This is a slightly different post than my usual which focus on reviewing the books I’ve read. I’ll start with a little bit of a story on how we got to this point.
As a judge for the Indie Ink Awards last year, I had the opportunity to read The Thirteenth Hour by Trudie Skies for a couple of categories. I absolutely fell in love with this world and it’s flawed characters. A couple of months later I dove into book two The Children of Chaos and once again Trudie’s works sunk its claws into me.
Then in December I found out Trudie had a discord server that I joined to keep up on her work, especially as book three The End of Time nears release. I also read her shorter book Tales From the Domains in December which I recently shared my review of.
I caught wind a few days into 2024 that she had started a Domain Reading Challenge for the year which establishes prompts each month to coincide with the various domains of her written world. Here are the prompts and graphic she provided us all to set the parameters.
After a couple of days trying to fill as many of these with books I already own either physical or digital here is what I ended up with. Many of these books have been on my shelf or radar for far too long so this gives me a nice nudge to finally get reading them!
This is my selection for January and the Memoria domain. Although this series has been on my radar for some time, I recently signed up for The Broken Binding subscription and this was the first book I received last year. I figured what better time to get to this beauty and kick off the challenge in a proper fashion.
Echoes of Dragons by C. Borden
February finds me still chipping away at the massive SPFBO-9 personal TBR list I created last year. Echoes of Dragons is on the shorter side of reads but it does sound interesting and has a beautiful cover as well. I initially thought to go with something with animal type of characters such as Redwall but I honestly don’t own them, so I quickly pivoted after seeing some others mention dragons for this prompt.
March will bring another SPFBO-9 selection. This was initially slotted in for February with the wolves but I slid it to March to cover our Forest or Mountain setting. This cover drew my attention initially but the premise does sound mysteriously interesting as well.
A King’s Radiance by L.R. Schulz
I was truly struggling to find a story that included magic or powers based on the sun. I had to reach out to a couple of friends for advice on this once. The wonderful @esmayrosalyne immediately recommended A King’s Radiance and I honestly looked right past it several times even though it’s been on my “want to read” list for what seems like ages. It will be nice to finally get into this book.
The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
This almost feels like a rite of passage read for me. As the fantasy genre is still my primary choice many friends find it difficult to believe I’ve still never ready this. To compound the issue I’ve owned these books for years and they are just sitting on my shelf. I feel it’s time this year to finally give this a read.
A Necromancer Called Gam Gam by Adam Holcombe
I honestly have quite a few books to choose from with a horror or gothic theme to them. This was just the first one that came to mind as I was seeing quite a bit of chatter about it last year. The fact this is a short one was also appealing to me after what is being read the month before.
Rise Red Kingdom by Kerstin Espinosa Rosero
Though I haven’t been able to confirm whether the second book in this series does in fact have airships, I’m going to assume it does since the first book did. I really enjoyed book one in the series and have had the second floating right on my TBR bubble for months now. Once again, this challenge gives me the opportunity to finally get this one read.
No Land for Heroes by Cal Black
Yet another book and author that has been on my radar that I’ve not been able to work into my active TBR lists. Reading the authors short story from the Advent of Winter collection renewed my interest and lit a bit of a fire under me to get reading more of her work. I also looked for confirmation I could use this one for the desert setting in Trudie’s discord server and got some excited answers of yes and that it’s a great read in general. I’m definitely excited to get to this one.
Dragon Your Bones by Tatiana Obey
This one is another assumption on my part. Tatiana’s Bones to the Wind was another book I read during the Indie Ink Awards last year and have had the second book floating around my TBR since. There was plenty of romance and sex in the first book so I’m going to assume there will be more of the same in the second!
Empire of the Vampire by Jay Kristoff
This one might be one of my bigger prompt stretches as I was looking through books I own that I could use for Fall or Halloween that I haven’t already read. Seeing some recommendations which included typically Halloween fair such as Frankenstein and Dracula it got me thinking about this book which I picked up the hardcover version when it released and it’s just been sitting there. I mentioned this one to Esmay as well which she said it was one of her favorite books so this is another I’m excited to get to later this year.
Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells
This is my flexible selection for the Sci-Fi or Space theme. I have owned several books from this series and just finally read book one in December. I’m not naming a specific book from the series as I’m not sure which I’ll be on come November. However, I’ll pick up where ever I left off leading in this month.
We Men of Ash and Shadow by H.L. Tinsley
This will be one of my more difficult challenges as I’ll need to wait until December to read it. This is another author that’s been on the radar now for awhile and reading her short story from Advent of Winter renewed my interest in making sure I read more of her work.
Many of these books and authors are long overdue for me to read. This should be a great way to finally give these a chance and a lot of fun to see what reads others have while taking part.
No Comment! Be the first one.