Goodread's Reading Challenge 2018

This year, I completed my GoodRead Reading challenge, not as successfully as my friend Tim, who read 100 books and then has continued to read a hundred more and then kept going… not that good.  But I did finish twenty-five books.  My biggest feat was to catch up in a series that I started years ago, the Elantra series.  I finished Cast in Silence in late May and then by late November I finished Cast in Deception, that's books 5-13 not quite all in a row, but it means I will be able to read the new book in February and be very current.  The series mirrors the journey of the book in my head a little bit, but not too much.  The main character is a young woman who was born in squalor and hardship, true desperation that does not exist in any time in our history and she survived unscathed until she was on the verge of reaching a teenager when she was selected for greatness buy unknown powers and marks appeared on her skin that glowed in the presence of magic and granted her the unique power to heal people and fix the world by giving up one or two of the marks on her skin.  The world at large is an empire ruled by immortal Dragons and the residents are a mixture of humans, bird people, lion people, mind reading empath people, but also dragons and Elf-like immortals.  The setting is a huge city called Elantra that sits next to oblivion that threatens the world.  Adventures ensue, you learn about each of the races in a well thought to manner, and you learn how the most important resident, a young woman who has only achieved the rank of Private in the local Law enforcement organization is the Chosen, because of the marks, and how she changes the World and fights the oblivion.  Each novel is medium sized, about 500 pages and despite the length of the series, the novels have not begun to brag on especially, matter of fact the series seems to have been planned well, the first few books introduced the characters in detail and the races well while slowly ramping up the tension, as this is done the plot has thickened to the point where the tension is ready to snap and I will have to wait for the next book, Cast in Oblivion book 14.  

The author, I've met her.  She works at the book store that I shop at.    Really.  I pretended I did not know who she was, and asked her which books I should read, and she steered me away from her books and offered her opinion about the best books in the genera.  Then I ask about these books, and she sighed and admitted that she wrote them, and I said I knew that, but I had been missing a single book in the mid series that stopped me from progress in the series.  She found it for me and I was able to read the next several books, as you saw.  Typical Canadian, Michelle Sagara, she sighed again and asked if I had any questions about the series.  I responded no, but now I want to know if the main character will ever reach Corporal in the Hawks, but since this has been her personal goal in the series, I suspect it is the endgame event, unless the world ends.  She said that the number one question was which of the Male characters the female lead would hook up with.  Gah I said that's not important!  And then she offered to sign the books I bought and I declined, I was honest, I was going to donate them to a used book store when I finished them, I move too often to keep books.  :( 

I read three more Raksura books too, that is the book that features the dragon like being that discovered a colony of his own when he thought he was alone in the world.  He discovered his actual home colony in e books and fought to stay with his adopted colony.  

I read two more Charles Stross books, and one of them I went to the North American launch party.  That was awesome there were a hundred people and I got to read the book before the release in New York.  I got to ask if he was going to continue his other series at he wrote.  I was disappointed as mostly those lines were dead.  Both books I read were from the Laundry files, so low fantasy set in the recent past world in a different time line where Cuthulu Gods exist and magic is real, but is actually math, also superheroes because that is just magic. The latest book was a subtle comment on American politics, specifically that the USA was under a spell cast by a sleeping Elder God.  Fun fun fun.  I did not wait to get it autographed.  I listened to the reading by the author and I learned stuff.  The author reading is different than the book, it is similar to the book but not exactly, it is almost that he was speaking his own words about the story and the book was an edited version and expanded. Fun.

I read the second Airship novel, where she liberates her home town only to discover that her mother is … important to the plot.  

I started another novel and finished it after reading the 25th novel in my challenge.  It was by Tanya Huff, another Canadian writer!  SciFi.  Space marines on a vital diplomatic mission with many reverses.  Written in the dictatorial style of old SciFi.  There is a confederation of founding races that is expanding out in the limitless cosmos and they are peaceful and they encounter a new race that is not peaceful and does not want to expand away from the peaceful races, but through them, so the confederation has to figure out some way to survive, so they search out aggressive races and get them to join the confederation and fight their wars.  They find a race of war bent mammals that are descendants of war like monkeys and get them to join up, humans!  The story takes place 150 years after that, the confederation has added two other warlike races to the humans, basically elves, and a race that finds every other race appetizing.  The mission is to get a fourth military species to join the fight, a very very warlike race of lizards where males outnumber females 20:1 and the expendable members of society battle for the right to mate.  Forty battle hardened Marines with their freshly minted, untested leader are sent to show the lizards why they should sign up.  There are twists that continue up until the end.  The alien elder races of the confederation include sentient giant spiders (Get 'em off, get 'em off), giant Sloths, and flightless bird like creatures as well as a certain race that loves cheese and has a fast digestion rate that is unmet, possibly mouselike.  The question of these elder races seems to be, maybe we should stop inviting younger violent races into the confederation and learn to fight our own battles.  But that is just a side bar.  I am looking forward to reading book twenty-six of this year, the next in this series.