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Reviews tagging 'Bullying'

So finster die Nacht by John Ajvide Lindqvist, Paul Berf

93 reviews

owlribbon's review against another edition

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dark 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

4.25

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cousinrachel's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad tense slow-paced
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

The movie (Swedish original) had a much more "spare" plot with fewer characters and tangents--better for it, I think. My goodness, this book was all over the place--I think I read it about ten years ago but IIRC, 1/2 of the plot was about Oskar and Eli, the rest being side characters doing god knows what.

Also, the violence was gratuitous beyond belief, to the point of being ludicrous. My lord. Did we need that much information about the
alcoholic pedophile
?
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slushhhhy's review against another edition

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

5.0

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saturnal's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

Chilling. I really appreciated that this focuses more on the vampire aspect than the romance aspect, the latter of which doesn't really feel tacked on or anything. Some of the grizzlier details left me feeling a little nauseated and i don't know how to word that as a positive so you'll have to trust me on that one 
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thefigtree's review against another edition

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dark mysterious sad 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

vampire horror but in a real-world way; it is
pedophilia and genital mutilation and bullying and abuse rather than angsty teenagers or adventure or itwv-silly-fun.
it's very dark and i think you have to aware of that going in to enjoy it at all. but it's so well written, it's atmospheric and sensory and the constant switches in pov work so well with the pacing.

the novel is uncomfortable to read and at many parts made me physically curl up and cringe but it's good and it's clever and i liked it. it definitely could have gone on for another 100/150 pages and been an appropriate length too (with a more fleshed out ending!!!!). 

it's definitely going to throw you off if you go in for the vampires (or because it often gets advertised just as a 'lgbtq vampire book'), you have to be prepared for the content and how it's handled, but if you are it goes to show that when vampires are done well it really does work.
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kaiyakaiyo's review against another edition

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dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

0.5

If you’re into “vampire myth but make it extremely, graphically pedophilic” then this book is for you! I, however, abhorred everything about this. 

Scene after scene of child molestation and frankly unnecessary harm on women and children… the few women characters were there only to be extremely bad mothers or sexual objects… though to be fair, ALL of the characters were extremely unrealistic fucked up caricatures. 

This book was far too long (because of all the pedophilic content shoved in) and had a lot of strange subplots that all came together eventually with no real satisfaction. The only actually interesting thing about this book was how it dealt with Eli’s gender; disgusting castration scene aside, this book was surprisingly faithful to the inherent genderqueer-ness that has existed in vampire myth since the beginning. I’m sure someone could write or has written really interesting papers on gender in this. That’s the only nice thing I can say though, otherwise this was a moderately interesting vampire myth idea squandered on gratuitous trauma porn. What is it with Swedes and pedophilia??? 

Nasty book, the author should be jailed
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ireneac's review against another edition

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

4.0

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riley2005's review against another edition

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

4.75

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ryoflame's review against another edition

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

5.0

I had never been very impressed by either version of the film that they made based on this, but based on 'the book is always better' I picked it up anyway and holy shit the films barely scratch the surface. A wide cast of characters, an interesting yet vague backstory for Eli, a look into the minds of many extremely fucked up characters... this one isn't for the faint hearted and it has some extremely heavy themes, proceed with caution. But a truly excellent and horrific tale. 
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astre_errant's review against another edition

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dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No

3.5

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