Elke

With Zamonia Walter Moers invented a world like Terry Pratchett did with his Discworld and populated it with different people and characters. Now we are introduced to a new character - Optimus Yarnspinner - who is going to investigate the mystery of a short story and his unknown author. His quest leads him to the City of Dreaming Books and that's where the adventure begins to start in earnest.

It's absolutely amazing and wonderful how the author uses language to describe every event and scene.
The newspaper "Die Welt" has called it a love declaration for literature, and in that, the critic was quite correct. If you love books and adventures, you should read this book by all means.

What a nice little book! Finally, an author describes the world from another point of view - not from a human's, but a dragon's view. It's really funny and encourages in parts a bit meditativeness.
Read and enjoy it - unfortunately, the story is not very long so the fun is over much too early.

That story has got a nice mix of everything: a crime story in today's London, a wizard apprentice and his master, several gods and supernatural beings - it's nearly perfect. Although I'm a quite unoriented person (thanks to the people who gave us the GPS!) I liked the detailed description of London. It makes you plan your next holidays ...

First of all, let me say that I started to read the Harry Potter series in order to improve my English (although I've exceeded the proper age easily at that time already). My idea was, that children's books were easier to understand than those for adults. So far so good.
What I didn't expect was, that the books would be quite unique so that I've re-read them ever since I've laid hands on the first one.
It has been described before from persons who are certainly more able than I am, that Ms Rowling has created something special - a world which is not that far away from the ordinary one but still different, full of magic. However, the inhabitants of the other world have to struggle with common problems, too: distrust against each other, enviousness, lovesickness, .... Those are problems where no magic can help.

To be honest, I like reading children stories or books for young adults. Somehow it seems to be more suitable when an author invents fantasy worlds for children than for adults - they already live in an own world full of wonders.

I liked the idea of describing a young wizard being educated, the daily life in a boarding school, his growing-up with all implications of adolescence and of course the encounters with his adversary. As a conclusion I can only say, that I loved all the books - and still do. So my recommendation can only be: read the series and enjoy the story how it develops through all the books.

This story develops - even for the first part of a trilogy - quite slowly. However, the plot it well designed in a world which can be easily imagined by the reader. It was always thrilling so that I wanted to know how the story goes on.
But one thing was quite annoying: the language. There are several simple mistakes in the text which are disturbing ("him" instead of "her", words left out, obviously wrong tenses, ...). Sometimes this made it tiring to follow the story.

However, I liked the characters and look forward to meeting them again in part 2.