Reviews

22 May 2025

Realm of the Elderlings: The Data Science Edition

I previously wrote a spoiler-free overview, a series by series reading experience report, and a deep dive into the book series Realm of the Elderlings by Robin Hobb. This post here will conclude my blog posts about Realm of the Elderlings with some data, both about the books themselves, as well as my personal reading statistics and ratings. First, let’s look at the books and the series as a whole. I have read the physical paperback books published by Harper Voyager UK, so all my stats are based on those editions. There are 16 books in this series, which can […]

19 May 2025

Realm of the Elderlings: A deep dive

After I gave a a spoiler free overview of the Realm of the Elderlings, as well as a very long series by series review and reading experience report, I want to analyze some aspects of this series as a whole (but mostly regarding the books with Fitz as the main character). In this post, I’ll dive deep into the characters and themes of the series. SPOILER WARNING: This entire post contains heavy spoilers for the Realm of the Elderlings book series! Proceed to read at your own peril! Born a conflict FitzChivalry Farseer is the protagonist of 9 of the […]

15 May 2025

Realm of the Elderlings: Series by series reviews and reading experience

How was it to read The Realm of the Elderlings? After my spoiler-free overview in the previous post, this post will contain more in-depth reviews which were largely written as StoryGraph reviews as I was reading each book, and then later assembled here into a coherent post. Some books or sub-series were definitely a lot easier to read than others. Each was a somewhat different experience, but to summarize it: once I really got started with this series, I was hooked and it was easy to go through these tomes that average roughly 683 pages. The Farseer Trilogy I picked […]

12 May 2025

Realm of the Elderlings: A spoiler free overview

Never in my life before have I undergone such a monumental task as reading a 16 book series. I’ve read a book series here and there, mostly though with only 3 books or in rare cases, up to 7 or 9. This achievement is a first for me, but hopefully not the last. The series I’m writing about is The Realm of the Elderlings by Robin Hobb. Her novels were recommended to me by friends and BookTubers alike, so after having had them on my to-read list for a year, and the first three books waiting on my actual to-read-bookshelf […]

29 April 2025

What 3 Australian TV shows taught me about life

Tired of American TV shows, or just America in general? Why not go down under for a bit? There are certainly a lot of hidden gems down there, and it’s most definitely not only Bluey that’s the greatest thing Australian TV has produced in the past 10 or so years! I’ve tried a lot of Australian movies and TV shows over the years, and while there were a lot that I couldn’t get into at all, either because they just bored me or they were way too cringe (Cleverman, Underbelly, Glitch, Deadloch, Colin from Accounts, Fisk), there are also a […]

13 March 2025

Horror story reviews, by someone who doesn’t like horror

I’m not a big fan of horror movies or TV shows, because I’m not a big fan of jump scares. I’m generally way more into fantasy, sci-fi and dystopian fiction than any other genre – except perhaps some of Anne Rice’s works/adaptations. But every once in a while, a horror movie or TV show comes along that I do actually enjoy. Hannibal was such a case. In more recent years, I’ve discovered the works of author/director Mike Flanagan, and after having watched 3 of his shows, I think what he does is absolutely brilliant. His works are not just horror […]

24 February 2025

Seeing the present through the past: The Newsreader

If you’ve followed the news today, you’re probably just as depressed as me by the German election results, with actual fascists having gotten 20% of the votes, and the majority of Germans still having voted for the less fascist yet conservative party CDU. Don’t expect any progress in this country. And that’s just German politics, let’s not even mention the sheer insanity that is going on in other countries. Well, needless to say, I’m not a fan of reading the news anymore. I gave up on that years ago, because it’s just absolutely horrible for my mental health. Attention-grabbing social […]

19 February 2025

Original Sin & New Blood: Dexter revisited

Back when Dexter first released, I was a big fan. I even wrote a review about the first season, which was phenomenal and probably one of the best seasons of television I’ve seen, thanks to its plot twists. That was 18 years ago! I continued to watch new seasons of Dexter as they aired, but as we probably all know, the show sadly experienced a massive decline in quality over the years. For me personally, S1 still remains the best and cannot be topped in the severity of its mind-blowing plot twists. Season 2-3 were also generally good, and while […]

17 February 2025

Romantasy is not for me

I jumped on the Fourth Wing and Romantasy bandwagon in 2023, when I was researching cool books to read. Back then bookstores were plastered with these novels, so I honestly wanted to find out what the hype was about?! Fantasy is one of my most favorite genres and I always enjoy a good fantasy book. Romance? Well, I can’t say I’ve ever read any proper romance novels, aside maybe from some fanfiction 🤔 But why not? Well, my first Romantasy novel was the ubiquitous Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros. I jumped on the hype train with this book, mainly because […]