They gathered at the tavern. Some came alone, some came with friends; all came with books. Many called out happy greetings to familiar faces. New faces were welcomed with a smile and found a seat. Soon all were deep in discussions of other worlds and fantastic beasts. And so it began.
Wyrd and Wonder is off to a flying start! This promises to be our biggest adventure yet, so today Lisa and I are hosting half of the Quest Log each: you can get to know your fellow adventurers’ with her round-up of the intro posts over at Dear Geek Place.
Housekeeping
Before I get started, a reminder from your immensely impressed but slightly overwhelmed co-hosts! Please remember to add a link to the Master schedule if you want your blog posts included in these weekly round-ups. We do our best to keep an eye on everything with our crystal balls, but with a party this big it’s easy to miss something. Don’t go getting up to mischief when we’re not looking.
A hundred thousand thank yous to all of you who have already adopted the master schedule – there’s over a 100 links in it already, and it’s only day four!
New companions
The word is out that Wyrd and Wonder is the place to be – let me introduce you to the latest adventurers to join the party. Give your best bookish welcome to Sahi of My World of Books, A.K.Azariah of Wallie’s Wentle Trap, Kat of BookBlather, Meg the Fairy Bookmother and Erin of Erin’s Library. Well met, friends 🐉 Wait – is that Nikki the Bibliophibian and The Captain I see coming in? Welcome back!
Giveaways
It’s too late to register for the Sign Up Giveaway; the winner will be drawn next weekend and announced in next week’s Quest Log. However, that’s just the beginning
- Keep an eye out for Robin Kirk‘s announcement later today as it starts and ends before we update you next – you’ll have until May 10th to enter
- …and watch out for Tammy’s monthly giveaway at the end of May
The Wyrd and Wonder Challenge
We nearly didn’t have a set of challenge prompts this year, but I’m glad we did – the blog posts and photos are a daily delight. I’m loving the many interpretations we’ve seen already; I’m not going to try and link any photos this week (check out #WyrdAndWonder on Instagram) but let’s take look at some of the blog posts coming our way…
Day 1 | TBRs
Lisa has many TBRs in the intro posts featured in her half of the Quest Log this week, but I’ve got a few more to share from these first few days…
- DeeZee has some classics lined up in her Wyrd and Wonder TBR at Dragons & Zombies
- Nikki the Bibliophibian has a TBR as enticing as it is ambitious
- …as does Lynn of Lynn Reads
- Tammy of Books, Bones & Buffy has a TBR that looks like a Best of Year line-up
- …and Jessticulates will be reading this year’s award nominees (ahem, and playing catch up on some ARCs, aren’t we all)
- Meg the Fairy Bookmother is reading her backlog (hooray, The Goblin Emperor is on her shelf!)
- …and Caitlin’s TBR is more like guidelines anyway (let’s hear it for mood reading!)
- Wandering Lynn has a delightfully varied TBR
- …while Rin of The Thirteenth Shelf has a tightly-focused TBR for herself (hey Rin, I think we’d all love to read about books written ten years ago, hint hint 😉 and has stolen our heart with the littlest TBR (and welcome to our youngest-ever adventurer!)
- Last but not least, my lovely co-host Jorie has dragons, King Arthur and more lined up – check out all her plans for this year’s Wyrd and Wonder at Jorie Loves a Story
Happy reading, folks!
Day 2 | Start here prompted some delightful retrospectives and recommendations
- Natrosette and JonBob look back fondly at the books that introduced them to reading fantasy
- Katrina has suggestions for gateway fantasy based on your current reading habits at Read, Ruminate, Write
- ..and Peat Long has a few more
Day 3 | The best things come in threes saw lots of brilliant trilogy recommendations on Instagram, and two fab re-interpretation posts
- JonBob celebrates Dungeons & Dragons and Critical Role at Parsecs and Parchment
- Lisa talks love triangles in Tessa Gratton’s Strange Grace at Way Too Fantasy
- Peat Long takes a look at the mythological triads who have become fantasy characters
Reviews
- Annemieke brings us the first review of the season, sharing her thoughts on Shorefall by Robert Jackson Bennett at A Dance with Books
- Mayri the BookForager takes a walk down memory lane to revisit Sabriel by Garth Nix
- Peat Long has a few (positive!) things to say about Priest of Bones by Peter Mclean that probably merit a NSFW tag
- Mogsy reviewed Legacy of Ash by Matthew Ward at The Bibliosanctum
- Rowena looks at The Ranger of Marzanna by Jon Skovron for Beneath a Thousand Skies
Features
- Beth started Midnight’s Children for Bookish Beginnings / Friday 56 at Beth’s Bookish Thoughts
- Over at Jorie Loves A Story, my co-host Jorie interviews author Valerie J Mikles.
- There’s some fun tags doing the rounds already: Line of First Line Reader and introduced themselves with the Get To Know The Fantasy Reader tag and I shared the fantasy bucket list tag here at There’s Always Room For One More. Maddalena of Space and Sorcery kicked off a fresh round of 5 Star (Fantasy) Books In 5 Words – we’ll be seeing a few more of these over the course of the month!
- Wyrd and Wonder has picked up the dice early this year, kicking off with Roll to Save‘s stroll down memory lane to celebrate the Fighting Fantasy books
- Jessticulates wants to know where her centaurs are at (answers by perfect bowshot please)
- Making the biggest dent on my cold reptilian heart this week, Sia of Every Book a Doorway has a heartfelt essay on the importance of fantasy in her life
- …and DH Willison made one of our 2020 emblems into a chibi 💝
Read-alongs
The Goblin Emperor read-along kicks off with the first round of questions on Wednesday! Lisa will post questions on Goodreads for those participating via blog posts and re-post them on Twitter each Sunday for a live discussion.
The reading breakdown is as follows:
- Week 1 | Chapters 1 through 9
- Week 2 | Chapters 10 through 17 (end of part 2)
- Week 3 | Chapters 18 through 26 (part 3)
- Week 4 | Chapters 27 to End (part 4 & 5)
Anyone chipping in who has read the book / series – please, no spoilers!
One last thing
Are you missing from the Quest Log? It may just be a matter of timing – posts added to the master schedule this afternoon may not be included until next week. Not in the schedule? Ah, well, that would be it. Get those links added and we’ll sweep them up next week too (if you cross-post a link to Twitter, include the #WyrdAndWonder tag and we’ll try to include those too, but it’s not guaranteed).
And if your link has been in the schedule all along, I apologise – you may throw virtual vegetables at us from a socially acceptable distance. Just don’t feed us to the dragons, I promise we’ll give them indigestion.
Right – shall we venture out of the tavern and into the woods? Let’s go find an adventure!
