Reviews and Comments

OriginalBarbas

OriginalBarbas@ramblingreaders.org

Joined 1 year, 11 months ago

He/Him. A wandering Spanish physicist who reads too much of everything that is not related to my work. I enjoy reading books (mostly #SciFi, #fantasy or #mystery), comics (mainly #EuropeanBD but I just devour anything that looks interesting to me) and from time to time #TTRPG manuals, #nonfiction (#physics and #anarchism) and whatever else I find that might be cool. Glad to join Bookwyrm and I'm loooking forward to see what everyone is reading!

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reviewed Cibola Burn by James S.A. Corey (The Expanse 4)

James S.A. Corey: Cibola Burn (EBook, 2014, Orbit Books) 4 stars

The gates have opened the way to thousands of habitable planets, and the land rush …

A great display of hard sci fi

5 stars

As with every book from The Expanse that I have read before this one, the authors do a great job of imagining a possible future for humanity and to take those premises to places that feel extremely plausible.

Also, murder mystery on a galactic scale, which is always nice. Looking forward to the next one!

Andrew Cartmel: Written in dead wax (2016) 4 stars

"He is a record collector -- a connoisseur of vinyl, hunting out rare and elusive …

An unexpected finding

5 stars

For a book whose main plot is the finding of rare vinyls in small shops in London, the book itself it's one of these unearthed gems.

Without spoiling much of the book, it starts with the protagonist (the Vinyl Detective) looking for a rare jazz album for a mysterious client. Then the book continues with this plot, but adding classical elements from the mystery genre ("accidental" deaths with the worst timings possible, mysterious strangers following the protagonists, layers of plot threads to unravel) mixed with a commentary on the history of Jazz and the exploitation of its musicians.

I love Jazz, I also have a terrible musical ear and I am a cheapskate with my audio equipment, so a lot of the technicalities in the text I wasn't able to fully understand. But it is fine, as most of the characters also didn't get them.

Like any good mystery novel, …

More Usagi, and that's great

5 stars

As always, all the Usagi Yojimbo stories are great and by reading the earlier ones, such as this one, you can see how Stan Sakai's craft improved over each the previous ones.

This is the first multi issue story arc, and the first to involve all the previously introduced characters. It follows a familiar structure (admitted by Stan Sakai himself on the notes), but it does so in a way that it is incredibly difficult to notice.

The fact that it is colourised only adds to the piece, without substracting anything.

Samantha Shannon: Priory of the Orange Tree (2020, Bloomsbury Publishing Plc) 4 stars

A world divided. A queendom without an heir. An ancient enemy awakens.

The House of …

A great book and (hopefully) more to come

5 stars

This is the first book from Samantha Shannon I have read, and I have really liked it. The overall story is very good, the characters are very interesting and the worldbuilding has many layers (as it should).

I like how each chapter starts by having a geographical distinction, which helps situate the different characters in the map. It also cements the differences between each region and the lore.

Another important topic of the book is the rupture with other fantasy novels in the importance of the women in the plot (which is good) and the prominence of queer characters in it (which is also good).

I am looking forward to more works from the same author and I imagine that I will be reading them as soon as I know that they are released.