imyril @ There's Always Room For One More Giveaways, Wyrd and Wonder, Wyrd And Wonder 2021

Quest Log the First

Settle in by the fire, traveller. Grab a hot drink – or a cold one, if you’d rather – and get ready to hear the tales of a hundred adventurers fresh back from the wilds of fantastic realms. Yes, it’s time to look back on the first week (and a bit) of Wyrd And Wonder…

As usual, the event has got off to a flying start – the pegasus is the perfect mascot for us! There have been so many of us sharing our love of all things fantasy, with more than 150 challenge responses plus loads of reviews, lists, interviews and more. It’s such a joy to see the community grow every year – a big thank you to everyone for diving in with a will and for adding your links to the master schedule (because with this many of us, we’d need a crystal ball and a phalanx of helpful elves to keep track without it).

Even with blog feeds and Twitter, it’s easy to miss a lot of the fun – but never fear, your Wyrd and Wonder hosts are here to sing you the songs of our people! Keep reading to meet our newest party members and read everyone’s reviews, read-along thoughts, interviews and other miscellaneous delights. Get to know your fellow adventurers and catch up on their TBRs, themed lists and discussions over at Dear Geek Place. And watch out for a Wyrd and Wonder Challenge Flashback from Jorie Loves A Story on Friday!

New companions

The doors of the Wyrd and Wonder tavern are always open. Give a warm welcome to: Adeel Reads, Heather of Based On A True Story, Based on the Book, Caspian of BibliophileBastard, Kate Davies, Rachael the Green Tea Librarian, Alyssa of Into the Heartwyld, Georgina Jeffery, The Literary Sisters, Peat Long, Jared R Lopatin, Kester of Lost in Storyland, Mervi’s Book Reviews, PalaeoPat, Liz of Redds Reads, Jeff Speight, Starr of WOSFF Women of Science Fiction and Fantasy.

Want to join the party? You’re absolutely welcome – just add your name to the party rolls and we’ll announce you next week. If you’d rather slide quietly into the conversation, just use the #WyrdAndWonder tag when you make a post on blogs and/or social media (…and – altogether now – add your links to the master schedule. Yes, you’re going to hear me say that a lot).

Note that only people who have officially signed up are eligible to enter the international party give-away at the end of the month!

Reviews

Read-along round-up

We’re reading The Bone Shard Emperor by Andrea Stewart this month, with weekly discussions (schedule details can be found here – we’re reading ca 11 chapters each week). I will post questions for week two on Goodreads midweek, but first let’s look back at the group’s first impressions:

Want to join us? Grab a copy and get reading – or slide into the comments on our posts to share your thoughts. If you have read the book or read ahead – please, no spoilers for future weeks!

Interviews and other treats

There’s been a flurry of interviews to start the month. At The Fantasy Hive, Nils sat down with Genevieve Gornichec to talk about The Witch’s Heart, a retelling of the sagas of Loki’s wife Angrboda; and with John Gwynne to talk about The Shadow of the Gods, kicking off a new series in a new Norse mythology-inspired world. Over at A Dance with Books, Annemieke shared her segment of a mega interview with Josie Jaffrey, author of the Seekers series.

Music and poetry have been on our minds this week: Jean Lee’s World shared some epic instrumental themes to get the imagination going, while Maxine’s Obsessions – after a tight Twitter poll – cast the deciding vote to class Star Wars as fantasy and celebrate Music Monday with music from Jedi: Fallen Order (what’s that? Right, nobody likes policing genre boundaries, and I’m perfectly happy to call Stars Wars galactic fantasy. Space wizards!). Less controversially, Tanja shared some favourite fantasy poems at Where Stories Lie, prompting a commitment to include this as a prompt in next year’s challenge – because hell yes, fantasy poetry!

Jessticulates took a look at what she’ll be reading from this year’s Hugo shortlists; while Caspian the Bibliophile Bastard focused on what he’d be reading this week. Rachel shared her reactions to her first encounter with The Fellowship of the Ring at A Bookworm’s Paradise and Mr Tolkien can consider himself on notice: she won’t accept any more deaths of members of the Fellowship.

Book Tags

We do love a book tag – if you’ve been wondering what to post about, you might want to consider tagging yourself in and taking one of these…

Giveaways

We have winners and we have MOAR GIVEAWAYS – hooray!

Housekeeping

If you want your posts to be included in Quest Logs, the Challenge Flashbacks and boosted on Twitter, please remember to add the links to our master schedule – yes, we’d love you to add links to your challenge photo responses too!

A million thank yous to everyone who has already been doing so – the Wyrd And Wonder party is so big these days that it’s the only way to be sure we see all your posts. If you missed this week’s cut-off, don’t worry – we’ll include your link next week.

IMAGE CREDIT: pegasus images by Svetlana Alyuk on 123RF.com

If you’d like to use the banners on your own blog, you’re welcome to download this year’s graphics. Don’t forget to credit the artist.