Books review

Short review (02.2023): A personal favourite of mine. It was the first book I have read in 2023 and it set the standards really high. In fact, it was better than most books I have read in my past ^{(that’s quite an opening)}.
The first few chapters were somewhat easy-going, but soon after a main character Shadow meets a mysterious man in a suit Mr. Wednesday the story truly begins to shine all the way to the last chapter.
The constant mix of fantasy characters and unreal events with “our” reality is done exceptionally well to the point where you can feel truly engaged and invested with the world created by the author. I will definietly be trying out his other work.

Personal score: 8/10

Short review (08.2023): I always thought of myself as a sci-fi guy rather than a fantasy one, and tbh I only picked this book ’cause someone gave it to me a long time ago.
Anyway, I was hooked pretty much from the start, and all the way to the sudden end. This convinced me to be more open to fantasy genre, and that ugly/old covers don’t mean much ^{(I know – never judge a book by it’s cover)}.
“Hawkmistress!” is a part of a bigger Darkover saga, but every book can be read independently, as they are only set in the same world.
In this one we follow a story of a young noblewoman named Romilly with laran – ability to communicate with animals. But, because she was a woman her family didn’t want her to use it. Once Romilly learns her father organized a marriage for her, she runs away only with her hawk.
My basic description and the book’s backcover doesn’t do justice to just how entertaining this novel is. I will definietly look up other Darkover books.

Personal score: 7/10

Short review (08.2023): One of my favourite character from my childhood. I have read quite a few books about his stories and watched a lot of Horrid Henry’s cartoons in the mornings. Good memories, good book.

Personal score: 7/10

Short review (04.2023): To be honest I never read biographies, because they do not interest me. This book is an exception because it was given to me by my PE/self-defence teacher in middle school thanks to my good grades 😛
I tried reading it back then, but I gave up almost immediately.
My second attempt was this year and I did manage to read the whole book. It really was a different experience than what I am used to, but overall, I do not regret it.
As you can guess, Funakoshi desribes his life, his love to karate and how he lived according to it’s rules. He was a true master of this martial art.
Each chapter is short, condensed, interesting and (if I remeber correctly) in each of them the author describes his opinion about his actions in the given chapter.
It’s good, that I have finally read this biography, because it gave me some different view points of my own life, but in the last few chapters I had a strange “realization” that Funakoshi no longer lives. It’s just weird that this man had such an amazing passion to karate (that he even managed to spread it’s popularity to the rest of the world) and now he only lives in memories of people, and I am reading the story of life of a deceased man. But I guess it is a topic for another time.

Personal score: 5/10

Short review (07.2023): This biography is about a “Godfather of Gdansk’s mafia”. It was written by his last wife, and she describes how they met, their everyday life and the people that were surrounding “Nikos”. I did not meet the guy, nor any of his friends. I wasn’t even born when he was killed. I write this because for a story about the ”Godfather of Gdansk’s mafia”, you would expect some interesting, unexpected, even dramatic content. Unfortunately, all you get from this biography is mostly a shallow, everyday life of a rich couple. Edyta Skotarczak did not take participate (at least she didn’t wrote about this) in darker parts of ”Nikos” life, so I guess that is the reason why this book lacks interesting details that would make it a page-turner. For me, it was a chore to even get to the end. Don’t get me wrong – this book is written well, there aren’t any typos, we get some pictures of Nikos and Edyta but for me it is just boring.
I borrowed this book from a friend, and I’m gratefull I did not had to buy it myself. Tbh I don’t even like biographies, so thats another minus 😛

Personal score: 0/10

Short review (08.2023): For the record – I got this from a friend in middle school; I have not heard about Spawn before, nor after and I do not have more issues. The score is based only on this first issue. With that out of the way, here is my opinion:
Story is borring and the artstyle is ugly.

Personal score: 6.5/10

Short review (05.2023): This book is written for teenagers and as such, I am a little to old for it. For me, it lacks realistic and gruesome events that you would expect in sci-fi novel. But it is not the “Time Riders” fault (I’m just old).
The story introduces five main characters and a few chapters later, the first big time travelling problem begins – someone from a far future travels back in time to ~1940 in order to create IV Reich and (successfully) counqer the world. Now, our five Time Riders need to repair the timeline.

Personal score: 7.5/10

Short review (03.2023): I was never a big fan of pirates, so I kept my expectations rather low. And man, I was wrong. This book really delivered a great reading experience. Thanks to the great writing, I managed to sunk really fast into the great world the author has created. The characters and events are realistic, there aren’t any magical things and I guess that this has helped me have a blast with this novel.
We follow a journey of a young-adult boy that decides (together with his friends) to find a great treasure on a Treasure Island. He got a map to that island from a mysterious pirate that was living in his inn. There are ofcourse other pirates that want the riches, so our protagonist has to fight them off.
Overall, I was surprised that a 22 year old me can have a good time with a book, that (I think) was written for much younger people.