly. I am genuenly asking anyone who really believes in the outrage to explain it to me because I'm so confused.

About the blood libel, I just heard people go like "oh and I just heard it's also antisemetic" but like ???? Blood witches do not use blood for magic, it's literally just "period powers". Blood witch's magic is in their blood and just flares up when their period starts. It just makes them go murdery and out of control and super strong, absolutely nothing about using blood for anything.
Again, if I'm missing something please do enlighten me.

------

Now that part is out of the way. As you can see by my star rating and the fact it's not on my reccommendations tags, this wasn't the best book I've ever read. It's got a lot of problems with it. It's incredibly predictable - like from the way the characters are introduced and the first events are set up, you can predict all the twists at the end. The characters feel incredibly scripted and their emotions feel forced. Character's arcs and progressions get reset within a couple sentences just for shock and twists and plot progression which just feels so stupid and confusing and just fustrating.

There's not many characters - some see that as a negative but so many books nowadays have insane amounts of characters and I've got an awful memory so it was quite nice for me - but you'd think that would make the emotional beats be much more impactful. But honestly, the majority of the emotional beats where kinda just lost on me as so much was told to you, the characters don't feel like they're alive and their own people. And so many of the side characters are only on the page for like, a couple chapters.

Mix's writing style was certainly something to read. Everything felt like it was written in present tense but when I was around 10% in I realised it was actually in past tense which completely threw me for the rest of the book. Additionally, as mentioned in the previous paragraph, the characters don't really talk, it's sort of written like it's in first-person but at the same time there's this authors voice dictating everything and telling us about things which feels really disconnected from the characters. Most important things happen off-page as well then it's just info-dumped to us randomly when it's needed - all the history and information about the disease, ranka's history and even connections to people, even the romance is all pretty much off-page.

The journey to the city is a good show of that. We see her set off on the journey, then we see her arrive. Apparently during the journey a lot of incredibly important things happen but we're just told them later when needed. Why not use the page space telling us used to instead just show us the journey.

The way dialogue was written as well... This is more a personal issue I have with this style of writing but it also did clash quite badly with how some of the characters were portrayed and did undermine some scenes. It tries to be this quirky funny dialogue sometimes. Sometimes characters are just super awkward and dumb and bashful when 2 seconds prior they where battle-hardened, focused on the task and super serious, sometimes a character would crack jokes to someone they hate as they're being beaten and tortured and it's just a bit weird. It feels very forced in for comedic relief and really does not feel natural in any sense of the word.

Some other random issues I have with the book is despite so much being overexplained, so much just wasn't? Like I still don't understand how Bloodwinn's are chosen, I don't understand what types of witches there really are, I still don't understand the motives of basically every antagonist, and a lot more. Additionally, why in gods name does everyone just bite each other in fights. Y'all have swords and axes and shit why does everyone just resort to biting. At the end of every fight scene is a lot of bite wounds. Synonyms also apparently don't exist, the word "pale" is used to describe every white person and I did count it, it's used 66 times total. Sometimes multiple times over a couple pages.

Pacing was another slight issue. The book covers - mostly - just over a month's worth of time but somehow within that it seems like multiple years worth of action and progression happens. Does no one sleep in this world? Do they really just literally hop from one action to another? How is it that we're still only really told about things that happen instead of seeing them if the length of time is so short but this book is so long?

I did quite like the premise - but the premise does kinda just spoil way too much. The execution was a let down in basically every single way. I did really love a medical scientist though like Aramis in such a high-fantasy book, I did quite like what little time we had when she was experimenting or healing. At the end as well, the concept of

therapy

is also told to us (again, the experience is not shown to us..) which was super interesting to see in a high-fantasy book. I don't actually really recall even a general fantasy book that's approached the topic before. But it was only a couple sentences long and yeah.. only just told to us.

So yeah, I don't really think this warrented all the sheer hatred and vitriol against it personally but it's certainly not a 5* read. If you want to read a book that's got a similar romance structure to this (royal siblings supposed to be in arranged marrages but actually just gay) please read Gwen and Art are Not In Love - but that book is not a high fantasy it's just an incredibly good semi-romcom with one hell of a genre twist.

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kirstenf's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful 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

4.0

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quinnpjd930's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny inspiring reflective 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? Yes

5.0

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radiantgeode's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional hopeful mysterious sad 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

3.5

I don’t agree with the controversy surrounding these books, I suggest reading them yourself before judging by the reviews.

That being said, I rated this book 3.5 stars. I just felt like something was missing from the story and the ending didn’t quite do it for me. I liked it enough that I finished it, I just feel like it had more potential and didn’t quite hit the mark.

I liked the focus on found family and overcoming toxic familial relationships. The character’s background was interesting and building on their mental health gave them depth.

Bonus: good lgbtq+ representation.

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omnisyncd's review against another edition

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dark emotional inspiring reflective sad 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? No

3.75

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linnea1801's review against another edition

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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

4.75

This book is sooo good!!!! It’s a story about overcoming abuse and trauma, it’s beautifully written and it’s gay so it’s a ten out of ten in my books. Also I just want to give Ranka a hug, she deserves it.

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