#bookreview

See tagged statuses in the local Kirjakasa community

Michael W. Lucas: Run Your Own Mail Server (Hardcover, english language, Titled Windmill Press)

You Against the Email Empire Message services appear and disappear, but email remains. One of …

best email how to i've read

Back in 2006 I wanted to self host my mail. After two weeks of feeling with a bunch of howtos from the linux documentation project I gave up. That was also probably due to me getting free email hosting from google. When that offer ended, I thought about self hosting again , this time documentation was way better. This book is huge howtos and covers everything email related. The protocols, the history. It also provides exemples, sequencing : what to do first and then. I've been using email and managing some email related domains for 25ish years. I've learned a lot and would recommend that every sysadmin reads this book.

#email #sysadmin #book #goodread #bookreview #bookstodon #ryoms

reviewed Labyrinth's Heart by M. A. Carrick (Rook and Rose, #3)

M. A. Carrick: Labyrinth's Heart (2023, Orbit)

Ren came to Nadežra with a plan. She would pose as the long-lost daughter of …

A finale worthy of the world

#BookReview

After the dramatic events at the end of The Liar's Knot, we enter this book aware of what’s behind the much of the ill our main characters, Ren, Vargo and Grey, are fighting.

The trouble is, although these three are now revealed and reconciled with each other in all their various guises, having become embroiled in multiple personas or other lies, at some point it was inevitable there would be consequences of such deceptions.

For Ren, however much she adores the new family she’s gained by becoming Traementis, it’s based on a falsehood, and it’s really the work that she does in her Vraszenian guises of Arenza Lensky and The Black Rose that she’s passionate about. Is there any way for her to not break with the Traementis while following her heart?

For Vargo, and his spider, he somehow needs to keep the trust of those he relies on …

reviewed The Liar's Knot by M. A. Carrick (Rook & Rose, #2)

M. A. Carrick: The Liar's Knot (EBook, 2021, Orbit)

Trust is the thread that binds us . . . and the rope that hangs …

Found family, sumptuous world-building and intricate politics

#BookReview Here, we continue with story of Ren, a would-be con artist, who’s achieved her goal of being accepted as a full member of the noble House Traementis in the Renaissance Venice-inspired city of Nadežra, where this trilogy is set.

However, Ren’s now a long way from her main motivations being those she started with, as she has a new tangled web of heart and home considerations to think of at every turn.

The primary thrust of this second book takes us back to the mysterious curse on House Traementis, something that was introduced a bit too hurriedly in the first book.

Who or what is it that has the power to so profoundly affect families so as to cause entire family lines to die out? Why is the crime lord Vargo seemingly also so interested in this problem? How does this link to the 200 years of tension between …

M. A. Carrick: The Mask of Mirrors (Orbit)

Nightmares are creeping through the city of dreams . . .

Renata Virdaux is a …

Expertly crafted political fantasy

#BookReview This book is the first in a completed trilogy, written by two authors under the pen name of M. A. Carrick. It follows the stories of multiple characters as they try and negotiate the turbulence of life in the Renaissance Venice-inspired city of Nadežra.

Our main protagonist is Ren, a city native (who are of Vraszenian race), who has returned to Nadežra after being forced to flee it after betraying the sinister leader of their group (knot) of child thieves. Together with her sister Tess, she is trying to move up in the world by executing a con trick passing herself off as the daughter of an estranged relative of one of the ruling Liganti-race gentry families - the Traementis family - in order to be taken in by them officially.

However, as Ren negotiates her con, helped along by her marvellously fun, and sometimes scandalous, appearances as a …

J. R. R. Tolkien(duplicate): The Fellowship of the Ring : being the first part of The Lord of the Rings (2011, Harper Collins)

The first part of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Tolkien’s classic epic of Good …

A truly special tale

Every time I return to Middle Earth, it's like visiting an old friend. The familiar faces, the smells of pipe smoke and trees, the quiet hum of the river – it all washes over me with a sense of peace and belonging. Tolkien's world-building is so immersive that I can almost feel the road going ever on beneath my feet and the cool breeze on my face.

The setting is truly a masterpiece, but it's not just that which draws me back. It's the characters. Frodo, with his quiet courage and unwavering determination; Gandalf, Sam all all the fellowship – these are people I've grown to love. Their journeys, their triumphs, and their struggles feel deeply personal.

Then there's the story itself. With each reread, I discover new nuances, hidden meanings, and deeper connections between the characters and the themes. I mentioned the sense of peace in my first paragraph. …

China Miéville: The City & the City (Paperback, 2010, Del Rey)

When a murdered woman is found in the city of Beszel, somewhere at the edge …

One of the most thought-provoking books that I have read

This is a darn good detective story but also seriously gets you thinking (it’s also a totally different thing to the TV series once you get into it).

Minor – Chapter 1 style - spoilers ahead

The basic plot revolves around two seemingly normal cities existing in the same space somewhere in Europe. One city, Besźel, really reminds me of Bratislava when I first moved there. Lots of beautiful old architecture showing past wealth, but currently crumbling away from neglect. The other city, Ul Qoma is surging ahead economically and is full of glass and steel new construction.

The story follows Inspector Tyador Borlú, of the Besźel Extreme Crime Squad (who strikes me as if Inspector Frost grew up in Bratislava) who stumbles upon a crime that forces him to confront this very complex situation.

This is very much our world with Google and Microsoft Word and without any magic …

More delicious malevolence

#BookReview This book, second in Naomi Novik’s young-adult dark academia fantasy series ‘The Scholomance’, starts exactly where we left off in the first book (ramblingreaders.org/user/clare_hooley/review/558898) with our two main protagonists, our narrator El and and her perhaps boyfriend Orion, now seniors in the deadly school. The end of the senior year is when both of them will face ‘graduation’ - a literal gauntlet run through a room filled with wicked hungry magical monsters (always deliciously well-described by Novik’s writing) that, in a standard year, only about half those entering survive. Of course with El and Orion both being so exceptional, we know this isn’t going to be a standard year. El has mellowed out (grown up) from being quite so whiny and angsty, although her sarcastic streak remains undimmed, and now even has friends. Owing to events at the end of book one, she also can’t be invisible …

reviewed A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik (The Scholomance, #1)

Naomi Novik: A Deadly Education (Paperback, RANDOM HOUSE UK)

A delicious coming of age magic school fantasy

Young-adult fantasy told in first person through the eyes of El, a 3rd year (~16 years old) female student in the ‘Scholomance’, the magic school of the series title. We as reader are thrown directly into her life at the school, which is completely cut off from the outside world of the adult wizards (there are no teachers here). In this first book of the series, we are then taken a-pace through a series of the school’s non-stop horrors as we learn most of the students die in increasingly gruesome ways; there’s magical monsters at every turn, work assignments that turn deadly, contaminated food, bullies and cliques, and a good dose of adolescent angst. In fact, it’s all quite a good deal of macabre fun, and told with much delightful malice. One of the main themes is how much easier life is if you come from a position of privilege, …