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Reviews tagging 'Blood'

Tinerele Elite by Marie Lu

16 reviews

tinysierra's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional fast-paced
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Marie Lu’s writing and world building is easy to get into. I liked the excerpts from in-world media.

Read The Young Elites if… you like Vi and Jinx from the show Arcane.

Don’t read The Young Elites if… you do not enjoy anti-hero/morally gray protagonists, violence, and depictions of child abuse. 
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_nyctophob1a_'s review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional sad 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

My fave book trilogy
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queer_bookwyrm's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense fast-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

5.0

5 ⭐ CW: Violence, blood, child abuse (emotional and physical), self harm, discrimination, death, torture

The Young Elites by Marie Lu is book one in the Young Elites series. This came out in 2014 and honestly I'm sad I slept on it for so long! This was such an excellent villain story! It gave me X-Men vibes. 

We follow Adelina, a malfetto girl who is being abused by her father and only has her sister Violetta. One night when Adelina tries to runaway, she kills him with illusions she is able to conjure. She discovered that not only is she a malfetto, she is also a Young Elite, children who caught the fever when they were young and survived and gained powers. 

Adelina is arrested and sentenced to execution, but is rescued by the Dagger Society, group of Young Elites fighting against the king and queen's brutal discrimination of malfettos. She finds out she is aligned most strongly with fear and Fury, and passion and ambition. We see her fight to control her power and the pleasure she gets from fear and power.There is a constant battle inside of her, and that makes her a great villain. There is also some political stuff with the main antagonist, Teren, who is an Elite that hates himself and has pledged to rid the world of all malfettos. Dude needs some therapy. 

I loved this story. Adelina went from a meek, abused girl afraid all the time, to do gooder vigilante with some morally gray aspects, to complete villain. I want to learn more about the rest of the Daggers! I'm also really looking forward to the extended world-building that's coming up in the next book. I just really love the way Marie Lu writes her FMCs. Plus we get some queer rep in side characters and disability red in Adelina with her missing eye. 

I'm very excited to read The Rose Society! 
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sophieamreacher's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional 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

4.0

Dark and magical world. Interesting characters and plot twists. 
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vaniavela's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark 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

5.0


Adelina Amouterou is a malfetto, marked in more ways than one.

I loved the concept of The Young Elites and the different powers and abilities each Elite has. I can't believe Marie Lu always writes such amazing stories. I am so in love with her mind. 

One of my favorite aspects is that the "special" characters, the ones with powers, are not treated like heroes or royalty. They are cursed and cruelly killed. Even if you're just marked, with no sign of powers, you can end up dead in the worst possible way. 

These characters yearn for more. Whether it's love, power or revenge, they all need something. I love complex characters, they constantly make me hesitate between loving them or hating their existence. This time, Marie Lue has achieved both.

The diversity is this book has been well written, finding not only different skin colors, but sexualities and disabilities. 

The Young Elites has exceeded my expectations, giving the perfect start to a trilogy.

TW: ableism, abuse (during a sexual encounter, off page), blood, body horror, child abuse, confinement, death, death of a parent, domestic abuse, emotional abuse, (minor) gore, self harm, suicidal thoughts, torture, violence, disease, bigotry, imprisonment, physical abuse, ableism, eye removal due to illness, ableist slurs, child selling, mention of stoning, mention of fire, mention of putting people the stake, child abandonment, bigotry, mass death, mention of death of parent, stabbing, soldiers brutality, mobs, murder, cheating, manipulation, vomiting.

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karelidz's review against another edition

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adventurous dark medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Honestly better than I expected. I was expecting it to be very distopian and maybe "hunger games-esque", and I was pleasantly surprised when I discovered that it wasn't. It reminded me a bit of Six of Crows a bit at times, in the sense of being a "band of outcasts" and being in a type of secret society.
I liked the magic aspect of it and the tiny bit of romance that we got. I also LOVE that it's basically a villain's origin story, it's so tragic - it's so good. It makes me excited to see what happens in the next book.
⭐⭐⭐⭐/5 will be continuing the series
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l0velym00n's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious 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? Yes

4.75

This book is dark and by dark I mean like new moon-night dark with no stars in the sky an clouds all over. 
The book perfectly describes how darkness, isolation and loss can make you  a “different” person. Outsider pressure mixed into all if this only tightens the stranglehold. Even though this is a
villains
origin story it makes you deeply connect with the character and their darkness. All of this, if not this graphic, happens within ourselves when experiencing said loss, isolation and betrayal.
The book is 100 per cent worth the read and I thoroughly recommend you to pick it up if you already have it at home.

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lizzyc_16's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense 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? Yes

5.0

i finished this like 1 minute ago and...

what the frick.
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teri_b's review against another edition

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Too much of the wrong kind of abuse and incredibly tropey. This YA book has not aged well. Also, did not really like the narrators.
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oliviaferlazzo's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense fast-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? Yes

4.0

This book did not turn out like I expected. I kept thinking, “oh she’ll overcome that cause like, she’s the main character… oh wait… so no? But wait, yeah she will right?” Basically just like that throughout the whole book. 
But yeah, Marie Lu did an amazing job at expressing the fear of darkness and what you could do to people. This personally is the first book I’ve read like where you see that darkness firsthand— the actions and consequences and the sad humanness of it all. Really it reminded me of when I was a child and I didn’t know how to control my emotions or thoughts and everything was just roiling around. 
I had to close the book and weep at the turn of events and the way things ended up. 
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