Reviews tagging 'Infertility'

Crier's War 1 Paperback 17 Sept 2020 by Nina Varela

14 reviews

elliott_the_clementine's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional hopeful reflective sad tense fast-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

4.5

Fantasy at it’s finest - Crier’s War is pure queer magic. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: War, Torture, Death, Death of parent, Infertility, Violence, and Child death

Moderate: Toxic relationship

talonsontypewriters's review against another edition

adventurous mysterious 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? It's complicated

2.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Grief, Classism, Death, and Violence

Moderate: Emotional abuse, Child death, Confinement, Death of parent, Gore, War, Fire/Fire injury, Animal death, and Child abuse

Minor: Drug use, Suicide, Vomit, Torture, Kidnapping, Alcohol, Infertility, Self harm, Addiction, Sexual content, Excrement, and Suicidal thoughts

Discrimination and derogatory terms between in-universe factions. Self-injury for magical purposes.

kell_xavi's review against another edition

adventurous dark medium-paced

3.0

Crier’s War introduces a winning concept: a land in which a queen unable to birth a child commissions a girl to be made (the first automa), and soon the upper classes all desire automai, and soon the growing numbers of automai revolt their threatened position as subpar and dangerous to humans, and so there is a war. Years later, in a kingdom run by an automa who has appropriated human customs even as he takes joy in their fearful servitude to him, a teenage girl works toward revenge for her family’s senseless death in the war, and the sovereign’s daughter comes into an understanding that her father’s and her fiancé’s hatred of humans and conspiracies among their own kind are dangerous and worth standing against.

I must admit, none of immersive fantasy, revenge stories, or romance are a draw for me, so I can’t say these elements we’re successful. I do look for unique narratives and ideas though, and Varela has certainly created something I haven’t come across before. I was curious about the automai as a computer/robot analogue or as a live automaton, a doll come to life. They seem, more than anything, given the natural elements they need to live, to be sentient creatures created by magic. Their pillars, though, are created more like AI might be coded. They’re Pinocchio x an algorithm, I guess, meant to be perfect according to some (European Enlightenment) version of the strong, symmetrically beautiful, reasoned man. This idea, taken further with a power dynamic of servitude and control, mastery through abjection and cultural genocide, is a story told many times in history, in many voices and truths. It is also a twist on the clever machine, a story of humans playing god and being killed by their creation. It is a story of the Enlightenment, Modernism, and the Computer Age, distant from any mention of divinity, a battle of gilded things, intellects, and emotions.

It is here that the print gets smudged a bit. Why is this a love story, why does the relationship become what Varela wants to say? The descriptions of Crier and Ayla listening to each other breathing, feeling each other’s warmth, being stung and angry and worried and desperate and hateful of each other, thinking of each other and holding the other’s belongings… were not new. They were sluggish in the story, overwrought and tropish, slowing down the court intrigue, the uncovers of secrets, allies and enemies. The winding and conflicting passions bring the story back to Earth (or wherever they are), away from the brilliance spinning out from all directions. Crier’s jealousy and Ayla’s sense of betrayal, unrelated to their feeling for each other, are similarly sticky, repetitive, sentences to skip past until the plot comes back in. 

The events of the plot are great! The threads pull apart and stitch together and fray so many times, and I loved the weaving. There’s folktale in the lines, there’s music and dancing, murder and memory,  feathers and stones, apples and ocean, a compass and black dust. The symbolism is wonderful, spinning up a creeping Victorian dread, a liveliness, a rich and storied history to the world we enter. I wanted more. I wanted Ayla and Crier to sink in, rather than floating out into each other and away from each other, as though the setting were not a magnificent tale to be told. 

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Xenophobia, Murder, and War

Minor: Sexual content and Infertility

nightshaderoots's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

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

4.75

I liked how complex the plot and characters are. The writing style was something to get used to but I liked the way the author described scenes and the characters. The world building was also something I haven't seen before which I loved learning about. The lore building was also paced well so it doesn't feel like info dumping but it was still enough where I wasn't in the dark. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Abandonment, Genocide, Injury/Injury detail, Slavery, Body horror, Cursing, Grief, Torture, Physical abuse, Vomit, War, Blood, Death, Death of parent, Gaslighting, Gore, Misogyny, Murder, Sexual content, Suicidal thoughts, and Violence

Minor: Infertility

hanz's review against another edition

emotional mysterious medium-paced

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

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Death, Bullying, Child death, Death of parent, Violence, Confinement, Excrement, Gore, Grief, and Murder

Moderate: Addiction, Infertility, and Drug use

breadwitchery's review against another edition

adventurous mysterious 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? It's complicated

3.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: War and Death

Moderate: Child death, Animal death, Death of parent, and Sexual content

Minor: Infertility

sssssoup's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious 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

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Fire/Fire injury, Grief, Murder, Violence, Blood, Death, and Misogyny

Moderate: Emotional abuse, Gaslighting, Injury/Injury detail, Abandonment, Gore, Death of parent, Child death, and Mental illness

Minor: Kidnapping, Infertility, War, Alcohol, Cursing, and Sexual content

cemeterygay's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional medium-paced

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

4.0

I adored this book. It hit all of the right tropes for me. I mean person and machine falling in love. Exploring the boundaries of humanity and the consequences of war and oppression, I adore it. Both Crier and Ayla are great protagonists and I adored reading both of their POVs, I just wish the supporting cast was a bit more memorable. I think the world for the most part was quite understandable, but the initial timeline was a bit hard to wrap your head around. 

I also loved that we got a Sapphic romance that wasn't solely focused on coming out. I also really enjoyed the writing style of this book and I found the ending cliffhanger to be quite effective. While quite a few twists were predictable, the reveals were still quite satisfying and it wasn't necessarily a let down that they weren't revolutionary.

I was very concerned that this was going to be a yet another book where a person in a position of privilege only begins to care about oppression because they think a person that is oppressed is cute, but that was not what this was. It is very clear from the onset that Crier has severe doubts about the treatment of humans and from the get go wants to help improve the lives of humans separate to her relationship with Ayla.

I really liked this book but I will say it's nothing that revolutionary. I would recommend this book but it's not like you have to read it. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Genocide, Grief, Misogyny, Xenophobia, and Infertility

Moderate: War and Cultural appropriation

Cultural Appropriation is of fictional cultures. Discussions of infertility refer to past figures and not main characters but is still discussed in depth.

starccato's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

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

3.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Colonisation, Death, Gaslighting, Genocide, Grief, Misogyny, Murder, Sexism, Toxic relationship, and Violence

Moderate: Abandonment, Child abuse, Child death, Death of parent, Emotional abuse, Gore, Hate crime, and Injury/Injury detail

Minor: Alcohol, Confinement, Cultural appropriation, Fire/Fire injury, Infertility, Police brutality, Self harm, Sexual content, and Mental illness

k_aro's review against another edition

hopeful mysterious tense medium-paced

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

3.5

It was good.... I definitely enjoyed the slow burn enemies to lovers, but I'm not sure if, as a whole, it'll be particularly memorable for me. Like, it was good, but not life-changingly good.

Crier and Ayla are... good? Characters? I'm definitely not categorically opposed to them but I don't think they're particularly compelling in and of themselves, they seem kind of standard.

It was pretty gripping, though. It took me a little bit to get into it but it was definitely exciting after that.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Genocide, Misogyny, and Xenophobia

Moderate: Abandonment, Cultural appropriation, Police brutality, and War

Minor: Alcohol, Death of parent, Self harm, and Infertility

It's sort of hard to talk about the more social aspects of this book, given that it's between a fictional race and a real one, so when I say "cultural appropriation" I'm unsure whether it would realistically affect someone, given that it is largely the king appropriating human culture (such as, marital traditions).