Perfection in a Beginner's Guide.
This is a warm and fuzzy starter book which goes over the history of runes, a little bit about the Nordic mythology and how the stories in the Havamal pertaining to the runes, the symbolism behind each rune individually, how to make your own rooms from scratch and which materials to use, as well as how to cast and read the stones. It is a very short book however expertly penned with bright, beautiful & vivid pictures on every page. I love this book and consider it a treasure in my library. A great book for any beginner.
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Utterly depressing...
The novel follows the stories of three women, Rachel, Megan and Anna, with Rachel being the main story. Her story consists of her steady decline into alcoholism and depression. Her failed marriage and cheating husband and inability to have a child are the contributing factors to her downward spiral. Anna is the woman Rachel's husband left her for. And Megan ends up being a missing persons case in which Rachel decides to become involved in. But when her ex-husband is suspected by Rachel to be the culprit of the missing Megan things start to get dicey. The book seems to be well written and put together with the three different stories from the three different women. Each one seems to have their own style even though the author is the same person. The plot twist at the end was very nicely done. I honestly cannot understand why this book was so hugely popular in the literary world. While the plot twist at the end was very well done the majority of the book itself is extremely depressing and even daunting to read. The character Rachel descends further and further into her alcoholism, blackouts and depression from her failed marriage and it's not really something that anyone would want to watch let alone read the details of. This book took me a very long time to read considering that a book of this size I could probably finish in a day. This book took me over a week to read which is unusual for me. I feel like this book is my literary Kryptonite. I really don't know what else to say about this book. Fast paced indeed!
In this coming of age, fantasy epic our protagonist is 16 year old Ailie who is slowly growing into the immense powers she will one day possess. But living in a Convent Academy and having the power to open the gates of hell really don't commingle so well. With the help of her werewolf best friend, Ailie vows to discover and reap Revenge for the murder of her would be mother. Will she be able to save this world? Or will she damn us all to hell? Our Fate is in the hands of a brave 16 year old girl. Beautifully written and constructed. The storyline is intriguing and keeps you on your toes all the way through to the end. The sentence structure and paragraph formation are perfect. You can tell when you're reading this novel that the author is well read. The only qualm I have is that the author seems to write a bit in the shadow of Stephen King in the sense that she tends to put way too much detail into each scene. So much detail becomes daunting for the reader and it becomes monotonous. Another very small factor that probably would play against the author's writing style is her word usage. While the words that she uses are very beautiful and elegant, some of them are simply not words that are used in the common tongue today. The casual layman reader would have trouble understanding some of her words. But of course those readers who are like me and read with a dictionary are good to go on that point. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I feel that the story was very inventive and the plot was very well thought out. The characters were very well developed. I don't want to give too much away but let's just say I'm anticipating the second book's release 😉 Interesting read to say the least...
"The Singularity. It is the era of the posthuman. Artificial intelligences have surpassed the limits of human intellect. Biotechnological beings have rendered people all but extinct. Molecular nanotechnology runs rampant, replicating and reprogramming at will. Contact with extraterrestrial life grows more imminent with each new day. Struggling to survive and thrive in this accelerated world are three generations of the Macx clan: Manfred, an entrepreneur dealing in intelligence amplification technology whose mind is divided between his physical environment and the Internet; his daughter, Amber, on the run from her domineering mother, seeking her fortune in the outer system as an indentured astronaut; and Sirhan, Amber's son, who finds his destiny linked to the fate of all of humanity. For something is systemically dismantling the nine planets of the solar system. Something beyond human comprehension. Something that has no use for biological life in any form." The stories are written in an anthology form. They were obviously well-thought-out and well put together. The author has a very new age style of writing which is very eye catching and edgy. The scientific terms used in the writing style are almost at the point where the layman would not understand what's going on but not quite there. The stories flowed very well with each other and was easy to read from one story to the next. Ugh yet another dystopian novel that I didn't really care for. Perhaps the dystopian genre in general is just not for me. I don't know. All I know is that these novels seem very cliche and repetitive and most of them including this one seems like the author is almost trying too hard to be edgy and hip. I would definitely recommend to somebody who likes dystopian novels but this book just holds no interest for me personally. |
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