Author Archives: Alexandra

Review of “Silverstrupen” by Siri Pettersen

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Title: Silverstrupen (~Silver Throat)
Author: Siri Pettersen
Translator (Swedish): Ylva Kempe
Series: Vardari #2
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 425
Published: 2023 (translated 2024), B. Wahlströms
My Grade: 5 out of 5

GOODREADS’ DESCRIPTION

Imagine having stolen the devil from those in power. Robbed them of their source of everlasting life. And started a war, so fuelled by fear and disdain, that you are forced to become what you are hunting.

Juva is scarred for life by the man she liberated. The devil himself, whose blood sustained the eternal lives of the vardari. Now, she is battling unintended consequences: a flood of wolf-sick, a wavering city council and vardari´s desperate feud for the last drops.

Consumed by grief and fury, she is forced to side with dark, fanatical forces. Juva is fighting for everything she holds dear, but soon finds herself on a knife’s edge when she realises that the scar from Gríf cuts far deeper than she had imagined…

  • Náklav’s foundation is cracking under a flood of wolf-sick.

  • Divine images miraculously reveal the true faces of evil.

  • The elite who ran the world are crawling out from the shadows.

  • A vardari awaiting death finds a reason to live.

  • A fanatical priest opens the doors Drukna

MY REVIEW

Haha, wow, no wonder I couldn’t remember too much about The Iron Wolf before starting this second instalment in Siri Pettersen’s second trilogy, Vardari. It was released 2021 in Swedish which, with my bad reading memory, equals like two decades. It was delayed for almost two years also.

Whenever I grade a book, I always do it with my gut. Sometimes I honestly think that I am not very good at reviewing books because of this. But at the same time, I also believe that the general feeling after reading a book tells you more than if you look at very specific things that might speak differently to different readers. For instance, I love Siri’s world building. For me to love a setting like this, it doesn’t have to be original (even though this definitely is with its Norse roots), it’s all about how it is presented. Sometimes, I get a bit annoyed when the author is trying too much to describe the world by putting new words and things in the story without even a small description of what it means. Some might like that, but I don’t overly much. Siri builds her worlds very detailed but doesn’t do it in an overcomplicated way. It just makes sense, even if it was a bit hard getting into the story again after such a long time waiting (and reading other types of fantasy in between).

The story progresses nicely, it’s hard to put the book down (like with the first one). Things are constantly happening and you always want to continue to find out where this is going. And the ending. I feel that I am repeating myself a little bit after my review of The Iron Wolf, but the ending here was so similar. Not story-wise, but feeling-wise. It was an ending. A really good ending. And on the second to last page, I wasn’t sure what the third book could possibly be about. But then came the last page. Yep, there will definitely be a third book and I am so excited for it to, first of all, be revealed, and secondly be released. Hopefully in 2025 according to her website. But I also totally respect the writing process. Writing is hard and takes time. But please, Siri, hurry up with the final piece in this trilogy 😊.

I think Siri Pettersen could write anything and I would read it as soon as it is released. She is definitely one of my favorite authors! Do I even need to print the grade out in words?

Yeah, FIVE out of five possible!

Kirra

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Four weeks down under has gone by so fast and we have made our first move. We left our tiny granny flat in Mermaid Waters this morning and took an Uber down to Kirra in Coolangatta, the most southern part of Gold Coast. It only took 30 min, but when we are standing on the beach here and watch the skyline, it looks so far away.

I got one last beach session in with Cici and Katja at Surfer’s and we all had lead legs for some reason. Might be the cold. It’s really cold right now in the mornings. The sunrise was incredible as usual and I’m not even sad to have alarms set at 4:45am when I get to start my day with 1,5h of beach volley practice while the sun is rising.

Mikael and I cleaned out the AirBnB and had the luxury of checking in at the next place as soon as we arrived. And what a place! We have a room in a two bedroom apartment on the top floor. We are staying here through a friend of a friend of a friend and she matched us up with another friend of hers that plays beach volleyball as well. But she doesn’t seem to come until the end of the month so we have this two story apartment to ourselves for a bit. We can see the ocean from both balconies and it is super cosy with ocean theme.

Bye granny flat!

We packed up and then went out to explore a bit. It is truly beautiful here. Much calmer, not as many and not as high skyscrapers and they are not as tight together. We had lunch at Haig St Cafe and Restaurant and wow, we are definitely going back. Everything on the menu looked incredible!

We walked past the beach volleyball nets, walked all the way down to New South Wales and then a quick shopping on the way back. Right in Coolangatta, there is a state line which means that we walked to NSW today. Pretty cool!

The public restrooms are really nice here! Our first koala! Central Gold Coast looks so far away. QLD and NSW boarder.

The sunset on the way back was amazing! We are a bit further east than the rest of the Gold Coast, so we saw the skyline being lit up by purple and the sun set behind the mountains. Even if the sun sets behind land, it still colors the sky amazingly!

More beach volleyball

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What an amazing day it has been! The weather has been flawless, 25C and basically no clouds. Winter’s not too bad, haha! It just started though, I am counting on it getting colder.

This morning started with my alarm going off at 5am. I was hunting sunrises! Me and a couple of girls were gonna do some drills on the beach while the sun rose. Unfortunately, the poles were down at Surfer’s so we had to go down to Kurrawa and actually missed when the sun rose above the horizon. I guess I will have to do this again sometime.

I had such an amazing feeling after this morning, the sun was so warm, I was hungry and read on the beach until Mikael joined up so we could go to Elk Espresso and have a really nice brunch.

After that, I went in the ocean for the first time since getting here, in my new swimsuit. It was incredible! Wow! Mikael definitely missed out.

At 3pm, the next beach session of the day started for me, but this time social 4s and 2s with Beach Volleyball Gold Coast and Mikael got a haircut. I only did 4s today. My foot is really swollen after a mysterious twisting a week ago. It looks really bad and now it has started to hurt even when I’m running in sand, previously it was only hurting when I was walking on flat ground. Oh well.

Dinner at home in front of the latest Star Wars series The Acolyte and now bed. Such a long but magical day! The sun makes you tired and so does two two hour beach sessions, haha!

Goodnight!

Burleigh Head National Park

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WOW! We have had the most amazing day down in Burleigh Heads today. We were told that Burleigh Head National Park was incredible and it sure was. We followed the Ocean View Track in the national park. There were beautiful beaches in the beginning at Tallebudgera Creek, and it was almost a jungle feeling inside and along the small walking path and then we walked along the ocean with amazing views over the ocean and northern parts of Gold Coast. I will let the pictures speak for themselves. The coolest thing we saw was a Kookaburra sitting on a branch overhanging the walkway. It was just sitting there while we took pictures and lots of people walked by. So cool! A group of people we met along the way just told us that there was a Kookaburra ahead of us. People are so friendly here and just tells you about these things to brighten other people’s days.

After the short “hike”, we sat by the ocean, watching the surfers down below and just soaked it all in until the sun set behind the buildings. We had sushi at Oi Izakaya, a small place in Burleigh that had amazing sushi!

Today, we have taken a ride on the local bus and it worked just as well as the tram. Practically locals, haha!

SeaFire 2024

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First official day of winter is here! And what a day it has been. I had 16k steps before Mikael and my day even begun so to say that I’m tired would be an understatement.

Today, instead of Mikael being out early going for a run, he slept in while I spent the morning at the beach playing social beach volleyball with BVGC again. Stella from Wednesday was there again and we started strong together and kept going strong. It was so much fun! The morning started with no wind, no sun, but still like 20C. Optimal conditions. The wind took off a bit later, but wasn’t too bad. 3 hours later, and I was done! Got to talk a bit more with the locals, and apparently there is only social beach volley over here. No organized trainings or groups  for development. Like where are all the good teams? Apparently they all move to Europe to continue with their beach volleyball careers.

After a shower back at the granny flat, we took the tram up to Cavill Ave where we first had lunch at Pancakes in Paradise (savory mushroom and chicken crepe and sweet pancakes with syrup and chocolate fudge), then some shopping (Mikael got a pair of thongs and a sweater for $60, this years bikini models didn’t fit me at all either, so I will wait for my old ones to be sent down, haha) and then the big event of the evening: SeaFire!

SeaFire is a fireworks competition that I think goes yearly? Anyway, we had little expectations, just heard that there would be fireworks on 1st June. We were not disappointed! There were three firework displays, Italy first at 6pm, then UK at 7pm and Australia finale at 8pm. They all had choreography to music; Italy more towards local opera and such, UK to a little bit of everything and Australia movie music. Italy was good, some parts of UK was good and Australia was very relatable with Harry Potter, Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park and more. It was a great experience! And the displays were all non-comparably better than GP’s New Years firework in Gothenburg. Shot from boats out in the water and viewed from the beach with thousands of other people was magical! It was raining quite a bit, and we were super cold in the middle of it all, still soaked when we go back home, but it stopped before the final. Stella joined us too. She’s here on a WHV (working holiday visa) and will move on to Perth on Monday – we had a good couple of days together).

All in all, great day!

In short: yesterday we didn’t do much. We learned how Aussies recycle (everything recyclable in one bin, everything else in the other). And in general, it’s very clean here. Hardly any garbage on the street at all. No chewing gums, no trash, no nothing. Some shopping carts here and there (but that might be because we live close to a shopping center). The public restrooms are also very clean! Back home, I would hold it until I was back home, but here, no worries at all.

Videos from the display are on my Instagram, under highlights “Down under”. I should be able to upload videos here, but the wifi here is just too bad…

Surfer’s Paradise. Super touristy. Not for us. But now we’ve seen it!

Today’s adventure: Local tram

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We are still completely knocked out in the mornings. We set the alarm for 8am, but snooze through it and wake up at 10:30. But that’s not too bad. If we spent more time outside, walking and taking in new impressions, than these half days, I think we would be completely dead.

Even if we didn’t get out until like noon, we still managed to see a lot of things. On today’s agenda was to use the public transit here. There are several buses going around here and one tram, G:Link. It was super easy to buy a card at the station (we live by the end station in the south), they leave every ten minutes on average and stops at every stop. They were super clean and the cards were so easy to use. There are machines on every station, so you tap the card before you go on, and then when you get off again. Very convenient.

So we are living in Mermaid Waters and decided to go up to Main Beach and check it out. There is a scenic point called The Pit Gold Coast which didn’t look like it was too far. We gave up after going a third of the way from the tram station.

We live on the orange dot, took the tram all the way to the light green dot and walked to the dark green dot. That’s when we got tired and turned back.

Today’s realization: GOLD COAST IS BIG!

Much bigger than we thought. And it’s long. When we move onto our next place (Coolangatta) in three weeks, we will be one hour south of here, which is already kinda south in GC), even though it looks so close on the map. Insane!

We walked around in the Marina north of Main beach where huge yachts were stationed. We also saw that there are whale watching boats there. Humpback whales are migrating from Antartica now so we might just take one of those tours out one day.

Main Beach.

Southport, where we will stay our last three weeks.On the way back, we actually struggled to find a restaurant to eat at. We jumped off the tram at Surfer’s Paradise, but all the restaurants seemed to be at the stop before: Cavill Avenue. So we went to Broadbeach and had dinner at a bar, The Lukcy Squire, by the shopping mall The Oasis. The Philly Steak Sandwich was actually really good. And even if it was simple, it ended up costing 35 AUD per person with one soda as well. It’s expensive here.

Beach volleyball

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We slept much better last night, but were still super tired when we woke up and didn’t leave bed until like 10:30. Started the day with a little bit of shopping since I’m missing sport bras for instance. Found one at LSKB, another brand I’ve never seen before, there are lots of new stores around here, and got to use it for my first beach volleyball session later. We also got some food at Woolworths.

Beach Volleyball Gold Coast had social games today at 3:30pm and I was a bit nervous about the wind. Even if it was strong, it was consistent and I tried to use it as best as I could which actually felt really good, up until the point where I got a set from a player I didn’t know and didn’t time it at all. My reception was surprisingly good, and most of the setting. We also played 4vs4 and mixed which also confused me a lot, haha. But it was so much fun playing again (even if it was only a week ago I played back home) and the sand at the beach was so fine! I could get used to this.

We had dinner at a pub nearby and then walked back home through the more central parts of Broadbeach.

Chicken and mushroom pie with coleslaw and chips.

Jetlag?

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It’s been two really slow days after the intense two first days in Brisbane. I don’t know if we got delayed with the jetlag or something but we’ve both been so tired and sleeping bad.

Yesterday, we spent all day unpacking and going over our clothes that we managed to bring. I have everything I need normal-wise up top but am missing everything bottom except two pair of shorts, the jeans I flew in and the two new pair I bought in Brisbane. When it comes to my exercise clothes, it’s the opposite. Several tights and shorts, but only one tank top and one sports bra. Mikael missed all his exercise clothes plus lots of underwear and all his extra shoes but had decently even with everything else. To leave the house a little, we went shopping, both more food but also shoes and workout clothes for him.

Yesterday, we also cooked dinner in our tiny kitchen. Spaghetti and meat sauce but without the pasta since we only have one cooker and didn’t want to wait. We had avo on the side instead. And wow. What amazing avocadoes they have here! And for only 1 dollar each! And they’re big! Amazing!

Today, Mikael took his new workout outfit for a test run while I took a shower and fixed a bit at home. I didn’t go to bed until midnight last night, but woke up at 3 am and was super awake and couldn’t go back to sleep for another two hours.

When sleeping until 11, doing a little bit of fixing at home, the day is over in no time. Had leftovers for dinner and watched a documentary about Australia wildlife on Disney+.

Oh, also! We saw our first cockroach today! It wasn’t anything special, only like 2cm. I will update again when I see one the size of my hand. But for now, every first is still cool! 😎

First day in Mermaid Waters

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First day in Gold Coast. Last night, we were so tired and went to bed at 8pm. Set the alarms for 8am. I woke up at 6 and just couldn’t go back to sleep and finished The Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson, the third and last Mistborn book (review can be found here, this is still a travel and book blog 🤓) – WOW! Mikael didn’t wake up at 8, but that was fine since I wasn’t done with the book just yet. At 10, he started to move a little and at noon we were ready to walk 5 minutes to Pacific Fair, the big shopping mall. On today’s agenda was buying food and sunscreen, which is a bit of a jungle. It’s important to buy the right one due to chemicals and stuff. Good thing it’s cheaper here than in Sweden, but the good ones are as expensive, if not more so. Shopping at Woolworths was fun, but surprisingly similar to a Swedish store. I was prepared for something completely different, like in the US. I remember loving going grocery shopping there because it was so different. I guess it was different here as well, obviously, but not as much. There were many things we recognized, but also so many more options of everything. It took us a while to go through a fraction of it, haha.

Our next stop was the beach. We’ve been here three days now and I haven’t seen the beach. It took us maybe 20 min to walk to the beach and got there just in time for the sun to set behind the skyscrapers. It was not cold with full pants and a thin cardigan, but it wasn’t warm either. Even if it is around 20C, it’s not really warm. When it’s 20 back home, it is warm. Definitely different climates.

The beach is huge! It’s super wide and as long as you can see! I don’t think I’ve ever seen a beach this big, haha! And the sand was squeaky, hilarious. I wonder how that affects playing beach volleyball.

The waves were pretty high, and there was only one place on the beach where you could go swimming, right in front of a lifeguard tower. There was a detailed sign about today’s conditions. The water was 23C while it was only 19C on land.

Review of “The Hero of Ages” by Brandon Sanderson

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Title: The Hero of Ages
Author: Brandon Sanderson
Series: Mistborn #3
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 556
Published: 2008, Tor Books
My Grade: 5 out of 5

GOODREADS’ DESCRIPTION

“Description contains spoilers for previous book in the series”

Who is the Hero of Ages?

To end the Final Empire and restore freedom, Vin killed the Lord Ruler. But as a result, the Deepness—the lethal form of the ubiquitous mists—is back, along with increasingly heavy ashfalls and ever more powerful earthquakes. Humanity appears to be doomed.

Having escaped death at the climax of The Well of Ascension only by becoming a Mistborn himself, Emperor Elend Venture hopes to find clues left behind by the Lord Ruler that will allow him to save the world. Vin is consumed with guilt at having been tricked into releasing the mystic force known as Ruin from the Well. Ruin wants to end the world, and its near omniscience and ability to warp reality make stopping it seem impossible. Vin can’t even discuss it with Elend lest Ruin learn their plans!

 

MY REVIEW

It’s impressive that Brandon Sanderson manages to write a trilogy where all the books are so completely different, yet still hang together and continues the story flawlessly. Where the first one introduces this world of the Final Empire in a very captivating way, the second offers a story that takes a 180 turn when it comes to content and the third is just miserable and hopeless all the way through. Like how will Vin and Elend fix this?? I was prepared for a sad ending. And it kinda was. But I also felt satisfied with it. And it was a happy ending. I don’t think I was very excited to start the next trilogy that takes place 300 years later, but now I am. I want to know what will happen in the future.

I can’t really write anything without spoiling and I’m trying to keep all my reviews spoiling. At the end of book one, you think there shouldn’t be any more books. At the end of book two, you rethink the whole series so far. And at the end of book three you understand the whole picture and want to know what happens next.

I did find it a bit confusing with two very similar story arcs going parallel. But that was about it.

Sanderson is great at revealing things after a while without you having any clue about what will come. You get surprised all the time, because information comes from nowhere but it totally makes sense once you get it. It’s really a delight! 5 out of 5, highly recommend! 😊