books – Klardendum

Just wanted to talk about Kentaro Miura’s Berserk

10/08/2024 10/08/2024

Berserk became the first manga I’ve read. I rarely watch anime either, so when a good friend of mine, who has great taste in good storytelling, suggested I watch the 90s anime adaptation of Berserk around 2004 or so, I went in with no expectations. Yet I loved it and immediately went for the source material, just as said friend already did, downloading and reading through all of the scans of the fan translated manga that, at that point, has just started to get officially translated and sold in the US, which was way too expensive to import to Ukraine. Decades went by and amidst the ongoing russian full scale invasion of Ukraine I decided to gift myself the full set of currently released hardcover Deluxe volumes from Dark Horse, importing them through Amazon and re-experiencing Berserk from the beginning in the way I never could before.

Kentaro Miura, the author of the manga, unfortunately passed away in 2021 and the episodes released since that time were done under the supervision of his friend and colleague Kouji Mori, who is trying to finish the story. He is, however, only doing what Miura described to him, without any additional embellishments and episodes of his own, so as a result, the storytelling is a lot more condensed and already starting to resemble the shorter more unfinished elements of The Silmarillion. I’m still hoping to see the end of the Berserk story as Kentaro Miura has envisioned it, but it clearly won’t be told in the way he would’ve wanted if he could. In this post I wanted to share some of my thoughts and love about Kentaro Miura’s Berserk in its completed, and sadly unfinished, form. And maybe revisit this topic again once the story concludes with the help of other people.

Few thoughts on: Scott Pilgrim (vs. the graphic novels, vs. the film, vs. the animated series)

31/05/2024 31/05/2024

Up until now, I’ve never read the Scott Pilgrim original graphic novels, nor saw Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, nor watched the Scott Pilgrim Takes Off. Neither did I ever listen to Plumtree. So, what changed? Apart from my general interest in Edgar Wright’s unique directing style and vision, the main motivation for finally checking this “franchise” out was the full Ukrainian translation of the novels. With my renewed interest in quality localisations and desire to support newer Ukrainian publishers, I’ve decided to get all of the volumes, the last of which was just released and see if it grabs me.

Few thoughts on: books by Ukraїner (and a couple of others)

03/03/2024 03/03/2024

While I’ve loved reading since I was a little kid, I do it quite a bit less often in the past 15 years or so. And when I do, for the sake of convenience I tend to prefer digital versions – they don’t take up extra space, you can easily read them when you commute or take them with you on travels. But in recent years, especially as I grew more interested in more visually rich books and rekindled my love for photo books, I’ve been grabbing occasional physical copies. With the start of the full scale Russian genocidal invasion of Ukraine, I’ve felt additionally compelled to grab more books from Ukrainian publishers. Which led me to discover just how much high quality publishing is happening right now that I was completely missing, with a few of older and established and several promising up and coming publishers providing content that feels extremely satisfying to own physically. In this post I wanted to focus on some of the examples. I’m focusing on Ukraїner, a project focused on bringing photographic coverage of modern Ukrainian life, and the books they’ve published because I happened to get them all and liked the majority of them.

Few thoughts on: Itchy Tasty: An Unofficial History of Resident Evil

02/12/2022 02/12/2022

As a lot of people reading me for a while might know, I’m a huge fan of Resident Evil. And if you’ve been around the gaming internet since the early 00s, you’ve probably used the GameFAQs for the guides and walkthroughs. If you were looking at Resident Evil and RE-related guides and walkthroughs on that site back in the day you would undoubtedly stumble upon fantastic ones by one “cvxfreak”. So when I’ve learned that Alex Aniel (real name of the author) was now living in Japan and interviewing a lot of Resident Evil series developers for a book about the history of the franchise, I got quite intrigued. After several years of teasers and successful crowdfunding campaign on Unbound the book came out half a year ago. Finally, partially “thanks” to Russian terrorist missile strikes and blackouts they caused, I’ve had some time to read the book. It’s neat!

Revisiting the books about Sherlock Holmes

24/05/2020 22/02/2022

Of all the ways I liked to entertain myself as a kid, the one that I chose most was reading. I read a lot. And I really liked adventure novels, so having full book collections of sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Jules Verne and the like was a blessing (they were all Russian translations, of course). And, well, of all the famous book characters, Sherlock Holmes was one of my biggest heroes. I read all of those novels and collections of short stories on Holmes so many times… Yet, until last year, I never actually revisited them since I was, probably, 13.

Often times, revisiting things that you liked as a kid leads to disappointment. But, there was so much stuff written on Holmes, that I knew that somewhere there could still be at least one short story I would still enjoy today. Luckily, I liked far more than that.

Revisiting the J. R. R. Tolkien’s legendarium

21/08/2019 22/02/2022

Writing about something that’s extremely popular can be difficult. Mostly due to the constant nagging feeling of – can I even say/write anything that’s worth writing that hasn’t been discussed to death by now? Well, The Middle-Earth books by J. R. R. Tolkien aren’t just “extremely popular” – they’re a natural part of culture, part of how people perceive any fantasy world (at least in the “Western World”), something that remains as inspirational and rich as it used to be when the books just got published.

Now, they weren’t as much of a revelation for me as they were for lots of people. Yet, even when I originally read The Hobbit as a kid, in some abridged version with illustrations for each page, I felt as if this work existed from before the beginning of time and will exist forever since. Weaving together western and northern world mythologies, using his linguistics skills and immense imagination John Ronald Reuel Tolkien has created something that has been imitated numerous times since. Yet often never reaching the same density and believability of the world of Middle-Earth Tolkien created.

So, a short while ago I decided to finally revisit the 3 main works set in the Middle-Earth: The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion. And here’s what I thought of them now.

Returning to The Chronicles of Amber

10/12/2017 22/02/2022

I haven’t read too many books by Roger Zelazny, but the ones I read I did enjoy. And of them all, The Chronicles of Amber remained the most important to me. They might be the first example of the multiverse, somewhat similar to the many-world interpretation, that I’ve personally had experience with, in either science or fiction works, and has remained influential for me to this day. But my memories, of both the “Corwin cycle” and “Merlin cycle” (first 5 books and second 5 books), were quite fuzzy by now, with only the main events, main ideas, memorable scenes intact, and I was curious to read them again. And, for the first time, the way they were written – in English, – since my original teenage experience was with the (pretty solid) Russian translations of the books. Hopefully, I won’t get disappointed…

The beauty of layers (and correct ingredients)

27/09/2017 22/02/2022

Last year I was finishing up reading A song of Ice and Fire series (the published books, I mean) and went on to read The Witcher books. And something about that experience felt… off. Something that made me think about how I “consume” art/entertainment, what I look for in it. And it struck me then – The Witcher book series didn’t have simple stories, or simple characters, but something about how different layers of stories and events connected was too… simple. I started looking at other books I like, movies, games, music, food even and it often led down to this simple word – layers. And how well they connect, of course.

The Witcher. Reading the fables

30/05/2016 22/02/2022

The last story expansion/DLC to The Witcher 3 is upon us. And I haven’t played the game yet because I’m waiting for it. That’s despite the fact that I still remember how The Witcher 3 was launched from within the office of CD Projekt, as I was working at GOG back then. There was much rejoicing *yaaaay*. That’s also despite the fact that I’ve played the first The Witcher game about 3 times in just a few months after it was first released, that’s how much I loved it. But that love for the first game was a surprise to me – I never read the books. They were super popular here in Ukraine, probably less so than in Poland, of course, but we had fans, we watched the TV series… Well, I didn’t. So I wanted to read the books, finally. And so I did. And the books were a bit of a mixed bag.

A Song of Ice and Fire. With fire and blood against night terrors

31/01/2016 22/02/2022

My parents always were proud of the fact that I was a reader since very young age. From children books on ants and dogs in the pocket, to classic adventure literature of Jules Verne, Conan Doyle or Alfred Szklarski I read and re-read everything I found to be interesting in our home library. And I’ve been doing this as one of my main means of “story kicks” up until about 10 or more years ago when games finally started upping their story quality. BioWare, who feel so pop and simplistic today, Obsidian, new and old projects from western and eastern developers I would discover for the first time with exciting wonderfully told stories. I knew that I’m not a particularly good writer myself, but had a bit more talent with games, so I spent more time with games, and less with books. And, eventually, decided to write about games. Nowadays, I rarely read books and watch movies/shows, having occasional exceptions for something that I feel is especially interesting or just “fitting the mood”. And spend more time with games trying to find my place with them. Now, when games are telling really amazing stories more commonly, I’m glad we’re getting more and more fantastic worlds, characters and stories. Yet, when I read George Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire”, I finally noticed something that wasn’t just about that. These books don’t just have amazing world, character and stories, they’re also one of the best examples of storytelling I’ve ever seen.