Tag: book-review

The Alley of Books

~ Veselin ~ 3 Comments

I’ve been a big fan of book fairs ever since I was a child. I hunted for comics and Karl May books, then gamebooks, then sci-fi, and so on. I usually visit them multiple times so that I don’t miss anything. Couldn’t do the multiple-visit tour this year due to my work trip where I damaged my computer and the consequences of that. At least I visited it once.

The Alley of Books’24 is happening right now on Vitosha Boulevard and near NDK.

Here’s my record-breaking harvest:

  • Bion by Satanasov is a comic book. Got the first part. I’ve heard good things about it
  • 2 Gamebooks by Lubomir Nikolov, frequently featured here
  • Dodger by Terry Pratchett. Pratchett influenced me as a youth and is one of my favorite writers. I missed 3-4 of his books, and here we are – filling a void in my Pratchettist degree
  • Travis Baldree’s second book – a fantasy bookstore?
  • Brandon Sanderson’s The Sunlit Man from Cosmere
  • Orconomics vol 2. This time I’ll be prepared for a bloody fantasy rather than a satire.

There were more books I wanted to buy but sitting on the shelves is not perfect. I challenge myself to read 5 out of these 7 by the end of October. I’m the most excited about Bion and Dodger.

June in Books

~ Veselin ~ 4 Comments

Best books for the month

Thraxas Under Siege. It’s 5/5 and overall great. “Thraxas and the Ice Dragon” and “Thraxas and the Oracle” are not far behind. Turai is about to fall and Thraxas will have to help Lisutaris any way he can, which varies between failing miserably and saving the day. Makri is not far as well.

Notorious Nineteen by Janet Evanovich and The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik were also good reads and 5/5s. The Golden Enclaves concluded the Scholomanse series and explained the Maw-Mouths. Notorious Nineteen was a nice bubblegum. Stephanie Plum doesn’t age.

Worst books for the month

  • Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians – a parody where the author talks to the reader from the author’s position. It wasn’t fun in the way “The Carpet People” was. The only reason to complete it was my respect for Brandon Sanderson and the hope that Book 2 would be better. Brandon Sanderson is known to have some flops. I gave it a fair 3/5 because it was readable.
  • Iron Flame – the sequel to The Fourth Wing had 760 pages of people talking and moving around in a world that makes no sense but closely resembles other fantasy worlds that do. I gave it 4/5 because it was still interesting, but objectively, it was worse than Alcatraz. Brandon Sanderson built a unique steampunk magical system that could sustain excellent sequels, which isn’t the case with Iron Flame.

Honorable Mentions

I read one standalone gamebook and one collection of 3 gamebooks. The local community keeps printing these, and the artwork inside is above and beyond. Some adults are having fun and publishing stuff because they can. None of the writing is Brandon Sanderson’s quality but it carries the spirit of the 80s and 90s.

Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros

~ Veselin ~ Leave a comment

I finished this monumental work by Rebecca Yarros and have mixed feelings. I considered not writing a review but at the same time the book is is divisive and engaging. So here are my thoughts. Let’s start with the good. It’s readable and I read it!

The magic system is not good and it doesn’t get better in this part of the series. The nagging feeling that the system was borrowed by Naomi Novik remained, even though it’s likely unfair.

Naomi Novik develops a Mana/Malia magic system in the Scholomance series, which I recently reviewed and appreciated highly. The Mana is a magical energy that’s earned by work and owned by life. The Malia is mana stolen from others, often by draining their life. Rebecca Yaros uses the same system but doesn’t use the names Mana and Malia. Good energy comes through Dragons and bad energy – from Earth directly, no Dragons. This becomes a critical problem in book 2 as the main conflict in the book is between the magicians who use dragons and those who don’t. But why are the dragon-users good? They don’t strike to be particularly kind or merciful. What generates the Dragon mana? Is it dead sheep?

Naomi Novik develops a dragon rider university in the series Temreire and chases the history of dragons, how they fly, how they fight, how they eat, what they eat, numbers, shepherds, fields, cows, and so on. Rebecca Yarros drops “I’ll eat a flock of sheep” in book 1, and “he moved a flock of sheep to the valley” in book 2. What we get instead is the description of how baby dragons sleep for months and grow while sleeping. I wish those baby dragons at least ate some food like baby birds.

I still found it interesting despite these serious flaws. The book is engaging in the way Matthew Reilly writes. Yeah, there are dragons, which make no sense. They are connected to humans for no reason, generate unlimited energy with no source, and the love story exists despite the constant lies and intolerable deception by the main male protagonist. But it is still a page-turner. I might even consider reading the third part, although it won’t be high on the list.

4*/5

Thraxas and the Dance of Death

~ Veselin ~ 1 Comment

It’s not common to read a book that’s not on Goodreads but this particular edition is unknown to it. It’s tiny and hard to hold. You have the feeling it will break if you press it too hard. It’s a fragile jewel, worth the read. The first page-turner for me in over a month.

Thraxas and a bunch of powerful wizards are after a green jewel that makes people kill each other and slip away. The story is good and has no villains, which is quite impressive given the large number of dead people.

Makri is accused of theft and wants to resolve the accusations her way by rolling heads. She’s surprisingly civil for a gladiator champion with ork blood this time.

Both cases somehow manage to connect. I couldn’t predict most of the stuff that happened. The only guarantee is that it’s a good read.

5/5

Is it okay to criticize books?

~ Veselin ~ 10 Comments

I awarded 3* to Brandon Sanderson’s Warbreaker with a few harsh sentences and a couple of weeks later, it was announced he’ll visit Bulgaria. He did and I met him. Felt so embarrassed. But why was that?

When it comes to criticism, Dale Carnegie has been my ultimate guide. He wrote:

Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain – and most fools do. But it takes character and self control to be understanding and forgiving.

Dale Carnegie

I just completed book 11 of Stephanie Plum’s series. I liked it but let’s assume I didn’t. I didn’t like that Stephanie ate so many donuts and faced no consequences. Most of us would burn in hell if we ate half of that. So, we have a disagreement on the donuts problem. What do I do? May I go to Goodreads for a soul-crushing review, and award 1*?

Dale Carnegie says criticism does not work, it’s always bad, and he’s also attributed to a saying that constructive criticism doesn’t work either. Are there any exceptions? Dale Carnegie himself criticizes the people who criticize by saying they are fools, so at least one exception must exist.

The only somewhat working system I’ve seen so far is to criticize actions and not the people who do the actions. When I yell at my kids, I yell things like “Fighting with each other is bad” and I don’t yell “You are bad”. When reasoning is provided, it should be specific and with no generalizations. “This particular thing is bad because of this specific reason”. “Don’t punch your brother, he’ll feel bad and cry and I’ll take your phone” as opposed to “Stop you, idiot”, even though the second feels so much more rewarding.

So, in the context of Stephanie Plum , I said this: “I didn’t like that Stephanie ate so many donuts and faced no consequences. Most of us would burn in hell if we ate half of that.” – this criticizes Stephanie and generalizes because she doesn’t always eat vast amounts of donuts, only when her hair is messed up or her car explodes. Most people probably don’t have sugar issues, and I can’t speak for most people anyway – I can only speak for myself. I should’ve said something like “Reading about Stephanie eating 7 pieces of cake in one go made me feel nauseous. Cakes and donuts in such amounts can make her ill. I wish she had another way of dealing with the burnt and exploding cars.”