Category: Books

The Sum of All Men, Runelords #1 by David Farlang

~ Veselin ~ 1 Comment

“The Sum of All Men” is an epic fantasy set in a world where the strong and powerful can extort and extract skills from ordinary humans. The poor give up their intelligence, strength, or beauty in exchange for care and protection for themselves and their families. Once they make this sacrifice, they become disabled and are kept in storage until their rune lord dies.

This is the most brutal magic system I’ve read. Most of the gifts come at a great cost, causing severe suffering on the donors. It’s not a typical RPG-style system where taking a thousand strength gifts makes someone superhuman. The strongest gift is metabolism, which grants extraordinary speed but each gift taken reduces the lifetime of the lord.

The main antagonist of the story has taken tens of thousands of gifts from people and has superhuman strength, speed, and healing. His voice can make the strongest people submit to his will. He wants to conquer the world and become the sum of all men, a person with the talent of millions. The main protagonist is also a superhuman of a slightly different kind – one that can get away with anything. He understand that taking gifts is evil. Who is going to win?

The top review on Goodreads is by Mark Lawrence, the author of Prince of Thorns. If there’s a fantasy book more cruel than Runelords, it’s Prince of Thorns. Mark Lawrence gave it a 4, and I would agree.

4*/5

You Are Deadpool

~ Veselin ~ 5 Comments

An adventure gamebook in the shape of a comic book. Best of both worlds 🙂 It has 5 sub-stories, each with 100-ish episodes.

September starts strong with a 5/5 book that I would not dare to review. It’s Deadpool. I hate superheroes but Deadpool hates them too, so I think it’s fine.

The August Pile of Books

~ Veselin ~ Leave a comment

I read 9 books in August. Pretty happy with that achievement, although two of these were very short.

Best books

  • The Dry by Jane Harper, and the series about Aaron Falk. It’s a quiet mystery — cozy and depressing — that doesn’t fit the usual mold. I enjoy books with a lyrical style, where the story is secondary to the writing itself. Jonathan Moore writes like that.
  • The Goblins Return by Lubomir Nikolov. It’s a fun and refreshing gamebook that touched my childhood memories. The book’s content aged well, though the pages were yellow and brittle.

Worst books

  • Six of Crows – a popular young adult novel where teenagers act like elderly gang members. There’s a 17-year-old leader with a cane who is too mature to have a girlfriend. Nobody has acne or other problems appropriate for their age. The storytelling was nice and smooth but the details felt dubious. I think the good execution compensates for the bad details and gave it 4/5.
  • Orconomics – some people walk around in a fantasy world and wait for the main character to awaken as The Red Beard. I’m actually looking forward to the continuation. The Red Beard was kind of cool and the absurd world can be a feature.

The Goblins Return

~ Veselin ~ 1 Comment

Found this gem on Facebook. Fresh humor on yellow pages that barely hold. I enjoyed it very much. Not sure if it can endure another read without starting to fall apart. But the book was cool, well written, short, and brought me good memories.

I finished the monumental Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo yesterday and my original plan was to blog about it today but then I read the above book to fix the my tastebuds. The Goblins deserve a post, and the Six of Crows can be left to less critical book bloggers.

Exiles by Jane Harper – Book Review

~ Veselin ~ Leave a comment

Jane Harper’s trilogy about Aaron Falk concludes with Exiles – the opposite of an epic thriller.

3 people died over the last years in a small but flourishing Australian town. It’s all written off as accidents but a body is missing and Aaron Falk will start digging. Most of the book it’s not even clear he’s investigating. He doesn’t do much other than enjoy the hospitality of his friends, and whenever he notices something, the writer doesn’t tell us what. However, he’ll find clues and solve all of the cases. It’s all hidden in front of our eyes.

The big issue? This town is way too good. Can Aaron go back to the big city as a federal agent after seeing how all these people live?

I give it 4*/5 and despite the sub-optimal score, I enjoyed it and would read a continuation if one is ever written.

The shelf naturally formed with other low-stress books like Travis Baldree’s Legends and Lattes, two Brandon Sandersons and 3 gamebooks. I have some reading ahead of me.