Every Thursday, Nathan (over at Fantasy Review Barn) leads the gang in touring the mystical countryside, looking for fun and adventure. His Tough Traveling feature picks one of the most common tropes in fantasy each week, as seen in The Tough Guide to Fantasyland by Diana Wynn Jones, and invites us to join in the adventure. All are invited to take part, so if you're joining the journey late, no worries . . . we'll save you a spot in the caravan.

This week’s tour topic is: Otherworldly Creatures (Tentacles preferred)

Okay, let's get the obvious out of the way first and address theelephant octopus in the room. H.P. Lovecraft. The whole Cthulhu Mythos. Really, kiddies, this is what tentacle-strewn nightmares are made of. His work is just chock full of "slimy creature from the sea" - most of them sporting preternaturally strong, agile, sticky tentacles. Right from C'thulhu himself, right down through the ranks, you can't talk about the horrific potential in tentacles and not think of Lovecraft.

Now, let's deal with the other elephant Watcher in the room, and talk about J.R.R. Tolkien. Really, if there's a tough traveling trope that he didn't either invent or use, it's probably not worth mentioning.Anyway, he brings us the horrors of the Watcher in the Water fromThe Lord of the Rings. Is it a squid? An octopus? A Kraken? Who knows. All we ever see of the guardian at the gates of Moria is its tentacles. Heck, even Gandalf isn't sure whether there's one Watcher or several.

Terry Brooks liked his tentacles monsters as well, using them multiple times in the Shannara novels. In The Sword of Shannara, Menion, Shea and Flick are attacked by a Mist Wraith - a tentacled beast with a beak at its center - as they make their way around the edge of the Mist Marshes. In Wishsong of Shannara, the Mord Wraiths summon an honest-to-gosh full-scale Kraken to batter down the Dwarven Fortress Dam at Caapal.

As long as we're talking Kraken, then we have to go back and revisit Swords in the Mist, the 3rd Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser book from Fritz Leiber. Becalmed, our two heros tie a rope to their ship and descend into the sunken world of the Sea King. It's a story full of flirting, battles, and frantic escapes, but what I remember most is Fafhrd fighting against a giant squid with a sword in each of its tentacles as the underwater world collapses around them.

Finally, since we began with horror, lets end with horror - the The Mist by Stephen King. There's a scene in the book where a group of men decide to make a desperate run from the supermarket to the generator out back, which has broken down. As soon as they open the door, a mass of tentacles attacks, snatching more than one of the would-be heroes and dragging them off, kicking and screaming, into the mist for dinner.

A fantastic week, including my wildly popular Canada Day feature, and a look back at my favorite books of the year (so far):

• A mid-year recap of My Best of 2015 (so far)
• Horror Review of One, Two, Three Kiss by E.J. Kimelman
• Reading Canada with SFF Legends (eh?) feature
• Fantasy Review of Shower of Stones by Zachary Jernigan
• Thriller Review of Pulse by Robert Cook

My cold turkey approach to requesting any new review titles is going well. I actually did request one new title this week (a September release) but haven't been approved yet, so that doesn't count. :)

I did, however, use my Amazon credit to pick up a few books. After having friends and fellow blogers rave about the latest installment in each series, I finally gave into curiosity and snagged copies of A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan,Blood and Iron by Jon Sprunk, and Three Parts Dead by Max Gladstone. Better late to the bandwagon than never!

• Esoterrorism by C.T. Phipps
Ragnarok always puts out great stuff, and this sounds like it could be a lot of fun, so we'll see what kind of magic and monsters it has to offer.

• Forge of Darkness by Steven Erikson
I was disappointed in The Crippled God, so I passed on this when it was first released, but I picked up the paperback in anticipation of Fall of Light and I'm enjoying it immensely.

This year, in honour of our nation's 148th birthday (and the 50th anniversary of the Maple Leaf), I decided to invite some legends from the Canadian science-fiction/fantasy/horror community to stop by and share their thoughts on fiction north of the 49th parallel. We may not be as vocal or demonstrative as our neighbours to the south, but based on the overwhelming response to my request, it's clear that we are indeed a patriotic bunch - and proud of our unique literary niche!

Come, join us, and check out what the legends are reading . . .

Apparently, I read (or attempted to read) a lot of books this year. According to Goodreads, an astounding 124 books successfully passed through the Ruins this year, and another 30 were abandoned along the way. Of those that made it through, an even 10 were perfect 5-star reads, which is actually 2 more than the year before. In chronological order they are . . .