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Nnedi Okorafor: Binti: The Complete Trilogy (2019, DAW) 4 stars

Collected for the first time in an omnibus edition, the Hugo- and Nebula-award-winning Binti trilogy, …

Review of 'Binti: The Complete Trilogy' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

Such a cool premise - a teenaged girl is the first of her people from Earth to attend an intergalactic university. She basically sneaks away from home and on the way, things start to happen.

And the plot is definitely something else - lots of things happen, many of them beyond my prior imagination, alien species with peculiar properties show up, and Binti goes on a very special journey of her own. Not bad.

Unfortunately, I enjoyed reading these three novellas and one short story much less than I had hoped. Too many conflicts, even MAJOR ones, are resolved in just a few lines or paragraphs. Feuds end after a brief chat. Shocking news are believed and accepted without any proof. Plotlines finish with "deus ex machina"-style plot device- solutions pop up that were never around before to magically save the day. Bits of mythology and spirituality are info-dumped over …

Sylvain Neuvel: Waking Gods: Themis Files Book 2 (2017, MICHAEL JOSEPH) 4 stars

"26 years ago: A girl in South Dakota falls through the earth, then wakes up …

Review of 'Waking Gods: Themis Files Book 2' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Just like the first part of this trilogy, this book is very entertaining because of its fast-moving plot, a quick read because of its short chapters, and a tad deeper than some other sci-fi books (but just a tad). Just what I needed as a literary palate cleanser after two heavy books I had read back to back (sorry Mr Neuvel), captivating and exciting, and with a terrible cliffhanger that made me get the third part of the trilogy as soon as I could.

Philippe de Pierpont: Paysage après la bataille (French language, 2016) 4 stars

Review of 'Paysage après la bataille' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Probably fewer than 1000 words in this graphic novel, artwork that looks simple at first, a plot that is difficult to decipher in the beginning, but then hit me in the face and didn't let me put down this hefty book (>420 pages!). A random find, and one I will definitely recommend to anyone who asks for "very good" or "very moving" graphic novels!

Khaled Hosseini, Khaled Hosseini: The Kite Runner (2007, Bloomsbury) 4 stars

The unforgettable, heartbreaking story of the unlikely friendship between a wealthy boy and the son …

Review of 'The Kite Runner' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Who doesn't love a book that takes you on a journey into a world you knew very little about, this time around the Afghanistan of the narrator's childhood, and then again adulthood? If your answer is "me, I don't care about that", then this book is not for you. I, however, enjoyed this praised novel a lot, with its physical and psychological violence, its mood set expertly by the author, and how it all comes together in a plot spanning a few decades and at least two continents.

Were some things a little too on the nose for my taste? Certainly. The sheer violence of it all may also not to be everyone's liking. I guess it all serves the purpose of the novel, to teach us a lesson in being human. (Cheesy? Yeah, actually, just like a few parts of this book.)

Overall a moving experience, recommended to everyone …

Willy Vandersteen: La harpe perdue (French language, 1980, Erasme) 2 stars

Review of 'La harpe perdue' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

My first "Bob et Bobette" comic -- it was probably not the start of a new literary love affair. The plot seemed all over the place - witches and knights and time travel, oblivious bystanders and strangely uninteresting (and uninterested) protagonists... Not sure what this was about. I guess you have to have loved the series as a kid to appreciate it today. Or maybe this was just a bad example to start reading.

Philip K. Dick: Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? (Paperback, 2010, Gollancz) 4 stars

It was January 2021, and Rick Deckard had a license to kill. Somewhere among the …

Review of 'Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Pew-pew laser action paired with musings about what it means to be human, what a combination of topics we find in this short novel. The plot is interesting enough with a varied pacing - some chapters flow much more slowly than others. The different narrators make things more interesting.

Somehow this book didn't quite catch me the way I had expected it to. It may have been my mood, wrong timing, but it joint found everything in this story "ok". This should not hold you back - I enjoyed reading it, just less than I had anticipated.

Stuart Turton: Die sieben Tode der Evelyn Hardcastle (Hardcover, 2019, Tropen) 4 stars

Review of 'Die sieben Tode der Evelyn Hardcastle' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Any book that makes me want to rush home and continue reading (rather than do pretty much anything else) is at least a four-star book for me. If it also keeps the tension, makes me wonder what on eart is going on, and lets me second-guess every character's identity and/or intentions, it's very possible that it gets an additional star. This true page-turner with its witty premise and beautiful setting checked almost all of my boxes, a delight to read, and recommended to everyone who likes a classic whodunit, but wants more than that from time to time.

Damian Duffy, John Jennings, Octavia E. Butler: Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the sower (2020, Abrams ComicArts) 4 stars

In 2025, with the world descending into madness and anarchy, one woman begins a fateful …

Review of "Octavia E. Butler's Parable of the sower" on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

An eery book to read: Written decades ago, it shows us a dystopian future starting in July 2024 where climate change and political turmoil have left the US, and much of the world, with civilization crumbling, similar yet different from what we know today.

Pushing politics-induced anxiety aside, I expected an exciting novel with social commentary. What I got was... a novel with social commentary.

The first half seemed like a near-endless introduction to me - of the protagonist, her family, and her community. This part was definitely too long for my taste - a lot of characters are introduced, but never brought up again. The bits of information about the outside world seem detached and irrelevant to a certain extent.

The protagonist has a supernatural ability that only comes up after a while, and is described inconsistently: Sometimes her heightened sense of empathy for others' emotions and pain overwhelms …

Merlin Sheldrake: Verwobenes Leben (Paperback, German language, 2021, Ullstein Verlag) 4 stars

"Eines jener seltenen Bücher, die uns verzaubern und den Blick auf unsere Welt verändern." Helen …

Review of 'Verwobenes Leben' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

Fungi are so fascinating - their biological properties are beyond weird ("different"), they can be found virtually anywhere, and have influenced humans and their civilizations in so many ways.
The author and I share this fascination, but unfortunately this book wasn't a hit for me.

Ironically, I didn't find enough information about fungi in it. There is a lot of stuff being described, but I found myself much less interested in the million stories around them -- and even less in the clearly hallucinogen-induced madness of some other passages.

What bugged me: Many of the properties of fungi that the author describes are incredible - but not unique. Other (micro-) organisms are able to do the same or very similar things, but are not mentioned. I think this is a misrepresentation of facts, and should have no place in a science non-fiction book like this one.

Admittedly, as a microbiologist, …

Review of 'Everything That Rises Must Converge' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

What a writer Flannery O'Connor was - this collection of short stories shows it very clearly. The characters seem to come to life after a few pages, the settings are uncomfortably real, the plots somewhere between conceivable and realistic.

After a few stories, however, they started to feel like "more of the same" to me: The settings are just too similar to tell them apart meaningfully, the characters - albeit awfully real - seem to come from the same stock, the plots often seem to meander towards some gruesome death. I felt a certain hopelessness in the plots, and couldn't really connect to any of the characters well enough to carry me through the stories.

My edition contained a 60-page foreword by a friend of the author's (who edited and published her work after her death). While it was dreadfully long and very literary minded, it did help me put …

reviewed Die Wut, die bleibt by Mareike Fallwickl (Rowohlt Hundert Augen)

Mareike Fallwickl: Die Wut, die bleibt (German language, 2022, Rowohlt Verlag) 4 stars

Review of 'Die Wut, die bleibt' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Wütend hinterlässt mich dieses Buch teilweise - vor allem die erste Hälfte ist ein echter Pageturner, der mir die Trauer der Hinterbliebenen und die Wut über die oft schrecklichen Umstände von Frauen in unserer Gesellschaft sehr deutlich gemacht hat. Ich fühlte mich geradezu hingesogen in die negativen Gefühle - ein Beweis für die bemerkenswerten Fähigkeiten der Autorin.

Je weiter ich im Buch kam und je mehr ich der Handlung gefolgt bin, desto unbehaglicher wurde es mir. Das lag an der verurteilenswürdigen Misogynie der Charaktere und der Gesellschaft -- allerdings auch am Buch selbst.
Die negativen Gefühle zu Helenes Tod (von dem wir schon im Klappentext lesen) waren mir einfach zu viel. Dutzende Seiten las ich über Trauer und Wut und Hofflungslosigkeit und klägliche Versuche, das Leben weiterzuführen ohne die eigene Mutter, Freundin, Ehefrau -- das war schwer zu ertragen. Weniger Raum für diesen Aspekt wäre aus meiner Sicht besser gewesen, …

Franck Pavloff: Matin brun (French language, 2010, Cheyne éditeur) 4 stars

Brown Morning is a French fable, written by Franck Pavloff in 1998, published by a …

Review of 'Matin brun' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Too realistic to feel entirely fictional, slightly too allegorical to feel like a description of real events, this very short story left me feeling very uneasy, and has thus reached its goal. A clear warning, may it be read by those who need it.