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Short, completely out of context excerpts from my reviews during my first ever bingo attempt
Knights and Paladins
Paladin's Faith by T. Kingfisher
⭐⭐⭐
Eventually a demon showed up and bolstered the plot like a real champion. And everybody clapped.
Hidden Gem
The Crimson Road by A.G. Slatter
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
The atmosphere is perfectly creepy. It seeps between the pages and envelopes you.
Published in the 80s
Thornyhold by Mary Stewart
⭐⭐
Rather than a tale about female empowerment, this is a story about how god-fearing women who are pretty will always prevail against bitter, jealous ugly women.
High Fashion
Spindles End by Robin McKinley
⭐⭐
This book is endless. I don't remember a time when I was not reading this endless slog of a novel.
Down with the System
The Knight and the Moth by Rachel Gillig
⭐⭐⭐⭐
The quest was fun, in a sort of Dungeons and Dragons way. And unlike the author's previous books, there was no awful poetry.
Impossible Places
The Lost Bookshop by Evie Woods
⭐⭐⭐
If only the third POV hadn't been a whiny, selfish, uninteresting twat this would have been a 4 star read for me.
A Book in Parts
A River Enchanted by Rebecca Ross
⭐⭐⭐⭐
This felt quick for such a thick book.
Gods and Pantheons
The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
I confess I did not initially enjoy that so much of the narration was written in second person. But as the story unfolds it begins to make sense, and in the end it was such a payoff.
Last in a Series
Within the Sanctuary of Wings by Marie Brennan
⭐⭐⭐⭐
This isn't the strongest entry in the series, but it brought everything to a more or less satisfying conclusion.
Book Club or Read Along
The Witch's Heart by Genevieve Gornichec
⭐⭐⭐⭐
It's an engrossing tale. For some reason I expected more flowery language in a myth retelling, but found I appreciated the plainer language.
Parent Protagonist
Magic Lessons by Alice Hoffman
⭐⭐
What is the point of a generational curse if literally every woman finds a way around it?
Epistolary
Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales by Heather Fawcett
⭐⭐⭐⭐
The descriptions of various strange beings and unnerving happenings does bog down the narrative a bit, but Emily's character is so well developed, she holds it all together.
Published in 2025
Behooved by M. Stevenson
⭐⭐
I really wanted to love this one, but I can’t love a book that makes me roll my eyes this much.
Author of Color
The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo
⭐⭐⭐⭐
It's barely more than a sketch of the Empress. And yet the book didn't feel too short. I got exactly as much as I wanted from the tale.
Self-published or Small Press
The Librarian of Crooked Lane by C.J. Archer
⭐
This book tries to be many things at once and succeeds at none of them.
Bio punk
System Collapse by Martha Wells
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Once it got going, it was all the things I love about the murderbot books.
Elves and/or Dwarves
The Drowned Woods by Emily Lloyd-Jones
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
This isn't exactly a loveable band of misfits on an adventure. It's more complex than that.
LGBTQIA Protagonist
Small Miracles by Olivia Atwater
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
This book was cute and fun until the final climax, when it delivered an emotional gut punch that I will need a bit to recover from. I laughed, I cried, I bought the T-shirt. I absolutely adored it.
Five SFF Short Stories
Buried Deep and Other Stories by Naomi Novik
⭐⭐⭐⭐
They feel like beginning stages of novels yet to be written. That said, if they are, I hope she does write them.
Stranger in a Strange Land
Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor
⭐⭐
First of all, this book is far too long.
Recycle a Bingo Square
Starling House by Alix E. Harrow
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
This one started slow, but it felt intentional.
Cozy SFF
Cassandra in Reverse Holly Smale
⭐⭐⭐⭐
This book really blew hot and cold for me, I think my internal rating swung from a 3 to a 5 to a 1 during the second half of the book.
Generic Title
Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree
⭐⭐
it also felt far
fairly simple story benefitted from the fairy-tale/ballad-like narration. The biggest downside for me was a twist involving a character that didn’t feel well set-up.
Five Short Stories
The Ladies of Grace Adieu by Susanna Clarke 4/5
I previously read Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell and couldn’t get enough. Luckily, Clarke published a whole short story collection taking place in the same world. Like most short collections these varied widely in quality, but Clarke’s wit is undeniable. I’ve always enjoyed her mysterious, dangerous, and impulsive fairies, and because these stories varied in perspective, they were represented in a more diverse and complex light.
Stranger in A Strange Land
The Cruel Prince by Holly Black 3.75/5
I didn’t really expect to love this book, but I ended up reading the whole series and really enjoying it. Book 1 was by far the hardest of the lot to read because it was just so dark. Combining teen drama and fairy court politics, there was a lot of bullying and a truly messed up family dynamic, and it brought me back to some places I didn’t enjoy. I appreciated that the fairies were allowed to be both flamboyant and merciless - there was a heavy dose of whimsy despite the dark themes. There is a love story which doesn’t really take off until later books, but which felt satisfying even though it featured one of my least favorite tropes. Overall this was a pretty addictive, if uncomfortable read.
# ------
Recycle a Bingo Square - Prologues & Epilogues
Half a Soul by Olivia Atwater 4/5
An entertaining and delightful regency fantasy-of-manners about a broken young woman trying to navigate high society and fix a fairy bargain gone wrong. There is some interesting stuff about class, disability and altruism wrapped up in a Jane Austen-like romance with fairly lovable characters. The fairies in this book are a mirror of the worst parts of English class society.
Cozy SFF
Phantastes by George MacDonald 3.25/5
This was the oldest book on my bingo card, published in 1858 before the fantasy genre had really solidified, and you can see the template for the more popular Alice in Wonderland here. This was a man v. self story with an unfocused, psychedelic plot - the core of which is that a young English gentleman wanders into fairyland and learns about his own limitations. There were some absolutely beautiful passages - the fairies are strange and wonderful and somewhat harmless. It was also kind of hard to connect to the main character, who had an arrogance that only a man of his time and class could possess. The story itself felt largely allegorical, and this made it a bit less grounded. But it was memorable all the same.
Generic Title
A Court of Thrones and Roses by Sarah J. Maas 1.5/5
This was, by miles, the least favorite book on my card this year. The only good thing I can say about it was that it was readable enough for me to finish it, although I question that decision sometimes. The MC is a standard-issue YA girlboss who old and beautiful men are falling over for a seemingly unknown reason. The romance was dull as rocks, with nothing particularly compelling about either character - even the book’s one sex scene was pretty unmemorable. And the worldbuilding felt kind of generic and empty. There were a few interesting monsters, but all-in-all I think Maas could have had more fun with this book - these were fairies after all. I’ve heard the later books do get better, but I’m not really compelled to read them.
Not a Book
Carnival Row (Season 1) 3.25/5
I watched the whole first season of this dark fantasy show which cast fairies as a repressed refugee class and Orlando Bloom as a murder detective with a secret. There are some really interesting themes about immigration and diversity and pretty solid production value. Overall I found it really technically proficient and not terribly interesting. Part of this was that the fairies were basically just sad humans with wings - they didn’t feel that culturally distinct from the society they had immigrated
also positively cozy, in a rural English kind of way (border collies!) and although the protagonist was a kid I found her interesting and understandable. I chose this for impossible places because not only is Discworld itself an impossible place, but the Fairyland of this book is dizzyingly impossible, with dreams inside dreams inside dreams.
A Book in Parts
Midnight Never Come by Marie Brennan 3.25/5
I was excited to read a book that compared Elizabethan historical fiction with fairy fantasy, but the result was just ok. The book’s excellent finale suffered from a dull and emotionally distant first half. Maybe it was trying to do too many things at once - as a fairy fantasy it suffered from being too grounded and sober, but as a historical drama it was too fantastical, drawing the focus away from how real systems of power are abused towards a more metaphysical threat. The love story had a ton of plot relevance but wasn’t given enough setup to feel really meaningful. None of this to say the book was bad - I had just hoped for more. The fairy queen represented a sort of dark mirror to Queen Elizabeth, and the courts of each were full of political maneuvering and mistrust.
Gods and Pantheons
A Kiss of Shadows by Laurell K. Hamilton 3.25/5
I’m pretty neutral about erotic literature, but fairy smut is so big right now that it didn’t feel right to avoid it, and A Kiss of Shadows, published in 2000, was one of the first. This was a fairly fun book when I wasn’t thinking about it too critically (unfortunately, I do overthink everything). Merry is a supernatural detective in LA and a fairy princess in hiding and I kind of loved that she was a 30-something independent adult woman. Because she was part fae, she had some refreshingly unhuman views on sex. Speaking of… there were a lot of plot diversions with the purpose of putting her in awkward situations with men, and I found the men pretty unremarkably similar (despite some weird appendages and hair colors) and the sex scenes a bit too obligatory to be fun. I felt like this qualified as Gods & Pantheons because some of the fae are noted to be former deities or descended from deities, but this didn’t really affect the plot - I heard it does in future books in the series though.
Last in a Series
Drowned Country by Emily Tesh 3.75/5
Drowned Country concludes the Greenhollow Duology, wrapping up the story of the green man and the young English gentleman whose lives have become intertwined. It also takes them to Fairyland. The fairies in this book are unique, but saying more will spoil too much. That said, I found this book slightly less memorable than its predecessor, although with its cozy woodsy setting and slow-burn queer romance, this was definitely a comfort read.
# Book Club
Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees 4.5/5
Published in 1926, this is one of those genre-establishing classics that held up really well. Lud-in-the-Mist is primarily satire, revolving around a fictional city and its inhabitants who have been threatened by drug-like fairy fruit. The hero, Nathaniel Chanticleer, is a delightfully frustrating anti-protagonist - the kind of unremarkable person you would not expect to save anything, and the book asks some philosophically fascinating questions such as what counts as reality, whether the law can be delusional, and how to handle the maddening pull of the creative spirit.
# ------
Parent Protagonist
Little, Big by John Crowley 4.5/5
Certainly one of the strangest and most beautiful books on my card, Little, Big is a 500-page magic-realist-ish multi-generational epic with surprisingly little plot and what may be the best prose in the entire fantasy genre. There is a healthy mix of magic and reverence for the mundane, all intertwined in the way only the best fantasy books can achieve. Smoky Barnable marries an odd girl named Alice Drinkwater and meets her even stranger family, but then we jump backwards to her ancestors and forwards to their children and all around to a tapestry of POVs and interconnected story
Bingo 2025 - Fae, Faries, Fairyland
How This Came About
Accidentally. That is, I realized mid-year that I had already read a disproportionate number of books about fairies and had the insensible idea to make an entire Bingo card out of it. This is my first year doing Bingo and I'm doing 3 cards... welp.
Did I enjoy it? Mostly, at least I was made aware of the very large number of books about fairies that exist in the world, many of them very good. 24 was too many at once though. But I hope this can provide a resource for anyone who wants to read more about fae and isn't sure where to start.
What exactly are Fairies?
Fairies (faeries, fae, fay, and many other names) are a mythological being originating from multiple convergent mythologies, primarily in Western Europe, with roots as diverse as the Aos sí of Ireland, the Elves of Scandinavia, and the Peri of Persia. The word “fairy” comes from French, and they’ve been a popular literary fantasy trope since the Middle Ages.
Ideas about fairies have changed over time and between regions, with traditions being discarded and reimagined. Modern fantasy grabs from everything, and so modern fairies are in no way homogenous. They are usually human-like, although they sometimes have wings or other strange paraphernalia. They can be large or small. They are almost always intelligent, and although they can be benevolent or evil they are usually clever, and often love trades and bargains. Sometimes they are all of these things at once. They often steal human children and replace them with their own, called changelings. While not all fairies are monarchical, fairy queens are common. They are frequently associated with woods and nature. They often live in a place called Fairyland (also known as Elfhame or the Otherland) alongside other stranger supernatural creatures.
Rules
For Bingo I included any books that prominently featured fairies (of whatever spelling or name). If they weren’t explicitly called fairies they should feature enough common fairy tropes to be recognizable as such.
Books I disqualified: The Bear & the Nightingale and The Pomegranate Gate are on my unthemed card. These beings were fae-like but too mythologically distinct to be called fae. Wylding Hall may have fae, but the book was too ambiguous for me to feel comfortable including it. Spear and The Broken Sword both featured beings which were mythologically related to fairies, but which predated them.
Nettle & Bone had a fairy godmother but I needed it more for my unthemed card, and fairy lore wasn't prominent enough for me to feel the need to include it here. I read several fae books for another themed card I’m finishing up now - most relevant of which is The Celtic Twilight, a book that explores 19th century fairy myths from Ireland. I won't even talk about the many, many books that aren't on this card, either because I read them previously or because I haven't gotten around to them yet.
Trends
Fairies never went out of style - at least not judding by my card. There are an exceptional number of Pre-Tolkien books included, plenty of contemporary reads, and everything in between.
I tried to incorporate a wide number of subgenres from romantasy to urban fantasy to historical court dramas, but there were a shocking number of books here that could be qualified as YA or children’s lit (I counted a total of 10 books with a female protagonist under the age of 20).
The easiest-to-fill Bingo categories were by far Impossible Places, Stranger in a Strange Land and Cozy SFF. Fairyland is by its nature an impossible place and a “strange land.” There were also a lot of books with cozy elements, and a few that were downright cozy. The hardest category to fill was Biopunk, which luckily had exactly one pretty good fit, though it was a weird one.
While these books varied in tone, almost all of them had a high dose of whimsy, and the inclusion of fairies allowed a certain playfulness and freedom
this a category!
Best Use of Food Writing: Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz. I picked this book out for my SFF book club without knowing much about it. One of my readers told me it was the most “me” book I'd ever chosen – feel good SF with a love letter to biang biang noodles in it! Gotta love it. Also I want to make biang biang noodles now.
Most Unique Secret Society: Starter Villain by John Scalzi. Also, that cover kills me every time I see it. More well-dressed cats please.
Best Bromance: The Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch. Pretty hard to beat Locke and Jean on this one (again) – last year they also got this award for me for Red Seas Under Red Skies. A runner up shoutout to Royce and Hadrian of the Riyria Revelations series by Michael J. Sullivan.
Favorite Premise that Didn't Pan Out (for me): The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett. I liked but didn't love this one, though I know it's incredibly popular on the sub. I didn't get the promised Sherlock Holmes rush out of it that I was hoping for.
Book I Wish I Read as a Kid: There have been a few of these over the years – classic kids books that I didn't read until much later. For this year it's definitely A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle. This one held up incredibly well for me and I think it's because of the author's choice to simply write a book suitable for children, with children as characters without dumbing down the vocabulary or concepts. A kids book that doesn't talk down to kids makes for a very satisfying read as an adult too.
Bingo MVP Authors: The authors I manage to squeeze onto my card most years (with no re-reads!) that made it onto this year's card too - Octavia E. Butler, Patricia Briggs, Marie Brennan, Nghi Vo, and T.J. Klune were my frequently read authors this year. Surprisingly for me, no Ilona Andrews, Naomi Novik, Martha Wells, or Lois McMaster Bujold on this card. Ironically, I did read books by Ilona Andrews, Naomi Novik, and Martha Wells this year, but they didn't make it onto my card.
Thanks for reading and here's to next year's Bingo! Can't wait to see the new card.
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Read During Bingo: The Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch (650 pages), but I listened to this one (excellent audio book for anyone wondering). The next longest was The Mask of Mirrors by M.A. Carrick which clocked in at 630 pages.
Shortest Book Read During Bingo: The Brides of High Hill by Nghi Vo was only 116 pages. I have used 2 of the other books in the Singing Hills Cycle in prior Bingo years too and they are almost always the shortest entry on my card. Just a little longer than that was the charmingly bite-sized Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz which was 168 pages.
Oldest Book Read for Bingo: I thought it was going to be Way Station by Clifford Simak (1963) but to my surprise, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle beat it out (1962). The 1980s square has nothing on me!
First Book Read this Bingo Season: An Easy Death by Charlaine Harris, but it fit the card so poorly it didn't end up on my card! The second book I read for Bingo (which did land on the card) was The Martian Contingency by Mary Robinette Kowal.
Last Book Read this Bingo Season: Wild Seed by Octavia E. Butler. I had this one picked out for the 1980s hard mode square since the start of Bingo, but I love Butler's work so I sort of kept this as a reward for myself, knowing I wouldn't get bogged down in my last book of the year.
Personal 5 Star Ratings: Only 1 this year! I am either getting pickier about my 5 star reads or the cards are making me stretch to read things that aren't playing to my preferences as much. Maybe both. Anyhow, this year's sole 5 star read was The Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch. I did have a whole lot of 4.5 star reads, some old favorite authors and some unexpected new finds.
Personal 1 Star Ratings or DNFs: None – though I am kind of stuck in Twelve Kings in Sharakhai by Bradley P. Beaulieu. I've been reading it on and off since January and haven't made it very far. I may need to DNF this to move on.
Highest GR Average Rating: A super tight race between 2 books that didn't make it onto my card – Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros at 4.57 and Twelve Months by Jim Butcher at 4.55. For books that made it into the card, the reward goes to Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinniman with a 4.48 rating.
Lowest GR Average Rating: The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels by India Holton at 3.64. This one surprises me as it has 54,125 ratings – so pretty popular book. I thought it was silly and lighthearted fun and gave it a personal rating of 4.5 stars (rounded down to 4 on GR).
Most GR Ratings: Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros at a staggering 3,668,882 ratings. The only other books that even came close were her own sequels. In prior years I was impressed with books hitting several hundred thousand ratings. Millions is a whole new game. I do want to give a big honorable mention to A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle – a beloved classic that's at 1,294,817 ratings. I'm always impressed when these classics from WAY before the digital age rack up so many ratings. This happened in prior cards with Shirley Jackson's books for me.
Least GR Ratings: On the other end of the spectrum we have A Wolf Steps in Blood by Tamara Jeree at 352 ratings. This is a self-pub I believe, so a much more uphill battle to reach readers. Surprisingly to me, we also have The Last Uncharted Sky by Curtis Craddock, which is the conclusion of the steampunk/Three Musketeers mashup series The Risen Kingdoms. I really enjoyed this series which was put out by Tor and was shocked that the 3^(rd) book in the series only had 541 ratings.
Strongest Reading Month by Page Count: I think the wonky page count listings for audiobooks on GR has messed this up, but from what it shows July 2025 was my best month this Bingo season at 2032 pages read or listened to. I know I needed some escapism in July and was doing a lot of driving (audio books), so there we are.
Easiest Bingo Square: This was an interesting race this year! I had 4 squares in the running with the winner being
Piranesi - Reading it felt like a mirror about surviving someone else’s version of you
I just finished Piranesi and I wasn’t expecting it to do what it did to me.
On the surface it’s this strange, dreamlike story about a man living in an endless house full of halls and statues, tides, birds. But somewhere around the middle I realized I wasn’t reading it as a mystery anymore. I was reading it as a mirror to my own life. Because I kept recognizing what the Other was doing before Piranesi did.
The way he controls what information Piranesi has access to or how he positions himself as the only reliable authority on what’s real. The way Piranesi’s usefulness to him is dressed up as care. I kept turning pages with this low-grade dread because I knew the shape of it. I’m coming out of a 15-year relationship and marriage that left me feeling like I had lost parts of myself. Not in one big dramatic moment. Just slowly, through confusion and that awful feeling of constantly questioning your own read on things. So watching Piranesi trust someone I had already clocked was its own specific kind of painful.
That’s what the book is really about in my opinion, not the house but about the Other and the power someone can hold over you through control, without it looking like control.
What gets me is that Piranesi is so gentle and curious and full of wonder that you could almost read his softness as the problem. But Clarke is saying something different and that his softness is what survives. His ability to keep noticing, pay attention, and keep some private interior life intact even while someone is quietly rewriting the world around him. That’s what the Other couldn’t fully reach.
The ending didn’t say you go back to who you were. It said something harder than that. And that maybe you don’t. Maybe both versions are real. The one from before and the one shaped by what happened. And now the work is figuring out how to belong to yourself again. And that that part broke me.
I think that’s also why it felt healing. Because it doesn’t treat being gentle or sensitive as weakness. It treats them like wisdom. Like evidence that something survived in the long run. And this is going to be one of those books that snuck up on me completely. Not going to forget it.
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Review of Clair Obscur Expedition 33 for Bingo's Not a Book Square
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Not a Book HM)
4.75 stars
This one became a bit longer than the others on the post I'm going to be making for my other squares, so I decided to make it its own post here!
I would have honestly preferred to count and review either Silksong or Deltarune Chapter 3 + 4 for this square because I connected to both of those games more than Expedition 33, but neither of those felt in spirit of the square being about trying something new that isn’t a book, as I was already a fan of both video game series before playing them.
That being said, Expedition 33 was still an outstanding game that I enjoyed my time with quite a bit! It was really fun to try to plan out moves that synchronize with each other during battles, and the enemies were different enough to where I never felt like I was going through the motions when fighting them, unlike some other turn-based games. Some of the fights were also just absolutely gorgeous in their own rights.
The music of the game is absolutely excellent, and many of the tracks have made their way onto my playlist. Some of my favorites (though not quite all of them, because that list would be very long) are Goblu, Monocco, Poème D'amour, Vers le Sommet, Une vie à t'aimer (of course lol), Our Drafts Unite, The Whale Next to the Cliff, Our Painted Death, and Une vie à peindre.
The plot of the game had one of the best twists that I’ve seen in gaming, and it recontextualized the rest of the game up to that point in a super fascinating way, though I did find the >!world and politics outside of the Canvas a good bit more intriguing than what was happening in the Canvas, and wish we got a bit more insight into the worldbuilding out there, though I definitely understand the decision to continue to concentrate on the Canvas, as it’s where the heart of the story resides. Perhaps we’ll get more about the outside world in a future game?!<
The way the game messed with gameplay and tried to manipulate the player’s feeling to draw parallels to what was happening in-world was super fascinating too. I can think of two examples of this that really stood out to me from the top of my head. >!One instance was how Verso very abruptly replaced Gustave in the party, trying to evoke the feeling in the player that he was just a replacement for a dead character that we cared about much more at the time, to draw a parallel to how many of the Dessendre family members would view him as a hollow replacement of the real Verso. The other is how the Paintress starts healing you during the final phase of her battle as a way to try to preserve her and Verso’s creations as long as she could before Renoir Gommaged them after she was ejected from the Canvas.!<
I haven’t done everything in the postgame yet, but one thing I did get around to was >!The Reacher. Gosh Renoir cooked with the allegory here. It was super touching to see how much he cared for Alicia/Maelle in the creation of her Axon, and in the way it represented his hope that she would be able to continue to fly and thrive despite the people and circumstances wishing to tear her down. And, the fact that Maelle is afraid of heights hinting both towards the fact that Renoir doesn't quite understand her needs and desires despite his best intentions, and the fact that she doesn't think that she can overcome her challenges in the real world is so, so good in a depressing sort of way. And don’t even get me started on Painted Alicia’s scenes here. It was so beautifully tragic. Even outside the Dessendre family narrative, it was a super cool area in general. I really loved the contrast of the Reacher against the sinister enemies you found there, and the sort of scarecrow monster feeling most of them invoked was really neat theming!!<
Finally, the ending was incredible, and devastating all at once. >!The fact that you got to choose the fate of the Canvas yourself was incredibly impactful, and I stared at the screen for a good while just trying to figure out whose side
Kurmaić – 2.5/5**
Zorian is an annoying teenage kid who goes to magic school, then gets stuck in a time loop.
I hated this book. It stayed *just* entertaining enough to keep me wondering if it was on the brink of turning into something fun, but never did. The author uses the time loop structure to set up a story which blends mystery elements with slice-of-life coziness. Ordinarily, I like both of those things, but Zorian was too annoying for me to enjoy watching him live his life. The prose was clunky and the infodumps were blatant. Also, I think the audiobook made the whole experience worse, since the narrator did *too* good a job committing to the text. A character who’s only mildly annoying on the page becomes infuriating when you have to listen to them whine nasally in your ears.
How it fits: I know nothing about this author and can’t even remember how this book found its way onto my TBR.
**(23) Generic Title (HM) – *The Broken Sword*, by Poul Anderson – 4/5**
*The Broken Sword*, a fantasy classic from the 1950s, is heavily inspired by ye olde Norse sagas. The story follows Skafloc, a child of vikings settled in England, stolen by the elves as a baby. Skafloc grows up in Alfheim and fights for his adopted people against both trolls and his changeling counterpart Valgard.
This novel is grand and ambitious, with archaic language that captures the feel of myth despite the sub-200 page count. The author succeeds in telegraphing the ultimate tragedy of the story without sacrificing tension. Some readers (though not me) might find it unnecessarily dark or edgy – these are the cold, inhuman elves of myth, not the wise elves of LOTR, and they’re only marginally less evil than the trolls they fight. In a way reminiscent of *The Worm Ouroborous*, the morality of this story is somewhat orthogonal to modern ethics. Skafloc and the other heroes of this novel are those who surmount great obstacles with courage, not those who act rightly or selflessly.
A few things bothered me, though. The writing style keeps some distance between the reader and the characters, which makes it hard to connect with the characters emotionally. The ending is also rather abrupt; the last few pages of the book are the climax, which left me missing some sort of falling action or space to engage with the story’s emotional fallout.
How it fits: Self-explanatory
**(24) Not a Book (HM) – *God of War (2018)* – 4/5**
This is not the first entry in the God of War series, but it’s the first one for me. My understanding is that it’s a reset for the series: the protagonist Kratos has left Ancient Greece for Scandinavia, where he faces threats from Norse mythology instead. The story follows Kratos and his son Atreus as they go on a personal journey which takes them through many different realms and puts them up against the Norse gods themselves.
This game was quite good. Lots of fighting and puzzle elements, with great scenery and lore about the Norse gods and giants. There’s a decent character journey woven into the gameplay, where Kratos and Atreus grow closer together and Kratos learns to be more than the cold, distant father you meet when the game begins.
How it fits: Self-explanatory
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in the interstellar Teixcalaanli Empire. Mahit must navigate unfamiliar Teixcalaanli politics and culture while (A) persuading the folks that matter *not* to conquer her people next and (B) figuring out who murdered her predecessor and why.
This novel is extremely well-crafted, but it’s the sort of book that will turn off readers who go in expecting it to be something that isn’t. Although nominally a space opera, the story is almost exclusively set in the smoke-filled rooms of Teixcalaanli imperial politics. There’s no laser guns, no space battles, and a bare minimum of space travel. Fundamentally, this is a slow-paced mystery with a focus on political intrigue and worldbuilding. If you like that sort of book, you’ll like *A Memory Called Empire*. The author writes excellent dialogue, does a great job putting you in Mahit’s emotional headspace, and placed a lot of emphasis on making the Aztec-themed Teixcalaanli culture feel alive. I also loved the concept of an imago-machine (the novel’s primary scifi element), by which people from Lsel station integrate their predecessors’ memories into their own minds to gain the benefit of that experience.
How it fits: Mahit visits Teixcalaan as an envoy, not as an immigrant or refugee
**(22) Cozy SFF (EM). *Half a Soul*, by Olivia Atwater – 4/5**
*Half a Soul*, set in Regency-Era England, follows Dora Ettings, who has been faerie-cursed since she was a child. Dora’s emotional life is extremely muted and she has only a loose grasp of social convention. Cue some predictably comic results when Dora moves to London, enters the aristocratic social scene.
This book was charming and delightful. The romance feels especially wholesome because of Dora’s unusual perspective. The story doesn’t rest exclusively on cozy, romatic vibes either – the romance plot runs parallel with a darker story about the dangers of the faerie world. Although I still found this novel a little too insubstantial for my taste, that faerie plotline did a lot to balance out the book’s tone.
How it fits: I read *Small Miracles* last year, which I’d recommend even more strongly (4.5/5).
**(24) Not a Book (EM). *Invincible (S1-3)* – 3.5/5**
How it fits: Hard Mode requires the reader to “write and post a review to r/fantasy.” This is very deliberately *not* a review. I’m declaring S4 unnecessary for the square, since it was rudely released less than 2 weeks before the bingo year ends.
**LAST FEW HARD MODE REVIEWS**
**(5) Down with the System (HM). *World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War (Full Cast Audio)*, by Max Brooks – 4.5/5**
*WWZ* is structured as a series of interview transcripts which were compiled by a journalist recording stories told by survivors of the Zombie War. These stories collectively tell of how the zombie plague emerged, how it managed to spread globally, the damage it did around the world, and how humanity ultimately began fighting back.
This book is excellent. The author puts so much care and creativity to show how the zombie plague afflicts every part of the world and how people would respond to it. There’s a brilliant blend of cynicism and idealism here; the interviews cover the full spectrum from depressingly bleak to inspiring. A couple of the interviews are duds, but they all tell separate stories so a bad chapter doesn’t taint the book.
Also, the audiobook is a whole different animal than the printed copy. It has a true all-star cast, including Mark Hamill, Alan Alda, and Rob Reiner. Highly recommend. By contrast, the *World War Z* movie sucks and, other than the name, has no relationship to the book.
How it fits: This is about the complete upheaval of almost every aspect of life on Earth … *except* for the governments, which mostly survive intact. Although a few governments do fall, that’s not the focus of the plot.
**(9) Last in a Series (HM). *The Song of Rhiannon*, by Evangeline Walton (Mabinogion #3) – 4.5/5**
*The Song of Rhiannon* is a retelling of the Third Branch of the Mabinogion, which is Welsh mythology. After the wars retold in *The Children of Llyr*,
My last 14 reviews for 2-card Bingo!
Bingo! And bingo again! I finished 2 cards this year, which is 2x as many as I managed last year. One card is all easy mode, one card is all hard mode. This was fun, but in future I'll just stick to one card. This ate up all my reading time for the year, including the time I usually reserve for nonfiction. My last batch of reviews is below – let me know what you think!
**Overall highlights of my 2025 Bingo Year:**
- *House of Leaves*, by Mark Danielewski
- *Blacktongued Thief*, by Christopher Buehlman
- *The Rook*, by Daniel O'Malley
- *Carrion Saints*, by Hiyodori
**LAST FEW EASY MODE REVIEWS**
**(4) High Fashion (EM). *Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries*, by Heather Fawcett – 4/5**
This novel is set in an alt-early 20th century world where faeries are a recognized phenomenon, studied by professional dryadologists, rather than a subject of myth. The story follows Emily Wilde, a Cambridge academic who travels to Ljosland in Scandinavia to study the faeries who live there. Emily meets the locals (both faeries and human) and gets mixed up in all sorts of trouble in her pursuit of knowledge. The novel has an epistolary structure – each chapter represents one day’s entry in Emily’s journal.
I really enjoyed this one. Emily is such a fun character to follow, intensely competent with respect to all things Faerie and equally incompetent in all things social/interpersonal. Bambleby makes an equally entertaining foil. The village of Hrafnsvik and all its inhabitants felt real, giving the novel a wholesome, cozy feel despite (1) the sometimes clinical tone of Emily’s journaling and (2) the dark, serious directions which the plot sometimes takes. The chapter where Emily >!cuts off her own finger!< was horrifying, epic, and intensely memorable. Unfortunately, the ending didn’t feel quite satisfying to me – I was expecting something a little cleverer from Emily than what the author gives us. I also found the epistolary structure inconsistent. Sometimes the author would lean into the journal-entry format of it all, but other times the style would shift into more traditional narration and dialogue that I couldn’t imagine Emily recording as written.
How it fits: clothing and sewing play a surprisingly large role in the plot for the second half of the book.
**(5) Down with the System (EM). *Morning Star*, by Pierce Brown (Red Rising #3) – 4.5/5**
This novel continues the story of interplanetary revolution which began with *Red Rising*, kicking off some time after the second book’s big cliffhanger ending. Like *Golden Son*, *Morning Star* keeps the focus on space opera politicking and sci-fi warfare. Like *Golden Son*, *Morning Star* is fast-paced without feeling rushed. The author takes the reader rapidly from one epic scene to the next while still finding room for emotional moments in between. All in all, a fantastic ending to the first trilogy – so much so that I’m not sure I want to muddy it by continuing to trilogy #2.
I don’t normally believe in pushing through a bad first book to get to high-quality sequels. If you already finished *Red Rising*, though, you’ve already done the hard part. The rest of the trilogy is a tremendous improvement in quality.
How it fits: Political revolution is literally the whole plot.
**(11) Parent Protagonist (EM). *The Dispossessed*, by Ursula Le Guin – 4/5**
*The Dispossessed* is classic sci-fi, set in the contrasting worlds of Urras and Anarres. Urras (or at least, the part of Urras the reader sees) is a highly-developed capitalist society with substantial inequality. Anarres, an anarchist society populated by revolutionaries self-exiled from Urras, is impoverished by comparison. The novel tells two narratives in alternating chapters, both following the protagonist Shevek, a physicist. The first follows Shevek’s childhood on Anarres and his partial disillusionment with Annaresti society, while the second follows adult Shevek’s extended visit to Urras.
I am, appropriately, of two minds about this book. I felt that the Anarres narrative
was spectacular; Le Guin gives us an incredibly thoughtful and nuanced picture of the political, cultural, and economic dynamics of Anarresti society. Also, whether or not you agree with the theoretical accuracy of that portrayal, Shevek’s character arc is timeless. I think many of us can resonate with the psychological struggles of an idealist who struggles to get by in a stagnant society which purports to represent grand principles but only sometimes succeeds. On the other hand, I was underwhelmed by the Urras narrative, which, among other flaws, was poorly paced. For 3/4 of the book, nothing happens on the Urras front. Then, with no particular inciting event, everything happens all at once.
How it fits: Shevek has kids, but they’re off-screen for nearly all of the novel and play very little role in the story.
(17) Elves and Dwarves (EM). Iron Axe, by Steven Harper – 3.5/5
Danr, an indentured farm laborer, is half-troll. In the novel’s Norse-themed setting, where humans fear both the trolls living under the mountains and the elvish slavers in their forests, that makes Danr an object of fear, mockery, and contempt. When strange things start to happen, Danr is forced to flee from his unhappy but familiar life and finds himself embroiled in an evolving conflict between the different fantasy peoples and the gods themselves.
This is a solid novel, every aspect of which – characters, worldbuilding, plot, prose – is reasonably well-done. The author gets a lot of good mileage out of Danr’s internal struggle to figure out where he belongs, and there’s a truth-telling magic which I liked. I don’t have any real criticisms, but nothing wowed me, either. I think my taste has drifted away from high-fantasy, but if that’s your cup of tea then this might be a good one to pick up.
How it fits: there’s elves and dwarves around, but the protagonist isn’t one of them.
(18) LGBTQIA Protagonist (EM). Carrion Saints, by Hiyodori – 4.5/5
I already reviewed this novel elsewhere for SPFBO, but it made such an impression on me that I’m reposting the review here. This book is amazing and people should know about it.
I really can’t describe this story better than the author does on Goodreads: “Carrion Saints is a sapphic enemies-to-lovers romance between an immortal saint and a severed head.” Now, romance isn’t my favorite subgenre, but talk about a hook! The author sets that romance in a delightfully creepy postapocalyptic setting. The world is slowly eroding into the void, human civilization is in shambles, and immortal monsters of every variety prey on the survivors.
Enemies-to-lovers is such an easy trope to do badly. I feel like the most common approach is to base the initial opposition on a misunderstanding which the author can resolve to set up a reconciliation. That’s the easy path, which the author does not take. Instead, we’re treated to the fascinating complexity of an evolving relationship between two beings who are genuinely, fundamentally at odds. This is the most screwed-up, manipulative, psychologically twisted relationship I’ve seen since the TV show Hannibal. And it’s so well done. The story itself is structured like a travelogue. In other books that often bores me, but Hiyodori makes it work. I think it’s all the little details of the setting. Did the pasta in that village need to be shaped like a human ear? Did the tea in that other village need to be brewed from pink beetles? Of course not, but congratulations, you have my undivided attention.
The story is an extremely slow burn. It’s not always clear where the story is going, so the book demands a fair bit of trust from the reader. All I can say is that it all pays off in my favorite sort of ending: beautiful, bittersweet, and deeply existential.
How it fits: far from being marginalized, the protagonist here is near the top of the power curve
(20) Stranger in a Strange Land (EM). A Memory Called Empire, by Arkady Martine – 4.5/5
A Memory Called Empire follows Mahit, an ambassador from the insignificant Lsel Station, newly arrived
something I was super impressed by.
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better. I like the characters and the fact that this is set in a world that sucks and we’re following people who just live in it, no matter how shitty this world is, is a nice change from the world changing plots and massive wars that most fantasy epics have. I’ll happily pick up the next book soon.
24. Not a Book // Set in a Small Town 2024
Pet Sematary by Stephen King
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.75 - 465 pages
I chose to pick up a book for this one. It was my second time reading Stephen King and I loved this book. Everything about this book is good, the character work is amazing, the story, the sensation of dread all throughout. I just cannot bring myself to give it 5 stars because I love cats. Truly an amazing book.
25. Pirates
The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.25 - 489 pages
The last book I read for this bingo. I’m not a fan of powers and ships but I genuinely liked this book. The characters were interesting and I liked the writing, the story and it was a good time overall. It was a pretty atmospheric read. I already ordered the next book in the series and I’ll be happy to keep going with this series.
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Bingo Board 2025 - Quiet a few discoveries
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1. Knights and Paladins
Spiderlight by Adrian Tchaikovsky
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ - 275 pages
This book was great. Easily my second favourite of the past year. I loved the banter and the story and the length was perfect for the story it was trying to convey. The writing style was great and it made want to read more of his work.
2. Hidden Gem
Misplacement Game by Teng Yuan Xin
⭐️⭐️⭐️ - 1002 pages
This one is a danmei, and more specifically unlimited flow. It had a few instances that were quiet interesting but the relationship between the main characters was not the most interesting. It’s also quiet long for what it was but I had a good time overall.
3. Published in the 80s
The Dragonbone Chair by Tad Williams
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ - 934 pages
This one was my favourite book of 2025. I had a great time with it and it didn’t feel long at any time. I loved all parts of this book equally even though the beginning was a bit slow, it didn’t feel like too much. I loved the characters and the plot and I cannot wait to keep going with this series. The prose is also easily one of the best I have ever read.
4. High Fashion
Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones
⭐️⭐️.75 - 302 pages
I know that this one is a classic and that people of all ages love it but I never watched the movie nor read the book before and it read very much like middle-grade (which it is) and I didn’t care for it. I can see why it’s loved but I prefer more complex stories over whimsical ones. I was happy when I finished it.
5. Down With The System
The Nightshade God by Hannah Whitten
⭐️⭐️.75 - 480 pages
This is the last book in The Nightshade Crown trilogy. While the first book was interesting and the second was fine, this one felt like a letdown. I didn’t like the ending and I will never read this again.
6. Impossible Places
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
⭐️⭐️.75 - 245 pages
I didn’t like it. The beginning was so interesting but I had expectations and so many questions and not knowing was so much more interesting than what the truth was. It’s just one of those books?movies where the reveal is disappointing because the questioning is the best part.
7. A Book in Parts
Eat the Ones You Love by Sarah Maria Griffin
⭐️⭐️.25 - 275 pages
This was boring… So very boring. I expected botanic horror, not mall melodrama…
8. Gods and Pantheons
Atalanta by Jennifer Saint
⭐️⭐️.75 - 357 pages
I just didn’t care. It’s a rewriting of a story that I already knew in a way that brought nothing new to the story.
9. Last in a Series
Wisteria by Adalyn Grace
⭐️⭐️.75 - 425 pages
This was the last book in the Belladonna trilogy. I absolutely loved the first book and the second was not as interesting. I didn’t care at all for this book. I don’t like the ML and was very happy when I finished reading it. I’ll only reread Belladonna as a stand alone from now on.
10. Book Club or Readalong Book
The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.5 - 544 pages
It was good. It was an entertaining book and the story was interesting. I liked the characters and the overall story and I’ll be glad to continue in this universe.
11. Parent Protagonist
Fool's Errand by Robin Hobb
⭐️⭐️⭐️.5 - 584 pages
This is the first book in The Tawny Man, the third series in the Realm of the Elderlings. I was pretty disappointed in this book. Robin Hobb is a great writer and her stories are always so good but the first half of this book is so very dull, the second half was good but it didn’t save the book. I’ll keep going with the series but yeah, not the best book.
12. Epistolary
The Black Hunger by Nicholas Pullen
⭐️⭐️.25 - 376 pages
This was a very interesting looking book that turned out boring as hell. I expected so much more from a book like this. It’s just a lot of talking and research and more talking.
13. Published in
to, and they certainly didn’t have all the quirks that made them stand out in other literature.
Pirates
Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens / Peter and Wendy by J.M. Barrie 4.25/5
I was familiar with the Peter Pan story from Disney and my childhood but it really hits differently as an adult. The book I read was a compilation of two novels, the first describing Peter’s origins and the second from the perspective of a group of kids he convinces to run away with him to Neverland, where we meet other famous characters like Tinkerbell (the fairy) and Captain Hook (the pirate). Peter is practically a changeling - a formerly human boy who grew up with fairies - but he refuses to do the very human act of growing up, and by living this captivating folk-hero life he also fails to be a proper child too. Wendy makes a good foil from which the audience can observe Peter; she’s mature, grounded and relatable, but still enchanted by him. The result is that both Peter Pan novels manage to be simultaneously incredibly cozy and incredibly sad.
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threads. The family has a secret which involves fairies, and we spend most of the book on the edge trying to catch glimpses, but what glimpses they are!
Epistolary
Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands by Heather Fawcett 3.75/5
I enjoyed reading the Emily Wilde books and was happy for an excuse to continue the series. This middle book might be my favorite of the trilogy, although it did lack some of the small-town coziness of the first, replacing it with a somewhat endless stream of zaniness as dryadologist Emily & friends learn more about fairyland. Although I found the writing of the whole series a little stiff, I thoroughly enjoyed how faeries were portrayed here (diverse and a little scary) and I enjoyed the continuation of Emily and Wendell’s relationship.
Published in 2025
The Summer War by Naomi Novik 4/5
I’ll give Novik credit for always taking familiar tropes and managing to surprise me with them. Part chivalric romance, part fairy tale, part YA novella, The Summer War features a young girl on the edge of fairy (the people are technically “Summerlings” in the “Summer Land” but they’re so heavily fae-coded that I had to count it) who accidentally cursed her brother in a moment of childish anger and wants to fix it all. I’ll give the book a pass for some silly tropiness because of the thoughtfulness with which it handled its themes.
Author of Color
Ash by Malinda Lo 2.75/5
A queer YA retelling of Cinderella with quite a lot of fairies. This was pretty readable, but I didn’t find it particularly memorable and the characters didn’t really blow me away.
Small Press or Self-Published
Under the Pendulum Sun by Jeanette Ng 2.75/5
I wanted to love this book. I liked the idea of this book. But I didn’t love this book. The concept was fantastic - what happens to missionaries on a hopeless mission to convert the fae, a wholly inhuman folk? There is some great religious philosophy. But we spend most of this book in a single house (heavy gothic vibes) in MC Catherine’s head, and I really wanted the characters to see and do and get out more. And what they did do, I won’t spoil but I didn’t enjoy reading about.
# ------
Biopunk
Fairyland by Paul J. McAuley 3/5
So the fairies in this book are really genetically modified beings, but it certainly plays with the tropes in very unique ways. As a dark and gritty near-future cyberpunk novel, this was way out of my comfort zone, and I’m not sure I would have read it if there were any other options for this category. That said, I appreciate that I read it, because it had a lot of unique and interesting worldbuilding. At the same time, it was a messy enough novel that I’m not sure I’m sold on the genre.
Elves and Dwarves
The King of Elfland’s Daughter by Lord Dunsany 4.75/5
Are elves fairies? The answer is sometimes and sort of. Elf and fairy myths are inextricably intertwined, and in this case, I felt the elves were appropriately fae enough to count.
This was honestly my favorite book of the card, the kind of read that was so comforting I wanted to reread it just about as soon as I finished. Yeah, the plot is kind of a suggestion and the characters are mostly shallow (but charming) fairytale archetypes, but there was an enchanting sense of mood and atmosphere that emphasized idyllic rural beauty and a quiet, pervasive melancholy illuminated by rich, archaic prose. Beginning with the marriage of an Elf princess and a human noble, the rest of the book deals with the fallout when two worlds collide and magic seeps into a human village. There is an interesting take on magic, too, that the real danger is that it’s too beautiful to look away from.
LGBTQIA Protagonist
The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar 3.75/5
A beautiful, enjoyable but not particularly memorable literary fairytale novella. The primary focus is the relationship between two sisters, one of whom is torn between a pragmatic suitor and a faerie lover (the lover is nonbinary and changes form; thus, the LGBTQIA label). The prose was beautiful, and the
for authors to come up with weird creatures, features, and customs. This even included darker books - cruel fairies must also be whimsical.
There are a lot of popular authors on this card, and some who are even more popular for non-fairy works. It seems like almost everyone has written about fairies at some point or other, and this was a great way to introduce myself to authors I hadn’t had a chance to read yet (new to me authors: 18). While I tried to include a diverse set of authors, there is a predominance of female (17) and white (21) authors on this card.
Also note on my ratings, I seem to have a softness for classics, but there should be something for everyone here.
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# Reviews:
Knights/Paladins
The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman - 4.5/5
Fairies have been a core part of the Arthurian tradition (see Morgan le Fay, etc.) and were popular characters in medieval romances, so I’m happy to have at least one Arthurian book in this spread. The Bright Sword features a ragtag group of knights trying to uphold their ideals after the death of King Arthur. The fairies served mostly to contrast the spread of Christianity and also lend a degree of weirdness to the book. Incredibly well-researched, fun, sad, sharp, and fairly messy.
Hidden Gem
Kingdoms of Elfin by Sylvia Townsend Warner - 3.25/5
A series of interconnected short stories taking place in various European fairy kingdoms with many overlapping themes and characters. The fairies of this book, and the stories about them, were cruel and impulsive. While they were all imaginative and sharply written with witty prose, I really didn’t connect with this book’s particular style of dark humor and that dragged down the whole experience for me.
Published in the 80s
Fire and Hemlock by Diana Wynn Jones 3.5/5
A weird contemporary coming-of-age book about a girl with two sets of memories who becomes accidentally entangled with fairies, and a retelling of the romance Thomas the Rhymer and the ballad Tam Lin. The pacing is really strange - there are large parts of this book that don’t feel fantastical at all, with a blink-and-you-miss-it ending. The romance is even stranger, with the age gap between the main characters too extreme to feel comfortable. At the same time, Jones is a talented writer who can create a relatable young adult character while weaving a lot of themes and symbolism into her writing.
High Fashion
Wildwood Dancing by Juliet Marillier 3.5/5
A cute YA fairy tale loosely based on The Twelve Dancing Princesses with a few other tales as well. Jena is the second eldest of five daughters and finds herself responsible for managing and holding together the varying desires of her sibling unit as they pass from a permissive guardian to a more tyrannical one. This book had a wonderful atmosphere and the fairy balls were particularly delightful to read about. The plot was relatable, but I found the ending a bit thematically confusing and the girls’ upbringing a bit anachronous. I am counting this as high fashion due not only to the importance of dressing for fairy balls, but in the family’s business which includes the trading of textiles.
Down With the System
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente 3.5/5
12-year-old September gets whisked away to fairyland and meets all sorts of strange creatures there, as well as a tyrannical fairy queen. What a beautiful, whimsical and cozy little book with the same kind of wild imaginative fancy as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. I definitely appreciated it more than I connected to it though - I think I personally prefer slightly more grounded tales.
# ------
Impossible Places
The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett
This was my first Pratchett and now I know what I was missing out on! This had so much warmth and wit and whimsy that I will definitely be exploring more Discworld as I can. It was
Read whole The Golden Enclaves yesterday in one sitting(spoilers)
Its third book of Scholomance trilogy, and I loved it so much. Sometimes the characters felt like they thinking too much into stuff and logics of world seems too over the top but the way author wrote emotions and atmosphere was surreal, it felt real, it felt how would I feel if the world was like this. The threat of death actually seems to matter, not just some obstacles for mcs. My favorite moment is that 'speech' by Aad, saying why couldn't she be the lucky one this time. It felt so human and futile, cuz she couldn't do anything but suck up to the strong, there's no other way for her to survive, it was quite a take on chosen one trope, cuz if someone is chosen, others aren't. And they gotta pay for that in statistics.
But now that I finished it, i feel like that watcher from marvel, like i witnessed it quietly and left immediately, so nobody would know, now i have so much emotion about this series but nobody to share it. One of my favorite series in all
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Parents with 14 qualifying books, only 8 of which were hard mode. As far as hard mode, A Book in Parts had 11 qualifying books, but 9 of them hit hard mode for me. The other 2 squares in the running were Down with the System (12 qualifying, 6 hard mode) and Impossible Places (13 qualifying, 5 hard mode). Not so impossible after all!
Hardest Bingo Square (Hard Mode): 1980s easily – I had exactly one book that qualified (and for hard mode), because I selected it to meet this square. The book was Wild Seed by Octavia E. Butler. A close contender was Biopunk – I had one hard mode (Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett) and one regular mode. Some other squares were close, but sort of gimmes for this one – Self-Pub/Small Press and Hidden Gem. Counterintuitively, Generic Title was actually pretty hard for me! I only had 3 books qualify for Generic Title, but 2 of those hit hard mode so this was a runner up for sure.
# And now, I present... Random Awards I Totally Made Up:
ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED Favorite New To Me Author: Afraid I'm not breaking any new ground here, but Matt Dinniman. I stopped resisting the Dungeon Crawler Carl hype and now I've started book 3 already! I'll also mention that while I enjoyed my read of book 1, I later “re-read” it on audio with my husband and the audiobook is even better, which earned this another half star for me. REWARD: An extra half-star!
Favorite Author I Found through Prior Bingos (that's also on this card): Nghi Vo – She was a new-to-me author in 2020 when I first read The Empress of Salt and Fortune and I gave her the “Favorite New to Me Author” award that year. Since then I've included her in 4 years of Bingo, including this one.
Most Powerful Book(s): Wild Seed by Octavia E. Butler. The gold standard for hard-hitting SFF to me. Not the first time I've given her this award either – the Parables duology (Parable of the Sower/Parable of the Talents) easily took this for me in the 2020 Bingo season and if I was reading those for the first time this year, they would have won again (possibly a sad commentary on our reality, but let's not go there right now).
The Author I Binged in Spite of Bingo Rules: Rebecca Yarros, for a change up (it's usually Ilona Andrews). I read Fourth Wing for my SFF book club and binged right through the rest of the series. Not one of the books made it onto my card, though they did feature in my stats quite a bit. These books found me at the right time when I really needed an absorbing but not challenging distraction.
Worst Dad of the Year: The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels by India Holton – Almost made this a “Worst Parent” award this year since there were a lot of questionable moms on my card, but not so many dads. However, I think the Dad in the Wisteria Society is suitably villainous to deserve the award – plus he makes people listen to his (very bad) poetry and prose.
Best Dressed: This award is making a reappearance from my 2022 wrap up. This one goes out to A Mask of Mirrors by M.A. Carrick. Fittingly used for the High Fashion square. Worst Dressed would definitely go to Carl from Dungeon Crawler Carl, but that already got an award.
Best (Alt)-Western: Does not come with a free continental breakfast. This goes to An Easy Death by Charlaine Harris – featuring a female “Gunny” Gunslinger in a very alternate Old West type setting.
Most Unique Mythological Creature: Greenteeth by Molly O'Neill. Not too many books out there featuring a Jenny Greenteeth character! This was a great folklore based story. Not exactly a retelling, but not far off either.
Highest Amount of Tea Brewed: Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett – featuring a British scholar. Tea guaranteed. Close runner up, The Wisteria Society of Lady Scoundrels by India Holton. Honorable mention to The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett on this one, but you might think twice about partaking. I do find it funny that I always have enough tea drinking books on my card to make
Annual (Almost) Bingo Eve Wrap Up with Completely Random Stats and Awards!
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Hello! Welcome to my 6th Annual (Almost) Bingo Eve Wrap Up post - complete with some random stats about my card and my completely made up awards for my 10th completed Bingo year! Usually I like to post this on March 31, but this year that's not going to work, so a few days early it is. Sidenote, an entire decade of Bingo makes for a heck of a lot of unfinished series.
Even when I try to restrain myself, I am wordy, so this is likely to be a long one. Thanks for sticking around if you make it to the end.
This year I managed to finish the last book I needed for Bingo on March 8, 2026, nearly an entire month early. That's a record for me in recent years.
Here's this year's completed Bingo Card (also attached as an image, so hopefully it shows up): https://imgur.com/a/jqNbKLu
First up, RANDOM STAT TIME – because I know we're all suckers for random stats:
Books by Author's Gender: 17 women (including a two woman writing team and one woman editor who was part of a male/female editing team), 9 men (including one male editor who is the other half of that male/female editing team) – I have been corrected in prior years on this one, so if I made a mistake, let me know and I'll fix it.
Number of Authors using Initials Instead of First Name (aka the T. Kingfisher stat... or maybe the T.J. Klune stat?): 4 this year, including one pseudonym for a 2 person writing team (M.A. Carrick)
Sequels (or further into a series): 9, beating last year's record by 1. This makes me very happy as it's a personal goal to squeeze as many sequels onto the cards as I can so I can keep making progress with the roughly 1 million series I've started and not finished due to Bingo and the no-duplicate-author rule! Big shout out to this year's Last in a Series square – very appreciated, much like the Sequel square from 2 years ago. If I was smarter I would have used the Sequel square as my “any prior year” square.
Standalones: 5, I believe, unless the authors decide otherwise (or there are sequels I don't know about for some of them). I didn't do as well at avoiding series starters as I did last year. However, some of the series I may just choose to let the first one be my only read.
New-to-Me Authors Read: 10.5 (.5 for the half of M.A. Carrick I hadn't read before) – most of the non-sequels were new-to-me authors.
Self-Pub or Small Press Books: 1 – pretty sad showing on this one for me this year. I'm going to give myself a half book credit for a book that was self-pub when I started the series but was republished by a trad publisher later (Ravensong by T.J. Klune). Hopefully I can get back to including more self-pub/small press on next year's card.
Bingo-iest Book Read (qualified for the most squares): The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jemisin counted for 8 total squares this year, 4 hard mode and 4 regular mode. Either this year's card made it harder for books to hit multiple squares or my choices did! Curious to see what books you all read that hit more squares. Last year I had a book that hit 10 squares.
Least Bingo-iest Book Read: An Easy Death by Charlaine Harris – 1 square, regular mode. This book didn't make it on my card because I did a hard mode card. This is the book I was reading when Bingo started – I did not guess well!! Also, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle also only hit 1 square (hard mode), which I used it for – Impossible Places. I actually had several books hit only 2 squares or so, or no hard modes at all, which is pretty unusual. I think this year's card was on the more challenging side to hit things by accident. Other 2 square, normal mode only books from this year – Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros (I know, I'm late to that party), The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie, Empire of Ivory by Naomi Novik, and Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz.
Longest Book
I was going to take. I finally settled for Maelle’s ending, as it wouldn’t have been fair to all of the denizens of the Canvas to be killed to save one family if they were aware and sentient, which it definitely seemed like they were. I have definitely debated with myself if my decision was the correct one though. I especially feel so incredibly awful for Verso, both the Painted version who has very clearly expressed he doesn’t want to exist in the Canvas anymore and who had his autonomy stripped away by Maelle, and the sliver of the real Verso who is still forced to paint when it seems he doesn’t really want to anymore. I definitely want to go back and give Verso’s ending a try to see the differences between the two to finally settle the debate in my mind to which is a better ending to choose, though it’s obvious that both are extremely flawed answers to a complicated and tragic question.!<
Honestly, I’d say the game’s one main weakness is that it didn’t actually make me feel too much in the moment at any point of the game besides the aforementioned ending and sections of >!The Reacher!< for whatever reason, though afterwards thinking about it has made me pretty emotional at times, so it’s definitely still a very moving game in general. It just never quite connected to me in the way that other games have, which probably sounds kinda nitpicky and vague, but I like to categorize how good something is to me by largely considering how it makes me feel and whether it moved me, so it can’t quite reach 5 stars for me no matter how objectively good it is. Regardless though, it’s still an excellent game, and I really enjoyed my time with it.
Recommended: Absolutely! If you like video games, especially if they’re very story focused, do yourself a favor and check this one out!
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@r_fantasy
BINGO! (so much fun).
Wow, this was great. A gigantic thank you to the Bingo 2025 team, the mods, everyone who made recommendations and everyone who posted early Bingo cards while I lurked and tried to figure out how to do this. To u/messi1045 thank you so much for the autofill template. I would not have posted my card otherwise and I was just delighted to see magic populate my books into slots.
These are all wonderful books and by no means all that I read, it was a good year for SFF. Regarding ratings, five is sublime, four is outstanding, three is pretty darn good/will read the author again I try to rate against my expectations for the subgenre--I don't expect from space opera what I expect from cozy fantasy. Ninety percent of these books were on audio.
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My personal rules 1) Published in 2025 whenever possible 2) Hard mode 3) If a book I was tempted to DNF was generating buzz and some good reviews on r/fantasy push through to finish 4) Only include books that I'd be willing to recommend and 5) Use the library as much as possible. I am typically not a reviewer/or rater although I put stars on the form. Maybe for next year and maybe more thought into discouraging people from reading really fun books by not giving a 4 or a 5. So, some last minute superlatives.
Favorite: The Everlasting by Alix Harrow. Knights & Paladins HM.
Most surprising: The Bewitching by Sylvia Moreno-Garcia which I liked far more than I expected (I don't generally read horror). Author of Color HM.
Most fun: Of Monsters and Mainframes by Barbara Truelove. I thought this book was hilarious and I found it at random by getting an armful from New Releases shelves to get a start on Bingo. My substitution for Generic Title, Picked based on the cover (2024).
Great r/fantasy recs: The Works of Vermin by Hiron Ennes (Fashion HM), Sorcery and Small Magics by Maiga Doocy (Cozy HM), A Letter from the Lonesome Shore by Sylvie Cantrell (Epistolary HM) ((someone recommended her first book, A Letter from the Luminous Deep) and Greenteeth by Molly O'Neill (Published in 2025 HM).
Treasure hunt on my own shelves: I finally listened o a 2014 Gail Carriger YA (Crudrat) for Hidden Gem which was light but enjoyable. I also had a lot of fun reading Crown Tourney (Five Short Stories) a book I'd gotten to support a favorite (Doctor Who) podcaster, Tansy Rayner Roberts.
Brain stretchers: Without Bingo, I would never have read Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorofor (LGBTQ HM) or Notes from a Regicide by Isaac Fellman (Stranger in a Strange Land, arguable HM but I didn't count it as such). While I can't say that either of these books were perfect, they were both written by authors teasing out themes in complex narrative structures and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of reading them.
Most disappointing. I struggled to find a book for this, I had already read all those generic title epic fantasy books! I was excited to get access via Hoopla to Red Sword by Bora Chung, translated by Anton Hur, to use for Generic Title/2025 pub date. But, I just could not get through it. Sigh. So I substituted another 2025 book instead.
Looking forward to Bingo 2026!
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@r_fantasy
two survivors return to Wales and find themselves at a loss for what to do with the rest of their lives. One of them proposes the following solution to the other: come home with me, seduce my mom, and we can all just hang out together. After which, various mystically bad things occur.
I’m being a little facetious here; this is a great retelling. Walton does an excellent job making the characters feel like human beings doing psychologically plausible things, which is a tall order for a retelling – mythical heroes often just *do stuff*. The best part is the prose, which preserves that fantastical and mythic feeling even as Walton turns the source material into a modern-ish novel.
One note: whoever published this edition should be fired. Granted, it’s probably too late for that, since it was published in 1972. The cover looks like the world’s worst porno, which is especially strange because this book isn’t sexually explicit or erotic in any way. On top of that, literally everything in the back cover blurb occurs in the last 50% of the novel. Some of it in happens in the last 25%!
For your amusement: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/28796.The_Song_of_Rhiannon
How it fits: I’m shamelessly relying on a technicality here. *The Song of Rhiannon* represents the third chronological branch of the Mabinogion – the second to last, out of four). I haven’t yet read the 4th. However, the 4th and chronologically final branch was published (for whatever reason) before all the rest. So *The Song of Rhiannon* is the fourth and final release by publication date.
**(11) Parent Protagonist (HM). *The Road*, by Cormac McCarthy – 4/5**
After an unspecified apocalypse, a father and his young son wander through the empty ruins that used to be the United States. They try to survive and protect each other while “carrying the fire” of human goodness in a fallen world.
This book should have been very boring. Read cynically, it’s little more than a laundry list of survival chores: look for food, try to stay warm, hide from desperate people, repeat. Instead, McCarthy makes this struggle feel deeply meaningful. The setting is nothing but ruin and despair, but that allows the novel’s core theme to come through with perfect clarity and deep emotion: that even a few peoples’ love and hope and conviction still matters.
Unfortunately, the ending is terrible. I’m still angry about it. McCarthy literally laid all the foundations for a perfect ending, then blew it.
How it fits: this father-son relationship is the whole focus of the book.
**(17) Elves and Dwarves (HM). *Elric of Melniboné (The Elric Saga, Vol. 1)*, by Michael Moorcock – 3.5/5**
Elric is the emperor of Melniboné, which ruled the world for millennia before the cruel, inhuman Melnibonéans slid into a decadent and stagnant irrelevance. This collection is comprised of four Elric novellas.
The first two novellas in this collection, *Elric of Melniboné* and *The Fortress of the Pearl* are fun and pulpy. Classic sword and sorcery, though not masterpieces. Elric is a fascinating character: he’s the only Melnibonéans with a glimmer of conscience and introspection, which alienates him from his subjects and pushes them towards other potential rulers who act as a Melnibonéan ought. The third novella, *Sailor on the Seas of Fate*, is entertaining but a little too surreal and aimless for me. The fourth novella, *Weird of the White Wolf*, is terrible; Elric is barely recognizeable as the same person. While I recognize that these novellas were all published at different times, this sort of massive character discontinuity is a fatal flaw in a a collection of novellas which purports to tell Elric’s story in chronological order.
How it fits: The Melnibonéans aren't explicitly elves, but they're nonhuman, elflike in description, supernaturally elegant, and magically inclined. My understanding is that Moorcock wrote them as a subversion of Tolkien's elves and helped to create the dark elf trope.
**(19) (Substitution Square: 2021) New to You Author (HM) – *Mother of Learning, Arc 1*, by Domagoj
was spectacular; Le Guin gives us an incredibly thoughtful and nuanced picture of the political, cultural, and economic dynamics of Anarresti society. Also, whether or not you agree with the theoretical accuracy of that portrayal, Shevek’s character arc is timeless. I think many of us can resonate with the psychological struggles of an idealist who struggles to get by in a stagnant society which purports to represent grand principles but only sometimes succeeds. On the other hand, I was underwhelmed by the Urras narrative, which, among other flaws, was poorly paced. For 3/4 of the book, nothing happens on the Urras front. Then, with no particular inciting event, everything happens all at once.
How it fits: Shevek has kids, but they’re off-screen for nearly all of the novel and play very little role in the story.
**(17) Elves and Dwarves (EM). *Iron Axe*, by Steven Harper – 3.5/5**
Danr, an indentured farm laborer, is half-troll. In the novel’s Norse-themed setting, where humans fear both the trolls living under the mountains and the elvish slavers in their forests, that makes Danr an object of fear, mockery, and contempt. When strange things start to happen, Danr is forced to flee from his unhappy but familiar life and finds himself embroiled in an evolving conflict between the different fantasy peoples and the gods themselves.
This is a solid novel, every aspect of which – characters, worldbuilding, plot, prose – is reasonably well-done. The author gets a lot of good mileage out of Danr’s internal struggle to figure out where he belongs, and there’s a truth-telling magic which I liked. I don’t have any real criticisms, but nothing wowed me, either. I think my taste has drifted away from high-fantasy, but if that’s your cup of tea then this might be a good one to pick up.
How it fits: there’s elves and dwarves around, but the protagonist isn’t one of them.
**(18) LGBTQIA Protagonist (EM). *Carrion Saints*, by Hiyodori – 4.5/5**
I already reviewed this novel elsewhere for SPFBO, but it made such an impression on me that I’m reposting the review here. This book is amazing and people should know about it.
I really can’t describe this story better than the author does on Goodreads: *“Carrion Saints is a sapphic enemies-to-lovers romance between an immortal saint and a severed head.”* Now, romance isn’t my favorite subgenre, but talk about a hook! The author sets that romance in a delightfully creepy postapocalyptic setting. The world is slowly eroding into the void, human civilization is in shambles, and immortal monsters of every variety prey on the survivors.
Enemies-to-lovers is such an easy trope to do badly. I feel like the most common approach is to base the initial opposition on a misunderstanding which the author can resolve to set up a reconciliation. That’s the easy path, which the author does not take. Instead, we’re treated to the fascinating complexity of an evolving relationship between two beings who are genuinely, fundamentally at odds. This is the most screwed-up, manipulative, psychologically twisted relationship I’ve seen since the TV show *Hannibal*. And it’s *so well done.* The story itself is structured like a travelogue. In other books that often bores me, but Hiyodori makes it work. I think it’s all the little details of the setting. Did the pasta in that village need to be shaped like a human ear? Did the tea in that other village need to be brewed from pink beetles? Of course not, but congratulations, you have my undivided attention.
The story is an extremely slow burn. It’s not always clear where the story is going, so the book demands a fair bit of trust from the reader. All I can say is that it all pays off in my favorite sort of ending: beautiful, bittersweet, and deeply existential.
How it fits: far from being marginalized, the protagonist here is near the top of the power curve
**(20) Stranger in a Strange Land (EM). *A Memory Called Empire*, by Arkady Martine – 4.5/5**
*A Memory Called Empire* follows Mahit, an ambassador from the insignificant Lsel Station, newly arrived
in the interstellar Teixcalaanli Empire. Mahit must navigate unfamiliar Teixcalaanli politics and culture while (A) persuading the folks that matter not to conquer her people next and (B) figuring out who murdered her predecessor and why.
This novel is extremely well-crafted, but it’s the sort of book that will turn off readers who go in expecting it to be something that isn’t. Although nominally a space opera, the story is almost exclusively set in the smoke-filled rooms of Teixcalaanli imperial politics. There’s no laser guns, no space battles, and a bare minimum of space travel. Fundamentally, this is a slow-paced mystery with a focus on political intrigue and worldbuilding. If you like that sort of book, you’ll like A Memory Called Empire. The author writes excellent dialogue, does a great job putting you in Mahit’s emotional headspace, and placed a lot of emphasis on making the Aztec-themed Teixcalaanli culture feel alive. I also loved the concept of an imago-machine (the novel’s primary scifi element), by which people from Lsel station integrate their predecessors’ memories into their own minds to gain the benefit of that experience.
How it fits: Mahit visits Teixcalaan as an envoy, not as an immigrant or refugee
(22) Cozy SFF (EM). Half a Soul, by Olivia Atwater – 4/5
Half a Soul, set in Regency-Era England, follows Dora Ettings, who has been faerie-cursed since she was a child. Dora’s emotional life is extremely muted and she has only a loose grasp of social convention. Cue some predictably comic results when Dora moves to London, enters the aristocratic social scene.
This book was charming and delightful. The romance feels especially wholesome because of Dora’s unusual perspective. The story doesn’t rest exclusively on cozy, romatic vibes either – the romance plot runs parallel with a darker story about the dangers of the faerie world. Although I still found this novel a little too insubstantial for my taste, that faerie plotline did a lot to balance out the book’s tone.
How it fits: I read Small Miracles last year, which I’d recommend even more strongly (4.5/5).
(24) Not a Book (EM). Invincible (S1-3) – 3.5/5
How it fits: Hard Mode requires the reader to “write and post a review to r/fantasy.” This is very deliberately not a review. I’m declaring S4 unnecessary for the square, since it was rudely released less than 2 weeks before the bingo year ends.
LAST FEW HARD MODE REVIEWS
(5) Down with the System (HM). World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War (Full Cast Audio), by Max Brooks – 4.5/5
WWZ is structured as a series of interview transcripts which were compiled by a journalist recording stories told by survivors of the Zombie War. These stories collectively tell of how the zombie plague emerged, how it managed to spread globally, the damage it did around the world, and how humanity ultimately began fighting back.
This book is excellent. The author puts so much care and creativity to show how the zombie plague afflicts every part of the world and how people would respond to it. There’s a brilliant blend of cynicism and idealism here; the interviews cover the full spectrum from depressingly bleak to inspiring. A couple of the interviews are duds, but they all tell separate stories so a bad chapter doesn’t taint the book.
Also, the audiobook is a whole different animal than the printed copy. It has a true all-star cast, including Mark Hamill, Alan Alda, and Rob Reiner. Highly recommend. By contrast, the World War Z movie sucks and, other than the name, has no relationship to the book.
How it fits: This is about the complete upheaval of almost every aspect of life on Earth … except for the governments, which mostly survive intact. Although a few governments do fall, that’s not the focus of the plot.
(9) Last in a Series (HM). The Song of Rhiannon, by Evangeline Walton (Mabinogion #3) – 4.5/5
The Song of Rhiannon is a retelling of the Third Branch of the Mabinogion, which is Welsh mythology. After the wars retold in The Children of Llyr,
My last 14 reviews for 2-card Bingo!
Bingo! And bingo again! I finished 2 cards this year, which is 2x as many as I managed last year. One card is all easy mode, one card is all hard mode. This was fun, but in future I'll just stick to one card. This ate up all my reading time for the year, including the time I usually reserve for nonfiction. My last batch of reviews is below – let me know what you think!
Overall highlights of my 2025 Bingo Year:
- House of Leaves, by Mark Danielewski
- Blacktongued Thief, by Christopher Buehlman
- The Rook, by Daniel O'Malley
- Carrion Saints, by Hiyodori
LAST FEW EASY MODE REVIEWS
(4) High Fashion (EM). Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries, by Heather Fawcett – 4/5
This novel is set in an alt-early 20th century world where faeries are a recognized phenomenon, studied by professional dryadologists, rather than a subject of myth. The story follows Emily Wilde, a Cambridge academic who travels to Ljosland in Scandinavia to study the faeries who live there. Emily meets the locals (both faeries and human) and gets mixed up in all sorts of trouble in her pursuit of knowledge. The novel has an epistolary structure – each chapter represents one day’s entry in Emily’s journal.
I really enjoyed this one. Emily is such a fun character to follow, intensely competent with respect to all things Faerie and equally incompetent in all things social/interpersonal. Bambleby makes an equally entertaining foil. The village of Hrafnsvik and all its inhabitants felt real, giving the novel a wholesome, cozy feel despite (1) the sometimes clinical tone of Emily’s journaling and (2) the dark, serious directions which the plot sometimes takes. The chapter where Emily >!cuts off her own finger!< was horrifying, epic, and intensely memorable. Unfortunately, the ending didn’t feel quite satisfying to me – I was expecting something a little cleverer from Emily than what the author gives us. I also found the epistolary structure inconsistent. Sometimes the author would lean into the journal-entry format of it all, but other times the style would shift into more traditional narration and dialogue that I couldn’t imagine Emily recording as written.
How it fits: clothing and sewing play a surprisingly large role in the plot for the second half of the book.
(5) Down with the System (EM). Morning Star, by Pierce Brown (Red Rising #3) – 4.5/5
This novel continues the story of interplanetary revolution which began with Red Rising, kicking off some time after the second book’s big cliffhanger ending. Like Golden Son, Morning Star keeps the focus on space opera politicking and sci-fi warfare. Like Golden Son, Morning Star is fast-paced without feeling rushed. The author takes the reader rapidly from one epic scene to the next while still finding room for emotional moments in between. All in all, a fantastic ending to the first trilogy – so much so that I’m not sure I want to muddy it by continuing to trilogy #2.
I don’t normally believe in pushing through a bad first book to get to high-quality sequels. If you already finished Red Rising, though, you’ve already done the hard part. The rest of the trilogy is a tremendous improvement in quality.
How it fits: Political revolution is literally the whole plot.
(11) Parent Protagonist (EM). The Dispossessed, by Ursula Le Guin – 4/5
The Dispossessed is classic sci-fi, set in the contrasting worlds of Urras and Anarres. Urras (or at least, the part of Urras the reader sees) is a highly-developed capitalist society with substantial inequality. Anarres, an anarchist society populated by revolutionaries self-exiled from Urras, is impoverished by comparison. The novel tells two narratives in alternating chapters, both following the protagonist Shevek, a physicist. The first follows Shevek’s childhood on Anarres and his partial disillusionment with Annaresti society, while the second follows adult Shevek’s extended visit to Urras.
I am, appropriately, of two minds about this book. I felt that the Anarres narrative
Daavor's Duobingo: Not a Book (It's a Film!) Reviews: The Northman, Frankenstein
Well, I've completely and utterly abandoned the pretense I was going to write a review for every pair of books in my double bingo quest. But, I suppose as the duties of my one hard mode card insist I should probably write reviews for the Not-A-Book square.
I'll admit I took the mildly boring route of choosing a few speculative films to watch. Not the most wild option out of those we've seen, but I always mean to watch these kinds of things and often miss out on them, so using Bingo as a little push is perhaps good.
The Northman:
Probably the film out of the speculative films I saw this year that I was most excited for, have longest wanted to get to, and ultimately liked the most. This is a Viking adventure epic from the unmistakable stylings of Robert Eggers. I loved his films the VVitch and Nosferatu, and had also enjoyed The Lighthouse so as a fantasy fan his sprawling Viking epic probably should have been something I tried earlier.
Loosely based on the underlying story that inspires Hamlet, the film follows Alexander Skarsgard as Amleth, the titular Northman. His father is overthrown by his uncle and he escapes into exile as a berserker and raider, when he hears word that his uncle now lives on a farmstead in Iceland (having lost his crown to the expanding Norwegian kingdom) and begins a quest of revenge tinged with magic and cast across the sprawling and epic Icelandic landscape.
The narrative is classic and compelling, leaving room for the characters and actors to breathe their own life into it. The main men of the movie: Amleth and his uncle Fjolnir serve as complicated antipodes, a righteous quest of revenge drives ones wish to destroy the other while ironically by the time revenge is coming it is Fjolnir who provides a quiet and stable life for a household while his berserker nephew is a force of destruction tormenting them. Driving this home are the star performances of Nicole Kidman as Amleth's mother Gudrun who is now also Fjolnir's wife, and Anya Taylor Joy as the slavic witch Olga, who cast more complicated lenses on the simple revenge tale that the men seem cast in.
The cinematography and landscape is gorgeous and amplifies the high melodrama of the plot up to and including the bizarrely gonzo conclusion. The magical and mythological elements are elusive and hallucinogenic, reaching out to unsettle our understanding of what is mostly a gritty and grounded (albeit epic and melodramatic) piece. In other words, it's classic Eggers.
A pleasure to watch.
Frankenstein:
So Guillermo del Toro made a Frankenstein movie. And it's pretty good. Like the Northman this is a sweeping melodrama of grand landscapes. Unlike some more studious fans, I chose to let myself go in with only a vague memory Frankenstein as I read it close to 15 years ago.
The for of film's two core acts follows Victor, the titular Frankenstein through his early life as he slowly grows his obsession with understanding and later creating human life. The more claustrophobic of the two acts, this one winds through the halls of palaces, then universities and cluttered apartments, and finally the cavernous ruined mill in which
The second act follows the Monster, portrayed as a just-more-than-naturally tall homunculus by Jacob Elordi, who escapes from the shackles of Victor to try and survive, then to try and find human connection, and finally to seek out his own master in the hopes of finding another of his kind, an Eve to his Adam.
Again the cinematography is quite compelling, though the film leans on a palette of colors that evoke bruised flesh in an uncomfortable vividness. Unlike the Northman I don't think this film necessarily puts in the work to complicate it's core duo beyond the rough sketch of a compelling dynamic the novel provides, and it doesn't have quite the deft hand at the characters (particularly women) beyond the two core men who can break that simple archetypal interaction.
Fun to watch, but not necessarily
2025
Overgrowth by Mira Grant
⭐️⭐️⭐️.75 - 488 pages
This one was good. The story was interesting and I had a good time. It’s a bit too long and it could do with 50-100 pages less but the idea was interesting and the ending was pretty unexpected.
14. Author of Colour
The Darkening by Sunya Mara
⭐️⭐️⭐️ - 400 pages
I don’t remember this one. I usually don’t read YA and this is one of the few I did read but I didn’t care for it… clearly. It was pretty similar to The Foxglove King and… that’s all I remember.
15. Small Press or Self Published
Ghost Marriage by Huājuǎn
⭐️⭐️⭐️.5 - 154 pages
It was a short and fun danmei about a ghost marriage. It’s pretty short so there’s not much to say but it was fun and I liked it. The translation was good.
16. Biopunk
The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett
⭐️⭐️⭐️.5 - 406 pages
I only read this because it was the only book I found that fit the prompt and looked somewhat interesting. I’m glad I did. The story and characters are interesting and I’ll be glad to pick up the second book and keep going with this series. I liked the writing style and the descriptions. This is what at the Ones You Love should have been.
17. Elves and/or Dwarves
The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien
⭐️⭐️⭐️.5 - 480 pages
It’s a very interesting book if you’re into the lore and history of Middle-Earth but it’s also very dense and not that engaging. I’m glad I read it but I’m also glad that I’ll never have to pick it up again.
18. LGBTQIA Protagonist
Poor Monk by Shijing
⭐️⭐️.25 - 1227 pages
Another danmei. I thought it would be very good demon / buddhist monk story but it was so damn boring… It’s so slow and the ML is barely ever present, they probably have three scenes together and the book is OVER TWELVE HUNDRED PAGES!! And only three scenes!!! What happens? Pretty much nothing. It was a slug to go through and I am never thinking about this again.
19. Five SFF Short Stories
The Mammoth Book of Vintage Science Fiction: Short Novels of the 1950s by Isaac Asimov with Poul Anderson, Katherine MacLean, Charles V. De Det, Walter M. Miller, Jr., Frederik Pohl, Frank M. Robinson, Eric Frank Russell, Theodore Sturgeon, William Tenn, Philip José Farmer
⭐️⭐️⭐️.25 - 512 pages
I read this almost a year ago and I remember nothing. None of the stories were practically interesting and yeah…
20. Stranger in a Strange Land
The Fox Wife by Yangsze Choo
⭐️⭐️.75 - 388 pages
The Ghost Bride by this author is probably my favourite book of all time. I had a lot of hope for this book but it was boring. I didn’t care for any of the characters or the story. It’s a book. I bought it. I read it. I sold it.
21. Recycle a Bingo Square // First in a Series 2024
Jade City by Fonda Lee
⭐️⭐️⭐️.75 - 498 pages
I finally started The Greenbone Saga and I enjoyed it quiet a lot. I don’t like the characters all that much but I think that’s the point. I read the second book earlier this year and I cannot wait to finish this series. Overall a pretty good book with a few twists and interesting scenes. Not as fantastic as I would have hoped though.
22. Cozy SFF
Hemlock & Silver by T. Kingfisher
⭐️⭐️⭐️.25 - 359 pages
Another book that I picked up because I liked one of the author’s other works. In this case, Nettle & Bone, which is one of my favourite books. This one had an interesting premise but I could pretty bored as the book went on. I feel like a lot of T. Kingfisher’s main characters read like the same character over and over again and while I liked the witty commentary at first, it quickly got tiring. Also, the second half of the book is not as interesting as the first.
23. Generic Title
Sword of Destiny by Andrzej Sapkowski
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.25 - 402 pages
The second book of short stories in The Witcher series. I liked it. I really enjoyed the first book and I enjoyed the second one just as much. Having played both the first and second games, it was nice to get back into this world and understanding it
my heart wanted was TMA fanfiction and TMA theories and TMA fanart and… yeah. I sort of missed out on the listen-along because I sped past the pace of the posts (7-10 episodes per week? Please, I was listening to 15 per day), but I am 300% grateful for it being there as I might have not started TMA without it. Should have added even more stars to the chart tbh.
Parent Protagonist: The Hazards of Love by The Decemberists | I’ve always loved concept albums, especially ones that tell a cohesive story rather than are a collection of themed songs. The Decemberists did an amazing job with telling the story through lyrics and music, you can really see the scenes each song depicts without the musical appeal being sacrificed.
The disappointments:
Down With the System: The Long Walk | This was a letdown – I have fond memories of the book, so I was expecting something better to be honest. Though I did read the book over 20 years ago, so possibly I am remembering it as better than it is. The film reminded me why I stopped reading King, I just really don’t like this style and voice anymore. Kudos to the filmmakers by really make it sound like a King adaptation I guess, it was unmistakeably his voice shining through.
Five SFF Short Stories: Love, Death & Robots s4 | LD&R peaked in season 1 and has been chasing that high ever since, with rather middling results. This season had one or two episodes I enjoyed on the visual side, but the stories were very… meh. 400 Boys was the highlight of this season imo.
Not A Book: attempted to write a fanfic | English is a stupid language with a bunch of nonsense rules and grammar that doesn’t make any sense. And what do you mean there is only one right word order in a sentence! I haven’t done any writing since like 2015, and any non-academic writing since maybe 2003, so this was a journey of rediscovery and frustration. In the end, I have 3 pages of notes and no fanfic because writing is pain and English is nonsense. I did spend enough time on this endeavor though that I am inclined to count it anyway. Maybe one day I will get a strike of inspiration and turn the notes into something, who knows.
Overall, I think it helped me get motivated to watch/play more, so I guess I finally realized the purpose of the bingo lmao. Might do it again next year too!
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I also decided to see if I completed the book bingo without actively trying to, and turns out I did! Apparently, if you read enough books in a year, you can do the bingo even if your reading includes reading 10+ books by the same author in a row. Multiple times. I even had a 'not a book' left over from the bookless card! (though I guess the entire card could be my 'not a book' too?)
#My accidental book card
(the recycled square is 'novel featuring a ghost' from 2020)
I cannot say I was not influenced by the bingo at all when choosing my reading, despite not actively participating in it – I don’t think it’s possible to engage with r/fantasy on the daily without learning the bingo squares, seeing recommendations or themes being discussed, so it is entirely likely that at least some of the books I ended up putting on my card ended up there because I saw someone recommend a book for the bingo and I chose to read it because it sounded good.
I did have to substitute one theme as I haven’t read anything from the 80s (apparently the oldest book I read since April 1st 2025 is from 2017, I guess I don’t reach for older books when left to my own devices), and others might be not great fits since I wasn't really tracking the bingo squares as I read and some books from the card are from almost a year ago so idk if I'm remembering everything correctly.
https://redd.it/1s74cgz
@r_fantasy
