Reviews tagging 'Blood'

The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter

58 reviews

sleepy_stardust's review against another edition

dark mysterious tense slow-paced

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

3.25

The Bloody Chamber is good, but you really need to stick with it. It's very slow, but if you're willing to sift through the (almost) unbearably dense prose, it has some very meaningful takes about the power struggle of women in a patriarchal society.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Death, Sexual content, Sexual violence, and Sexual assault

_rowan_'s review

dark mysterious medium-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Misogyny, Murder, Rape, Blood, Body horror, Death of parent, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Gaslighting, Gore, Grief, Incest, Kidnapping, Mental illness, Pedophilia, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Abandonment, Addiction, Adult/minor relationship, Animal death, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Confinement, Torture, and Violence

oirving44's review against another edition

challenging dark fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? N/A
• Strong character development? N/A
• Loveable characters? N/A
• Diverse cast of characters? N/A
• Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

1.0

Note to self: don't read anything else by Angela Carter

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Adult/minor relationship, Cannibalism, Cursing, Murder, Sexual content, Violence, Blood, Death, Excrement, and Injury/Injury detail

blueshirt's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious reflective sad medium-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? It's complicated

4.0

Beautifully written. A few of the stories I did not really understand. Like, I didn't get the message of "The Snow Child" beyond my initial (and superficial) "man suck" reaction. But that's more on me as a reader than Angela as a writer.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Blood, Death, Gore, and Murder

chefboyavi's review against another edition

challenging dark fast-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

2.75

These are fine. I think I’m a bit jaded as a former English major because I’ve read a lot of stuff like this. I’m also at a point in my life where if I'm gonna read modern fairytales, they better be gay otherwise what’s the point. 

The most interesting thing in reading these stories is that I also happened to be reading Tell Me I’m Worthless by Allison Rumfitt at the same time, which name drops Carter and The Bloody Chamber, so that was a weird coincidence. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Cannibalism, Animal death, Blood, and Body horror

katie0528's review against another edition

dark mysterious medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? N/A
• Strong character development? N/A
• Loveable characters? N/A
• Diverse cast of characters? N/A
• Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A

4.5

This is a collection of classic fairy tale retellings, from Beauty and the Beast, to Bluebeard, to Snow White, and Red Riding Hood. The retellings are a blend of classic and modern retellings, taking a darker edge and exploring the sexual undertones of many classic tales.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Sexual content, Blood, Body horror, and Death

Minor: Animal death, Confinement, and Adult/minor relationship

soniajoy98's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Body horror, Gore, Sexual content, Violence, and Blood

Moderate: Murder, Sexual violence, Confinement, Domestic abuse, Cursing, Racism, Racial slurs, Ableism, and Adult/minor relationship

Minor: Excrement, Sexual harassment, Suicidal thoughts, Toxic relationship, Infidelity, Gun violence, and Rape

mericat's review against another edition

dark mysterious sad tense fast-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Pedophilia, Misogyny, Child death, Confinement, Gaslighting, Gore, Body horror, Death, Blood, Rape, Sexual content, Sexual violence, and Adult/minor relationship

jovianjournals's review against another edition

slow-paced

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

0.25

This book is probably the worst book I've read in my life.

Claiming to create a retelling of fairy tales, Angela Carter writes stories showing how women can take back some of the power in those fairy tales. Her ideas are great; the execution is horrifying and downright disappointing.

While she may have been going for a "Satire" approach, these short stories go too far and do not seem feminist to me in the least bit. Describing a girl's first period as being started because "a wolf... must have nibbled her cunt while she was sleeping" serves absolutely no purpose, and you cannot claim that the story is about "women taking their agency back" when half the stories are about teenagers or pre-pubescent teenagers willingly having sex with adult men/monsters. 

Some reviews have claimed that these books are supposed to be read as the men's sexual desires actually representing the women's inner desires; thus, when the characters give in to the male's advances, they are really giving into their own. Through her stories featuring bestiality, pedophilia, incest, Carter basically asks the question "what if the claim that girls are really asking for it when they are raped were true?" 

Furthermore, from a writing perspective I found her stories to be boring and not well written. Many praise her elaborate writing style, but it seems as though she is trying to hide the lack of substance in her stories with flowery writing. Some of the descriptions felt pulled straight out of a fanfiction. The plots of each short story are also severely lacking; even the stories which otherwise do better trying to present her messages fail due to disuse of characters and plot points. 

This book should be marketed as erotica. If it were marketed as such, I'd say it's fine. But this is not a masterful genre-defying book of feminist prose; it's a collection of erotic rewrites of fairy tales. Some have a bit more meaning, but for the most part, it's just erotica. If you enjoy that, I'd encourage reading it! She certainly goes in depth describing the sex, and it probably composes at least a third of the book. But if you're looking for what the book markets itself as, I'd look elsewhere - though I do always encourage people to read things for themselves to decide.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Emotional abuse, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Blood, Domestic abuse, Sexual harassment, Grief, Confinement, Death, Pedophilia, Sexual content, Adult/minor relationship, and Gaslighting

Moderate: Violence, Toxic relationship, and Suicidal thoughts

breamfish1138's review against another edition

dark mysterious reflective fast-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? It's complicated

3.75

Carter has an amazing writing style that blends reality and dreams better than most authors I've ever read. Sure, the stories can get repetitive but when the descriptions are that vivid I really didn't care at all. Also, the feminist subtext? Yes please. Bear in mind the fairytales are, umm, of the German bedtime story varieties so expect a lot of macabre, weird, gory, horrific stuff. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Emotional abuse, Death, Blood, Animal death, Misogyny, Body horror, Gore, Confinement, Stalking, and Murder

Moderate: Cursing and Sexual assault

It's super gory and messed up and weird. Would not recommend use as actual bedtime stories. And it doesn't TECHNICALLY count as cannibalism but a lot of people do get eaten.