July 5th has arrived, meaning it is the official start date for the Group Read of Daniel Abraham’s novel, The Dragon’s Path. I planned to dive in early on this one but I continue to be behind on some reading (and quite frankly have been sucked deeply into Bioshock 2 of late) and thus I will be starting fresh from page one today.

This is a most difficult book to structure a group read around given that it does not have proper chapter numbers or titles. The chapter titles alternate between the names of the main characters and repeat themselves throughout. Simply giving page numbers for the various sections only works if we are all reading the trade paperback. I am not sure if ebook pages are standard regardless of device or not. And then some of you may be doing this on audio. Unfortunately the bundled version I have with Leviathan Wakes does not give page count at all.

I am wanting to try something a bit different for this Group Read. As many of you have various posts scheduled for different days of the week and because it is sometimes difficult to visit all the participating sites of a group read consistently, I wanted to see what it would be like to host this discussion on the Goodreads website. I have created a group homepage called The Dragon’s Path Group Read. I have left the group open for anyone to join and we will use the discussion forum on that page to do our weekly Q&A. That way everyone can jump in on the ongoing conversation and not miss any of the threads of the conversation. At the end of the group read you will have the option of doing a proper review of the book on your website and I will create a Mr. Linky here and a forum thread over there for you to post your links and we can do wrap-up conversations on the individual websites, that way we still have the chance to visit each other on our various websites.

On with the schedule.

The following schedule outlines who is hosting the discussion for the week. We will split the book up into 4 parts with roughly 135-140 pages of reading each week (based on the print book). If you are tagged here as a host and cannot do it or would rather not do it, simply email me and I’ll make a change. I know we all get busy and plans change, so there will be no hard feelings about having to mix things up.

Week 1:

Read pages 1 to 137 (print book), ending with the chapter entitled Dawson that begins, “The King’s Hunt pressed through…”

Discussion/Questions for this section will go live Friday, July 12th, hosted by me.

Week 2:

Read pages 138 to 283 (print book).  This section begins with a chapter entitled Cithrin that starts “The dragon’s roads behind them…” and ends with a chapter entitled Geder which begins “A riot?”

Discussion/Questions for this section will go live Friday, July 19th, hosted by Two Dudes in an Attic.

Week 3:

Read pages 284 to 424 (print book).  This section begins with a chapter entitled Cithrin that starts “Word of the destruction…” and ends with a chapter entitled Geder which starts “Geder couldn’t say exactly…”

Discussion/Questions for this section will go live Friday, July 27th, hosted by Kailana.

Week 4:

Read pages 425 through to the end.  This section begins with a chapter entitled Dawson which begins “Summer in Osterling Fells.”

Discussion/Questions for this section will go live Friday, August 3rd, hosted by Mihai.

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Please remember to contact me if you need a host schedule change or cannot host.

Anytime after August 3rd you can put up a proper review of the book and link it in my review and on the Goodreads site under a forum topic I’ll create that day.

Thank you so much in advance for being a part of this and being willing to do the grand experiment with Goodreads. Others have broken this ground before, but it is a first for a group read I am hosting.  I’ll be interested in the pros and cons everyone sees once we’ve rapped this up.

Enjoy the journey, everyone.  Head on over to the The Dragon’s Path Group Read site and join in!