Good luck to everyone on this year's challenge!

2014 Fantasy Challenge -LISTS ONLY THREAD

I read a book! For this challenge! It only took. . . 4 1/2 months. . . *hangs head in shame*

I finished up Amanda Downum's Necromancer Chronicles, rereading the first two books as a lead-in to reading the third, which had been languishing on my TBR pile for a while. The Kingdoms of Dust is excellent, though I didn't connect with it emotionally to the same extent that I did to The Bone Palace, and impressively I actually had a moment of doubt in the climax about which way the book was going to turn out. Isyllt remains a strong protagonist, the world-building continues being rich and nuanced and different from the standard faux-Medieval Europe (this book is drawn from the Middle East/Northern Africa, as far as I can tell, which is the most familiar setting of the three books in the series), and just to please me, all the books pass the Bechdel Test and at least two of them pass the Johnson Test. (I'd quibble over whether The Bone Palace passes that one.)

This book fits in my "Old" category -- books from series I have already begun reading.

I've been slacking so much this year that I haven't even picked my categories yet!

I know some of what I'm going to choose - Mythopoeic nominees, books from the Endicott list, New-to-Me authors, First books by authors...  But other than that, I really need to sit down and figure things out.

In other news, I finally got around to Catherynne Valente's Labyrinth - which I'd planned to read for LAST year's challenge.  It was good but pretty obviously a first novel.  Lots of poetic prose, but the plot (well, really, the anti-plot)  wasn't quite as structured as her more recent books have been. 

It's been very quiet in this section.  I was thinking of redoing the 2014 challenge for 2015 unless someone wishes to create another.

I think it's a good idea. I was sorry to see less action here.  I found a few new authors on others' lists, Amanda Downum for one.  I would probably do different categories this year.  (Lots of fantasy on my TBR) Other folks may have some suggestions for change.