Nightgate Inn

A fantasy mystery detective novel! What a peculiar combination! But under the pen of Glen Cook it works marvelously well. This book had everything one might want or expect from a fantasy / detective story: hard-boiled & unique characters, tangled & mysterious plots, lots of action & grit, funny & witty dialogue, fantastical monsters & crazy magic... should I go on? If you like the things I just mentioned, read it; you won't be disappointed!

Another very short story from Black Library's Digital Mondays. This one is about an adventure Gotrek and Felix undertake under the employ of Aldrich who comes along with them. Aldrich wants them to locate his family old mansion in order to obtain an item of high personal value to him. What they find there though goes beyond what they expected.
The two main characters Gotrek and Felix are very entertaining and exciting but I think they fall a bit into some cliched moulds. While very fun to read about, I got the feeling that I've read about similar characters many times before. At the same time though, the length of the story (which clocks at under 20 pages) does not really allow for any character building or development which is an excuse for my first complaint but at the same time a slight minus point on its own.
As for action and fight-scenes, there is sure a lot in those few pages, definitely more than in many other much longer novels. The action is described really well and is always entertaining. It gives you an "on the edge of the seat" feeling and you don't really feel like skipping a passage. On the other hand though, I was thinking that maybe it would be better to have a bit more character building and little less action in such a short story. But maybe that's just typical of Warhammer and Black Library, I can't say that I have such an extensive experience with them yet.
All in all, this is short entertaining story which is fun to read but not anything really amazing or exceptional.

Wulfen is a very short story about Inquisitor Damietta's interrogation of a survivor from the daemon world of Voidsoul. It's less than 20 pages long and probably this is its major drawback. This is the first story or novel I've ever read by Wraight and I thought that his writing is very easy to read, straight-forward and intense. The characters take an average grade from me, they are interesting but nothing special or unique. The plot was captivating and thrilling at the beginning but it fell victim to the story's length at the end. I felt that it was wrapped up too fast. I suspect that this short story would appeal much more to fans of the Warhammer series that have read more books and have prior knowledge of the characters and events but it's not beyond recommendation for any SF reader.

Italo Calvino's Marcovaldo is a collection of 20 short stories, loosely connected with each other in chronological order but not really in causality. There's one story for each season of a year for a span of 5 years. Marcovaldo is a poor worker and a father, living and working in a random city probably somewhere in Italy. But as with all Calvino's works, this city is every city and it's our city as well, with streets and shops and houses that we know very well. His neighbours are our own neighbours and they can be found everywhere. And his problems just so happen to be our problems that maybe we once had or will probably have... And that is exactly the magic with Marcovaldo, as Calvino practices his almost supernatural ability to makes us think like him and feel like him and get into his head and see through his eyes. So while we know that it's probably a pretty stupid idea to go outside and sleep on a specific park bench we still do it, just like Marcovaldo. We know we can't actually see a plant grow in the rain... but we would try it, just like Marcovaldo. It is those contrasts between the realities of Marcovaldo's life and the drab consumer-society around him, that might perhaps manage to jar us just enough to start viewing life from a different perspective.
As with every other Calvino work that I've had the pleasure to experience, Marcovaldo is very easy to read, with language that flows smoothly and untroubled, beautiful descriptions drawing pictures of not so distant memories and natural dialogue among his characters that can either witty, tense or relaxed depending on the circumstances and always realistic. The stories at the earlier part of the book felt a bit lighter in subject while towards the end they acquired a slightly deeper and more serious tone but that could just as well be a subjective change of perception. Some of them will resonate incredibly well with some readers but it is just as easy to love all of them.
In all, this is a very easy to read book, worthy of its praise and definitely one that I can recommend to anybody.

Captive universe is a rather short novel about an Aztec young man whose restless and inquisitive spirit makes him dare to deny tradition and fears and start discovering the real world around him. What he discovers is something he could never have imagined or believed.... but we, readers, must have expected just by looking at the front cover! And that is my first major complaint of the novel! Maybe this would have had more of a kick if I didn't already know what's going on.. but we are being shown and told before we even start reading. Actually it's very hard to talk about this novel without spoilers but I will do my best.
Complaint no 2 is of course plot and character development, which is a big mess and totally absolutely unbelievable... in a bad way! At one point in the book, a certain person has hardly seen a tool made of metal or a wheel before and lo and behold! a few hours/days later he can fix a huge air-purification or air-conditioning system just by a quick glance in a few minutes or explain cosmological and geophysical differences based on centrifugal forces vs gravity or understand the nature of hospitable planets and solar systems... and you get my meaning! Other characters also display the same incontinuity of personality and mentality which is a rather poor feat if we take into account that the number of all the main and secondary characters is not even half a dozen.
Complaint no 3 is that Harry Harrison is not that great of a writer. He's not bad but he will not excite with his wordcraft either. As I always focus a lot more on dialogue than descriptions, I thought his dialogues were rather rough, forced and not very realistic.
Maybe my expectations were higher that they should have been but I felt disappointed by this book. I can't really recommend it.

3.5 stars
This is a strange kind of thelogical low-tech science fiction with elements of fantasy. The story was very interesting and the characters very unique and with depth. The plot had some very interesting twists but for some reason it didn't leave all that great aftertaste in my memory. Maybe that's why I delayed so much writing this review. If you're looking for some short and different science fiction by a skilled author, you probably won't go wrong with this one.

Another very good book and worthy sequel from Mark Lawrence. As always, in my review I won't describe any summary of the plot or something like it, it's up there and you can read it. I'll just word my thoughts which are mostly possitive. I think what Lawrence does with this book is take everything from the first book and turn it up a notch. That includes everything that is good but also some things that are not so good.
Negatives first and I'd say that for me there are 2 of them. One is that even though I feel that I'm a tough guy who won't shy away at the mention of blood and gore and despicable things and I like a big dose of grit in my reading everyday... still some scenes or their graphical descriptions in King Of Thorns felt a bit too much and made me wonder if Lawrence was maybe trying too hard for the shock factor. Not often and not too much, but those thoughts came upon me occasionally while reading this book.
The other minor problem I had were the temporal points of view during the story. There are actually 3 of them. The chapters are divided among 2 points of view but there's a third for Jorg's memories. I know that Lawrence used this technique to reveal things when appropriate and make the plot more interesting but at the same time it was confusing sometimes. And rather jarring as it was not perfected or smooth as say something GRR Martin or Gene Wolfe would have written (but ok... that's not even a fair comparison, I'm doing it for the example's sake).
There's a bunch of positives compared to the fist book though! For one, there's more magic! More unexplainable/unexplained things that add to the mystery of the world!!! The world-building is also expanded and it doesn't feel limited anymore but wide and huge and deep which is always good for me. The battle/fight scenes are definitely better written with the right amount of tension, detail and length to them.
For me a major plus of this sequel is the secondary character characterization! This is no more a Jorg-only book. During this book I came to love his Brothers, I learned about them, started to recognize them for what they are. And not only them, but most secondary characters are well defined and described which is surely the biggest improvement from the first book!
All in all, this is a worthy 4-star book. If you liked the 1st book, you will certainly love the 2nd.

This was a more interesting book than I expected!! When I got contacted by the author asking me if I wanted to review his book, I was a bit hesitant at first, thinking that this is not really my kind of book. Fortunately, I agreed and only after a few pages into it, all my doubts were dispelled. This book starts fast and just keeps going. Things just keep happening, there's absolutely no downtime between events and there are almost no filler-pages. The author had a very interesting story to tell and he did just that. Maybe that's why this is shorter than an average novel, having just under 200 pages but I see this a plus and not a minus.
The characters are all really well made and each has a distinct style and personality, no generic cookie-cutter cliches here. The dialogues are really refreshing, it's been a long time since I read a book with such realistic and life-like dialogue (based on the greek edition of the novel). The plot is really unique and believe me when I say that there's no easy way to summarize it in a few phrases, what with all the plot-twists and the insanely fast pace of things happening.
Not all is perfect though. The "love-relationship" parts didn't really connect with me, they felt a bit strange the way things escalated and evolved. Also, there was occassional info-dumps that really felt out of place and stuck out of the captivating and frenetic pace of the story. Finally, the ending felt rushed, as if the author run out of steam during the last few chapters. Or maybe he cut part of the story in order to make a sequel... I can't possibly know, but the last few chapters felt rushed and incomplete to me.
But my gripes certainly do not take away from the general enjoyment of this book. I read the greek version and parts of the english one, and while the translation is very good, I would definitely recommend the greek version to greek readers, mostly due to the beautifully natural dialogues that unfortunately loose their kick in the translation.
Well done mr Tsamis... now I wish my dogs spoke too... :)

It's one of the few times that this happens but I stopped reading just after the halfway point. Really... there was no point to it. Or rather, allow me to copy a quote from the book to say it better:

"There is a sense in which I am pretty sure this makes no sense. I don’t know where this is going. I don’t know how it ends."

Maybe I'm stupid or this book is too clever for me. But there is no plot.. and if there is one then it makes no sense or I'm too dense to get it. They author seems content to waste paragraphs and pages talking about nonsense and nothing in particular, meandering everywhere in his memories and thoughts but without any actual aim. I've read from many that this is a "meta"-kind of book ... well if it is then it's not entertaining at all.

Other negatives? Well for one the insanely long sentences, sometimes they take a whole paragraph or page!!! Also while the author's writing shows remarkable skill, it's drenched in misery and self-pitty, so much in fact that it became hard reading it. It was like listening to a friend complain and whine about everything in his life non-stop... but this one was no friend, so I didn't care!! Add to all the above, a huge dose of sci-fictional jargon and made up words and Yu's time-travelling concepts.... and you get yourself a huge soup of tiring, miserable, meandering and aimless nonsense that tries too much for its own good to be clever.
I can't really recommend this book.

This book is a hard one to review. Gaiman let his imagination go wild in many aspects but at the same time the underlying plot is rather weak. It has many possitive points but also a few letdowns as well. Gaiman's style is really good, with vivid descriptions and imagery. He knows when to take it slow and when to take a shortcut. Also, the two main antagonists are extremely entertaining and well-written! I dare say these two should definitely get some story of their own, maybe a prequel of sorts!! On the other hand though, the main character is rather indifferent and a bit boring and annoying at times. It is very ironic that in a novel full of contrast between a fantastical place and the real corresponding one, a character so attached to reality felt rather unrealistic to me. He felt out of place, which in a sense is pretty much what Gaiman wanted him to be -that's the whole point- but at the same time not exactly in a "right" way. Also, and this is a completely personal and subjective thing, I'm not really a London-fan, probably the opposite, and a book that relies so heavily on the whole typically english London atmosphere and setting does not fire me up to be honest. In retrospect, I think this book is probably better than I felt or make it sound to be as most of the gripes I had are on a very personal level. It's just a pitty that it didn't work quite so well for me.

As far as short stories go, this was incredibly beautiful. Scholes' writing is very good and flows well with the subject. The plot is amazing and contains some very emotional scenes and passages. I'm tempted to try and read Scholes' other works after reading this one! A Weeping Czar Beholds the Fallen Moon gets a totally recommended sign by me and since it is a free short story, there's nothing holding you back from downloading and reading this too!

This book is a trully mixed bag. A lot of negatives but also some important positives that bring the score to just about average. The negatives include probably the most annoying, frustrating and unlikable protagonist ever (I won't EVEN say "hero"), some occasional bad writing by Piers, very sketchy characterization where females almost always get the worse end of it and a bit of a meandering plot. On the possitives is ofcourse Piers' inexhaustible imagination and some really weird plot twists that I personally found entertaining. Also, if this is supposed to be a humorous book then it was a bit lost on me since there are no laugh-out-loud passages anywhere but more like pun-based high-brow humor that more than often misses its mark. However, as humor is an entirely subjective thing and based on personal taste, I can be flat wrong about how funny it might seem to somebody else. I can only recommend it for a casual afternoon quick read as it still it reads very fast but not for someone expecting a book to really get lost in or fully enjoy.
2.5/5

A very strong and deep graphical novel that deals with many serious subjects such as religion, spirituality, humanism, love, passions, pain, sacrifice and many more. It hasa very nonlinear plot and that might confuse some. I also thought it lost focus now and then but maybe that was just me not "getting it". The ending was really strong through. I recommend it to all fans of serious and adult graphical novels.

Maybe I will come back later for a longer review but for the moment I will just say that this was an extraordinary book and a well-deserved conclusion for the trilogy. The plot is really well-though and the revelations come at a staggering pace. Even though there are many points of view, the pace does not suffer at all. The ending is really amazing and I dare anybody to try to make a break from reading anywhere in the last 150-100 pages! In my opinion, this book is on par with the 1st book of the trilogy and definitely better than the 2nd one!

"The invisible cities" is a unique book, it's a strange book and sometimes it's a hard one to understand but it always is an eye-opening and inspiring book above all. And I say always because you do not need to reach the end to understand this; just open a page at random and read about that city with an open mind and an open eye for the world around you. You will be wiser.
The book contains descriptions of many many cities, maybe more than 50, all of them imaginative and fantastic. These are cities that don't exist anywhere, never existed and never will. But at the same time they are real and they are everywhere. I've read somewhere that the book's central point is the exploration of human imagination. Allow me to disagree! This book is about the human psyche, about sociology and social behaviour and evolution, about beliefs and traditions, about the details of everyday life and habits, about history and humanity, and about so much more that it would be overly optimistic to attempt to list here. Maybe it feels different to every reader but whatever it means to each, it surely is a work that is eye-opening, that enhances the perception and understanding of the world around us and of us humans in it.
I should also like to mention that I read the book simultaneously in greek and english as I was lucky enough to have both editions at hand. I'm very pleased to say that the greek edition was not only at par with the english one, it was probably better as the translator rendered the language and the descriptions so naturally that I could have sworn that Italo Calvino had lived in Greece for most of his life!
All in all, this is a higly recommended read for anyone, especially those with a restless and open mind.

This novel tells the stories of a cloister of monks somewhere in central North America after a nuclear holocaust during 3 different time periods. It starts with the fall of human technology, continues with the resurrection of it and ends in a very serious and sober note about it. All the while, it deals with religion and humanity from various perspectives. We only get a few characters developed in each story but I felt they were enough. The plot is very interesting but I thought that the pacing was rather slow and uneven throughout the book which is the novel's main negative point. The ending though was really good and powerful! All in all, I give this a 3.5 but I'd like to point out that it probably is a much better book than my rating shows so I'd suggest you give it a try.