A review by rnbhargava
Exhalation by Ted Chiang

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