As of today: I have completed the 2017 Sirens Reading Challenge!
As part of this challenge, I’ve read many books I would not have read otherwise. I loved some of them (N.K. Jesimin’s The Fifth Season, for example). I flat-out hated others (I alluded to one such here). Most were somewhere in between.
The experience of reading so many new-to-me authors and books was definitely positive. I do have some more specific thoughts about my experience of the challenge overall, but I’m letting them coalesce for the time being. Once I can write about them with some coherence I’ll post more. In the meantime, here’s what I read (books I especially liked marked in bold).
Guests of Honor: Required
- Zoraida Córdova, Labyrinth Lost
- N. K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season
- Victoria Schwab, A Darker Shade of Magic
Required Theme
- Charlie Jane Anders, All the Birds in the Sky
- Franny Billingsley, Chime
- Zen Cho, Sorcerer to the Crown
- Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Mistress of Spices
- Marika McCoola & Emily Carroll, Baba Yaga’s Assistant
- Anna-Marie McLemore, When the Moon Was Ours
- Jewell Parker Rhodes, Bayou Magic
Additional Theme Books
- Susan Dennard, Truthwitch
- Laure Eve, The Graces
- Laura Anne Gilman, Silver on the Road
- Alice Hoffman, Practical Magic
- Caroline Stevermer & Patricia Wrede, Sorcery and Cecelia
Middle Grade/Young Adult: Select Five
- Leah Bobet, An Inheritance of Ashes
- Cinda Williams Chima, Flamecaster
- Frances Hardinge, The Lie Tree
- Sarah McCarry, All Our Pretty Songs
- Sabaa Tahir, An Ember in the Ashes
Adult
- Mishell Baker, Borderline
- Jordanna Max Brodsky, The Immortals
- Genevieve Cogman, The Invisible Library
- Sarah Beth Durst, The Queen of Blood
- Kat Howard, Roses and Rot