Reviews tagging 'Cannibalism'

The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly

3 reviews

val_theburrowofstories's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark mysterious reflective sad slow-paced

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

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Cannibalism, Blood, Chronic illness, Grief, Murder, Terminal illness, Child abuse, Death, Child death, Mental illness, Torture, and Violence

Moderate: Gore, Cancer, Death of parent, and War

Minor: Sexual harassment

I'm not used to reading dark stories, so to me this was very VERY DARK. Please check all the warnings before reading this book.

booksploration's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad fast-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? Yes

1.5

The Book of Lost Things is a dark and twisted story about loss, grief, and growing up. Regardless of its playful cover and the age of the main character, it’s not a children’s book.

Here’s a short description (taken from another edition): "Taking refuge in fairy tales after the loss of his mother, twelve-year-old David finds himself violently propelled into an imaginary land in which the boundaries of fantasy and reality are disturbingly melded."

I find the premise of the book exciting, the cover is beautiful, the author’s love for books shines through the story, and he manages to convey the complex feelings of grief well. 

 

Despite all of this, I didn’t enjoy the book. "Disturbingly melded" summarises my overall impression (after reading the whole book) pretty accurately.

A few examples:

Blood and gore - I enjoy a good horror story and am not against scenes of graphic violence in general. However, I think the author sometimes overdid it a little in a way that didn't add to the story, especially since it’s about the adventures of a 12-year-old boy. 

Paedophilia and the way in which it is addressed - In other parts of the book, the author described scenes of violence VERY graphically, but on page 47, he used a horrible "euphemism" to talk about the heinous crimes of a child molester:

"Now, in another bedroom, he thought of Jonathan Tulvey and Anna, and wondered if a man from a clean little house, a man who lived with his mother and kept sweets in his pockets, had made them go down with him to the railway tracks. And there, in the darkness, he had played with them, in his way." I’m glad that Connolly didn't go into more detail here, but the choice of words ("played") seems VERY unfortunate.

Homophobia - I’m aware that David is "only" a child, but the same doesn’t hold true for the author who chose to write this:

"David was being dragged along on a quest for a man whom he had never met, a man for whom only Roland had feelings, and those feelings, if the Crooked Man was to be believed, were not natural. There were names for men like Roland where David came from. They were among the worst names that a man could be called. David had always been warned to keep away from such people, and now here he was keeping company with one of them in a strange land." (p. 237)

And there's so much to unpack here:

"A bedchamber contained a naked woman and a naked man, and the Crooked Man would bring children to them (not the special ones, the ones who gave him life, but the others, the ones he stole from villages or those who strayed from the path and became lost in the forest) and the man and the woman would whisper things to them in the darkness of their chamber, telling them things that children should not know, dark tales of what adults did together in the depths of the night while their sons and daughters were sleeping. In this way the children died inside. Forced into adulthood before they were ready, they had their innocence taken from them and their minds collapsed under the weight of poisonous thoughts. Some grew up to become evil men and women, and so the corruption was spread." (pp. 304-305)

 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Death, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, Gore, Grief, Animal cruelty, Animal death, Blood, Body horror, Cannibalism, Homophobia, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Misogyny, Murder, Stalking, and Violence

Moderate: War, Pedophilia, Sexual content, Terminal illness, Torture, Vomit, Child abuse, Confinement, Fatphobia, Kidnapping, Mental illness, and Cancer

Minor: Alcohol and Excrement

debz57a52's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

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

3.0

Connolly has taken the story of a real boy sucked into a brutal fairy tale world and made it a tremendously serious coming-of-age story.  His ability to include the descriptions of the setting and character that really give me - as the reader - the heebie geebies is undeniable.  That being said, this is a brutal and gory book, much more gory I think than the real Grimm fairy tales I've read, and I would not recommend this for the squeamish.  I would also not recommend it for readers with overactive imaginations, if they like to read before bed (like me), nor really to middle grade or below readers.  David sees and does some truly disturbing things in his time Elsewhere, and I really started disliking him as he learned the hard lessons and "grew up."  I had to force myself to finish the book.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gore, Death, War, Violence, Torture, Murder, Kidnapping, Injury/Injury detail, Grief, Death of parent, Child death, Cannibalism, Blood, and Animal death