Tag: Hobb

Bookish Deadly Sins

On By reenchantmentoftheworldIn books, Ola, Piotrek, tag, Two-shot51 Comments

We do not do tags often, and when we do, it’s usually so late everybody’s forgotten about them 😉 but we did like this one, one explored by several friends of Re-E, and now we’re ready to post 🙂 Seven deadly sins, but for readers!

GREED
What is the most expensive book you own? Which is the least expensive?

 

Ola: Huh, the book that springs to mind most quickly is my Folio Society’s edition of The Once and Future King, because I paid for the pristine, mint condition book personally 😉 But I do have a few signed books, or rare first editions, that may be worth more. Never really considered it though, and besides, I left them all back in Poland, for now – with a promise I made to myself, that I will bring them home one day, wherever it will ultimately be.

Least expensive? Old used books bought on Amazon Marketplace. I’m not counting the gifts, because those that I received as a gift were definitely expensive, to the giver 🙂

Piotrek: Well…I paid £75 for a Folio Society Edition of Dune, but some of the XIX-century volumes I own might be actually more expensive, I’d have to have them evaluated. They are family heirlooms, so I’m not going to sell them anyway.

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Least expensive… I have dozens of volumes bought from Amazon Marketplace at £0.01 + postage and packing, great value for money, although recently the postage got more expensive, and less reliant – I blame notoriously unreliable Polish Post Office.

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Ed McDonald, Crowfall (2019)

On By Ola GIn books, Ola, reviews46 Comments

crowfall-uk

Author: Ed McDonald

Title: Crowfall

Format: Paperback

Pages: 454

Crowfall is the final installment in Ed McDonald’s Raven’s Mark trilogy – though, to be fair, the ending does seem to imply a return to the broken world of Deep Kings, Nameless, and Misery. Where Blackwing was a powerful, riveting debut, and Ravencry even upped the ante, delivering one of the best middle books I’ve read, Crowfall concludes the story of Ryhalt Galharrow in a deeply satisfying way. That is not to say it is without its flaws, and you can count on me for detailing them all 😀

But first things first. Six years after the events of Ravencry we find Galharrow changed in more ways than one. Living alone out in the Misery, ruthlessly self-sufficient and accompanied by ghosts, Ryhalt is a man driven by a single purpose: to free the love of his life, Ezabeth Tanza, from the light she had been imprisoned in for the last decade – at all costs. At least that’s what he thinks – his friends and the patchwork family he’d created over the years seem to have a bit different conceptions of Galharrow’s impeding fate. And it is impeding indeed, for as Galharrow changed, the world around him was transformed even more. From the time of an event known as Crowfall, when thousands of carrion birds fell down the sky with burned out eyes, Dortmark became an even less pleasant place to live. Plagued by magical nastiness in various forms – from bloodthirsty, carnivorous geese to black rains bringing madness, to disappearance of color orange, and to Saplers – little mandrake-like creatures sapping the life-force from their hosts and slowly acquiring their hosts’ characteristics.

mandrake

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Nighteyes

On By Ola GIn art, Ola7 Comments

Time for the monthly art exhibition 😉 I keep wondering when I’ll get back to drawing/painting and my best guess is when all my older fantasy-themed works are on the blog already. This time it’s Nighteyes from Robin Hobb’s Fitz and the Fool stories – my favorite wolfish character of all times (including werewolves).

Nighteyes
Nighteyes © A. Gruszczyk

Robin Hobb, Assassin’s Fate (2017)

On By Ola GIn books, Ola, reviews8 Comments

Assassins Fate

Assassin’s Fate is the final installment in the acclaimed Fitz and Fool Trilogy, and the grand finale for all three trilogies about the two protagonists: The Farseer Trilogy, The Tawny Man Trilogy and, indeed, The Fitz and Fool Trilogy. But more than that, it is quite possibly the crowning achievement and the ultimate conclusion to all Hobb’s writing pertaining to the world of Elderling Realms: Six, sorry, Seven Duchies, Rain Wilds, Kelsingra and beyond. Let’s stop here for a moment and count those: four trilogies – because there’s also Liveship Trilogy – and one tetralogy about Rainwilds, newly hatched dragons and their keepers. Altogether sixteen books, each easily over 500 pages long. A solid piece of one’s life spent on reading – let alone writing! It’s not surprising, then, that Fitz and Fool and Nighteyes had become important persons in my life 😉 and that I was heavily invested in reading the end of their story.

And, before I say anything else, I must say that it is a worthy conclusion. As always, it’s heart-breaking, riveting, harrowing and rewarding, enthralling, cathartic, horrible and beautiful in equal measures, tragic and poetic and sad – and yet, still immensely satisfying and incredibly powerful.

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Robin Hobb, Fool’s Quest (2015)

On By Ola GIn books, Ola, reviews4 Comments

fools-quest-robin-hobb

It’s just a few months to the release of the final installment in Fitz and the Fool trilogy. And so it’s high time to review the middle book, Fool’s Quest. I must admit I’ve been putting off the moment of reading this book for a while now – and it was a planned and conscious decision. I didn’t want to wait too long for the grand finale, because I expected Fool’s Quest to be the perfect second installment, the Empire Strikes Back of Realm of Elderlings: harrowing, dark, full of sadness and anger and desperation… In short – the perfect foundation for the grand, all-encompassing conclusion to the long and extremely rich series of Realm of Elderlings – not only the three trilogies of Fitz and Fool, but also the Liveship trilogy and the Rainwild Chronicles.

And I was not disappointed.

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