Category: Books

Night of the Dragon by Julie Kagawa, Book Review

~ Veselin ~ 10 Comments

Yumeko is a half-human half-fox teenage girl, gifted with the magic of illusion and trickery. She has the mission to bring a powerful scroll to safety. The scroll grants its owner a single wish, granted by the almighty dragon god, who can only be summoned once every 1,000 years. It was used to build or ruin empires, to give immortality, and to trap immortal creatures. However, over the last 2 books, the scroll was taken by an evil and long undead blood mage who wants to open the gates of hell. Yumeko and her friends will try to get it back.

This book is a LOTR-style romantasy where the entire magical system is inspired by Japanese folklore. No elves, or even kobolds. I didn’t tag the previous two books as romantasy because the love story was relatively insignificant and not out of the ordinary for fantasy books. However, this last part is all about characters doing things for each-other out of love and care. Yumeko is so nice that she can melt the hearts of demons.

5/5. Night of the Dragon is slightly less appealing to readers who aren’t into romantasy because some moments are cringe. I think the romance is tolerable.

The print quality is great and the series got its own shelf for now.

The real question for me is if I should keep reading Julie Kagawa. I’m not sure yet. It was a nice detour from the epic fantasy I usually read but another detour might be too much.

Le Cri (Sarah Geringën #1)

~ Veselin ~ 2 Comments

I somehow managed to read a book that’s only available in 6-7 languages, neither of which is English. The title says “The Scream”, and it got creatively translated to “Patient 488” because it starts with the death of a person who has the number 488 on their forehead. The crime scene looks like suicide but officer Sarah Geringën is not going to be fooled and will follow the lead wherever it goes. Unfortunately, some creep shows up who starts extorting her to add suspense to the book. That creep serves no other purpose and annoyed me for hundreds of pages.

The book comes with a subtle sci-fi element. It doesn’t target sci-fi fans, more conspiracy thriller fans, but nevertheless a sci-fi enthusiast could appreciate the absurd scientific theories. It’s unrealistic in the way the Three Body Problem is, which is not a bad book to be compared with.

All in all, I got tricked by the publisher’s “inspired by real events” on the cover and bought a book I shouldn’t have. I was upset that the detective abandoned her craft and started acting Commando very quickly, and I don’t think this is what should’ve happened.

3.5/5 – Not bad, may consider reading the continuation.

2024 In Books

~ Veselin ~ 4 Comments

2024 was the first year in which I managed to go over 100 books. This was a major achievement for me and a result of several circumstances:

  • I reengaged with the gamebook community, which is full of voracious readers (and writers)
  • I discovered the Thraxas and Stephanie Plum series that are super interesting and each book is short, single-thread, bubblegum-ish
  • A few of my friends were inspired to read a lot this year so I was not alone on this journey
  • I ignored several of the latest books by Brandon Sanderson, Joe Abercrombie, Zachary Pike, J.K. Rowling, Liu Cixin just because they were too long. Maybe I go back to these works in 2025. Or 2035. Not soon. Ignoring enormous books by otherwise great authors seems to be a good strategy. TL;DR.

Here are the best finds from reading 111 books and 36217 pages:

Best Series

  • Thraxas by Martin Scott – a Pratchett-style comic fantasy series, which I completed entirely in 2024. There are some hints of exploitation in the first 2-3 books.

Top 5 books

  1. We Are Legion by Dennis E. Taylor – Bob starts exploring the galaxy and the opportunities are endless
  2. Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
  3. Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames
  4. Conquer Yourself by Silvia Azdreeva
  5. All Systems Red by Martha Wells

Best Gamebook

Trends

  • Kobolds are everywhere
  • AI is human and should be treated as a life form (yet to find a book say otherwise)
  • Pretty covers sell well

2025

I’m not sure if I’ll try to keep the pace for 2025 yet. I’ll set an official goal to read 52 books, or 1/week for the year.

December in Books

~ Veselin ~ 5 Comments

I read 7 books this month, mostly from the Black Friday harvest 🙂

I feel like I had some excellent hits with 5 great books and only one truly bad, which I read anyway because it was Lee Child.

Best books

  1. We Are Legion by Dennis E. Taylor – an easy to read Martian style book. Loved it and it will be in the top 5 for the year.
  2. Infinity Gate by M. R. Carey – a Star Trek-like story with a million different species but no Kobolds. One of the main characters is a teenage rabbit with exceptionally long ears.
  3. Annie Bot by Sierra Greer – imagines what’s next with intelligent robots.

Worst books:

  1. In Too Deep by Lee Child – it’s time for Jack Reacher to retire. He’s turning into Steven Seagal.