The end of the journey

And thus, one of the best and hardest series I have ever read, comes to an epic close.

Not to spoil anything, but the appearance of the menacing Crippled God, and all the backdoor treachery was just the perfect way to close out this fantasy masterpiece.

I still have plenty of other stories to read involving this amazing universe, some series written by Steven Erikson that I am hunting down, and The Malazan Empire series written by Ian Cameron Esslemont, which I purchased on my Kindle a while ago.

It was quite the journey, that started on October 14,2018 and finished about an hour ago, making it 932 days between book one, Gardens of Moon, and book ten, The Crippled God.

I started using the Bookly app to keep track, and I have really specific data from starting book three, Memories of Ice, unfortunately from the first two volumes I only have total pages read, but the break down goes like this.

1. Gardens of the Moon (635 pages)
2. Deadhouse Gates (699 pages)
3. Memories of Ice (925 pages) (24 hours 58 minutes)
4. House of Chains (1021 pages) (23 hours 41 minutes)
5. Midnight Tides (624 pages) (20 hours 46 minutes)
6. The Bonehunters (804 pages) (24 hours 7 minutes)
7. Reaper’s Gale (1003 pages) (18 hours 55 minutes)
8. Toll the Hounds (1269 pages) (22 hours 36 minutes)
9. Dust of Dreams (816 pages) (12 hours 57 minutes)
10. The Crippled God (913 pages) (25 hours 23 minutes)

This gives me a total of 8,709 pages and a reading time, from book three to ten, of 173 hours and minutes.

I will highly recommend that you read this series, a real must for any fantasy lover, after reading less intrinsic series, I have been reading fantasy for more than 20 years, and this is a vast cast of characters, races, locations, magical systems ( the warrens are my favorite part of the stories), gods, kingdoms, and all around customs, that it can easily become to much if you’re not accustom to this type of stories.

Just to close out this amazing experience, I would like to say that my favorite volume was number two, the whe sequence in Raraku, the holy desert, was just amazing, and it reverberated with me quite personally, living in a desert you can appreciate the sheer vastness and beauty of a place like that, and Mr. Erikson captured it exquisitely.

Now, to begin new journeys.

Off to read.

azr.

Into the night

As I check my progress with the last of The Malazan Book of the Fallen, and with my deadline being today, my night has just become more interesting.

As you can see in the image above, taken from the Bookly app, I still have 148 pages left,and with my pace of reading, this will take 4 hours and 13 minutes to read.

Off to read, caffeine don’t fail me now.

azr.

Final report from Bookly’s Spring Readathon

I am really satisfied with my results of my reading for the 4-day readathon.

To be honest, I was on the fence to whether to participate or not, but as it turns out, it was a great motivator.

The best part is that it got me on pace to finish The Crippled God, currently on page 523, and getting me back in form for my month-long Star Wars readathon.

Off to read.

azr.

Bookly’s Spring Readathon, update two

I did it!!!

10 hours of reading.

Yesterday was a really productive day, I read for 5 hours and 5 minutes with a total of 316 pages.

My greatest satisfaction is that I made excellent progress with The Crippled God, read from page 361 to 485, that’s 124 pages, and way over the halfway point of the book, and 9 days to my deadline, I am more than confident to finish in time.

Let’s see total how many more pages and hours I can sum-up on this lazy, wine drinking spring Sunday.

Off to read.

azr.

Bookly’s Spring Readathon, first update

I am exactly where I wanted to be on my progress starting the third day of this boosting readathon, right in the middle of the 10-hour goal.

The first day, April 22, was fantastic, with a total of 3 hours and 3 minutes of reading, and 295 total pages. Yesterday, April 23 and World Book Day, which is kind of a busy day, I read for 2 hours and 1 minute for a total of 125 pages, a would have liked to have an all-out celebration to commemorate World Book Day, but you know life, but today I’ll try to replicate the excitement of one of my favorite days of the year.

I received from my lovely wife, as our tradition is for the day, a new book, La última sonrisa en Sunder City by Luke Arnold, published by the newly form Gamon Fantasy, a Spanish-based publishing house that is focusing on lesser known but still amazing fantasy books, this is the first addition to my shelves, and I am scrambling to get the others they have already printed.

Today’s focus will be to reach at least the 8 hours mark, and read as much as I can the final volume from the Malazan Book of the Fallen, The Crippled God, with some graphic novels in between, in particular the two volumes of DC Comics massive series 52, which came out quite a few years ago but I didn’t finish reading it, so I decided to read the whole thing.

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Stay safe, over here, things are getting again a bit difficult, we are back to lock-down over the weekend, with new decisions concerning how to go forward on Monday, this is far from over.

Off to read.

azr.

Bookly Spring Readathon

With 45 days left on this year of reading, I can’t think of a better way to kick off this final leg than with a readathon.

The goal is simple, read for 10 hours from Thursday to Sunday, that’s from the April 22 to April 25, while keeping track on the app.

It seems easy enough but it can get tricky, let’s see how it plays out, I’ll probably post update are the end if each day.

On the reading, I will be focusing on The Crippled God, and some digital graphic novels that I have been meaning to read.

As always, this type of intense reading sessions fuel up my motivation to finish the year strongly, and carry the momentum for next year.

Off to read.

azr.

Tapping out

After 7 hours, and 41 minutes, I have decided to stop my participation on Bookly’s Winter Readathon .

The goal was 10 hours over 4 days of reading, and to be close to 8 hours,and 591 total pages, I put this on the winning column.

My only concern is the upcoming, and really physically demanding 24in48 readathon.

Am I really up to the task?

Guess will see.

Tomorrow, I’ll post how my quest to balance out my total page count, spoiler alert, it’s not so good.

For now, I am off to rest my eyes.

azr.

Halfway there

As I start reading this Saturday morning, I realize that the halfway point of the Bookly Winter Readathon was behind me.

That gives me pretty much all the weekend to finish with the other half of the challenge.

I have been focusing on the eight volume of The Malazan Book of the Fallen, Toll the Hounds, currently on page 303, so my page count is kind of low.

Today I’ll be focusing more on the graphic novels in my reading list, and hopefully the goal for January will be achieved.

For now, I am off to read.

azr

Off to the races

And thus begins, the first readathon of the year.

I started off with a little over an hour of reading, 1 hour and 22 minutes to be precise.

That means I have 8 hours and 38 minutes left on the Bookly Winter Readathon.

I’ll keep pounding away on Toll the Hounds, currently on page 233, and on volumes 3,4, and 5 of the legendary rings of Peter David on Hulk.

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For now, I am off to read.

azr.

Preparing for the first readathon

With the fast approaching of the date of the first readathon of the year, starting thursday January 28, I am in full planning mode.

As I mentioned before, the goal is to read 10 hours over four days, to this challenge I will be also summing my how personal goal, to read 1,583 pages.

My intention is to at least read the 4,991 pages of my original goal for January, if all plays out in my favor, try to chip away some the 1,514 extra pages left from the other months, which are part of balancing act I have been posting about this passed few days.

Since all my printed graphic novels are gone, I will have to dig into my digital reserve, which is mainly located on my Comixology library.

I will post a list of reading for the readathon sometime tomorrow.

For today’s reading, and a warm up to the intense event ahead, I’ll keep on pounding away at Toll the Hounds, currently on page 194, and some She Devil action in Red Sonja: Vulture’s Circle.

For now, I am off to read, and scheme.

azr.