Reviews tagging 'Animal death'

Goliath by Tochi Onyebuchi

6 reviews

tigger89's review

challenging reflective medium-paced

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

4.0

I've often said that speculative fiction is very much of the time it's written. Accordingly, this novel, begun in the mid-2010s and published in early 2022, is very much of our times. And yes, it is very political. How could it not be, with themes including eco crises, mass incarceration, white supremacy, class and racial privilege, healthcare inequality, police brutality, white flight, and gentrification? The job of good speculative fiction is to use a fictional narrative to illuminate something of our own time and place, and in that regard this book is stellar.

The book's biggest strength — its varied cast of characters, painting a picture of the future through several distinct narratives — unfortunately also contributes to its biggest weakness. This is due to the way the story is told, with the narratives fragmented and presented non-linearly. While I believe my sense of the whole is complete, or near enough, I'd honestly struggle to tell you, start to finish, what precisely befell each character in the story. There's nothing quite like seeing a character pop up in a scene and having to pause, confused, and think to yourself: "I thought he was dead by now!" I'm not sure that reading it again would help. I think I'd likely have to break out the index cards and start laying the plot out down the hallway to make complete sense of it. Honestly, some kind of dates on the sections would have helped, but that would have ruined the near-future feel of the disaster so I understand why the author left them out.

I also have to mention that this book frequently calls upon Christian themes, ones that go beyond the David and Goliath reference. It's not terribly surprising, given the historical role of spiritual leaders in community organizing, but based on what blurb you read it's easy to get caught off guard. I will say that the book was never preachy, so this is certainly the better kind of Christian-inspired fiction, but if you're someone who avoids such references for whatever reason you might want to give this title a pass.

On a similar note, there's something about the gay couple in this story that gave me pause. Specifically, it's that the only gay couples are among the colonizers. All of the people who'd been left behind on Earth were depicted, as far as I could tell, pursuing exclusively cis-het relationships. I know I'm prone to paranoid reading when Christianity and queerness meet, so I've spent a fair bit of time turning this over in my mind before I sat down to write this, to try to be as fair as possible about a book that, overall, I enjoyed. Ultimately, I don't see any evidence that the author was attempting to make a point by writing it this way. I'm not mad about it. But that doesn't mean that this doesn't have the potential to be disturbing to some readers, so I wanted to mention it.

Last, but not least...do the horses die? Mild spoilers ahead!

A handful of wild horses are rescued and adopted as community livestock. These horses later die in a stable fire. Their demise is not narrated in detail, but it's made clear that they don't survive.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Drug use, Death, Racial slurs, Racism, Terminal illness, Colonisation, and Violence

Moderate: Cancer, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, Police brutality, Addiction, Alcohol, Animal death, Gun violence, and Grief

Minor: Slavery, Pandemic/Epidemic, and War

fenouil's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.75

woahhhh, I like the writing, the concept of the book is inriguing, the reflections made can be applied elsewhere

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Racism, and Blood

Moderate: Drug abuse, Racial slurs, Alcohol, Grief, Police brutality, Classism, Fire/Fire injury, Addiction, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Cancer, Chronic illness, Drug use, Genocide, and Gun violence

jo_lzr's review

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Body horror, Child death, Death of parent, Genocide, Gore, Grief, Gun violence, Injury/Injury detail, Kidnapping, Physical abuse, Alcoholism, Police brutality, Terminal illness, Torture, Violence, Alcohol, Colonisation, Drug use, Addiction, Fire/Fire injury, Hate crime, Islamophobia, Animal death, Bullying, Cancer, Chronic illness, Classism, Confinement, Death, Forced institutionalization, Medical trauma, Murder, Racial slurs, Racism, Slavery, War, and Xenophobia

Moderate: Child abuse, Addiction, and Infidelity

Minor: Rape

jackelz's review against another edition

dark

Imagine it. It’s year 20XX. You have to walk around wearing a mask because the air is radioactive/carcinogenic. All the white rich people have f*cked off to space.  It doesn’t seem so far off from our current reality. 

Goliath critically engages with racism (including environmental racism), police violence, gentrification, the prison system, and climate crisis as those still living on Earth suffer from resource scarcity and illnesses caused by pollution.

Jonathan and his lover, David, return from space and find a place they want to fix up for themselves, inevitably participating in a post-apocalyptic form of gentrification, as more folks start taking over the houses of Black people.

Linc, a Black worker, earns a living by salvaging from old houses and stacking the bricks that will be sent to the space colony. 

The narrative moves from one point of view to another, from the white returnees to the Black workers, weaving in stories of their pasts. About halfway through, though, it completely switches to two other perspectives and it threw me off at first. One is a sort of interview that details a man’s life up to the 2050’s, mixed with current (to us) events and situations he finds himself in. The other is told from the perspective of a white supremacist neo-confederate soldier on the run from a U.S. Marshall. 

This book was definitely a journey, and one that I appreciated. Take your time with this one.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Police brutality, Gore, Classism, Blood, Racism, Drug abuse, Racial slurs, Violence, Gun violence, and Murder

Moderate: Animal death, Child death, and Animal cruelty

Minor: Sexual violence, Sexual harassment, Rape, Child abuse, Sexism, and Sexual assault

laurareads87's review against another edition

challenging emotional hopeful reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Goliath is the first 2022 release I've read - I'd preordered it, having appreciated Onyebuchi's Riot Baby as well as his short fiction + interview in Short Story Club.  Goliath is ambitious, far-reaching, relevant, and, as others have written in their reviews, urgent.
Goliath is a non-linear multi-POV novel that follows a range of characters living in the 2050s; Earth is heavily polluted, and many of the wealthy have departed to space stations where they continue to extract resources from the planet they poisoned.  Those still living on Earth navigate imposed resource scarcity, illnesses caused by pollution, and precarious infrastructure.  Goliath critically engages with racism (including environmental racism), economic exploitation, police violence, and climate crisis, and in these respects it can be a challenging read, but it is far from all despair: there is joy here, humour, community.  I suspect Goliath will be one of the absolute best standout sci-fi works of the year -- highly, highly recommend.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racism, Gun violence, Drug abuse, Police brutality, Gore, Racial slurs, Violence, Classism, Murder, and Blood

Moderate: Child death, Animal cruelty, and Animal death

Minor: Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Rape, Sexism, Child abuse, and Sexual harassment

tonysipsandreads's review

There was a whole lot going one. Too many characters trying to tell their stories all at once. The story jumps from character to character so much, it's hard to keep track or remember what's really going on. The pace was too slow for me as well. Overall I just didn't enjoy this book.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Alcohol, Animal death, Blood, Body horror, Child abuse, Child death, Chronic illness, Cursing, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Gore, Gun violence, Kidnapping, Murder, Pedophilia, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Rape, Sexual violence, and Violence