Stas Yamkovyi

Хтось має це екранізувати. Перші дві книги трилогії - це якась нова якісна, розкішна гілка сучукрліту. Moving on to третя.

Які 5 зірок, тут цілий Чумацький шлях треба ставити.

Дуже несподівані та приємні відчуття від книги. Те що на перших сторінках скептично сприймалося як «Відьмак з OLX» - перевертні, мавки, козацька чортівня і т.д., дуже швидко виросло у колоритний і і унікальний всесвіт, а також у захоплюючу історію з персонажами до яких звикаєш як до друзів.

Що також важливо, окрім того що книга вийшла досить яскравою представницею колаби жанрів українського темного фентезі та альтернативної історії - вона відчувається, як би це патетично не звучало, більше ніж книгою. В чомусь це навіть мрія і казкове минуле, яке могло б статися.

А ще нарешті це книжковий продукт с козаками, фольком і так далі, який виглядає й читається сучасним та крутим. Дуже непогано написаний - з адекватними стрибками по часу, прям гідними кліфхенгерами в кінці розділів, непоганими жартами та болісними драматичними епізодами.

Книга заслуговує суттєво більше уваги, нагород і всього такого, та її час ще прийде.

Very flat Agatha Christie-style detective delivered in ironic and rich in humour manner. The style of writing prevails over the plot, which is...present and that's the only strong side of it.

“Everything is a copy of a copy of a copy” Chuck Palahniuk

I don't know why I keep on reading these self-help books, retelling the same old stories and tricks on how to make the gift/curse of life more livable.

This book in particular has some good advices and I absolutely like the idea of a time-making framework, but lord, the authors are both overcomplicating and oversimplifying too many things simultaneously.

The key issue is that some of their time-making solutions are noticeably time-consuming. So it looks like a zero win game or worse. Some are also only applicable if you are retired or unemployed, don't have your own business or have hoarded enough gold in the cave for daily duties gamification.

Nevertheless some good thoughts can still be definitely borrowed from it. But better with KISS framework included.

You know, “keep it simple, stupid”.

It started out so well, intriguing and gripping...

... and pretty soon the world and the idea got buried under the hoards of unnecessary detailed writing as well as partially sacrificed to cringey love stories of the non-developing super cliche characters.

Closer to the end of the book it completely turned to a bastard child of young adult and romance fiction who decided to self-identify as sci-fi.

Shame, the concept was so promising.

Unbelievably erratic, chaotic and passionate. About everything and nothing at the same time. Yes, sounds slightly quantum and superposition-like.

Very much reminiscent of Florian Illies “1913. The year before the storm” by style and concept.

Absolutely unnecessary read which is killing in the first chapter and falls deeply into fiction and mysticism in the following. Nevertheless triggers a weird aftertaste on completion.

Hated but enjoyed it.

Poetic, melancholic, metaphoric and old-schoolishly slow-paced.

Pretty much reminiscent of “Buried Giant” by Kazuo Ishiguro in terms of vibe.

And it's good. Definitely good and well-aged for something celebrating 50th jubilee.

I mean, Galloway is definitely some wise gentleman and some of his effective and calculated recipes sound pretty reasonable and legit. Even the majority of them are someone other's refined ideas.

At the meantime sometimes this life approach he offers, feels too bland. Live slow, die an accountant. I could get the same piece of advice and even less wordy from a session with ChatGPT roleplaying my father figure.

I've never before wished that hard for a book character to die from the first pages of the reading until the very end.

Very convincing & very painful South.

Little well-written book that will pleasurably break your heart.

If it would be possible, I would give this book zero stars instead of 1.

I don't mind Ukrainian anti-hero characters, but FFS there can be another way than displaying them as military rookies with poor taste for music, living in a cave full of heroin and punishing 12-year old boys by destroying their collection of comic books.

No to mention the main “Ukrainian” anti-hero Pechorin having a Russian name written in Russian transcription, with mother from Rostov and depiction and manners of a typical “grumpy Russian”.

FFS, so tired of this western writing colonial tradition of self-affirmation with the help of distorted and grotesque image of a typical Eastern European.

Nick Harkaway desperately tries to not write as typical Nick Harkaway and brilliantly succeeds.

The best short description is provided by the author himself - you're kinda familiar with all the statements and facts given. But you may be not much aware of them like the fish is not aware of the surrounding water.

Or - know your scripts and try operating them instead of them operating you.

Very stylish, historical mystification which besides being a modern literature classics served as a basis for nor less classical “13th Warrior” movie.

Rather simple but exquisite.

That was a long reading journey.

I appreciate the attempt of the author to tell a story of a grand city with the embroidery of continuing family sagas. In some moments it worked out pretty well and consistent.

But as closer I was getting to the end of the book the more tiring to track all this names' confetti was becoming, too numerous, too rich with not that necessary details, too distracting from something I want to see as the main character of the text - New York itself.

At certain point it felt like standing in front of a beautiful ancient piece of art not being able to enjoy its details because of a thick layer of buzzing tourists between you and it.

Not a bad book, though.

I wish all business books were written in this fashion - tight with info, without a flood of watery examples to prove the author's point.

This book should be definitely read by everyone making a product for other people's use.

Literally ANY product in any genre or niche.

Literally by EVERYONE - from product managers to ux designers, developers, testers - anyone who wants to deliver certain experience to his fellow user.

A nice compact, informative, punch-like read.

It's funny how the Chindogu concept can be applied to the modern way of how the Big Tech is updating it's SAAS-solutions for end-customers with random features.

Lots of them announced as ‘‘revolutionary'' or at least unbelievably handy are quite rarely used in reality because they solve non-existent or not that major kind of problems.

Why do they keep getting added? Because the machine needs to be fed, stocks need to grow in price and the end-user should never feel like his product is outdated or is not innovative enough.

So in consumption world were literally everything is a product, there's no spoon.

I mean, Chindogu.

Some people talk a lot not because they have many important things to say but because they love the sound of their own voice.

Same goes for some books.

“Mastery” is basically a thin layer of “Evolve. Adapt. Overcome” + vocation bullstuff on a thick slice of biographies. VERY repetitive slice.

If you've earlier read one book of this type - you've read them all.

There are several good points and enough of good examples to prove them. Well, to be honest - excessively enough. The book could be significantly shorter without losing in quality.

Also author's love for and inspiration from russian culture gets obsessive at certain point.

Almost to the very end the book goes pretty old school at a very low-tempo pace, but at certain point you realise this is the only best possible writing style for this narrative and this heroine.

A good story about loneliness, humbleness, wisdom and the sin of overconfidence.

Well, I definitely saw it coming straight from the pretentious “BREAKING!”-style title of the book.

And well it turned to be exactly what it is. A niche game designer waving his POV on gamification in general & thinking it's big.

Well, okay.

The book is seriously lacking on many things except for Hon's confidence in his expertise - there's plenty of it. Basically it's just a huge subjective article pumped up with lots of confirmation bias for gamification divided in 2 groups - good examples (Hon's games and beliefs) and bad examples (the rest).

It's also rather amusing to observe how far when speaking of “bad examples” he goes into demonising something that's just a tool. Like a knife. You can cut bread, you can cut people with it. The knife doesn't become good or bad because of that. It's all about the hand. Technique, execution and most of all - goals.

I think someone should also write a book about a terrible act of invention of the wheel which led to the capitalist dystopia we currently live in. Darn it, wheel you were made only to serve primal big corpo needs for transportation and kill the joy of traveling by feet.

Besides that it's just non-stop repetitious preaching with a call to the utopia of ethical gamification in the grand finale.

Very moving.

(GIF of Woody Harrelson wiping out his tears with dollar bills).

It takes some time to catch the pace and author's rich manner of writing but once you got the vibe, oh boy.

Yes, the reading gets tiring at some point and the book could probably win from being a little less drowned in details.

But it couldn't.

I would also add Margaret Atwood and her Maddaddam trilogy to the Pratchett-like and Vonnegutish comparisons of the Gone-Away World. While the gentlemen add their stylish absurdity and satire, there's a touch of blue Atwood's poetry to this post-apocalypse.

Still funny and mad.
John still doesn't justify the name of the first book in the series.
Novelty effect however is expectedly fading away with every continuation of the insane Undisclosed story.

It’s rather hard to rate this book without comparing it to the Siege series by the same author.

The events unfold in the same universe and the protagonist shares that same ironic, utilitarian outlook on life with a talent for witty and eloquent commenting on it attached. The overall vibe feels so close to Siege that I'd sincerely recommend not to jump straight from it to the adventures of Mr. Corax because it might seem too repetitive at first. Better to take a short break, read something else, and return later.

The story also suffers slightly from a slow pacing midway through after a very promising start. Probably the reason is that it's clearly written with a trilogy in mind, so maybe the bigger events are to come later with more dynamics.

David vs Goliath story with an alternative ending and as the history shows - temporarily triumph.

American general and his buddies with amazement discovers the key principle of evolution - “the most adaptable wins”. And that one of the effective ways of agile adaption is delegate & decentralise. Ok.

Then talks a little bit about Taleb's black swans and Lorenz's butterflies. Then brings to the table good-old Survivor's mistake along with Prisoner's dilemma and couple of other not so new concepts.

Nothing really new brought to the management table if read in 2024 and it could be so less repetitive. Though can be a good intro to a great framework for certain teams and types of work.