Ioana Visan Official Website

Et voila, we have a website! :)

2012 March Reading List

The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett – I liked A Hat Full of Sky better. 3/5 stars

Good Omen by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett – I wish the entire book was only about the demon and the angel and skipped the rest. The scene at the pub where they decided they couldn’t discuss the apocalypse while being drunk and then instantly sobered up was priceless. I also wish the demon’s strategy of growing healthy plants worked. Oh, and I want one of those cars that make all tapes play Queen songs! 3/5 stars

Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett – I liked it better than The Wee Free Men, though not so keen on the beginning. 3/5 stars

I Shall Wear Midnight by Terry Pratchett – I loved the title, it was what made me want to read the book even before I knew what it was about. As far as the story goes, I think I liked Wintersmith better. 3/5 stars

And I think I’ve had enough of Pratchett for now, it’s time to move to something else.

The Silence of Gaudi by Juan David Morgan – While I didn’t care for the basic premises and the plot takes some hard to believe turns, the story flows nicely and it’s an easy read. Plus the action is set in Barcelona so extra bonus points for that. 3/5 stars

Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carre – Fascinated as perspective, but disjointed plot. 3/5 stars

The Antiquarian by Julian Sanchez – Back to Barcelona, yay! The story starts well, but somewhere around the middle it becomes less good and then it goes completely off the rails. 3/5 stars

ROMCON Awards 2012 Nomination

The nominations for ROMCON Awards 2012 have been announced on Helion On-line.

I'm pleased to announced that "Miss Vu's Morning Ride" is nominated in the Debut category, and also a little surprised because I had no idea Miss Vu was so popular. :)

"Miss Vu's Morning Ride" is included in "Steampunk: The Second Revolution" anthology and it's available on Elefant.ro.

Observator cultural says goodbye to sci fi & fantasy column?

Or is it just Mr. Haulica saying goodbye to "Observator cultural"? In his last article, he announced that after seven years he's stopping writing his weekly column and focusing on writing instead. Good for him and I'm looking forward to reading more stories written by him, but in the mean time I will miss reading his articles on Saturday morning (that's when I read them, not when they were published.)

He concludes his long term endeavor with a run down of what happened in the Romanian sci fi world during the last seven years. Among other things, he notes: "Din ce în ce mai prezenți în atenția cititorilor sînt Ștefana Cristina Czeller, Ciprian Mitoceanu (debutați deja în volum), Aron Biro, Raluca Băceanu, Balin Feri, Cătălina Fometici, Narcisa Stoica, Ioana Vișan – posibile vedete ale sefeului românesc de mîine." Rough translation: Possible stars of tomorrow's Romanian sci fi world. Oh, my, the pressure!

Steampunk Review on BookBlog

I'm always happy to read a new review of "Steampunk: The Second Revolution". This time, it's on BookBlog.

Happy Women's Day

2012 Librex Book Fair

Who on earth had the brilliant idea to move the Librex book fair to March? It's cold, and wet, and windy and overall ick... Last May we had such nice weather and it was a pleasure to go. Now only the idea of tons of books waiting there could drag me out of the house.

Anyway, the fair... same location like last year, less crowded though, but maybe that was because we arrived after 6 PM. Actually it felt like there were more people sitting down and listening to the speaker than those checking the books. The number of people buying was even smaller. I saw few people with book bags, and even when they carried some those weren't big.

Of course we had to do the opposite. According to our concept saying that "rather than get poisoned with all the junk they put in the food, better get educated" we got our fill, sci fi for me and fantasy for little brother as usual. I'll probably end up reading them both, when I run out of books, but that's okay.

Hopefully next year they'll move the fair back to May! And bring more new books!

PS I liked last year's free bookmarks better. The new poster is nice, but the bookmarks are ugly.

Venus Review in Nautilus

I was left speechless and did a little bouncing in my chair after I finished reading Mr. Liviu Radu's review of Venus that was published today in the 50th issue of Nautilus magazine.

I wasn't expecting such big praises for a story that started as a love story, ended up as a crime story, and left me convinced it wouldn't make the cut to be included in the anthology because of that. Good thing I submitted it in the end, eh?

So spring has already started well for me. :)

For those interested, Venus is available on Elefant.ro.

Later edit: Yesterday things were still normal as in white background, black text and red links. Today I woke up to an alternate reality in which the background is dark gray, the text is white and the links are cyan. It looks like Nautilus got a make-over. It uses a theme similar to the one from Nemira's blog, only that now the blog looks almost decent compared to Nautilus. Good God, the front page is so busy! I can't find anything on it. Ok, I'm exaggerating a little, but it really is too busy. And because of the color scheme, I'm forced to go back to copy & paste big chunks of text into Word to be able to read them. Sigh. Yes, I know I'll get used to it in a month or two, but until then allow me to bitch. Can we get the next make-over soon? Like in... tomorrow?

P.S. I hope Gazeta SF doesn't change its layout too!