Reviews tagging 'Death'

Menewood by Nicola Griffith

5 reviews

anachronistique's review against another edition

Nicola Griffith has done it again. This book is much more compressed in some ways than Hild, covering the space of only a few years, but SO much happens in it. I love her prose, how Hild notices everything from the smallest insect's segmented leg to the grand sweep of man's ambition, and how the rich beauty and terrible horrors of Hild's world come alive. It also gets bleak as hell, with some remarkable writing about grief and trauma, though the characters don't necessarily have the words for it. But there's hope, and there's movement, and there's the willingness to fight for a better future. I think this and the first book have moved to my "must have personal copies" tier. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Pregnancy, Death, Body horror, and War

Infant death, explicit descriptions of decaying bodies

siria's review

adventurous emotional sad tense

3.5

Ten years after Hild, we get the long-awaited sequel Menewood. We rejoin Hild, now in her late teens, and finding her homelands on the verge of war and having to figure out how to navigate that in a way that keeps her family (by blood and by choice) safe. This is a story of grief and community and power.

As with the first book, Nicola Griffith clearly relishes the epic sweep of the tale she's telling and loves the particularities of the land she's talking about—having read this book, I feel I'd have a reasonable chance of being able to navigate around Northumbria if you plonked me down there today, just based on Griffith's loving descriptions of it. The prose is also clearly crafted to echo medieval epic poetry, with the repetition of epithets and by-names and the use of alliteration.

That epic strength of the book is also its major weakness: it really is just too long, especially since I didn't feel that the narrative's ruminations on the book's themes weren't quite deep enough, the characters (and there are a lot of them) fleshed-out enough, to make it feel like a page count that ran into the several hundreds were earned.

It was also obvious from the get-go that in order for Hild to end up as the abbess Hilda of Whitby, neither husband nor baby were long for this world. I was fine with Cian dying because my stomach for reading about someone rhapsodying about the smell of the smell of her husband/half-brother when they fuck is, uh, low. But the circumstances of the birth/death of Hild's infant daughter were both really upsetting and just a bit too OTT for me to be able to roll with. If you're writing a book that puts such emphasis on realistic world-building that you go way into detail on how you butcher a horse and prep its hide to make parchment, you make it much more difficult for me to buy an extended scene in which a woman in active labour fights on horseback and on foot in a full-on battle.

I will probably continue on with the series, should Griffith publish a sequel, but I hope that she'll either get an editor more willing to tell her 'no' or that she learns how to stop over-writing.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Incest, War, Violence, Murder, and Child death

ninjamuse's review

challenging reflective slow-paced

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

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Grief, War, Pregnancy, and Child death

Moderate: Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Animal death, Death, and Alcohol

Minor: Torture, Slavery, Abortion, Fire/Fire injury, Vomit, Sexual content, and Rape

careinthelibrary's review against another edition

adventurous dark sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes

4.5

Finishing Menewood this morning, I'm reflecting on this month-long reading experience. I read Hild in August and started this one not long after. Hild was bright and shiny and sharp. This one is bloody and epic, all things I hoped for and expected after Hild.

But it's also a protracted and deep meditation on grief. That pain ebbed and flowed through this novel. I didn't expect this book to be so sad. Its effect surprised me, and each pang shivered through me. Pondering grief as deep as a lake.

The impact of war. Messy, bloody, heartbreaking, grim. Holding space in my heart and mind all month for that visceral tone. The permanent ache of family gone. The fear of losing everything. It's a big book on feeling small. And then rising up and becoming legendary.

So while it didn't captivate and enchant me like Hild did with its sparkling light of the world, it lay in my mind like a lead weight and made me reflect on the suffering in the world caused by cruelty. How some never come out from beneath that oppressive weight. Some do manage to overcome, but can they ever be the same?

Nicola Griffith is a talented wordsmith and a storyteller and this time, she confronted me with the darkest shadows of humanity.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Miscarriage, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Blood, Child death, Death, Grief, Incest, Murder, Pregnancy, War, and Violence

Moderate: Sexual violence, Sexual content, Classism, Sexual assault, Alcohol, Animal death, Medical content, and Rape

hanne_'s review against another edition

adventurous dark reflective sad 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? Yes

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Body horror, Misogyny, Grief, Miscarriage, Animal death, Child death, Murder, Child abuse, Death, Gore, Injury/Injury detail, Physical abuse, Pregnancy, Sexism, Violence, and War

Moderate: Abandonment, Classism, Religious bigotry, Torture, Bullying, Emotional abuse, Animal cruelty, Genocide, Mental illness, Suicidal thoughts, Chronic illness, Death of parent, Infidelity, Physical abuse, Rape, Body shaming, Homophobia, Vomit, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Ableism, Sexual violence, Misogyny, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual harassment, and Slavery

Minor: Body shaming, Infidelity, Cursing, Fatphobia, Homophobia, Infertility, Abortion, Animal cruelty, and Fire/Fire injury