Bernard Jan's Blog - Posts Tagged "books"

The day has come. I have it! Now! Finally!

My own domain.

BERNARDJAN.COM

Yesterday was the day when I did that major change in my Internet appearance and life. I still have to do Google-related changes and stuff (ugh!), but it is already available for browsing, with much simpler and more memorable URLs.

I invite you to visit www.bernardjan.com and share with me my enthusiasm and happiness!

Hope you enjoy it and please don't hesitate to share and recommend my web page to others if you like it. (Not hard to imagine a happy grin on my face!)

Thank you!

Bernard Jan

One of the best trilogies I've ever read. Scary, gripping, moving. Highly impressing.

Unlike some novels I have been reading with a serious effort like I was plowing through a field devastated by drought, The Wool Trilogy by Hugh Howey is exactly the opposite. A perfectly balanced deep fall through a silo, which forces the reader to keep falling and falling, unable to stop himself and put the the books down until he hits the end.

Science fiction? Maybe. But only for the reason of being set in a Dystopian future.

The scariest thing was looking at a daringly realistic portrait of our society today. What happened to humanity?!? Plausibly unintentionally (or maybe intentionally after all), upsetting parallels of the real world are screaming into our faces like a wake-up call. If we do not do something to light up the flames of humanity and share with our loved ones and the stranger on the street, we will all end up in our present-day versions of silos eventually to be suffocated and poisoned, reduced to mere things, numbers.

Howey gave us a masterpiece. But he has also shown us the safe path to our future. This is the gift we should cherish, even if we chose not to believe that silos could actually happen.

BJ
www.bernardjan.com

Ghost Flight by Bear Grylls

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Ever heard of Bear Grylls? I truly hope so, because this former soldier in the British Special Forces, the youngest ever Chief Scout to the UK Scout Association and an honorary Colonel to the Royal Marine Commandos is also an adventurer, writer and television presenter. His Facebook bio says that “Bear Grylls has become known around the world as one of the most recognized faces of survival and outdoor adventure.”

I first heard about Bear Grylls seven years ago when I was on my vacation visiting my friends in Sweden and we watched his Ultimate Survival (also known as Born Survivor/Man vs. Wild) on the Discovery Channel. Needless to say that Bear Grylls captured my attention on the spot, that I wanted to see more of him, making me check for him online immediately after returning home to Croatia.

I loved the concept of his show in which he was left stranded with his crew in an unfamiliar wilderness – rainforests, glaciers, deserts, islands, to name just a few – with only one goal: to survive and find his way back to civilization.

The similar pattern follows his entertaining and exciting thriller Ghost Flight. Packed with action, adventure, beautiful landscapes of the remote Amazon jungle where lies hidden a mysterious WWII warplane, Ghost Flight guarantees to keep even the most demanding fans of this genre glued to its pages. It is so easy to picture Bear Grylls, an ex-soldier and a survivor, as an ex-soldier Will Jaeger, also a leader of a team of former elite warriors in their quest to uncover the mystery of the hidden warplane and the secret of Nazi evil forces (Wir sind die Zukunft) that lie buried in it.

I am a sucker for WWII novels and I am a sucker for Amazon rainforest. When those two are combined, you have an explosive reading before you. You are drinking up a cocktail made of ghosts from not so recent past, to majority of people almost forgotten, but the ghosts which are patiently waiting for their moment of the rise of the new Reich, and a pristine nature beaming with both beautiful and deadly life.

Ghost Flight is a successful debut novel with interesting and well-developed characters, full of action, twists and turns and gripping moments. It is also a very detailed novel which probably might not help us in a fight against the rise of a new Reich if it comes to it, but it could very well serve us as a survival guide in a primeval rainforest if we ever find ourselves in our personal mission under the canopy of magnificent trees where neither evil Nazis nor modern-day humans got to leave their destructive imprint.

BJ
www.bernardjan.com



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Black Canyon by Jeremy Bates

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I am so glad that Black Canyon is the first work by Jeremy Bates I've read. To be honest, since I have so many books waiting in line to be read – quite a pile on my table and in my Kindle, I wasn't planning on reviewing it at first. I wanted to save time and move on onto another book as soon as possible. But already in the first ten pages of this 2015 dark novella I knew this won't be the case, even if I reflect on it with just a few words.

It is a rarity to have an opportunity to read about the pre-teen young monster, who will grow into a new American psycho and a serial killer, from his own perspective. When a child (12-year-old Brian Garrett) tells you about the weekend camping with his parents in the Gunnison National Park in Colorado, you don't expect anything but the idyllic trip to the amazing and wild nature. And this is what you get. But coated with a few gory moments of surprise, very well timed twists, murders and true horror. The freakiest thing is the lightness with which Brian accepts his dark nature already at this early age, his calculated, heartless and almost mathematically precise survival instinct.

This is a quick-paced read about the seemingly normal but in truth one bad-vibed family which can be easily spotted and recognized too often around us, told in a simple and capturing narrative voice.

Black Canyon, which I also like to fondly call The Mean Innocence and The Growing of American Psycho, lingers in my mind with the aftertaste mixture of a novella and the movie Stand by Me and The River Wild movie, which I both quite liked, while Jeremy Bates, as an author, seriously competes to become one of my new darlings.

BJ
www.bernardjan.com



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Finders Keepers by Stephen King

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Upon reaching page 240 of Finders Keepers by Stephen King a thought stroke me. King cannot fail. What are the odds for that? Brilliant! This thought lingered and stayed with me until the very end of the book.

Finders Keepers, the second book in Bill Hodges Trilogy is a constant page-turner. A story about a vengeful reader obsessed with a retired writer spreads through 370 pages like fast and untamable fire. It burns its way to our hearts, brings us strong characters, lots of excitement and the fantastic plot! Again King has a surgically precise eye for the detail, which is a characteristic of his writing I probably like and admire most.

Brilliant! Five stars without much thinking!

BJ
www.bernardjan.com



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Finders Keepers

It did happen but I did not expect it to happen! I am one of the three winners of Paula Wynne October Book Bundle Giveaway Competition! What does that mean? It means that I have won a bundle of 16 books of various authors! Wow, amazing indeed!

I want to thank Paula for this wonderful opportunity to get such unexpected and much appreciated gift(s) and I also want to thank the following authors for giving their books for free for this competition: PJ McDermot, Mike Hartner, Jody A. Kessler, Paul Casselle, Jacky Gray, Hilary Thompson, Norma Hinkens, J. Naomi Ay, JA Andrews, Jenny Green, Ramona Flightner, Ali Dent, Andy Graham, Vered Ehsani, D.B. Martin, and Michael Bolan.

Beside me, the two other winners of Paula's 3rd Book Bundle Giveaway are Darlene Write and Carol Peace.

Here is what we said upon receiving those wonderful books:

Darlene Wright from the US: “Wow! Fantastic! Thanks So Much!! Made my day!”

Bernard Jan from Croatia: “I entered the October Book Bundle Giveway just for fun, not really expecting anything. Thank you, getting 16 books at one time is totally unbelievable, especially when you have thousands of readers who entered!”

Carol Peace from the UK: “Wow what a great surprise, I am so happy and excited. I love books and reading. Thank you so much!”

This is the link for future book giveaways.

Onwards to reading!

BJ
www.bernardjan.com

Not Just a Boy by Jonathan Hill

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Not Just a Boy is a warm coming-of-age human story about growing up and first love(s). A 78-pages-long novella – we can only wish it lasts longer! – of the talented author Jonathan Hill from Manchester, UK, takes us gently back to our childhood and school days where everything seemed to have been easier, carefree and more innocent. Unless . . . you were different.

For one of the two best friends moving to another school was everything but easy or innocent. Not being able to fit into the new environment, in difference to his friend, he is immediately labeled an outcast, unfit, different. His adolescent days unexpectedly turn into a nightmare of name-calling, ridiculing, bullying and physical assault; it seems like everybody knows about his schoolboy crush much sooner than him, even before he is fully able to comprehend the truth about himself. “There was precious little evidence, and certainly nothing concrete, to confirm that I liked boys. I just knew that I’d fallen for him. And if he’d been a girl or a . . . or a frog . . . maybe I would have felt just the same love towards her or it.”

Evidence or not, society doesn't forgive, and certainly not his school mates. Being different, being a boy with a crush on another boy, has a high price. And the price of being different he has to pay with broken friendships, isolation and loneliness, shame, confusion and torment.

After a grand opening, “I have been running for only a minute, maybe two, and yet their frenzied shouts are oddly distant, as if they originate not only from another part of the wood but from another time entirely. Every inch of me is riddled with pain and if I stop to think how bad the pain actually is, it is enough to make me want to tear off my limbs with my own teeth.”, and the tragedy that preceded this running but has been revealed only later in the book, at the end of the story, Jonathan Hill leads us to a pleasantly calming sunset of this remarkable novella, which warms our hearts with a promise of restored friendship and hope for a normal life despite being different.

Special kudos to the book cover art which just about perfectly captures the story that is about to grip and glue us from the first page already.

BJ
www.bernardjan.com



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Not Just a Boy
Jonathan Hill
Bernard Jan

The Kill Order by James Dashner

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


The best books are not those with happy endings but the ones that make your blood boil and make you silently scream from joy or despair. You sympathize with their characters and relate to them; you cheer for them and want to help them through their trials and hopeless situations because they are real to you; they are your new best friends and you don't want to see them harmed or dead. But not all good stories have a happy ending. Just like in real life, our favorites and darlings are robbed of their choices, and instead of laughing and celebrating their victories with them, we end up with tight throats, moist eyes and swallowing tears.

The Kill Order by James Dashner is a high-paced octane-fueled dystopian science fiction thriller. In the story of survival of the human race on the Earth devastated by solar flares, chances are so slim that they almost equal to zero. Those (not necessarily the lucky ones) who managed to survive the scorching effect of the Sun that melted the glaciers and flooded the East Coast of the United States with a tsunami of boiling waters are yet to face the real trials.

In order to save the humankind, that is, a selected few, a deadly virus—known as the Flare—is released with the purpose of controlling the remaining population. The infection, though, very quickly escalates and is out of control, and the real battle for their lives starts for Mark, Trina, Alec, Lana, Deedee and their friends against the infected.

The Kill Order is the first prequel book of the equally successful three novels in The Maze Runner series: The Maze Runner, The Scorch Trials and The Death Cure, and the fourth of five installments overall.

Without pretended modesty, I cannot wait to read the last installment, The Fever Code. I look forward to the new opportunity and satisfaction to remind myself of the Glade and the Gladers, the Maze, the Grievers, WICKED, the Flare, the Cranks, the Right Arm, the Immunes, the Bergs, the Post-Flares Coalition, Thomas, Theresa and all their dead and alive friends. For, each of these books in their own way shook me to the core, and this is what a good book should do to its readers.

BJ
www.bernardjan.com



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Bernard Jan

If you are a fan of high-packed action novels, and the rivers of gore and piles of dead, burned or evaporated bodies are your kind of thing, then you are at the right place! Welcome to The Thousand Years War Series by Angel Ramon Medina!

If we still don't believe we are not alone in the universe, it is the moment to reconsider our beliefs and everything they taught us as kids. Earth is under attack and our future and the future of our world rests on the shoulders of a few—a tiny group of four people—who put themselves on the frontiers of the new global war to save mankind.

Angel, Maria, Dayvon and Luis, popularly called our heroes in the three-book series, knew little about each other when the great evil decided to take over Earth for itself. They didn't have time to get familiar and overcome their differences when they bravely joined forces and stood against the new hostile, ruthless and violent alien race called gloobas, who already fought the similar war a thousand years ago. To save our world, they used a new virtual reality weapon, for whatever happens in this virtual world also happens on Earth.

In The Thousand Years War Trilogy casualties are many on both sides though the dead gloobas outnumber a lot dead humans and members of other alien races. Fight for survival is going on in all corners of known and unknown worlds: Brooklyn, Hollywood, the Arctic Core, the Solar System, black holes, outer space. Action scenes line up one after another like in a furious action motion picture, especially in The Thousand Years War and Revenge of the Gloobas: The Third Book of the Thousand Years War, while Framed: The Second Book of the Thousand Years War gives us the brief moment of deceptive break when we get to feel the taste of a normal life of our heroes. In this central—and the shortest— part of the series, Angel, a victim of dirty politics and human enemies, has to justify his good name and his family's good name before he can take matters back into his own hands and sets himself into the ultimate and final showdown with the gloobas.

Even though all three books need additional polishing and editing and the author's writing skills a little fine-tuning (Revenge of the Gloobas much less than The Thousand Years War and Framed), this Brooklyn-born Puerto Rican young writer gave us an amazing sci-fi adventure saga. On 1,030 pages (brace yourself for a long reading!) Angel Ramon Medina gave us evidence of his very vivid imagination and enormous capacity to write much and to write fast!

It should not be left unnoticed that in only seven months Medina wrote, designed, self-published and marketed three of his novels and Angel's Nightmare Adventures short story, which is a 2016 precedent! So whether we like alien-related stories or not, we must give Angel Ramon Medina credit for rocking the 2016 universe. 2016 was the year of Medina-writing-machine and we shouldn't surprise ourselves that the gloobas stood little chances under the onslaught of his virtual pen!

For more information on Angel Ramon Medina please visit The Hybrid Nation.

BJ
www.bernardjan.com

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Two of my books in Croatian are still available for purchase and this is a tip how you can get them!

Cruel Summer (Okrutno ljeto) is my YA adventure/mystery novel with a slight dystopian touch, set in New York City in an alternate reality at the end of the last millennium.

Seventeen-year-old Michael Daniels is a young man who dreams of being a professional skateboarder. He lives with his half-sister and stepfather in a society where people will do anything for power and influence, where child prostitution is rampant, human experimentation is commonplace, and the effects of climate changes wreak havoc on the population. Michael finds out that his stepfather is performing experiments on him to promote superhuman abilities. In an uncontrolled rush of his artificially created powers and rage, Michael beats his stepfather to death and becomes a fugitive on the streets of New Manhattan. His two best friends, Alien and Victor, help him evade the authorities who are learning about Michael’s enhancements and are closing in fast. The truth could provide a justifiable reason for Michael’s assault on his stepfather, but it could also threaten the very foundation of their entire society.

You can buy this book from the website of my publisher Dvostruka duga.

Look for Me Under the Rainbow (Potraži me ispod duge) is my novella listed in a program for elementary schools as a reading of choice for seventh graders.

The murder of seal pups, with their soft pelts and innocent eyes, has come to represent the greed and inhumanity of mankind. It is a tale of the victims hunted for their fur, particularly of a harp seal pup named Danny and his family, and Helen and a small group of people gathered under the name of Rainbow Warriors dedicated to protecting them. Helen represents the future of humanity. Acting in defense of those exploited for money, she questions man’s ability to change and rediscover the human bond with nature.

You can buy the fourth edition of this book from the website of my publisher Katarina Zrinski.

By purchasing, reading and reviewing my books you support my creativity and stimulate and inspire me to push my limits and to delve into new and unexplored literary endeavors! Thank you!

BJ
www.bernardjan.com

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Bernard Jan