The Champion

I was going to give a quick summery of the start of this story but if I did that then it would be a spoiler for the previous book. This is book five of Scott Sigler’s Galactic Football League series and it follows the life of Quentin Barnes as he tries to lead the Ionaith Krakens to a Galactic Bowl title, and deal with his family, team mates, his coach, team owner, Gods and the various people who want to kill him.

It’s been two years since book four came out and I’ve got the limited edition hardback and I’ve been listening to the podcast as Sigler is, like pretty much all of his work, is giving it away for free but after this weeks episode I realised I couldn’t wait each week for the story to continue. So I used my Audible credit this month to download the audiobook (I would’ve started reading it but I’m reading The Waste Lands by Stephen King). In two days I blitzed through this audiobook, getting through till about 10pm on Wednesday night as there was no way I could wait till the next day at work to finish it off.

I’ve been consuming Sigler’s work since about 2007/2008 and most of his work takes place in the one universe and theres a part in this book early on that almost knocked me off my feet, you’ll know it if you know Sigler’s work. That is something that I admire, writers being able to tie this stories together in this way, and it’s something that I’d love to be able to do myself one day.

This book had me laughing, it had me crying, it had me on the edge of my seat and it had me cheering on the Krakens.

The ending left a lot up in the air, but it didn’t leave me feeling short changed, not by a long way. Scott Sigler has said this is a seven book series and those last two books are going to be epic!

(over the next few months I’m going to be getting the previous four novels in the Galactic Football League series on audio because they are stories which get richer with each listen and from a writing point of view they are a great way to look at world building and character development and building a long term story.)

Although I am not setting myself targets or making any grand plans for this year one thing I am aiming a little more attention to is reading. I felt last year I didn’t make enough time to read and this is something that I need to change. one piece of advice that I’ve heard successful writers give is that to write we need to read.

I have just finished Shadows of the Realm by Dionne Lister and I have just started Embedded by Dan Abnett. Shadows of the Realm has been on my Kindle App for a couple of months and I really enjoyed it. I’ll admit that I was not sure how I would do with it as I’m not a huge fan of fantasy but if I’m honest I’ve never really tried to read a fantasy novel. I’m glad I did read Shadows of the Realm as it is not only very well written but it is also one of those stories that gets more and ore addictive as you read it. After I finished it I went straight over to Amazon and downloaded the second book in the series. I’m holding off reading it though until the third is out and I’ll read them back-to-back when the time comes.

Tracie got me Embedded for Christmas but it’s been one that I’ve wanted to read for some time. I’m only thirty or so pages into it but already I’m at the point of eagerly turning the pages to see what happens.

This year there are a lot of books I want to read. Scott Sigler has Pandemic and The Champion out, as well as a number of novellas and short stories in various anthologies. Christopher Stocking has The Rotten Apple out and Jordanna East has Blood in the Paint out soon as well. Justin Macumber will also hopefully be releasing a couple more novels this year.

Then there are the novels on my iPad and book shelve I want to read this year. Doing a quick count I can see twenty three on my shelf and twenty eight on my Kindle App. Damn that’s a lot of books, and I know I’ll buy more during the year. Of course I’m not expecting to read all of these this year, my Goodreads goal is thirty five books. That is the same as last year but I didn’t hit it… hopefully I will this year.

Here are the website links to the authors I mentioned:

http://danabnett.com/

http://scottsigler.com/

http://jordannaeast.com/

http://dionnelisterwriter.com/

http://mentalsweatshop.wordpress.com/