Hello! As you know, it’s Tuesday again, so it’s time for another Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl). Today’s topic is “Character Freebie”. Am I the only person that has trouble coming up with topics for the freebie days? I found a topic that I wanted to do for the freebie at the end of this month, but what to do about characters? I searched around and discovered that today was the Call of the Horizon Day. So I decided to celebrate this (very) minor holiday by highlighting characters who have traveled or who have gone on journeys, answering to that call of the horizon (or perhaps being forced on that journey).
The first character that came to mind when I decided on this topic was Frodo Baggins in The Lord of the Rings. I once did part of one of those “virtual walks” which was supposed to cover the distance walked on this epic journey. I didn’t get very far though.
A real person that traveled a lot was Laura Ingalls in The Little House on the Prairie series. She was born in Wisconsin, made the trek to “Indian territory,” then moved to Minnesota, and then finally settled in Dakota territory for the remainder of the books.
A lot of things can make you decide to travel. Perhaps you’re running away from something. Maybe you have to move due to poverty. Or perhaps you’re traveling across the country because you think your little brother needs to be rescued, as Free did when she took a road trip across the country with Cole in Into the Hollow.
Perhaps a lot of people like to hang out in their comfortable homes and avoid the call of the horizon unless they are forced to make it. Maia in Spin the Dawn probably wouldn’t have chosen to leave her family and travel as far a she did if she hadn’t felt compelled to do so as a way to protect her family. It’s this beautiful story’s book birthday today, by the way.
I thought this topic would be a lot more difficult than it seems to be. Maybe because traveling and avoiding enemies can make for an exciting book. One of the books that I’ve read recently that involves an epic journey is Julie Kagawa’s Shadow of the Fox.
I don’t talk about The Iliad much because Gareth Hinds’s graphic novel representation was just okay for me, but you can’t deny that the journey taken by these warriors certainly was noteworthy. Even more so would be the journey taken in The Odyssey, which I might have enjoyed more, but I haven’t read that one.
The characters in An Ember in the Ashes and the following books take quite a long journey. Like many of the characters here, I’m sure they would have preferred to stay at home. Nevertheless, struggle strengthens a person and also makes for a more interesting book.
The Throne of Glass series certainly takes you on an epic journey. Over the course of these books, Aelin and her allies travel the world in order to defeat their enemies and save the world.
A Song of Ice and Fire covers the lives of many characters across a vast world. Like most of the characters answering the call of the horizon today, most of them aren’t embarking on their journeys for the fun of it. Their survival is at stake.
While they don’t travel particularly far in the first book of The Mortal Instruments, the characters in this series do quite a bit of traveling. These books take you from New York City to Idris to Paris… and even to an alternate world. Life as a shadowhunter evidently involves quite a lot of travel.
Well, there you have it: characters who have answered the call of the horizon. Next week, we’re going to talk about my auto-buy authors. I actually only have two actual auto-buy authors, but there are several that I will read most of what they write, so we’ll talk about them.