Reviews tagging 'Injury/Injury detail'

Cantique pour les étoiles by Simon Jimenez

8 reviews

sashdb's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional reflective medium-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

Devastating, encompassing, life-affirming. A well from which joy and grief both flow. I'm in pieces.

Thoughtfully descriptive of the intention, energy, candor, and presence of minor and major characters alike, giving depth generously as a reminder that even brief encounters hold significance without plumbing outlandishly (a la Pratchett).
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sarah984's review against another edition

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

4.0

I liked this book a lot, but I do wish that I had read it before The Spear Cuts Through Water since that book refined a lot of the interesting touches in this one and took them farther, with more confidence. I liked the characters and the overall plot, but the big time skips made a lot of it feel sort of distant and I found the third section a bit silly.
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chris_reads's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional reflective medium-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? It's complicated

4.0

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metanav's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional sad tense slow-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

4.5

patience is necessary—i nearly dnf this book but i persevered and it paid off. i didn’t start to enjoy it until the story leaves the first planet, but the imagery and characters were beautiful and the sci-fi world building felt familiar but also fresh. pacing is slow at times but it gives you time to really get to know the characters and it definitely made me emotional near the end

just keep in mind content warnings, i added what i could remember but it probably isn’t all exhaustive. 
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ostenreal's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-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? It's complicated

5.0

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srm's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective 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? It's complicated

4.0

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vsnuffles's review against another edition

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

4.5

"It felt like a funeral." - William Shatner describing his voyage to space in the Guardian. I read the article today and couldn't help being reminded of this book.

This was an excellent and incredibly depressing read. I recommend reading it with caution due to just how very sad it is - it's definitely worth it but you'll want to be ready for some self-care afterwards. Do not expect a happy ending unless you like being very sad.


More in-depth:
The world-building is excellent: it's such a well thought-out future setting and the details of it are so elegantly incorporated it never feels like too much or too little. The writing was so good it was almost poetic at times, it was quite beautiful and poignant. The characters are grey and interesting. You get to see how they impact each other and the book has an excellent way of zooming out through the first few chapters, expanding the world before it settles on a more continuous story. It is a very bleak story and world, quite dystopian in a way that would feel cyberpunk if it were more focused on the digital world. Some mild spoilers for the tone of the ending/story overall:
I felt as though what hope there was for the characters was relentlessly crushed after being built up. To be fair, I think that this tone is set up well in the first chapter. But it is common for stories to pick up after tragedy and I would argue this one does not really pick up by the end in tone and the dystopian society is only more dystopian by the end.


If I had to say the story has a theme woven throughout I would have to say it is about cruelty and exploitation of humans through colonialization and capitalism. There is plenty more going on in the very well written characters, how they are shaped by their traumas in good and bad ways and being able to see how they grow based on how they react to their circumstances.
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korttipakka's review against another edition

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

3.75

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