Sravika's Books - Reviews and Other Trivia

 This is how you lose the time war  By Max Gladstone and Al Mohatar  Published Year: 2019 Page Count: 170 pages  Medium Used: Kindle PW  Genre : Science Fiction, Fantasy, Historical Fiction, Adventure, Multiverse, Time Travel, Shape Shifters, 2024-read.  Rating : 5/5 👏👏👏👏👏 Amazing. Brilliant work. Did a magic play with words. Weaved a tale that is mesmerizing while keeping it short!  Although I didn't understand it fully - despite reading it in two iterations - I loved the vivid imagery, cinematic prose and wonderful narration style. In my first attempt to read this book, I went fast in my perusal and understood very little. Then I quit that attempt and started new. I read the paragraphs real slow and made myself some mental notes as the plot unfurled. It is an amazing experience - walking in the shoes of the main characters, Blue and Red.  So, first of all, my question is - what are they? They are definitely not human beings. While I came to...

  Dream Snake by Vonda N. McIntyre Winner of Nebula and Hugo Awards Published Year: 1978 Page Count: 318 pages Medium Used: Kindle Paperwhite Genre: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Fantasy, 2024-read. Rating: 3.25/5 Plot and Story Overview Snake is a healer from a society of people who immerse themselves in training and genetic manipulation experiments to assist people with healing skills. Apparently, this story is taking place at a time in future after nuclear war has ravaged and destroyed many parts of Earth. She uses her three snakes - Mist, Sand and Grass (the DreamSnake) to heal and cure infections and other diseases for people scattered across the desert and mountainside. On one expedition, she accidentally loses her dreamsnake and that becomes a set back to her profession. She feels immense guilty to go back to her camp and ask for a new one because of the unavailability of these dreamsnakes with/to her people. Mist and Sand are genetically modified and when drugged, they produce ...

 The Serpent and the Wings of the Night  By Carissa Broadbent  Series : Crowns of Nyaxia #1  Published Year : 2022 Page Count : 450 pages Medium used : Paperback Genre : Fiction, Fantasy, Vampires, Romance, Young Adult, Adventure, 2024-read.  Rating : 3.75/5 ⭐⭐⭐💫 💫 Its an okayish read for me. At times I found myself wondering if this story is for real. A human girl fights and wins against hard-core vampires through sheer brute force and some magical abilities that she doesn't really know how to wield. She summons them in case of need but that doesn’t work always. I read the whole book and I am just as clueless, about why she is called a serpent, at the end as I was at the start. She is clearly raised with messages of wanting and needing self protection and self denial from associating with vampires in her father's(the Vampire King) court because she is a human. Why is she called a snake/serpent? Is there some part of her history that is not disclosed at this p...

Shadow and Bone (#1) By Leigh Bardugo Rating 4/5  Genre : fantasy This book didn't feel like much when I started but it had a strange pull on me as it went on. This very morning, I opened my eyes and resumed reading the continuing chapter before doing anything else..  I was a bit confused about a few things which got only partly cleared towards the end. Like whats the difference between the Darkling wanting to put the collar of stag antlers around her neck versus her putting it. How can he have absolute control over her and then cease to have any control at all. Well, still intriguing to read .. Keep reading on. :)  Alina Strokov is an orphan cartographer with the King's army. She has a hidden talent of summoning light from her body whenever she wants. This power is so immense and useful to the King's second hand man the Darkling who looks to exploit it. But she learns of his plot in time and escapes. She is eventually caught, the Darkling's plans unfold ...

A Feast For Crows (#4 in GOT Series)  By George R.R.Martin Rating :5/5  Genres : Fantasy,thriller,fiction  Like all the previous books in this series, this one too is wildly entertaining and very captivating. A few old, noteworthy characters are gone and new ones introduced - the absence of Tyrion and Danearys is deeply felt. After the last book ( a storm of swords) which was a wild ride with so many twists and turns happening, this one is more slower and tepid in action. Despite everything, still very riveting .. a special skill of the author, no doubt! 

The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Karunatilaka (2022) Winner of 2022 Booker Prize for Fiction   503 pages (Kindle Digital Edition) Genre : Fiction, Fantasy, Afterlife, Philosophy, LGBT. Rating : 5/5  Mr. Shehan weaved a mesmerizing tale that is simply superb and awesome. I was half way through the book and already making plans to read it one more time!!  He lifted the stigma and heaviness attached to the most gorical elements of war, death, loss and injustice. I didn't cringe or feel obnoxious reading through the numerous homosexual relationships Maali has. This story makes one reconsider their notions of what makes life worth while and wholesome. Why should we waste a life that is blessed to be had by indulging in wastefulness of war and power craving.  Loved it through and through!!  He paints a scary picture of Sri Lanka with race / faction wars in which innocent people are ruthlessly, mindlessly sacrificed. The government tortu...

The Daughter of Doctor Moreau  By Silvia Moreno Garcia  Rating 4/5  Genres : Fiction, Mexico, Fantasy  I liked the premise for the book more than the actual story itself. A doctor isolates himself on a Mexican island and conducts experiments of creating hybrid creatures..sometimes mingling animal with animal and other times human with animal.. his daughter Carlota being one of them. His employer not getting enough return on his investment plans to cease funding and at the same time the employer's son falls in love with Carlota .. but he is not a good fella .. the doctor wants the marriage and funding.. others in the sanatorium don't want anything to do with their alliance ..  All things break down at the end. The daughter of doctor moreau sets up her own place and practice with her surname wiped clean.. its an interesting read. Unlike other works where mention of hybrids made me cringe.. this one is very moderate and gave those animals a real human l...

The Lathe of Heaven (1971) By Ursula le Guin  Hugo and Nebula Awards W inner  Rating : 5/5 🎉 196 pages [Kindle Digital Edition]  Genres : Science Fiction,  Fantasy, Classics, 2022-read. Wow. What did I just read? This is a close your eyes and give it the best rating there is kind of a read. I haven't found myself so engrossed in a while. I couldn't put the book down. Found myself getting up early in the morning and reading to find out what comes next. Great stuff! 🥂 This also brought to mind another book I read recently which is along the lines of altering reality .. Recursion by Blake Crouch .. though in Recursion, where technology is used to navigate between different lines of reality of existence .. in this book, it is the fantasy of a man's dreaming that gets the state of reality altered between different lines. And someone even tries to apply that through technology and it backfires big time!  I liked Recursion but I just love The Lathe ...

The Strange Library  By Haruki Murakami Genre : Novella, Horror, Gothic🎃, Fantasy 🎉 Rating 5/5 🎃 This is perhaps the first book by Murakami that I have felt unqueasy reading. It has no sexual content .. obviously because it is about a horrid experience by a child at a library .. and very picturesque in the imagery as usual with all his novels .. I just loved it. Next time I think of a library, I might give myself in to wondering what wonderful things or horrible things are going down in its basement .. lol  A kid walks into a library to return a set of books and loan some more and meets an old man librarian. The old man gives him three thick volumes on the topic the boy wants to learn about and tells him he has to read those books on premises only. He takes the boy into a basement which is organized like a maze like structure. The boy is locked into a room, his feet chained to a heavy iron ball to prevent movement and escape. A strange wool/sheep man is assigned...

The Satanic Verses  By Salman Rushdie  Shortlisted for Man Booker Prize 1988 Rating 4.5/5🙃😇 Genres : Fantasy,Fiction,Magical Realism, Indian Author. What a crazy, wild story this has turned out to be!!  Reading some sections of the book, I was enthralled and speechless at how fantastic it was! Rushdie has combined many folklore and mystical beliefs held by Indians into making some highly creative stories within the main story.  There are also parts which left me dumbfounded for his overt disrespect and disregard for the teachings of not just Muslims but other religions as well. I think I was over 90 percent into the book and was feeling wonderful and joyous at the humorously witty, magical narrative when he makes fun of a hindu God, Lord Shiva. Being a devout Hindu, I felt outraged. I fully comprehended and understood why this book got so much negative reception upon release in 1988. It was banned by many countries and Iran most of all, issued a fa...

The Songs of Distant Earth  By Arthur C. Clarke  Rating 2.5/5 Genres Science fiction, Fantasy, Romance,2022-read. Just closed the book and there are a myriad of thoughts floating in my head. This is a short book and a quick read. It is only 200 pages or so in digital format. Many of the scenes seem to hold no weight against the overall plot. I am no longer surprised to read really below average and underwhelming work from really great authors as I used to in the past. This is one of the works which Clarke seems to have undertaken to convince the science community of a point rather than make himself more successful in the line of novelisists - probably because he is already a very well established author in the science fiction genre.  The point he seems to be making is not to abandon research into alien contact and also not to stop any steps being taken towards reaching distant stars and making them home if they are uninhabited. The prologue to the book se...

The Midnight Palace  By Carlos Ruiz Zafon  Rating 2/5 I 🤐 Genre : Calcutta, Fantasy, Fiction  I know that coming from me this is a low rating but this book just read plain silly! This is a bunch of extraordinary stuff pulled together and strung into a meaningless story that just sounds ridiculous. I am sure that this is not one of the best works of Zafon who is a masterful and splendid writer! Though the main characters are juvenile and teenagers, they exude an aura of adulthood and behave totally like kids - this in my opinion indicates poor characterization. My question here i guess is why did Zafon even feel the need/drive to write such a stupid book?!  Anyways, brief overview of the story. A bunch of orphan kids - seven in number - grow up together in an orphange and when they turn sixteen they get to enter the world as free adults. The background is Calcutta but the characters are named Ben, Kylian,Ian etc which don't seem to be Indian/H...

A Discovery of Witches By Deborah Harkness Medium Used: Kindle PW  Genre : Witches, Vampires, Fantasy, Time Travel, 2022-read. Rating : 4/5 Took me a long time to cover this one. But that's because of other commitments and engagements  in my life. What should I say about this book? When I started it and read a few pages, I wondered if I made a mistake picking it up. I thought it is going to be a trope vampire - witch romance story that's going to getting exasperating with time..but the reviews and ratings on goodreads are high..so I kept reading on. And my patience and faith eventually paid off. Its not a regular story as we read but one that has quite a few surprises up its sleeve..along with some shocks too. It has some blend scenes of Harry Potter and Twilight as far as I could recognize but they are altered to fit the plot. Coming to the story, Matthew is a millennium old vampire who has been waiting on the fringes of time and wiling his time as a professor ...

Annihilation  (The Southern Reach #1) by Jeff Vandermeer  Rating: 4/5  Genres: Fantasy, Science Fiction, 2022-read, novel plot, Mystery  DISCLAIMER  : Spoilers Ahead! I was torn between giving this a 4 vs a little  higher rating but finally settled on round 4. What a crazy story this is. It has formed the very definition of a "novel concept" in my mind. I guess this is one of those stories where we can interpret the concept in any of the many number of ways. It is terrifying and very addictive till the mystery is unveiled at the very end. The narrator is a biologist who has had an obsession with wildlife animals festering in abandoned water bodies since her childhood. She has learnt to rely on immersing herself in watching the mysteries and dynamics of such wild creatures as a coping/escape mechanism from her reckless and self centered parents. She is highly introverted and has problems opening up in her relationship with her husband. ...

The Lies of Locke Lamora (2006) by Scott Lynch Genres : Fantasy, Fiction, 2022-read, awesome-read, thieves, masquerades, disguises. Rating 5/5 Masterful. Simply awesome. In this 2006 novel which forms the first part of the franchise  'Gentlemen Bastards' by American author Scott Lynch, we meet Locke Lamora - the master of disguises and play acting - and his band of thieves. I just loved the archaic style of prose - I  overlooked a few occasional jabs of crudity and crassness which were lobbed off as humor/wit. The imaginary world on which the city of Camorr is situated is extremely well constructed/developed - some material and character inventions of the author are Elderglass, Wraithstone, Bondsmagi the sorcerers, black alchemists and physikers who are like doctors, dog-leeches like street physicians. The characters are solidly defined - even the smaller ones that appear only in one or two scenes have a lot of depth and their actions are very much in lieu of wh...

 The House of the Spirits By Isabel Allende  Rating 5/5  Genres : Magical Realism,  Drama, Romance, Politics, Fantasy  In some 400 odd pages, the author covers the life history and important events of three generations of the Trueba and Del Valle families. The plot is just awesome and the prose style is magical and very mesmerizing. I just got sucked into the surreal and eccentric world of Clara Esteban who is a dreamy character conversing with spirits and with her head lost in the clouds and wild imagination.  Esteban Trueba is a practical young man who falls head over heels in love with an angelic looking woman Rosa del valle. But before they could get married, Rosa dies in a tragic accident. This breaks Esteban's heart  and he devotes himself completely to the task of repairing his land and setting it up into a successful business center. To quench his sexual appetites, he occasionally turns into a monster ravaging the worker and peasant...

 The Return of the King  (#3 Lord of the Rings series) By J.R.R. Tolkien  Rating : 3.75/5  Genres : Fantasy,  fiction,  classics, 2021-read, magical realism, fairy tales, paranormal, supernatural, good vs evil This book marks the end to the saga started with the formation of the fellowship of ring 💍  in part-1 of the series. Its a culmination to all things - dark and light. In a tale of fight between an overpowering and encroaching darkness against forces of good/light - a ring forged by the dark lord himself becomes key to victory. Since the story must end, it is naturally anticipated that the ring gets where it should - thrown into the pits of fire smoldering in Mount Doom of Mordor - the province where the dark lord and his servants/soldiers reside. And that's what happens. Frodo and Sam through many perils and tribulations take the ring to the precipice of Mount Doom but Frodo becomes unwilling and possessive of the ring at the last mo...

 The Two Towers by J.R.R.Tolkein  (Lord Of The Rings series book #2) Genres: Fantasy, Classics, Fiction, Hobbits, Wizards, Giants, 2021-read, reviewed, awesome read.  Rating 5/5 😍🥳 Whew! "I loved it" would be an understatement for this great classical work by Tolkein!! I found this book smoother, swifter and even better - if that's even possible - than the first part. ✌ I wish hobbits are not a fictitious lot - but that they truly exist and I come across them in reality. Ahh, I know. It's wishful thinking. Hobbits - like rabbits - are harmless, simple minded, meek, short and stout people who are content to live in their holes underground surrounded by greenery, singing their tales of lore, feasting and merry making. Tolkein takes them into the mouths of danger and gives them shades of chivalry even perhaps they were not aware of. Bilbo baggins is something of a legend for adventure and bravery in the Shire but this book shows all the hobbits have somethi...

Circe  by Madeline Miller  Genres: Mythology, Fantasy, Fiction,Magical,Mystical, Sorcery, Witchcraft, Imaginative, good prose, 2021-read Rating: 4.5/5  💓💓 Circe is a witch. She spends most of her time collecting, grinding and boiling herbs, precious minerals from soil and casting spells of magic. Madeline Miller has done the same thing in her lovely book. She has poured different elements of mythology, history, fantasy, suspense and imagination into a giant couldron and prepared a savory concoction - with an occassional bitter taste. Ha ha ha 😂😂😂😂  I doubt if I could call this book the regular things - like "amazing", "gripping". I think more apt terms would be "amusing","interesting","magical". It's loosely based on multiple Greek mythology stories balancing them on one pivotal point,Circe. At the backdrop of it, we have a woman, a goddess,a nymph who comes into her own power after being treated worthless for a long time. Anc...

The Ocean at the end of the Lane by Neil Gaiman Tags: Mysticism, Magical realism, fiction, horror, fantasy, alternate world, dark fantasy, good prose, 2021-read Rating 5/5 😍 I loved this book so much! I am so grateful to authors like Neil Gaiman who don't seem to really inhabit - atleast in their heads - the same droll and mundane world that we do. They live in fantastic universes constituting magical creatures that are both good and evil. His prose is a flowing river that sweeps and consumes  it's reader away into the world it's creating. I liked to inhabit it so much and didn't want to come out that I read the book  "cover to cover" - not even stopping at the acknowledgements page as I usually do. 🙃🙃 The narrator of the story is a small boy of age seven whose life is forever changed when unusual things start happening in his neighborhood. People get money out of nowhere and there are also unexplained suicides,murders and other unpleasant events. A black m...