Irisul de Persia by Daniel Walther

📝 First Impressions

Irisul de Persia by Daniel Walther was a frustrating read for me. I struggled to connect with the stories, and the recurring sexual fantasies soon became one of the collection’s most distracting features. The situations varied, but that repeated emphasis left me increasingly disengaged rather than curious about what the next story might bring.

My Romanian edition added another layer of difficulty. I noticed numerous errors, though I could not always tell whether they came from the translation or had slipped through during proofreading. Whatever their source, they made an already unrewarding reading experience harder to enjoy.

It took me a long time to finish this book because I simply did not feel drawn back to it. I reached the end, but the stories had given me very little reason to want to keep turning the pages.

💜 What I Loved

This is one of those books where I cannot honestly point to something I loved. My experience of Irisul de Persia was overwhelmingly negative, and adding praise simply to balance the review would misrepresent how I felt about it.

The different scenarios did not translate into stories I enjoyed. Whether the focus was a woman in a painting or holograms used for sexual purposes, I kept coming back to the same frustration: the recurring fantasies were giving me little reason to care about the stories around them.

Other readers may respond differently to these ideas, but I did not find a favourite story or a redeeming element that changed my overall response. Sometimes a book simply does not work for you, and that was my experience here.

🤔 What Didn’t Quite Work for Me

My biggest frustration with Irisul de Persia was the recurring focus on sexual fantasies. A woman in a painting, a dead woman, a dark entity lurking among rocks, an ageing actor pursuing young women, holograms used as prostitutes—the settings and figures changed, but I kept encountering material that did nothing for me.

It was not simply the presence of sexual content that bothered me. It was how little I found to enjoy in the stories surrounding it. These scenarios did not make me curious about the characters or eager to discover where their stories would lead. As the collection continued, that recurring emphasis became increasingly tiresome.

The errors in the Romanian edition made matters worse. I could not always distinguish a printing mistake from a translation problem, but there were enough distracting passages for the quality of the text to become a frustration in its own right. Those issues repeatedly interrupted a reading experience I

👥 Who Would Enjoy This Book?

Readers who are curious about Daniel Walther and comfortable with recurring sexual themes in strange, unsettling scenarios may find more to engage with in Irisul de Persia than I did. The combination of desire, fantasy and disturbing imagery would need to be part of its appeal, because those elements were precisely what made it difficult for me to enjoy.

I would hesitate to recommend it to someone simply looking for a collection of science-fiction stories. Enjoying the genre does not necessarily mean enjoying this particular material, and I found little satisfaction in the storytelling around it.

If you are considering the Romanian edition, reading a sample first may help you judge both the stories and the quality of the text. The errors I encountered were a significant part of my frustration, alongside my dislike of the collection itself.

💭 Final Thoughts

Finishing Irisul de Persia brought relief rather than satisfaction. I had spent a long time trying to get through a collection that gave me very little enjoyment, and reaching the end did not reveal anything that made the effort feel worthwhile.

The problems with the Romanian text contributed to that experience, but they were not my only objection. Even without those distractions, the recurring sexual fantasies and the stories built around them did not appeal to me. Correcting the errors would have made the reading smoother; it would not have resolved my frustration with the content.

This is a book I cannot personally recommend. Other readers may find something compelling in its strange scenarios, but my own response was consistently negative. I finished it, and I was glad to move on.

📖 Book Details

Title: L’Iris de Perse
Romanian Title: Irisul de Persia
Author: Daniel Walther
Genre: Science Fiction · Short Stories
Publisher (Romanian): Nemira
Collection: Nautilus, no. 87
Published (Romanian): 1995
Pages (Romanian): 118
Translator: Constantin Frosin
ISBN: 973-9144-13-6
Format Experienced: paperback
Edition Owned: paperback

🇷🇴 Romanian Edition

Irisul de Persia was published by Nemira in 1995, as volume 87 in the Nautilus collection. Translated from French by Constantin Frosin, this Romanian edition contains 118 pages.

This is the translation covered in my review. The errors I encountered affected my reading experience, although I could not always determine whether they originated in the translation or during proofreading.