Cats, good books, AI, and religious walking in the city of Sofia
I visited the boor fair for a second time but the odds were not in my favour. Started raining after the first minutes and didn’t manage to find anything substantial. Got home with a tiny new book, about 50 pages of absurd comedy that took me half an hour to complete. Details about it in a few days.
What impressed me the most was the new edition of the Stormlight Archive. Pretty and shiny. Artline Studios go above and beyond lately.
The prettiest cover from the first 6 books I purchased during the book fair is already on the “read” bookshelf. It’s the second book I read this year that doesn’t have a Goodreads entry. If any of my readers here is a Goodreads Librarian, please add it – I posted two requests on Goodreads for book additions.
From what I see, the gamebook writers in some countries that aren’t Bulgaria, seem to prefer publishing their works on Google Drive as a PDF and just let them be available to anyone for free. This one is published in English here.
The photo of the cover is from an angle on purpose – to see all the shiny letters. Then each page has decoration, and the illustrations are stunning. I’m not sure why and how that happened but this is a first edition and a translation at the same time.
The story is Gibson-style cyberpunk, with some references to Gibson and other gamebooks. The gameplay felt linear – you must go through most episodes for a successful read. I’d consider it easy. The writing is good, and the story is engaging.
4/5 for the book, 5+/5 for the editing/illustration/publishing. It’s a piece of art.
I love the International Book Fair in Sofia. I have a system where I visit the fair multiple times before buying books to get the full experience.
This time I violated the system. Here’s my harvest from Day 1.
Rebecca Yaros, 2x Brandon Sanderson, and 3x game books. 5 out of these 6 books are likely to be 5/5s.
And here’s a photo from the book fair with no books:
The book fair will be open for 10 days until June 2nd.
A wonderful novella by Martha Wells, beautifully published by Artline Studios. The book is tiny and is a quick read. It’s about a very human murder bot whose job is to protect a group of planetary explorers. I’ll probably wait for the translations because the hardcover is so pretty.
The suggestion for this book came from a fellow blogger and friend @dni.
5/5, and the best book I read this month so far.
I read a gamebook that’s not on Goodreads. It is, however, available to download in English for free here, most likely submitted by the author. From what I understand, the only paper edition is in Bulgarian.
It’s beautifully made in Bulgarian, with original illustrations by famous illustrators. Dimo and Ivanchev are credited.
The story is about Middle-Earth-type dwarves who are running away from an invading army. You’ll have to navigate through a brief maze of episodes and find a few keywords, one of which is particularly difficult. There’s no way to read that from the first time. It’s only 100 episodes but the way it’s made, the success sequence is specific and hard to find. I didn’t attempt to fight the battles and only tried to find the codes, which was difficult enough.
Overall, a good book, about 4/5. The artwork, translation, and editing of the Bulgarian edition is 5/5.
Veselin.blog 