Reviews

16 January 2025

6 Mindbending TV Shows

If you, like me, enjoy watching weird and mind-bending TV shows, often with a bit of a sci-fi twist, I have a few mini-reviews for you of shows that I have watched in the past couple of months or so, and that I greatly enjoyed: Station Eleven This is without a doubt one of the smartest, most brilliant TV shows I have watched in a long, long time. It’s been on my watchlist for probably over a year, and I really don’t know what took me so long. Perhaps the less-than-appealing posters? But trust me, this is 100% worth if […]

7 January 2025

From the Chronicles of Dawnmaster Aeneas, The Morninglord’s Chosen

SPOILER WARNING: This entire post contains heavy spoilers for Baldur’s Gate 3, and in particular The Dark Urge origin! Proceed to read at your own peril! Written in the Year of Three Ships Sailing, 1492 DR, the following are extracts from the Chronicles of Dawnmaster Aeneas, a Bhaalspawn who was at the center of the events of the Mindflayer invasion. Together with a group of similarly lost souls, he was instrumental in the defeat of the Elder Brain that threatened to destroy Baldur’s Gate and most of the Sword Coast. Having woken up without recollection of who he was, he […]

12 September 2024

Unwind

The Unwind Dystology was by far one of the weirdest things I’ve ever read. It’s a captivating, easy to read series aimed at young adults, but despite that, it’s nowhere near light reading. In this world, abortion is outlawed, but instead parents can ‘unwind’ their children between the ages of 13-18. This means that they ‘continue living’ in a ‘divided state’, as the euphemisms in this book say, but in reality they become glorified organ donors. It sounds horrible and you wonder how a society could ever have sanctioned this way of life. But the books expertly convince you that […]

30 June 2024

Mistborn

Everybody loves Brandon Sanderson, don’t they? Well, as my enthusiasm for reading had been rejuvenated in the past year, I have been spending a lot of time on literature websites and other channels to find the right books for me to read. After some letdowns of overhyped books, I established a firm list of “must reads” and / or “classics” that I felt would be my thing. Reading what you want is so important, and probably why jumping on the hype train is always a disappointment. Anyway, everybody seems to love Brandon Sanderson, and while Stormlight Archive is praised to […]

3 May 2024

Susanna Clarke: Piranesi and Jonathan Strange

Did you ever finish reading a book and then went straight back to the first page to read it again? This happened to me when I read Piranesi, a rather short novel by Susanna Clarke. Piranesi is a magical, mythical and mind-boggling mystery. Probably one of the most unique books I have ever read. I don’t really know what else to say about this book without spoiling it, except that it’s absolutely worth reading. It’s a short (~250 pages) and very captivating read with very brief chapters. It’s an introvert’s dream place. And will stick with you for a while. […]

2 April 2024

Lord of the Rings: 20 Years Wiser

Lord of the Rings is such a vast and epic topic, where to even begin? And what can I write about it that hasn’t been written about it yet? I’d just like to share my own personal experience with this work of art, as I do so often here in this blog. I first became fully aware of the Lord of the Rings around 2000 or 2001, as the marketing for the first movie was starting to gain momentum. I was but a naïve teenager back then and I had very little contact with these books aside from having seen […]

7 March 2024

Fargo: A retrospective of five stories

With the new season having been on the horizon, I decided to (re)watch almost all of Fargo this January. Yesterday my journey culminated in the phenomenal finale of Season 5, and all I can say is: this TV show is absolutely brilliant (mostly). But let’s backtrack a little. Fargo is an anthology show in which every season tells an entirely different story (set in the same universe as the 1996 movie). Thus, each season feels vastly different, and there are very notable fluctuations in quality. What unites them are not only certain characters and cameos, but also the overall vibe […]

23 February 2024

Propaganda and polyamory: Revisiting the Hunger Games

Prompted by having read the prequel novel The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, I recently decided to re-read the Hunger Games novels. First of all, I was curious about the prequel – how can a prequel about the villain of the series tie in? The prequel tells the (love) story of a teenage Coriolanus Snow, who later becomes president (dictator would be the more appropriate term) of Panem. What an odd book to read, because how can you make a novel about an entitled narcissist, who treats people like possessions, possibly compelling? While his rise to patriotism is sometimes interesting, […]

21 January 2024

History repeats itself, as seen in “Berlin: City of Light”

Last week on a whim, I bought the third book in the series of graphic novels Berlin by Jason Lutes. I read the first one in university 10 years ago, and bought the second one a couple of years later. I always had at the back of my mind that one day maybe I should read the third one, which back then wasn’t released. Acquiring the third book prompted me to re-read all of them, and I’m glad I did (but also a bit sad). This story as a whole gives us a glimpse into Berlin in the years 1928 […]