The holidays are slowly drawing to a close, just like the old year, and I finally managed to drag myself from the weird limbo that is the week between Christmas and New years to write this post. I honestly, didn´t expect to be finished with this reading challenge already, with time to spare, but that´s just more reason to celebrate! I finished the Sporty Path, and managed to fill another of the Side Quest fields, basically just in passing-by. So, before we dive into the books I´m talking about today, I want to wish you all a belated Merry Christmas and happy holidays, whatever you celebrate. I hope you had a beautiful time, and that you can face the New Year with full energy. And lots of books of course.
Starting with the book I began last time, Renegades for the Superhero Challenge. I finished it soon after the last post, and a lot of my thoughts back then still stand. I love the way to book makes me think (though to be honest, even somebody like me, whose comic knowledge is limited to the movies, and who has never seen even one X-Men movie can tell that this whole set-up is heavily inspired by them. And Ace Anarchy is also clearly inspired by Magneto in terms of his goals. If they are actually his goals, and not what Nova believes, because I´m not sure I trust what he told her. I´s all a bit filtered information.) Nova has a point, with a lot of the things she says, but her world view is also a bit skewered by her past, which means she still misses some important spot checks. Namely: Just destroying the Renegades is just throwing everything back to how it was during the Age on Anarchy. And that´s not what she wants, but she lack the plan/foresight to keep that from happening. That’s what makes this book so interesting, and I really could talk hours about this book (maybe enough for another post on its own) and I´m really curious what the second book is going to do with the premise and conflict build up in this one.
ExP: 2
For the Main Adventure Plot Challenge I picked a book I´ve been waiting for months to come out, The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty. It has everything I´ve ever loved, taking place in a world build on islamic and oriental mythology, full of djinn, and starting in Cairo in the 19th century. Honestly, I study Egyptology because I love Egypt so much, telling me about a book taking place in Cairo is enough to get my attention. It won´t necessarily mean I´ll read it, but you have my attention. And this book offers so much more. Nahri, the heroine of the book, crafty, trying to play everything to her advantages, to try and find her place in this new world she gets suddenly thrown in, which is both her birth right and so very strange to her, is amazing, and I love that we get a lot information on the conflict between daevas and shaftis and how both sides view it, and themselves as the victims in this set up, and both sides have points and they both make terrible mistakes and there is intrigue and just like Nahri, we don´t really know what to believe. It´s complicated, the whole situation, and I love that this is not clear cut good and evil. It´s easily one of my most favourite books this year, with a touch of 1001 nights heavily mixed with politics and realistic struggles and…just read the book, it´s so amazing. The sequel, The Kingdom of Copper is scheduled to come out sometime 2018 and I can´t wait!
ExP: 3
The third book, filling the Set in the Wilderness Challenge, really gave me a lot of trouble, mostly because I couldn´t find a book set in the wilderness. I settled on Chomp, by Carl Hiaasen, mostly because I know and like the author (Scat is one of the books I still fondly remember reading, and I smiling just remembering it) and because I decided that the everglades are wilderness enough to count. The book is set there for a great part of the main action, so I feel justified in my decision. It´s a typical Hiaasen book, with the themes on nature and how mankind treats it very present through all of the narration, and it was really funny and a relaxing read, but it didn´t quite held a candle to Scat. I don´t know, it was a nice read, I liked the characters and the action, but in the end, it was nothing that special.
ExP: 2
Finishing the Sporty Challenge is My Lady Jane, written by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton and Jodi Meadows for the Written by a Team of Authors Challenge. This is the book which I´ve read before, earlier in this year, and read again now, because I remembered it was written by three authors. And because I loved it, because honestly, alone the premise of just fixing history and who cares how this went in real life, this is how it should have gone is speaking directly to my history and fanfiction loving heart. Also, there are tons of reference in the book, from Game of Thrones to Monty Python and the Holy Grail and a part of the later plot is definitely inspired by Lady Hawke, which just makes this better. Ok, admittedly I read this book at first, because I noticed that there is a second one, My plain Jane, coming out in June next year, dealing with Jane Eyre, and since I love Jane Eyre, I knew I had to get that one. And so of course I had to read the first one first, I needed to know what I was getting into. And reader, I loved it. It´s a fun ride through English history, with some very lively narrators and trust me; you are in good hands there. Only problem, it makes me look forward to My plain Jane so much more, which makes the wait so much longer.
ExP: 2
Oh, and as mentioned, I managed to finish a Side Quest, namely the Seasonally Inspired Read. In my case, it was a Christmas murder mystery, aptly named Murder for Christmas, because nothing says Christmas time like finding a dead body dressed as Santa Claus under the Christmas tree, right! Or maybe that´s just me. Admittedly, I´ve never heard about the author Francis Duncan, before, although the name of his hero Mordecai Tremaine triggered some very very vague memories of maybe having read it somewhere before. According to the text about the author, there exist four more books with this hobby detective, so he must have been a success. And it delivered exactly what I expected, a nice, classic Christmas murder mystery from the golden age of whodunn´its. Mordecai was sympathetic and charmingly eccentric, and while it wasn´t quite up in Agatha Christies league (few books are going to be that for me to be honest), it was a great and entertaining read. I can recommend it, as it certainly made me curious about other books with Tremaine as the hero.
ExP: 2
(The Character Card and the Challenge Board are the same as last time, stand-ins till I can get back to my own Laptop in the New Year. Just like the Book Cover For Murder for Christmas)
Total ExP: 25
Level: 3 (not a bad place to end)
I loved taking part in the challenge, and enjoyed every minute of it. It was sweet, fun and I got to pick some of my favourite books while being reminded of a charming and relaxing game. It was a perfect way to end this year and to keep myself from losing my head in the holiday stress. Next resolution for the New Year: Find more reading Challenges to take part in!
