
Paper_Dragon commented...
3h
It's pretty good so far! Can definitely tell it's a translation, but it almost adds to the charm.

Paper_Dragon started reading...
4h

Gamekeeper: The System's Huntsman
Nikolai Skiba
The air smells of pine. It’s July, and I am surrounded by taiga. I’m a gamekeeper and I know it like the back of my own hand. I’m out for boar today. Then suddenly a shot is heard, and everything goes dark. When I awake, I’m… seventeen, and my name is now Max. I’m a sickly kid that everyone around here avoids like the plague. My hands bear the crimson tattoos of a Huntsman. I have to capture my first pet, survive, and help my family. I have to get my bearings in this insane world - a world where people hide behind flimsy walls and fight for survival, and the woods are filled with magical creatures. I will learn how to be a Huntsman. I will use all my knowledge. With my experience, and the Animal Code, that shouldn’t be difficult. After all, the woods are the woods - you just have to know how to read them. And I do that better than I do anything else.

Paper_Dragon started reading...
4h

Gamekeeper: The System's Huntsman
Nikolai Skiba
The air smells of pine. It’s July, and I am surrounded by taiga. I’m a gamekeeper and I know it like the back of my own hand. I’m out for boar today. Then suddenly a shot is heard, and everything goes dark. When I awake, I’m… seventeen, and my name is now Max. I’m a sickly kid that everyone around here avoids like the plague. My hands bear the crimson tattoos of a Huntsman. I have to capture my first pet, survive, and help my family. I have to get my bearings in this insane world - a world where people hide behind flimsy walls and fight for survival, and the woods are filled with magical creatures. I will learn how to be a Huntsman. I will use all my knowledge. With my experience, and the Animal Code, that shouldn’t be difficult. After all, the woods are the woods - you just have to know how to read them. And I do that better than I do anything else.

Paper_Dragon TBR'd a book
4h

Park Life: The Memoirs of a Royal Parks Gamekeeper
John Bartram
'Retire? You can't retire!', Sir David Attenborough told John Bartram, when the man who has been gamekeeper and senior wildlife officer for Richmond Park for the past thirty years announced his intention to step away from the role, bidding farewell to the iconic park which has been his home, the backdrop for a career many would give anything for, and a way of life for so long. During a career spanning four decades John has been the behind-the-scenes mastermind ensuring the welfare and maintenance of Richmond Park's world-famous herd of deer - widely thought of as the finest herd in captivity. Working with these fabled creatures has demanded balancing their needs with the very real, and often fatal, dangers the park's visitors pose to his herd, and John pulls no punches when it comes to his opinion on the deer's place in the scheme of things, the human 'invaders' and the collision of their two worlds. A remarkable diary chronicling the final year of John's charmed life as the guardian of Richmond Park, this memoir tells of the unique demands of each new season, and of the enormous wrench he will feel upon no longer waking up in the midst of so much unchanged and wild beauty.Park Life is a treasure trove of stories and memories, some poignant and moving, others offbeat and hilarious: from the quirk of fate and farcical interview that led to him getting the job, to living in close-quarters with the deer, the tragedy of putting down fatally wounded animals, and the annual ritual of the rut - as dependable as the rising and setting of the sun.

Read the manwha prior to this first book, I think that suits more than the light novels.
Jake's perspective leans towards stat heavy, though will give props for the decent written fights.
Slow paced.

Paper_Dragon finished a book
21h

The Primal Hunter (The Primal Hunter, #1)
Zogarth Zogarth
On just another average day, Jake finds himself in a forest filled with monsters, dangers, and opportunity... It was a day like any other when suddenly the world changed. The universe reached a threshold humanity didn’t even know existed, and it was time to finally be integrated into the vast multiverse. A place where power is the only thing anyone can truly rely on. Jake, a seemingly average office worker, finds himself thrust into this new world. Into a tutorial filled with dangers and opportunities. His new reality should breed fear and concern. His fellow coworkers falter at every turn. Jake, however, finds himself thriving. Perhaps... This is the world Jake was meant to be born in.

Paper_Dragon is interested in reading...
3d

The Wizard Who Kept Himself Suspicious
Scott Lynch
When egos clash during an assemblage of wizards, grandstanding displays of magic become a matter of murder in a witty and suspenseful short story by a New York Times bestselling author. Curmudgeonly conjurer Shiverick joins a conclave of fellow wizards on the strangest beach in the world expecting the usual flashy outfits, hammy miracles, and predictable suspicions that his own powers are nil. After all, he’s never so much as cast a spell in public. When accusations of fraud end in a flamboyant murder, Shiverick must piece together the truth amid the chaos. An observant and logical thinker, it’s his time to shine. Scott Lynch’s The Wizard Who Kept Himself Suspicious is part of the Magic & Mystery collection, puzzle-box mysteries from top fantasy authors. They can be read or listened to in one enchanting sitting.

Paper_Dragon is interested in reading...
3d

Mercenary Reincarnated as a Chef 1 (Mercenary Reincarnated as a Chef, #1)
Gabriel Rathweg
An isekai LitRPG Adventure with a cooking twist, perfect for fans of Legends & Lattes & Grilled Armageddon! Retired Assassin. Reluctant Champion. Revolutionary Chef.Diamond Lou was the best mercenary assassin the world had ever known. Even the best have to die sometimes.For Lou, that was okay. He tired of all the killing and death. Only, the end never came. The goddess Azrael intervenes, giving him the opportunity to be reborn in a fantasy world not to be a mercenary or a killer, but a chef.Lou takes that chance. However, sometimes you get more than you bargained for. It's a good thing he knows how to fight for the chance at his new life. One actually worth living. Jump into this isekai LitRPG Adventure with a cooking twist, featuring slice-of-life elements, slow-build progression, tower climbing, incredible beasts, deep worldbuilding, magic, and delicious food.Perfect for fans of Delicious in Dungeon, Legends and Lattes, and Grilled Armageddon!

Paper_Dragon is interested in reading...
3d

Mercenary Reincarnated as a Chef 2 (Mercenary Reincarnated as a Chef, #2)
Gabriel Rathweg
Book 2 in this isekai LitRPG Adventure with a cooking twist, featuring slice-of-life elements, slow-build progression, tower climbing, incredible beasts, deep worldbuilding, magic, and delicious food.Perfect for fans of Delicious in Dungeon, Legends and Lattes, Food Wars!, and Grilled Armageddon!

Paper_Dragon TBR'd a book
4d

Stay Buried
Jane R. Miles
The claustrophobia of Room meets the camaraderie of Yellowjackets with a touch of Picnic at Hanging Rock in this dark, immersive, psychological thriller debut with a speculative/lite-horror edge. Christmas Eve, 1974. As Cyclone Tracy tears through Darwin, four girls disappear into the heart of the outback. No tracks. No bodies. No answers. Decades later, one returns. She claims to be one of the missing. But is she? There is no proof of who she is, only a keepsake that once belonged to another missing woman - Sally, a teen mother whose disappearance never mattered to anyone but Von, the daughter she left behind. Sally's return rekindles the cold case, as desperate families plead for answers - and a dark mystery begins to surface. A hidden bunker ... a ghost ... scratches on a concrete wall ... pictures inside a View-Master ... and the little girl who understood the darkness better than anyone. Inspired by true events, Stay Buried is the darkly thrilling tale of secrets unearthed, the will to survive and a legend that refuses to die.

Paper_Dragon started reading...
4d

A Walk in the Park: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon
Kevin Fedarko
From the New York Times bestselling and award-winning author of the epic adventure tale The Emerald Mile comes the most dramatic and deeply moving account ever of walking the Grand Canyon, a highly dangerous, life-changing 750-mile trek. The Grand Canyon is an American treasure, visited by more than 6 million people a year, many of whom are rendered speechless by its vast beauty, mystery, and complexity. Now, in A Walk in the Park , author Kevin Fedarko chronicles his year-long effort to find a 750-mile path along the length of the Grand Canyon, through a vertical wilderness suspended between the caprock along the rims of the abyss and the Colorado River, which flows along its bottom. Consisting of countless cliffs and steep drops, plus immense stretches with almost no access to water, and the fact that not a single trail links its eastern doorway to its western terminus, this jewel of national parks is so challenging that when Fedarko departed fewer people had completed the journey in one single hike than had walked on the moon. The intensity of the effort required him to break his trip into several legs, each of which held staggering dangers and unexpected discoveries. Accompanying Fedarko through this sublime yet perilous terrain is the award-winning photographer Peter McBride, who captures the stunning landscape in breathtaking photos. Together, they encounter long-lost Native American ruins, the remains of Old West prospectors’ camps, present day tribal activists, and signs that commercial tourism is impinging on the park’s remote wildness. An epic adventure, action-packed survival tale, and a deep spiritual journey, A Walk in the Park gives us an unprecedented glimpse of the crown jewel of America’s National an iconic landscape framed by ancient rock whose contours are recognized by all, but whose secrets and treasures are known to almost no one, and whose topography encompasses some of the harshest, least explored, most awe-inspiring terrain in the world.

Paper_Dragon TBR'd a book
4d

Columbine
Dave Cullen
"The tragedies keep coming. As we reel from the latest horror . . . " So begins a new epilogue, illustrating how Columbine became the template for nearly two decades of "spectacle murders." It is a false script, seized upon by a generation of new killers. In the wake of Newtown, Aurora, and Virginia Tech, the imperative to understand the crime that sparked this plague grows more urgent every year.What really happened April 20, 1999? The horror left an indelible stamp on the American psyche, but most of what we "know" is wrong. It wasn't about jocks, Goths, or the Trench Coat Mafia. Dave Cullen was one of the first reporters on scene, and spent ten years on this book-widely recognized as the definitive account. With a keen investigative eye and psychological acumen, he draws on mountains of evidence, insight from the world's leading forensic psychologists, and the killers' own words and drawings-several reproduced in a new appendix. Cullen paints raw portraits of two polar opposite killers. They contrast starkly with the flashes of resilience and redemption among the survivors.

Paper_Dragon TBR'd a book
4d

The Billionaire's Vinegar: The Mystery of the World's Most Expensive Bottle of Wine
Benjamin Wallace
The New York Times bestseller, updated with a new epilogue, that tells the true story of a 1787 Château Lafite Bordeaux—supposedly owned by Thomas Jefferson—that sold for $156,000 at auction and of the eccentrics whose lives intersected with it. Was it truly entombed in a Paris cellar for two hundred years? Or did it come from a secret Nazi bunker? Or from the moldy basement of a devilishly brilliant con artist? As Benjamin Wallace unravels the mystery, we meet a gallery of intriguing players—from the bicycle-riding British auctioneer who speaks of wines as if they are women to the obsessive wine collector who discovered the bottle. Suspenseful and thrillingly strange, this is the vintage tale of what could be the most elaborate con since the Hitler diaries.

Paper_Dragon started reading...
5d

Whistle
Linwood Barclay
New York Times bestselling author Linwood Barclay enters new territory with a supernatural chiller in which a woman and her young son move to a small town looking for a fresh start, only to be haunted by disturbing events and strange visions when they find a mysterious train set in a storage shed. Evil has a one track mind.... Annie Blunt has had an unimaginably terrible year. First, her husband was killed in a tragic hit-and-run accident, then one of the children’s books she’s built her writing and illustrating career on ignited a major scandal. Desperate for a fresh start, she moves with her son Charlie to a charming small town in upstate New York where they can begin to heal. But Annie’s year is about to get worse. Bored and lonely in their isolated new surroundings, Charlie is thrilled when he finds a forgotten train set in a locked shed on their property. Annie is glad to see Charlie happy, but there’s something unsettling about his new toy. Strange sounds wake Annie in the night—she could swear she hears a train, but there isn’t an active track for miles—and bizarre things begin happening in the neighborhood. Worse, Annie can’t seem to stop drawing a disturbing new character that has no place in a children’s book. Grief can do strange things to the mind, but Annie is beginning to think she’s walked out of one nightmare straight into another, only this one is far more terrifying…

Paper_Dragon DNF'd a book
6d

Devil Mountain
Inessa Jackson
A wickedly dark police procedural with a hint of the supernatural, this crime novel is Dinuka McKenzie meets The Bluffs. When Detective Sergeant Anastasia Brown is sent to investigate the strange death of a man found in a small NSW town, she sees it as an opportunity to redeem herself after an unjust suspension. But it's far from a simple homicide. The victim, a beloved GP and councilor, is found on a nearby mountain chained to a fence and burned to a crisp, with arcane symbols carved into the soles of his feet - and the boy who found the body saw a ghost lingering in the trees. As Ana struggles against small-town secrets and high-level misogyny, the truth only grows murkier. Is this a clever killer with a flair for the macabre? Or are the local murmurs of the mountain being haunted more than just folklore?

Paper_Dragon started reading...
6d

The Primal Hunter (The Primal Hunter, #1)
Zogarth Zogarth
On just another average day, Jake finds himself in a forest filled with monsters, dangers, and opportunity... It was a day like any other when suddenly the world changed. The universe reached a threshold humanity didn’t even know existed, and it was time to finally be integrated into the vast multiverse. A place where power is the only thing anyone can truly rely on. Jake, a seemingly average office worker, finds himself thrust into this new world. Into a tutorial filled with dangers and opportunities. His new reality should breed fear and concern. His fellow coworkers falter at every turn. Jake, however, finds himself thriving. Perhaps... This is the world Jake was meant to be born in.