Reviews tagging 'Colonisation'

Exhalation by Ted Chiang

5 reviews

scmiller's review against another edition

challenging emotional informative inspiring mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

5.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Animal cruelty, Child abuse, Violence, Toxic friendship, and Colonisation

Minor: Addiction, Death, Drug abuse, Misogyny, Sexism, Grief, Death of parent, Murder, and Abandonment

arayo's review against another edition

challenging emotional reflective

5.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Child abuse and Death

Minor: Addiction, Drug abuse, Gun violence, Forced institutionalization, Murder, and Colonisation

fox_at_the_circus's review

challenging emotional reflective fast-paced

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

4.5

This is one of the few short story collections where I enjoyed every single story. A big reason for this is that the stories are all so diverse in both themes and writing style and length, so reading them always feels fresh.
The stories cover all the big sci-fi themes: time travel, free will, AI, etc. and they add interesting new nuances or takes to them. The stories range from newspaper article like to fable to general prose, it is really amazing seeing one author nail all of them.
It's really hard to pick my favourite story, I think it comes down to either the Parrot's story or the Archeologist's story.
The book also comes with some explanations/notes on the stories by the author. It's interesting to see, where he got his inspiration from and his reasoning for some of his choices.

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Content Warnings

Minor: Addiction, Animal cruelty, Gun violence, and Colonisation

talonsontypewriters's review against another edition

challenging reflective medium-paced

4.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Addiction, Body horror, Gore, Gun violence, Medical content, Grief, Murder, and Colonisation

Minor: Ableism, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Cancer, Child abuse, Child death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Misogyny, Sexism, Sexual content, Slavery, Terminal illness, Torture, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Xenophobia, Kidnapping, Religious bigotry, Car accident, Pregnancy, Alcohol, and Classism

Extinction and apocalyptic events in multiple stories. Dissection, though with visuals of machinery rather than flesh ("Exhalation"). Mentions of bestiality, discussion of sentient sex dolls, cruelty to and dehumanization of AIs/robots, emotional infidelity ("The Lifecycle of Software Objects"). Mentions of natural disasters, manipulation/extortion ("Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom").

rnbhargava's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring lighthearted mysterious reflective relaxing 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

4.0

The short stories across this book are mostly sci-fi tinged, character based, moral dilemma narratives. Of course there will always be subjective mileage on subject matter for different readers but I was always quite engaged, feeling all sorts of emotions and reactions while reading through all the different stories. It’s a pretty good collection, some stories might be too slight or too bloated to some readers but they’re all pretty worthwhile for me.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Alcoholism, Animal cruelty, Body horror, Bullying, Cancer, Confinement, Drug abuse, Emotional abuse, Gore, Gun violence, Infidelity, Misogyny, Sexism, Slavery, Terminal illness, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Medical content, Grief, Medical trauma, Stalking, Car accident, Murder, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Cultural appropriation, Gaslighting, Sexual harassment, Colonisation, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism

The triggers above are all treated as extremes, they’re not confined, those showing preference for those are all ultimately less than savoury even if they’re our point of view character. Most of the tales have a good amount of intellectual curiosity and whimsy in at least a portion of them