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Dragonfired by J. Zachary Pike, Book Review

~ Veselin ~ Leave a comment

Books have a way of aging in your mind. I gave the first two Orconomics books 4 stars and enjoyed them moderately at the time. But the story and its characters lingered long after I finished reading, quietly growing on me. Eventually, I realized I was ready for book three.

I went in knowing it would be slow and long—and it was. Think of a late Terry Pratchett novel, stretched out, with a touch of romance. It was dark, funny, and packed with content. It was 800+ pages and took me more than a week to complete.

This time, our heroes must deal with the evil King Johan, all while tying up a wide web of loose ends. Gorm leads the charge – a dwarf with a berserker-like power (though it’s never called that). His band include an elf ranger, a fire mage, a necromancer/fire-mage who happens to be the son of a Liche, and some other, more mystical beings. Each of them gets a moment to shine.

I think it deserves 5*/5

PS. I misspelled the book name as Dragonfried, which I think would be at least as appropriate as Dragonfired. I read the Bulgarian edition.

Alpine Rockcress

~ Veselin ~ 5 Comments

This wild flower can be purchased as a garden plant in Sofia. We found it at around 2000 meters altitude. It’s called something like stone-loving Arabis in Bulgarian. There were lots of rocks around it.

Cold

~ Veselin ~ 5 Comments

We had a successful third hike this spring. We took a very adventurous path this time, one between the peaks Golyam and Malak Rezen. I suspect most people in Sofia do not know that the peaks they see every day are called like that, and are not Cherni Vrah. Also, even those who know, probably don’t know the most scenic route to the top is between them. Going to the top usually happens from the left or the right of both peaks, and the middle looks like a giant impenetrable rock. There are, however, paths in the middle. We took one.

The path was steep but fine, with the exception of one very large snow patch, which we had to circle around through the shrubs. We were completely alone until the Golyam Rezen peak, only saw one person who was maybe an hour ahead of us and chose to crawl on the snow patch. We saw his lonely steps on the snow.

Once we reached the open area, the wind was mind-blowing and cold, perhaps around 0°C. We were prepared with windproof jackets, gloves, hats, and even one face mask for the little one, which he used as a scarf.

Fallen Hero

~ Veselin ~ 3 Comments

This toy endured lots of play until it leaked sand due to partial decapitation.

Thankfully, I was able to quickly replace it with a new version of it before the little owner of this toy discovered that the big non-owner found a way to break it.