Tag: Chunkster Reading 2022

The Burning God

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The Burning God
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, Book # 3
Harper Voyager
Published November 17th 2020
Hardcover
654
English
August 17, 2022 October 24, 2022
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After saving her nation of Nikan from foreign invaders and battling the evil Empress Su Daji in a brutal civil war, Fang Runin was betrayed by allies and left for dead.

Despite her losses, Rin hasn’t given up on those for whom she has sacrificed so much—the people of the southern provinces and especially Tikany, the village that is her home. Returning to her roots, Rin meets difficult challenges—and unexpected opportunities. While her new allies in the Southern Coalition leadership are sly and untrustworthy, Rin quickly realizes that the real power in Nikan lies with the millions of common people who thirst for vengeance and revere her as a goddess of salvation.

Backed by the masses and her Southern Army, Rin will use every weapon to defeat the Dragon Republic, the colonizing Hesperians, and all who threaten the shamanic arts and their practitioners. As her power and influence grows, though, will she be strong enough to resist the Phoenix’s intoxicating voice urging her to burn the world and everything in it?

What I think

I didn’t like the ending. With this ending, the author justifies the conquest of the East by the West and even if progress is right, erasing an entire culture just to make room for the “Creator” is not right and I expected more from a person with Chinese origins (but what do you want me to do, she lives in America and therefore she has been brainwashed with the thought that “Americans are the best in the world and that everyone must be like them” with their 600 year old culture).

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War and Peace

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Война и миръ
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Knopf
1863
Hardcover
1273
Russian
Richard Pevear, Larissa Volokhonsky
May 18, 2022 December 14, 2022
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War and Peace centers broadly on Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812 and follows three of the best-known characters in literature: Pierre Bezukhov, the illegitimate son of a count who is fighting for his inheritance and yearning for spiritual fulfilment; Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, who leaves behind his family to fight in the war against Napoleon; and Natasha Rostov, the beautiful young daughter of a nobleman, who intrigues both men. As Napoleon’s army invades, Tolstoy vividly follows characters from diverse backgrounds—peasants and nobility, civilians and soldiers—as they struggle with the problems unique to their era, their history, and their culture. And as the novel progresses, these characters transcend their specificity, becoming some of the most moving—and human—figures in world literature.

Yeah, I’ve read War and Peace. And since that time, everything went wrong. I mean, I got off to a good start, I read about 500 pages the first month, then when the story of the war started to take up all the narration I got particularly bored and couldn’t go on. And I had a reader’s block.

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Deadhouse Gates

LauraLeave a Comment on Deadhouse Gates
Deadhouse Gates
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, Book # 2
Tor Books
September 2000
Hardcover
604
English
April 18, 2022 May 18, 2022
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In the vast dominion of Seven Cities, in the Holy Desert Raraku, the seer Sha’ik and her followers prepare for the long-prophesied uprising known as the Whirlwind. Unprecedented in size and savagery, this maelstrom of fanaticism and bloodlust will embroil the Malazan Empire in one of the bloodiest conflicts it has ever known, shaping destinies and giving birth to legends.

The story begins where the first book “Gardens of the Moon” ends, even if I honestly don’t remember anything about that book. Maybe that’s why I didn’t like it that much. The empire is collapsing, a prophesied rebellion is about to break loose on Seven Cities, and the empire is about to fall. At the head of the Empress’s forces is Coltaine, a Wickan of the Raven Clan. His task is to defend the people of Malazan settled in Seven Cities.

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The Stolen Girls

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The Stolen Girls
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, Book # 2
Bookouture
July 6 2017
eBook
452
English
April 1, 2022 April 5, 2022
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The young woman standing on Lottie’s step was a stranger. She was clutching the hand of a young boy. ‘Help me,’ she said to Lottie. ‘Please help me.’

One Monday morning, the body of a young pregnant woman is found. The same day, a mother and her son visit the house of Detective Lottie Parker, begging for help to find a lost friend.

Could this be the same girl?

When a second victim is discovered by the same man, with the murder bearing all the same hallmarks as the first, Lottie needs to work fast to discover how else the two were linked. Then two more girls go missing.

Detective Lottie Parker is a woman on the edge, haunted by her tragic past and struggling to keep her family together through difficult times. Can she fight her own demons and catch the killer before he claims another victim?

I liked the book, the case was very interesting and here too we see how all wars are destructive, not only physically but also morally. Of course, not all soldiers are bad, but there are those who do not respect morality. Not only certain peoples, but everyone has these episodes. And given the times we’re living in, I wonder how many Rhea and Mimoza or Andrei are in Ukraine right now.

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Beyond Reach

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Beyond Reach
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, Book # 6
Dell
July 31st 2007
eBook
594
English
March 26, 2022 March 31, 2022
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Sara Linton - resident medical examiner/paediatrician in Grant County, Georgia - has plenty of hardship to deal with, including defending herself in a heartbreaking malpractice suit. So when her husband, Police chief Jeffery Tolliver, learns that his friend and coworker detective Lena Adams has been arrested for murder and needs Sara's help, she is not sure she can handle the pressure of it all. But soon Sara an Jeffery are sitting through evidence, peeling back the layers of a mystery that grows darker by the day - until an intricate web of betrayal and vengeance begins to unravel. And suddenly the lives of Sara, Lena, and Jeffery are hanging by the slenderest of threads.

About the book

Sara Linton must defend herself in front of the Georgia court. The parents of a dead patient believe she did not treat their child as expected. Lena is under arrest for murder. So when her boss finds out, he leaves everything and with Sara, her wife, they run to help Lena.

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