Book Reviews Open
During that long wait between books, WoT fans are usually looking for something interesting to read. wotmania has opened this section of the site to help with that search for new reading material. As you browse around please take time to rate books and post comments - the more ratings and comments in the database, the more useful this section will become for everyone. The book reviews page opened for the public on November 26, 2001, so it is still very much a work in progress. Please don't e-mail me to complain about authors or books that aren't listed yet. I will be adding new authors and books as quickly as possible...
Authors
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Pointless Statistics
I'm a geek, so I like posting random, pointless statistics about things. Check out the information below, for those who happen to be curious about such things...
- Authors: 197
- Books: 712
- Ratings: 8213
- Comments: 558
Spotlight: Andrzej Sapkowski
Taken from Wikipedia:
Andrzej Sapkowski, born June 21, 1948 in Łódź, is a Polish fantasy writer. Sapkowski studied economics, and before turning to writing, he had worked as a senior sales representative for a foreign trade company. His first short story, The Witcher (Wiedźmin), was published in Fantastyka, Poland's leading fantasy literary magazine, in 1986 and was enormously successful both with readers and critics. Sapkowski has created a cycle of tales based on the world of The Witcher, comprising three collections of short stories and five novels. This cycle and his many other works have made him one of the best-known fantasy authors in Poland in the 1990s.
The main character of The Witcher (alternative translation: The Hexer) is Geralt, a mutant assassin who has been trained since childhood to hunt down and destroy monsters. Geralt exists in an ambiguous moral universe, yet manages to maintain his own coherent code of ethics. At the same time cynical and noble, Geralt has been compared to Raymond Chandler's signature character Philip Marlowe. The world in which these adventures take place owes much to J.R.R. Tolkien, while being also heavily influenced by Slavic mythology.
Sapkowski has won five Zajdel Awards, including three for short stories "Mniejsze zło" (Lesser Evil) (1990), "Miecz przeznaczenia" (Sword of Destiny) (1992) and "W leju po bombie" (In a Bomb Crater) (1993), and two for the novels "Krew elfów" (Blood of the Elves) (1994) and "Narrenturm" (2002). He also won the Spanish Ignotus Award, best anthology, for The Last Wish in 2003, and for "Muzykanci" (The Musicians), best foreign short story, same year.
In 1997, Sapkowski won the prestigious Polityka's Passport award, which is awarded annually to artists who have strong prospects for international success.
In 2001, a Television Series based on the Witcher cycle was released in Poland and internationally, entitled Wiedźmin (The Hexer). A film by the same title was compiled from excerpts of the television series but both have been critical and box office failures.
Sapkowski's books have been translated into Czech, Russian, Lithuanian, German, Spanish, French and Portuguese. English translation of The Last Wish short story collection was published by Gollancz in 2007.
Polish game publisher CD Projekt created a role-playing PC game based on this universe, called The Witcher, which was released in October 2007. There is also a mobile version of the game which has been created by Breakpoint Games and is being published by Hands-On Mobile in Western Europe,Latin America and Asia Pacific.
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 Survival
Must one species' evolution ensure another's extinction? Canadian author Czerneda (To Trade the Stars) attempts to answer that loaded question by focusing on the unique but dangerous relationship that biologist Mackenzie "Mac" Connor forges with Brymn, a Dhryn archeologist and the first of his race to visit Earth, in this imaginative, if somewhat slow-moving not-so-distant-future novel set in the Pacific Northwest and the far reaches of space. The story comes alive whenever the workaholic, emotionally withdrawn Mac interacts with the seven-armed Brymn, "a giant bearlike being," who at one point applies makeup to go diving with salmon. Trouble arrives in the form of the alien Ro, who kidnap Dr. Emily Mamani Sarmiento, a colleague of Mac's at Norcoast Salmon Research Facility. Blamed for creating the Chasm, a zone of space littered with worlds that have been sucked dry of all life forms, the Ro also want Brymn and Mac. The Interspecies Union's representative, Nikolai "Nik" Trojanowski, whose mysterious attraction to the straight-laced Mac adds romantic heat to the proceedings, helps the two escape to Haven, the Dhryn homeworld. Unfortunately, Brymn and Mac soon find no place is safe from one species' imperative to survive at any cost. A planned sequel may try to answer the next vital question-can friendship evolve to forgive the ultimate betrayal? -Publishers WeeklyHave you ever read Survival. Plenty of others have read and enjoyed this book. Read what others have written about about Survival, and maybe you'll want to read it, too. The House of the Spirits
--Christian Science Monitor
"Emocionante y ponderosa....La casa de los espiritusestá repleta de mujeres maravillosas e inolvidables, que confieren una dimensión especial al libro."--This text refers to the Paperback edition.
Review
"Extraordinary... Powerful... Sharply observant, witty and eloquent." -- Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, The New York Times
"Mesmerizing... A novel of force and charm." -- The Washington Post
"That rarest of successes -- a book about one family and one country that is a book about the world and becomes the world in a book." -- Cosmopolitan
"Nothing short of astonishing... In The House Of The Spirits Isabelle Allende has indeed shown us the relationships between past and present, family and nation, city and country, spiritual and political values. She has done so with enormous imagination, sensitivity, and compassion." -- Jane Futcher, San Francisco Chronicle -Reviews at Amazon
Interested in learning more about The House of the Spirits? Read the comments of others to see what others had to say about this book.
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