Reviews tagging 'Body horror'

Płonący bóg by R.F. Kuang

102 reviews

laughingkatana's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-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? Yes

3.75

I simply couldn't give it 4 stars. This book was truly great. It was fully immersive, incredibly detailed, and told an wonderful story (wonderful isn't the right word, it's an incredibly dark story). While reading the biggest issue was the pacing.

Spoiler

the marching and travel of war troops was clearly established in all three books, but this one took it to another level and it dragged on and on at times.

(Next spoiler is very light)

Spoiler

In other moments it felt like large climactic moments were brushed quickly to the side and made me question their importance to the story entirely.

After finishing the book my biggest issue is simply how much is left to question, and how the characters justified the ending. I'm very curious if R.F. Kuang will ever publish anything based in the same world and taking place after this trilogy. It's odd, I'm disappointed and wanting more of the story simultaneously. I think I just want to know if/how the characters in this story will affect the world long term.

Spoiler

It honestly feels like if Rin, Nezha, and a large majority of the main chracters never existed the story would've ended the same way. It doesn't feel like they had any impact in the long run.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Gore, Addiction, Child death, Classism, Colonisation, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Racism, Torture, Animal death, Confinement, Drug use, Grief, War, Blood, Body horror, Death, Drug abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Panic attacks/disorders, and Religious bigotry

ewinnk's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious 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

5.0

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Blood, Child death, Death, Fire/Fire injury, War, Body horror, Cannibalism, Suicide, Suicide attempt, Animal death, and Animal cruelty

missbsbookshelf's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

5.0

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Rape, Murder, Alcohol, Body horror, Classism, Death, Gore, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Cursing, Blood, Colonisation, Drug abuse, Drug use, Animal cruelty, Addiction, War, Sexual violence, Suicide attempt, Torture, and Violence

myk_yeah's review against another edition

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder, Fire/Fire injury, and War

Moderate: Animal cruelty, Body horror, and Self harm

bookbelle5_17's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense slow-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

5.0

Review of The Burning God

By: RF Kuang

            Rin and Nezha are now enemies and Kitay is her anchor, who keeps her from losing her humanity.  But it isn’t easy when your enemy has his own water God and not all your allies trust you nor do you trust your own capabilities.

            This is an amazing end for fantastic trilogy.  The confrontation between Rin and Nezha is complicated mess that shows how things aren’t so black and white.  The whole trilogy has explored this with this war showing there’s no villains, just people who think they are in the right.  You can understand Rin and Nezha’s rationalizations and you actually feel sorry for him, despite seeing things through Rin.  We also see the consequences of Rin and Nezha’s Civil war and how it effects the people.  Rin rationalizes that this war and if they side with the Republic they deserve to be punished.  At the same time Rin wants and misses Nezha, and the pair can’t seem to kill each other even though the want to.  Her relationship to Kitay gets shaken up as Rin gets closer to her fight with Nezha.  He is a character that keeps Rin human and prevents her from relying on her fire power first.  They are closer, because they’re anchored, but often clash on how to handle the war.  It tears their relationship apart.  I love how we learn about the Trifecta and its history.  We get to see them in action as we see the full scope of their powers.  There were a lot of great battle scenes between individual fights that involve God power.  

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder, Religious bigotry, Slavery, Grief, Death, Genocide, Body horror, Classism, Drug use, Cannibalism, Colonisation, Cursing, War, Torture, and Violence

malwa's review against another edition

dark emotional 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

5.0

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Rape, Violence, War, Xenophobia, Religious bigotry, Racism, Genocide, Drug abuse, and Addiction

Moderate: Animal death, Animal cruelty, and Body horror

marinasjd's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad 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

5.0

---

Content Warnings

Moderate: Drug use, Fire/Fire injury, Genocide, Gore, Gun violence, Self harm, Death, Addiction, Alcohol, Grief, Animal death, Blood, Body horror, Child death, Colonisation, Cursing, Murder, Pandemic/Epidemic, Suicide, Child abuse, and Animal cruelty

ltc's review against another edition

dark 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

5.0

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual assault, Animal death, Blood, Death, Fire/Fire injury, Gore, Body horror, Addiction, Genocide, Vomit, War, Cannibalism, Drug abuse, and Injury/Injury detail

decie's review against another edition

5.0

Spoiler

rin. what the fuck.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Gore, Religious bigotry, Suicide, Violence, Vomit, Animal cruelty, Blood, Body horror, Cannibalism, Colonisation, Fire/Fire injury, Self harm, Animal death, Death, Drug use, Genocide, Murder, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Torture, Child death, Classism, Confinement, Injury/Injury detail, Racism, and War

bisexualwentworth's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark sad 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

4.5

In many ways, this is the best book in the series. In others, it is the weakest.

R. F. Kuang's knowledge of colonial history is on full display here, as are her thoughts about colonialism, and those commentaries are a strong and often heartbreaking part of The Burning God.

I will say, however, that I wish that the world had felt larger. It's small in book one because Rin's knowledge of the world is small. It expands in book two. It fails to expand again here. I think there could have been more of a sense of the wider world (or just a sense that more than three countries had ever existed in it, honestly) without cheapening the ending. In fact, I think that the inevitable and heartbreaking ending would have felt even MORE inevitable and even MORE heartbreaking had there been other countries out there somewhere that simply would not or could not get involved in the Nikaran/Hesperian conflict.

Everything is so desperate here, and it somehow keeps getting more so. The problem is that after Golyn Niis and the end of The Poppy War, and after the utter, unending misery of so much of The Dragon Republic, neither the tone nor the content have the capacity to get much darker, and so they kind of don't.

Rin and Kitay's relationship continues to be my favorite thing, and the thing that fascinates me most. Kitay is a character who gives me so much hope, and Rin is a character who gives me so little, and I love how Kuang plays with that dynamic, especially given the nature of their relationship by this point. 

Rin and Nezha are of course compelling as well, and in many ways their conflict and their complex feelings about each other form the centerpoint of the entire series. We certainly get the most of Nezha's perspective here, but I still find their dynamic in The Dragon Republic the most compelling out of the three installments.

I think that the character work and the writing are very strong here, and I'm rating it extremely highly because it did what it set out to do and affected me deeply, but there were just a few things that did not totally work for me, and the experience of reading it was more exhausting than anything else.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Fire/Fire injury, Drug abuse, Xenophobia, Suicide, Death, War, Gore, Drug use, Torture, Rape, Addiction, Body horror, Violence, Murder, Genocide, Child death, Religious bigotry, Cannibalism, Self harm, Colonisation, and Racism