Reviews tagging 'Blood'

The Fervor by Alma Katsu

5 reviews

alicelalicon's review against another edition

dark tense slow-paced

• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual assault, Xenophobia, Miscarriage, Racism, Death, Blood, Police brutality, Pandemic/Epidemic, Racial slurs, Forced institutionalization, and Infidelity

kt2e56's review against another edition

adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

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

3.0

This started out great but sort of petered out as it went on. I think once the characters’ stories begin to intersect is where the trouble begins. Things start to become a bit too convenient and eventually lead to a really rushed ending that feels a bit like a deus ex machina. I also feel like as the story goes on, the Japanese folklore (aka the most interesting bits) sort of becomes less and less important and the book goes from being a creepy historical horror novel to a quasi-political thriller which just wasn’t what I was in the mood for. Don’t get me wrong, this was still entertaining but it just wasn’t as spooky as The Hunger so I feel a bit disappointed.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Xenophobia, Mental illness, Gore, Blood, Child death, Death, Hate crime, Misogyny, Murder, Racism, Racial slurs, and Sexual assault

Moderate: Pandemic/Epidemic, Police brutality, Forced institutionalization, Body horror, Antisemitism, Miscarriage, and War

sidneyreads_'s review

dark emotional mysterious tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated

4.0

felt like there was a bit of heavy handed copaganda toward the very end but otherwise a spooky and adventurous historical horror! 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Xenophobia, Blood, and Forced institutionalization

Moderate: Racial slurs, Violence, Murder, Abandonment, and Miscarriage

Minor: Alcoholism

kaiyakaiyo's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

4.0

This book made me sad and angry and disheartened, but I’m glad to have read it. “Farewell to Manzanar” is extent of my school-sponsored education on Japanese internment, so getting another (clearly altered for fiction) view into things definitely gave me a starting point for googling. I think it teases some supernatural elements but ultimately this is a book about internment, white supremacy, and the fact that the minority-eating machine that is American society makes no exceptions.   

Complicit white people by the thousands watched as their neighbors were dragged to internment camps. America set up the idea of the model citizen— do this, worship that, wear this, buy this— then pulled that rug out from under certain people’s feet as soon as jobs and resources were scarce. No matter how hard anyone at Minidoka tried to be model citizens, to not “resist”, etc. they were treated as sub-human by their guards, the scientists, and the rest of America. They felt they had to make themselves smaller to earn their rights back, to no avail, and it’s maddeningly sad. I doubt the term existed back then but it’s respectability politics hard at work, making POC turn the hate inflicted on them towards themselves instead of striking back at the actual source (white people).

The most galling & unfortunately accurate thing about this story is that

in the end Meiko is still looked at as the solution to what is clearly the American Governments giant fuck up.

POC, especially women, are often burdened with the responsibility to lead their own liberation and everyone else’s. White men, white women, and even POC men often wait for these women to take a stand before they find the courage to do so; an incredibly frustrating & nearly inevitable phenomena, then and now. 

Meiko & her daughter deserve $10 million cash and to be left the fuck alone. 

Pacing was a tad slow but picked up in the middle, and I liked the narrative style. THATS how you do an alternating timeline (im looking at you, Rin Chupeco)

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Xenophobia, Blood, Racial slurs, and Racism

ten_telegrams's review

dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Racial slurs, Racism, Violence, War, Xenophobia, Child death, Death, Grief, Blood, Bullying, Confinement, Gaslighting, Hate crime, and Medical content

Moderate: Infertility, Injury/Injury detail, Kidnapping, Miscarriage, Hate crime, Murder, and Pregnancy

Minor: Toxic relationship