Reviews with content warning for Fire/Fire injury - A Guerra dos Mundos

A very slow story with an anticlimactic conclusion but some ‘fun’ niches to appeal to the reader (at the time of writing, mind!).

Wells clearly did his work in familiarising himself with the suburbs of London to create a sense of familiarity with the intended audience when he wrote this. I only recognised a few places since I am not familiar with the city and its surroundings, but I certainly got my own tour of them all in this story(!)

I did enjoy the pseudoscientific approach to the narrator’s telling of his story - if only the science wasn’t outdated by this time it might’ve been more convincing.

Whilst I enjoyed the use of language and literary devices, I found it hard to feel immersed in the story by way of it feeling like listening to someone who is overly fond of their own voice ranting at me about aliens and society.

The plot was so diluted by Wells’ insistence on dictating directions around the general geography of London, that by the end I felt the climax was not all too climactic. Also, character development was non-existence so there’s not much to comment there.

Overall, an unfortunate low scoring for a book I was very excited to read.

Content Warnings

bones_jackson's review against another edition

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adventurous dark sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

Se eu não me engano foi o primeiro livro que retratou sobre alienígenas, então tem uns conceitos muito interessantes. A primeira coisa que veio na minha cabeça com a primeira descrição dos marcianos foi o vilão de monstros vs alienígenas e foi assim que eu imaginei eles durante o livro todo.

Content Warnings

wvelociraptor's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

Content Warnings

bearystarry's review against another edition

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dark sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

This felt very… meandering? Feels like 80% of the book was just descriptions of people running away and/or travelling to other places and how starving or mean or “silly” they are. Pretty sexist and racist; making reference to indigenous american people when talking about violent invading aliens was certainly A Choice.

Content Warnings

chriswaldron15's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

Content Warnings

bebidocrimes's review against another edition

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mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.75

I've always been fascinated by the radio broadcast and subsequent panic, so I figured I should read the full story. I can imagine how petrifying it would be to tune into this story, not knowing it's fiction, and hearing about these Martians just tearing into humanity for apparently no reason. The descriptions got the point across but we're still vague enough that the incomprehensibility enhanced the terror. It's interesting that at any point in history, when there is a catastrophe, there's a white supremacist planning a ~new society~ which happens to rely on eugenics. We don't know how that character winds up in the end. It was truly pure luck that the Martians succumbed to Earth bacteria and not the other way around, like an invasive species or colonisation.

Content Warnings

nerdkitten's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional tense medium-paced

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

5.0

Content Warnings

hanbu's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense fast-paced

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

4.75

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