Review: Certain Dark Things

Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I read this book, because I was challenged to read a book by a Mexican author. This one certainly has a strong Mexican flavor, but other than that there is not much going for it. The story line is a trite young-adult story of love and sacrifice, that's boring (because "trite") and pathetic (because "young adult"). The world the story is set in is marginally interesting. It's yet another parallel world, where people discovered the existence of vampires and were forced to deal with it (though I must add, here it looks very realistic). What I really didn't like about the setting is the attempt to explain it "scientifically looking". The "science" doesn't make any sense, but apparently sounds respectable. I don't like those half-hearted attempts and think that authors should either stick to actual physical laws (like Peter Watts) or give up and stop making appearances.

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Review: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I was hoping for an illustrated edition ever since I started to read to my son! And it finally happened! And also my son is finally old enough to share this experience!
I very much liked the illustrations, even though at times they directly contradict both the book and the film, which is hard for a kid to understand. And I liked them even though they made the book so big and heavy, we had to read it on the floor :) In any case, this is a great edition to read out loud to kids that are not all that good in immersing themselves into words, but old enough to understand the story. It is also of course a good gift, even for people who don't need illustrations to imagine.

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Review: The Bear and the Nightingale

The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

With two false starts I forced myself to read beyond the third page. While I was anticipating the book, the author seemed like she did her homework and actually went to the trouble of understanding Russian history and folklore. But on the second page we see the "frost-demon, the winter-king Karachun." Maybe I'm missing something, but I never heard any pagan god referred to by that name. Karachun is the Winter Solstice! And no, bread and fermented cabbage were not the only things allowed/available during the fast.
There were lots of little and not so little mistakes like that in the book: pine-nuts in a forest somewhere two weeks from Moscow at the beginning of the 14th century; women wearing their long hair loose and uncovered; a maiden stripping in the forest and swimming in a lake naked; a funeral on the next day after death; or a place (still two weeks from Moscow), where the Sun doesn't set in summer, but apparently still rises in winter. And that thing with vampires? Who kills a vampire with a birch-tree stake? For several chapters I expected it to backfire, but it never did. The one really big thing that threw me off was an unmarried priest. He is one of the key characters and his wife, apparently, didn't fit into the plot. The problem is, in Orthodox church, a person cannot, under any circumstances, become a priest until he's married.
Having all that said, after I got through my first astonishment at the author's interpretation of folklore stories, I really liked this book. It is a well written, thrilling, and absorbing story. At some points it was like reading the Lord of the Flies set is a fairy tale. At others, it was really chilling and reminding me that the Winter is indeed older than Summer. Even with all the misconceptions, the author managed to recreate the darkness and wildness of the pagan gods, and that touches deeper than most books ever can.

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