Reviews tagging 'Rape'

Heavenly Tyrant by Xiran Jay Zhao

17 reviews

ender24's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • 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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calamitydane's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional inspiring tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes

5.0

It's not often that a sequel surpasses the original story, but Heavenly Tyrant does this with maniacal fury and whole-hearted compassion at the same time. This book broke me, built me anew, and broke me again. A beautiful story of revolution and the conflicts that come with it, this is much more than an enemies-to-lovers romance. This book has easy-to-understand explanations of communist theory and discusses feminist revolution as well. It discusses racism, feminism, classism, ableism, homophobia and even ageism. I don't know of the last time a book felt like it really changed me the way this did. Cannot recommend enough.
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bookworm513's review against another edition

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

4.75

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jacksons_books_and_music's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring 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

Last year, I said Iron Widow was one of the best books I ever read. I love the sequel even better!

The characters and the circumstances in which they have to survive are incredibly messy and imperfect. They have to make difficult decisions that are sometimes right, sometimes wrong, and sometimes it’s hard to say. I felt the characters were realistic and nuanced in an incredibly engaging way. I wish all my friends would read this series so we could all talk about it often!

The narration was great! I think it was very smart to cast two different narrators, even if one of them didn’t narrate often. 

Please keep in mind this book series is upper YA/New Adult, with content not meant for younger teens. In terms of content and trigger warnings, it would be easier to say what trigger and content warnings it doesn’t warrant. There is graphic violence and spicy content, falling short of explicit (depending on your definition).

I’m not sharing any further thoughts due to spoilers! I look forward to reading the third book in the series when it comes out!
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lim's review against another edition

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slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes

1.25

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creationwing's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional inspiring reflective sad fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I have never read a book all in one sitting like this.
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rubybeep's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful sad tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

i did feel like the book went in circles at the start. For about a hundred pages we just spoke about labourism and what it means and not much else would happen and id find myself going yes i get it. Such intresting plot and world building but we spent so long talking about private property? It also broke my heart that Yishi wasnt himself for most of the book and it did hurt that shimin was only rescued right at the
It was a great book, hard to follow the first as it is my fave but I think this was a spill follow up.
i look forward to the next installment
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dododenise's review against another edition

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

2.25

It pains me how much I did not enjoy this book. I wanted to like it so bad. Iron Widow is one of my favourite books. Yet, this book tested my patience. I did not have a lot of time to read but even then it took me way too long to get through it. While I was in the middle of reading it felt fine, yet I kept getting distracted anyway. This just got worse and worse as I went on. I started with good hopes, willing to give it a try after hearing about mixed reviews before. But my enjoyment slipped away the longer I read. In the end, it wasn’t enough to capture my interest. 

I would love to give this book a higher rating, yet I had way too many issues with it to justify that. I really really hope that this is a case of second book syndrome and that the next book will be better. 

I made some notes while reading so I will list them here, as they summarise my thoughts quite well:

  • There are basically no interesting characters with interesting character moments. I do not care for most of them. The few character moments we are given did very little for me. 

  • The politics are explained over and over like it’s being explained to a young teenager. There is no elegance in approaching politics as the main theme. The uninspired political discussion were no fun and just kept on going. 

  • There would’ve been more interesting parts to write about. Yet it repeats the same boring stuff over and over. 

  • Iron widow should’ve been longer, heavenly tyrant should’ve been shorter. 

  • It makes no sense that it is young adult book. The brutality, and how explicitly it is described, comes close to adult. The sex scenes in my opinion already go further than what should be in a young adult novel. Perhaps the author would feel more free to explore the complexities of the political themes when it was an adult book instead of this superficial inelegant mess. 

  • Not a fan of Qin Zheng. He just annoyed me and I did not care about him or the whole toxic relationship between him and Zetian. 

  • I don’t think I like how their toxic relationship is portrayed. I do not think young readers will catch on to how toxic and unhealthy it really is. I see a lot of potential for them romanticising it (it has happened so many times before…)

What I enjoyed: 
  • Wan’er and taiping

Shimin’s (second) death felt empty, lazy, and undeserved. It makes no sense to me, and had little emotional impact. And now he is again in this “maybe he’s dead maybe he’s alive who even knows” state that we were in at the end of book 1. It feels lazy and is so unsatisfying to me as a reader.

The medians make very little logical sense so far. The whole final showdown was just so odd. What was there literally no one but five people?? Perhaps this will all make more sense later but for now I find this a befuddling ending.

What I liked: 
Zetian calling the baby qin zheng and yizhi’s baby. Idk it’s my petty humour I guess but it made me smirk every time.

So yes, it’s fair to say I’m very disappointed. 
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kmart_ceo's review against another edition

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

4.5

I don’t think the sequel is as good as the first book. Maybe that’s just because there’s WAYYYY more going on and
there was no Shimin (for the most part)
. The plot twists had my jaw dropping, and I started having a hard time keeping track of who I am supposed to hate. 
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blackknight4449's review against another edition

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dark emotional inspiring 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? It's complicated

4.75

A modern retelling that combines mecha-anime and historical China in a thrilling manner. I did not put this down after I passed page 200. I have never identified more with the protagonist and the antagonist at the same time for WILDLY different reasons. I have too much to say and too little time to say it. Suffice to say that this book goes above and beyond other similar science fiction of its type. It should have won the Hugo Award.   
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