Laura Dragonchild is organizing a buddy read for Curse of the Mistwraith over on Reddit. They’ll be doing a couple chapters per week from November through December. If you haven’t started Wars of Light and Shadow before (or have forgotten far too much!) this would be a good way to try it out with the support of other readers.
Laura is doing a really superb job with this readalong - if you want to brush up on past detail, or if you have anyone whose curious about the series, this is a lovely chance to plunge in. She’s put a lot of care and work into the summaries, I am knock out impressed!
There are NUMBEROUS read alongs going on this year, all over the place, if you want to join in, quite a few book tubers are doing deep dive discussions, volume by volume, series wide, and following them up with live stream channels that will be archived.
Blaise Ancona/Under the Radar books/Angie the Bookaholic and PL Stuart of PageChewing just completed Ships of Merior on Angie’s channel, they’ll be starting Warhost next.
Philip Chase, channel listed under his own name (you can find his review of Curse of the Mistwraith) - Johanna, and AP Canavan, of The Critical Dragon (you can search youtube for his channel and find his glorious shakedown of the Prologue to Curse of the Mistwraith, also linked in a post here) and Jimmy Nutt - have a planned discussion currently on hold due to life issues, but should be scheduled in the near future. The kick off discussion on Johanna’s channel (nonspoiler for Curse of the Mistwraith) is already archived.
If you prefer forum style, Steve of Steve Talks Books is beginning another discussion starting in April. He has a sweet little forum that covers everything fantasy, SF, gaming, books and book discussion, livestream channels, movies - like a tight little family, all welcome - you can find this at www.pagechewing/forum. It’s a lively spot to chat, troll free. I will be posting a list of linked resources for this discussion shortly.
More stuff in the offing, I will open it up when things become more official.
New Buddy Read of the series starting August 1st on GoodReads in the Fantasy Buddy Reads group - drop in and make it lively!
Ongoing reads with youtube video content: Angie, The Bookaholic - with guests Blaise Ancona, Under the Radar Books, PL Stuart, author of The Drowned Kingdom, and Niko of Niko’s Book Reviews - that read is now past Peril’s Gate, with Traitor’s Knot coming up in August.
The Page Chewing forum’s open live stream - anyone can join, sign up and find the link on the Pagechewing forum, they are currently doing Warhost of Vastmark, with next weekend’s discussion of chapter sets 4-6 scheduled on the events list. The discussions previous and future are archived for viewing at channels: Reading by the Rainy Mountain, and The Fantasy Thinker and Steve Talks Books.
Johanna Reads just hosted the discussion for Ships of Merior, with AP Canavan and Philip Chase on board - the next discussion for Warhost will be in September, likely hosted on AP’s channe, A Critical Dragon. This discussion deep dives into the intricacy of the plot, the setting and the prose - with an expertise brought to bear that is delightful to see.
More installments on Wars of Light and Shadow, ongoing, can be found on Niko’s Book Reviews with TODAY at 12 noon, Eastern Time, a livestream - I have set aside bonus material on the origins of the Paravians.
In fact, most of the livestreams that have me as guest, I have taken to exploring unseen sections of Athera’s backhistory - so give them a listen and share the love of books of all kinds on these dedicated video enthusiasts’ channels.
This buddy read is great. I’ve been following along as I have been reading the book and I’m really enjoying it. My family and friends are not into reading fantasy so it’s nice to have a community where I can interact with other people about such an amazing book.
A centaur was beset and pulled down in the rebellion - so we assume this was townborn human? (How did they withstand even his presence? Some had latent clan blood perhaps?)
Another thought that comes to mind is how lonely some of these characters are… F7 and senior koriani too I guess? and A and L lost their mother so young…they are all in relatively depressing situations as the even story begins
Is it ever explained why koriani are all women and do not marry? Seems like a curious limitation to have - you half statistically your talent population immediately”
In addition to the centaur being pulled down by mankind, I’m fascinated by an event in the Curse of the Mistwraith glossary: the assassination of a Paravian High King before mankind even arrived.
I love the split between showing the Paravians as a glorious, homogenous embodiment of ideals and then showing the nitty-gritty day to day details (like this assassination and some of the historical actions revealed in Song of the Mysteries) that make them seem much more fallible.
I guess we can only guess…I don’t want to spoil but there are likely only 2 possibilities in the second age? The glossary of SoM might have the answer actually?
There is some more information about that in one of the video chats Janny has attended, I believe. It relates to the conflicts with Drakespawn and such that lead to the summoning of the Fellowship(or after). The First and Second Ages of Athera are definitely not periods of everyone being happy and holding hands. There’s a lot of conflict and violence.
There is a NEW buddy read for Curse of the Mistwraith starting this month - a book tuber called Beard of Darkness is running it on his DISCORD. If you contact him, he will send you an invitation to join!
