📝 First Impressions My journey into Marian Coman’s world of Haiganu began long before I held Fluviul Șoaptelor as a complete novel. I first discovered this extraordinary universe through Harap Alb Continuă (HAC!), a Romanian comic magazine in which the…
📝 First Impressions There are writers whose work you admire, and there are writers whose voices feel immediately recognisable. Oliviu Craznic belongs to the second category for me. Even when the stories differ in subject, scale or mood, they carry…
📝 First Impressions The Last Wish is not a conventional fantasy novel, but a collection of interconnected stories inspired by childhood fairy tales, folklore and familiar legends. Andrzej Sapkowski takes stories we think we know—cursed princes, beautiful princesses, dangerous witches,…
📝 First Impressions Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows feels different from every previous book in the series almost immediately. Hogwarts is no longer the centre of the story, the familiar rhythm of school terms is gone, and Harry, Ron…
📝 First Impressions Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince feels noticeably darker from the very beginning. By this point in the series, the sense of wonder that defined the earlier books is still there, but it is constantly overshadowed by…
📝 First Impressions The Ocean at the End of the Lane feels, from its very first pages, like a story remembered rather than a story simply told. Neil Gaiman takes an adult narrator back to the place where he grew…
📝 First Impressions I first came across The Blood Lives through Lee Isserow’s ABAM project — A Book A Month. At the time, I was not really familiar with ARCs or with the whole idea of receiving advance copies directly…
📝 First Impressions The title Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil was the first thing that caught my attention. It sounded dark, poetic and mysterious, although I somehow did not expect the novel to be about vampires. Looking back…
📝 First Impressions There are books that take a familiar idea and somehow make it feel fresh again. A Deadly Education did that for me almost immediately. On the surface, the premise sounds familiar enough: a school for magical children.…
📝 First Impressions The Witches is probably one of the Roald Dahl books that best demonstrates just how dark children’s fiction can become without losing its sense of fun. The premise is wonderfully disturbing: witches are real, they live among…
📝 First Impressions Nettle & Bone immediately stood out to me because it doesn’t feel like a traditional fantasy novel. Instead of introducing a fearless chosen one destined to save the world, Nettle & Bone follows a quiet, overlooked princess…