Reviews tagging 'Gaslighting'

The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart

8 reviews

thenexthing's review

adventurous emotional 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? No

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Body horror, Animal cruelty, Blood, Classism, Violence, and Gore

Moderate: Confinement, Injury/Injury detail, Animal death, Body horror, Child abuse, Death, Gaslighting, Mental illness, Slavery, Violence, Abandonment, and War

Minor: Suicidal thoughts, Medical content, Confinement, and Emotional abuse

alexijai98's review

adventurous 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? It's complicated

4.25

Love a story where LGBT characters get to just be part of the world!! 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Body horror, Death, Kidnapping, Murder, Child death, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Violence, Animal death, Animal cruelty, Gaslighting, and Gore

Moderate: Xenophobia

alexalily's review against another edition

adventurous mysterious 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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Terminal illness, Blood, Body horror, Confinement, and Kidnapping

Moderate: Animal cruelty, Death of parent, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Injury/Injury detail, Classism, Death, Slavery, Xenophobia, Murder, Physical abuse, Trafficking, and Violence

Minor: Animal death, Child death, Stalking, Gaslighting, Torture, Child abuse, and Medical content

booksalacarte's review

challenging dark mysterious tense medium-paced

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

4.25

The bone shard daughter - 4.25⭐️ 1🌶️

The emperor's reign has lasted for decades, his mastery of bone shard magic powering the animal-like constructs that maintain law and order. But now his rule is failing, and revolution is sweeping across the Empire's many islands.

Lin is the emperor's daughter and spends her days trapped in a palace of locked doors and dark secrets. When her father refuses to recognise her as heir to the throne, she vows to prove her worth by mastering the forbidden art of bone shard magic.

Yet such power carries a great cost, and when the revolution reaches the gates of the palace, Lin must decide how far she is willing to go to claim her birthright - and save her people.

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✨My Opinion✨

This was a wonderfully woven beginning to such a unique story. The opening line pulled me right in and the characters strange and compelling stories kept me reading. 

The story follows 4 POV’s, each voice completely unique. There was so much world bulding done in a beautiful way. You see the magic through Lin, the emperors daughter trying to earn the magic her father keeps hidden behind locked doors, and Jovis, a smuggler who experienced one of the islands sinking into the sea and his companion pet Mochi.

The tone of the empire is flushed out through Phalue, a governor's daughter who is trying to balance duty and her relationship with the woman she loves. And the empires dark secrets are given a backgrand with Sandu, a woman on an island with no faint memories of her life coming to light. 

The characters get caught up in the different themes: morality, humanty, classism, grief, power, identity, complicated relationships, Love, trust, treason. 

My biggest draw to the story is the relationship between Jovis and Mochi. So much is unknown, even to them, what is going on. I can’t wait to see it play out. Jovis’ POV Definitly got me through the heaviest world building.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief, Murder, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Gaslighting, Physical abuse, Toxic relationship, and War

kaziaroo's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense slow-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

4.5

On the whole I loved this – the characters, the magic system, the mystery were all amazing (plus a queer-normative world!). I would have liked it if the setting was more fleshed out, maybe going more into the cultures of the different islands rather than them all feeling the same, but overall the story was immersive enough and the characters lovable enough to look past that. I loved Jovis and Mephi in particular, and I liked Lin too; there's always a difficulty in amnesiac characters as they have such a short background on which to build a personality and identity, but I think the author did an admirable job. 

I wanted to see more of Bayan, alas... :(

My only real criticism is that I felt the book would have been better without Ranami and Phalue's POV chapters. Their story had an interesting message and moral dilemma but it just didn't seem to fit and their chapters were quite dull to get through compared to the rest of the book. As a novella on their own, those chapters would have been fine, but I found myself skim-reading them to get back to Jovis, Lin and even Sand. Maybe more will come of Ranami and Phalue in the sequel, but I just couldn't get behind their relationship or find the point of their storyline or its impact of the overall plot.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Confinement, Grief, Trafficking, Child death, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Blood, Violence, Death, Gaslighting, Body horror, and Medical content

Moderate: Physical abuse, Racism, Animal cruelty, Panic attacks/disorders, Death of parent, Kidnapping, and Mental illness

Minor: War

iamsammie27's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious slow-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? Yes

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Medical trauma, and Gore

Moderate: Trafficking, Kidnapping, Violence, Gaslighting, and Body horror

Minor: Racism, Emotional abuse, Death, and Child death

ok7a's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death and Death

Moderate: Body horror, Death of parent, Gaslighting, and Trafficking

dogearedbooks's review

adventurous dark mysterious 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? N/A

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Murder

Moderate: Gaslighting