Reviews with content warning for Violence - Water

Reviews tagging 'Violence'

Water by Holly Black

26 reviews

seralina's review against another edition

adventurous mysterious relaxing medium-paced

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

3.75

I really love the world building and Kaye, the main character. Everyone else within this book was questionable, like for example I feel like Kyes relationship with Roiben is weird. It feels as though there was no tension or chemistry between the two of them. They never really had any deep conversations, and their attraction to each other felt weak. Corny gave me the ick. I know the fae enchant the humans to make them more subservient and enthralled with the fae, but even before any of that, Corny had a disturbingly gross fascination and obsession with the fae. He gave me the ick in a way that a creepy old man leering at me would. And although I do quite like Kaye, her sense of intuition and her judge of character is literally the worst I have ever seen in my entire life. Like, not one of the people in the book other than Kaye herself is someone I would consider a decent human being that I would be willing to spend any amount of time with. Literally everyone is sketchy, over-all weird, or rude. And I mean EVERYONE. But I truly love this world and I love the cruel prince trilogy, which is why I picked this up. The political intrigue was also lacking, whereas in the cruel prince is was marvelously scrumptious. The reason I say the diversity of the characters is complicated is because well, a lot of the characters aren't human. For the character's that were set in the human world, I can't really remember if they were diverse because I read 60% of this book then stopped reading it for a few months and then picked it back up and finished it. So all the introductions of the human characters had already occurred and I could barely recall much about them.

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natashalg's review against another edition

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dark emotional medium-paced

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

4.0

While I loved the last half of the book, the beginning was kind of dull. I also felt like the ending was rushed and the characters were not fully explored.

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e_neu's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

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

4.25

Holly Black writes wonderful pieces and this is no different. This book dives into fantasy worlds, wonderful and interesting characters, and a plot that was great from the very first page. It and the following books can be read as a stand alone and if you read or would like to read the Cruel Prince, it gives a lot of input on some of the bellowed characters.

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sammiebauer's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional inspiring mysterious reflective tense fast-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? It's complicated

4.0

this is not the first time i've read this, but a few things now really stand out to me about this book: this is not holly black's first published work, but this story in particular seems to really exemplify her writing style in a big way. you'll see this formula established in this novel of a 17 to 18 year old weird quirky girl with some strange relationship to her personhood being introduced to a new sense of independence, or maybe with a history of being wildly independent, with a complex relationship to her mother, repeated in multiple other stories by holly black. it becomes redundant, yes, but the part of these books that shines the brightest for me is the clarity with which the author writes about fairy myth. she has such a firm grip on the tropes and trappings of european fairy mythology that even when i don't find myself fully engaged by her characters, i am still delighted by the fae folk and lands that feature in the story. the other part of this story that feels particularly good to me is the nostalgic edginess of the main character and the interesting way that poverty is addressed. the edginess is not going to be to everyone's taste, but it scratched an itch in my brain that rarely sees the light of day. holly black's understanding of poverty is also very realistic, and also satisfies me in a deep way.
the first time i read tithe, the part that stuck with me the most was the side character cornelius. he is also the first in a line of characters that i view as holly black classics, which is the gay side character who is always some kind of unfortunate and awkward young man who gets along very well with the quirky female main character. i love corny. he is one of the best of all time. he is also the reason why i ended up rereading tithe recently, because i remembered his storyline in the book with more clarity than any other part of the story. if you want to read about a fucked up gay character who has a great character arc, i highly recommend this story. hes responsible for the fourth star in my rating of this book.

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smartcookiesca's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious medium-paced

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

5.0

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bookishfoxes's review against another edition

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dark medium-paced

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

3.0

I have to say I'm very disappointed. I went into this thinking I would love it. There was no doubt about it, it felt like a fact. Roses are usually red, my cat is a lovable idiot, and I will like Holly Black's books. Sadly, this was not the case.

I could've known this was a possibility. While I absolutely adored the folk of the air series (minus the lost sister novella, yikes that one) and enjoyed the first book on the middle grade series Black has written with Cassandra Clare, I was also deeply disappointed with the Spiderwick Chronicles. But I just thought it would be a one time thing - 2 if you count the TFOTA novella.

As soon as I started this book, I disliked the main character. And, ok, she got a tiny bit better by the end. But honestly? I didn't care for anyone but Roiben. I kept on reading because I am not about to DNF a Holly Black book.

And, yeah, it took a long time for me to get into it, but eventually I did a bit. Because even though it felt rushed and downright sloppy, Black's writing is still pretty addictive. And as I said before, I did quite like Roiben. I think if it wasn't for him this would've been two stars.

At the end, I don't know how to feel about this. I wouldn't put it on any recommendations posts. But I don't hate it as much anymore as I did the first 100-ish pages.

As for the rest of the series? Who knows. Since I was so sure I'd love this, I had already bought the sequel. Maybe I'll give it a chance some day so my money was at least worth something. But maybe once I started reading other books, this will slip from my mind and I'll never find myself interested to dive into this series again.

I'm glad that this was released in, what, early 00s? Because I very much enjoying TFOTA and that shows that Holly Black's writing has improved a lot since then, meaning I won't be scared off from her recent books.

I'm hoping to read the TFOTA spin off series this year, or at least the first one, because now I've read 2 books by this author and both are rated badly.

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