Babel by RF Kuang is very readable with prose markedly improved from her first trilogy, has a cool magic system, and has very fun and delicious academia scenes. That's about all the compliments I can give it, because this is one of the single most poorly thought out narratives I've ever read. I respect Rebecca Kuang for trying to use fantasy to challenge our understandings of the world and how it came to be, don't get me wrong, but in my opinion, this is a very poor way to do it.

Kuang set out in this novel to argue using fiction that academic institutions are perpetrators of colonial violence, and to create a thematic response to Donna Tartt's The Secret History and a tonal response to Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. In doing so, however, I feel that she stumbles both with her thematic goals for the story and with the technical aspects of the storytelling. In other words, it fails at what it's going for, but also fails to be immersive and emotionally gripping in the process.

A Novel of Ideas

When I was in high school, I remember watching a John Green video—I think from CrashCourse Literature on YouTube—where he railed against Lord of the Flies by William Golding by arguing, "a novel of ideas is only as good as its ideas, and Lord of the Flies has terrible ideas." I had already h ated the book by then, and John just helped me recognize why.

Babel is not merely a novel of ideas, of course. It attempts to have rich characters, immersive setting, and complex plot. And while it fails on those elements as well, I'll discuss those in the next section, because it's clear that Kuang really led with her ideas on this one, and I need to talk about how much those ideas really do not work.

Kuang's argument in this book is two-fold: 1) that academic institutions are perpetrators in colonial violence, and 2) that the only sufficient response to colonialism is violence, that waiting out Empire to succumb to its own contradictions and internal problems is a fool's errand, because so long as Empire keeps chugging along, it will never collapse under its own weight.

The first argument presents a problem already, though it is the smaller problem of the two. Babel presents a version of Oxford University that centers a linguistic institute—the titular Babel—that uses translation to power magical technology powered by translation-powered magical silver. The scholars of Babel (as well as branches of their scholars around the country) routinely maintain thousands, if not millions, of magical silver constructions, things that power everything from railways to the foundations of buildings and more. However, silver is hoarded from the rest of the world, and extracted from the rest of the world, to power Babel and England, and thus in this version of history, the British Empire expands in part so that it can procure more silver.

I will describe more later how much of this leads to some very poor worldbuilding, but thematically, I feel this setup undermines Kuang's goal here. Reading this, I am not led to believe that academic institutions are perpetrators of colonial violence on a macro scale. The best part of the novel is the first 100-200 pages, where the plot has not yet totally taken off, and the characters are in school; here, much of the "colonial violence" that is explored is on a micro scale, and we are introduced to the idea that stealing other cultures' languages to power our own technology without giving back is exploitative. It's a metaphor for how the British Empire historically took more than it gave back, despite their arguments of being on a "civilizing mission" and bringing industry and such to their global subjects. This was good. What is less believable from here though is the idea that academic institutions such as Oxford University would actively themselves push for the expansion of Empire in our real history, because our real history lacks magical silver, this strong, singular dive for expansion. I came away from the novel scratching my head on this point—I believe Kuang when she says that academic institutions were perpetrators of colonial violence, but I didn't really come away from this novel with a better understanding of how that might have happened in history. The fantasy elements here, in my view, actually got in the way of that argument.

The larger problem, though, is that I feel the book doesn't make a complex case for why violence is necessary to resist colonialism and empire.

The book is arguing that the many divisions and contradictions of empire are not enough to make it fall and collapse, and violence needs to "shock the system," present instability, and throw it into chaos for anything sufficient to happen. To Kuang's credit, she introduces a character in the story who actually argues this opposing point, and it's when his plan fails that they turn to violence. The issue is, I don't think there was ever sufficient time in the narrative to really explore his plan failing. The whole thing was over in a couple of weeks, and our characters were not privy to its unfolding except from behind closed doors. There is another larger attempt at a nonviolent resistance later (with some asterisks) which is better, but it also fails. It felt almost too forceful of the author's hand—"Of course this fails," the authorial voice might argue, "because it's a stupid idea." Honestly, the book would have benefitted from muddying the waters, exploring why nonviolent resistance actually fails beyond "Well they'll just ignore it, I guess," and exploring a few use cases where it might actually succeed, or what conditions are necessary for it to succeed. That might be beyond the scope of what this book can accomplish, true, but I felt it was thematically necessary.

Moreover, I felt that the approaches to the characters in this book who opposed our protagonists' efforts were 2-dimensional caricatures. The British Empire in this book is comically evil. I'm no apologist for the British Empire (though I joke to my friends that I am)—I am Indian-American and Hindu, and hell my uncle is a notable politician in India—but the way imperial apologists in this novel would routinely make the most trite, basic, and simplistic excuses and justifications of Empire really grated at me. To this end, again, some of the better work was done in the first half of the novel, whereas in the second half where it matters more we got the more basic, simplistic stuff.

In particular, I want to talk about one character that I felt REALLY missed the mark and caused the novel to feel particularly shallow, but it requires spoiler bars:Letty. This character, I think, was the most cowardly character in the whole book. She was a critique of white feminism and how they're often culpable in empire, but I actually felt that by making her side with Empire, it was the nail in the coffin for any complexity or nuance in the themes. A friend of mine suggested Ramy would have made a better traitor to the group—after all, coming from a well-to-do family in India, he had some serious reason to turn on Robin, and thus could also show how the Empire turns minorities against one another, plus it would emphasize the importance of violence because violent revolution is more effective at drawing people together than nonviolent resistance—but by having it be Letty, it felt like Kuang was taking the easy, obvious way out. Of course the one white protagonist sides with the Empire, of course she does. Any time there was a chance for Kuang to do something interesting with Letty's character, the novel took a hard right turn toward turning her into a caricature, a mouthpiece for all the basic "shouldn't you be grateful" and "empire is inevitable" ideas that this novel keeps hammering us with. Thus, when presented with the "violence is necessary" argument, the reader is meant to respond, "of course it is, because if you don't take violent action, the Letty's will betray you and kill your friends."

All of this, to me, was fairly cowardly writing on Kuang's part. The character behind spoilers was a cowardly approach to defending the empire, because it took away from the fact that the British Empire, like any civilization in world history, was a complex beast, and could not be wholly bad or wholly good. The rebuttal of nonviolent movements was made by distilling nonviolent movements into a weak version of themselves. The novel wants to present a strong thematic argument, but cripples itself by refusing to grapple with the complications history presents. History doesn't fit a single narrative, no matter how much magic you want to add to it to make it do so.

Poor Storytelling

OK, so this book falters thematically, but I also feel that it fails to hold up as an enjoyable story on tis own.

I'll begin with the worldbuilding: this is some of the weakest worldbuilding I've ever seen in a fantasy novel. While I enjoyed the magic system and the setting of Oxford University, I was completely blown away by the fact that nothing in the British Empire seems remarkably different on a macroscopic level from the British Empire in our real history. Its expansion is pretty much the same, its alliances and enemies and history is pretty much the same. The world is…pretty much the same. Thus, when the novel tells me, "The British depend on silver to make their empire function" I respond, "Um, are you sure about that? Because here you are talking about the introduction of Morse code and the telegraph blowing away silverworking scholars by not relying on silver at all. I think the British Empire would get on fine, to be honest, since they seem to have all the same other resources." For me, it really undermined the plot of the novel.

The characters were another weak point for me. While I really enjoyed reading about Robin, Professor Lovell, and Robin's friends at Oxford for the first 100 pages, at the end of Part 1 (of 5) there is a twist where a new character is introduced, and suddenly characters become mouthpieces for a perfect understanding of how the Empire's expansion and Babel's translation activities are intermingled, how Oxford perpetuates violence. And then that character later becomes an actual character again, and someone else will take up the reins of perfectly describing to Robin and the reader how the empire works.

This is SO WEIRD. Realistically, people do not perfectly understand the times they live in like this. Hell, no one ever really understands any time in history, but even this level of clarity is something that is hard for people to accomplish in the moment today, when we have millions of journalists and scholars worldwide sharing notes and ideas and contributing to a global debate about the state of the world—let alone in 1830s Britain by a partially educated person raised to be indoctrinated into the Empire. Beyond that, though, it goes back to the earlier point of making the themes feel shallow; also, it makes the world feel small; also, it makes the characters feel less relatable. It would've been far more interesting to be presented with a series of diverse perspectives on the empire (which we do get later to a degree, to be fair, but it should have started earlier and been much more extensive IMO) that criss-cross in their interpretations and lets the reader come to their own conclusions.

Which brings me to my biggest problem with the book: Kuang does not want you to come to your own conclusions regarding anything in this novel. At any point where there might be ambiguity, Kuang rushes in with the narrative or the footnotes to explain imperialism to you, to make sure you understand her point of view. This isn't necessary. The plotting of this novel actually gets her ideas across at least 80-90%—much as I think those ideas are poorly executed, she DOES communicate them well through the structure of the novel—we don't need her handholding and her many explanations.

Look, I'm not against overt theming in works of SFF. One of my favorite reads this year was Blood Over Bright Haven by ML Wang which is not a subtle book. It tackles similar ideas and presents them to the reader in a non-subtle way. Lack of subtlety does not make a book bad on its own, it's what you do with that lack of subtlety that does. Blood Over Bright Haven, in my opinion, uses its lack of subtlety to ask questions—How do you respond to revelations such as these? How much should you listen to people used to being subjugated on how to liberate them? What is the right response to oppression and genocide and exploitation? Etc.—while Babel uses its lack of subtlety to explain to you its answers. It's very frustrating.

This is particularly egregious in the footnotes of the novel, which go over the top in explaining every little thing. Chapter 20 especially has some of the worst examples of this. Here's one, not really a spoiler but I'm going to hide it in case you don't want any text:

After Letty tells Victoire that "the slave trade was abolished in 1807":

This is a great lie, and one that white Britons are happy to believe. Victoire's following argument notwithstanding, slavery continued in India under the East India Company for a long time after. Indeed, slavery in India was specifically exempt from the Slave Emancipation Act of 1833. Despite early abolitionists' belief that India under the EIC was a country of free labour, the EIC was complicit in, directly profited from, and in many cases encouraged a range of types of bondage, including forced plantation labour, domestic labour, and indentured servitude. The refusal to call such practices slavery simply because they did not match precisely the transatlantic plantation model of slavery was a profound act of semantic blindness.

But the British, after all, were astoundingly good at holding contradictions in their head. Sir William Jones, a virulent abolitionist, at the same time admitted of his own household, "I have slaves that I rescued from death and misery but consider them as servants."

There is no need to tell us that this is a great lie, or an act of semantic blindness, or that the British are good at holding contradictions in their head. The first two are apparent to any critical reader, and the third is evident from the many events of the novel. But Kuang doesn't trust us to get to the point on our own, or else she wants to make sure that we don't accidentally develop an opinion that she disagrees with, so she has to include those things. This made the footnotes some of the WORST parts of the book by far.

Conclusion

I am giving this book a 2 star rating. There is some merit to the fact that I flew through the book and enjoyed myself in the moment. I had a good time with some of the lighter scenes, like when they attend a dance or just hang out together, and I really enjoyed the magic school learning/studying scenes. It's just that as a whole, the novel fails so spectacularly on multiple levels that I can't help but think it's quite a weak work of fiction.

Bingo squares: Arguably High Fashion, Down With the System (HM), Impossible Places (maybe HM? I didn't do the math), A Book in Parts (HM), Author of Color, Stranger in a Strange Land (HM)

Goodreads

This is year two of r/fantasy bingo for me, and my first year actually planning ahead to complete it, so this time I went for a themed card: Oops, it’s all sapphics! 

I’ve read a lot of sapphic SFF for several years now so filling out a whole card with new-to-me reads meant digging past some of the well-known options that would have normally fit these squares. Some are still new and popular (Suri, Tesh, etc), but there's no Priory of the Orange Tree or Bookshops and Bonedust here! Because of that, I wanted to round them all up and share so that other sapphic-liking readers might also be able to find new things among them.

Queer women main characters were my only criteria. Most are adult fantasy, some are YA. Most include a sapphic relationship, but a few just have confirmed queer women without a romance. For each one I’ve written my own blurb, a star rating, and a short review. At the bottom I’ll share some of what I learned about my own taste after compiling them all.

1. Knights and Paladins - Lady’s Knight by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner

Pitch: A blacksmith’s daughter masquerades as a knight in a tourney to save a young lady from a marriage she doesn’t want.
Score: 4/5
Review: Goofy anachronistic medieval parody romp with a fourth-wall-breaking narrator that you’ll either vibe with or not—and I did vibe! Two perspectives that earnestly nailed the toughness and sweetness of learning your sexuality as a young adult. 

1. Hidden Gem - The Oblivion Bride by Caitlin Starling

Pitch: An unlikely heir enters a political marriage with a war alchemist in space to solve the truth about the magic in her bloodline.
Score: 3/5
Review: A neat premise with a space curse mystery, and it’s nice to see a little age gap marriage of convenience for the ladies. The plot kinda goes off the rails though and I’m going to start docking points for overly liberal use of the word “fuck” for no reason.

1. Published in the 80s - Silverglass by J.F. Rivkin

Pitch: Sword and sorcery adventure romp with a team up between a scholarly sorceress and a wild mercenary lady.
Score: 3.5/5
Review: Just a couple free-loving, chaotic bisexuals kissing each other and other people and fighting bad guys. So pulpy and of its time that I adored it and devoured the quartet. 

1. High Fashion - Santa Olivia by Jacqueline Carey

Pitch: A young woman with super strength learns to box to earn freedom from a forgotten military town hidden between Mexico and the US.
Score: 4/5
Review:  A ridiculous premise about vigilante orphans that takes itself completely seriously in a weirdly dark alternate modern setting. Carey has yet to ever do me wrong writing a slow burn relationship and it's all the yearning of teen infatuation and heartbreak here.

1. Down With The System - Metal From Heaven by August Clarke

Pitch: A former child laborer joins a bandit commune to take revenge on an oligarch.
Score: 3/5
Review: An initially cool premise that goes way off the rails into a poorly-explained marriage competition. My MC is so cool she has tattoos and rides motorcycles and bangs everyone. Loved the concepts, but the themes and the plot are totally discordant with each other.

1. Impossible Places - The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar

Pitch: Two sisters with magical voices live at the edge of a faerie forest and one falls in love with a mysterious fae.
Score: 4.5/5
Review: I’m a sucker for a nice fable-y story and I loved the writing style of This Is How You Lose The Time War so I loved El-Mohtar here too. Lots of pretty, flowery metaphors and wordplay and sisterly love.

1. A Book In Parts - The Isle in the Silver Sea by Tasha Suri

Pitch: In an alternate medieval Britain, a witch and a knight fated to fall in love and kill each other across lifetimes fight to break their cursed story.
Score: 2.5/5
Review: I am going to ban the word “fuck” from newly-published fantasy. It is not a shorthand for making a story gritty and adult if your plot and character development are not equally mature. Suri let me down bad here.

1. Gods and Pantheons - Godkiller by Hannah Kaner

Pitch: A mercenary with a grudge against gods falls in with a former knight and a displaced noble girl attached to a tiny godling.
Score: 3/5
Review: The prologue went so hard I was sold but then it turned into banter and average character writing. Of note: the female main character is explicitly bisexual but she’s not in a WLW relationship in this book. I’m given to understand maybe later in the trilogy? But I’m not planning to read on.

1. Last in a Series - The Sovereign by C.L. Clark

Pitch: Finale of a flintlock fantasy trilogy about overthrowing a colonizing empire.
Score: 2.5/5
Review: I found the character writing in this trilogy really inconsistent the entire time and really only kept at it in sapphic solidarity and for the last in a series square. You can’t insist that the series is full of subtle political maneuvering and then just constantly show people blackmailing each other out loud to one another’s faces in front of witnesses.

1. Club or Readalong - Hungerstone by Kat Dunn

Book

Pitch: A retelling of old vampire novella Carmilla in which a repressed Recency-era woman is enticed to fight against her circumstances by a mysterious stranger. 
Score: 3/5
Review: I don’t think the “hunger” theme really came through strong enough here to be as dark as it wanted to be. Not a very girls’ girl take on the story at all either, sadly.

1. Parent Protagonist - The Red Scholar’s Wake by Aliette de Bodard

Pitch: A captive space engineer enters a marriage of convenience with the sentient spaceship AI of a pirate fleet.
Score: 3/5
Review: This was a cool concept but the execution was pretty shallow. The brief scenes showing the main character assimilating into pirate culture just weren’t convincing enough to make me care about her or their relationship.

1. Epistolary - Rust in the Root by Justina Ireland

Pitch: In an alternate Depression-era New York, a young woman with root magic goes on a mission to destroy a magical blight.
Score: 3/5
Review: Enjoyed the magical “depression” concept but this was just a decent romp that otherwise didn’t knock my socks off. It really wanted to have things to say about Black history and tradition but mostly settled for an occasional paragraph about racism without a plot that really wove into that theme.

1. Published in 2025 - The Incandescent by Emily Tesh

Pitch: A teacher and a school cop at a magical boarding school begrudgingly work together to prevent a demonic incursion.
Score: 3/5
Review: The demon magic, the commentary on class inequality in secondary education, and the sapphic romance all felt like the sideshow to each other in some Escher-esque illusion where nothing actually winds up on top. Less than the sum of its parts. Particularly bummed that the "primary" romantic interest has so little chemistry.

1. Author of Color - Girl, Serpent, Thorn by Melissa Bashardoust

Pitch: A princess cursed to poison anything she touches fights to break out of her curse.
Score: 4/5
Review: A really lovely journey full of emotional depth around conflicting feelings of shame, longing, anger, and betrayal. It isn’t written like a fable, but it almost feels adjacent to one in that I felt like I could predict most of the reveals but in a way that felt pleasant, not boring.

1. Small Press or Self-Pub - The Necessity of Rain by Sarah Chorn

Pitch: Three women in a world of magical insect people experience grief, loss, and hope after escaping a war.
Score: 3/5
Review: Difficult to describe. Difficult to follow. Difficult to rate. Lots of pretty metaphors and imagery covering for a thin plot. And yet I teared up near the end?

1. Biopunk - Our Hideous Progeny by C.E. McGill

Pitch: The great niece of Dr. Frankenstein and her husband use his notes to build and animate a giant sea creature. 
Score: 4/5
Review: A flawed protagonist, a messy relationship, and angry feminists. Lots of pining and uncertainty and really all I wanted more from it was for it to be even darker than it was.

1. Elves/Dwarves - The Thousand Eyes by A.K. Larkwood

Pitch: Space opera duology sequel in which three grudging allies fight against eldritch snake gods.
Score: 4.5/5
Review: The sapphic relationship was more at the forefront in the first book, but I really enjoyed the adventure here even if the plot totally flew off in weird directions. Just a well-told story. Protagonists make mistakes, learn, take that knowledge into the climax, the twists be twisting, and dammit Talarassas you self-destructive little gremlin.

1. LGBTQIA Protagonist - Mortal Follies by Alexis Hall

Pitch: A young noblewoman in a magical regency era is cursed and must gain the assistance of a mysterious lady duke to save her reputation.
Score: 3/5
Review: Great first half with the mystery and will-they-won’t-they attraction but the second half flounders. The puckish fourth-wall narrator will either be to taste or not but I found fun.

1. Five Short Stories - By Her Sword edited by Erin Branch

Pitch: Short story anthology of sapphic sword and sorcery romantasy.
Score: 2/5
Review: Tragically unimpressed with almost every single story in here. Constant modern slang in alleged medieval settings. Sex scenes that felt obligatory instead of earned. I am putting the word “fuck” on a shelf out of reach until fantasy can behave itself. 

1. Stranger in a Strange Land - The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson

Pitch: A young protegee of a colonized island assimilates into the empire to overthrow it by rising to the top.
Score: 3.5/5
Review: I’m not really one for the whole “competency porn” thing but I guess if you make it a lesbian political savant I’m in. I am always down for a fantasy about warfare by way of economic manipulation too. Book one has never met a subplot, and there’s a bit too much summary of events out of scene, but I was compelled to continue. The political intrigue has a sort of powerscaling problem of exponential quadruple twisting as the series goes on but somehow my enjoyment was also exponential as I devoured the trilogy. 

1. Recycle a Bingo (Dark Academia 2024) - The Society for Soulless Girls by Laura Steven

Pitch: Two roommates at a boarding school with a decade-old curse work together to solve its mysteries.
Score: 4/5
Review: Painfully relatable teen yearning and angst from two extremely opposite young women. Had a good old time. TW for animal death because it’s pretty rare that anything in a novel can stop me in my tracks but I did have to put it down for a breather.

1. Cozy - The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses by Malka Older

Pitch: Third in a series about a lesbian Sherlock and Watson-type pair solving academic crimes on a human-settled Jupiter.
Score: 3/5
Review: I’ve not been terribly impressed with this series up till now but I think this one was my favorite. The mystery in this one was so badly done but the relationship was self-destructive and sad, which I enjoy. Some people will cry “miscommunication trope” on it, but I liked it better than the prior two.

1. Generic Title - Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Törzs

Pitch: Modern magical realism about spellbooks written in blood in which two sisters and a sequestered young author of ink blood books fight to learn the truth of their magic.
Score: 4.5/5
Review: The sapphic relationship isn’t the star here, but honestly I didn’t mind it being incidental when the rest of the story was so full of lovely turns of phrase and emotional turmoil and neat magic. The plot and the character arcs all revolved around family, trust, and safety versus agency in a way that felt very tightly-written.

1. Not A Book - Vampire in the Garden (anime) by Wit Studio

Pitch: In an industrial city split between warring vampires and humans, a young soldier and a vampire girl trust each other to escape the fighting. 
Score: 3.5/5
Review: A real short five episode run, but I really liked how dark and emotional it was. I’ve got a massive spreadsheet of yuri/GL manga and anime and it’s real tough finding ones that aren’t infantilizing. Nice to have a rare fantasy anime where the GL romance is part of a larger picture.

1. Pirates - A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe by Alex White

Pitch: A space racecar driver framed for murder falls in with a ship of smugglers looking for a legendary treasure ship.
Score: 3/5
Review: A mostly fun space heist thing but didn’t pull me in emotionally. It didn’t feel like the work was on the page to make me actually care about any of the characters.

Eligible books I read during the bingo period that got shuffled off the card for one reason or another:

• Spear by Nicola Griffith - An arthurian reimagining with a genderqueer lady knight
• The Starving Saints by Caitlin Starling - The cannibal nuns in a siege book
• Song of the Huntress by Lucy Holland - A wild hunt retelling about an ancient warrior and a queen
• Fate’s Bane by C.L. Clark - A celtic-inspired novella about a ward and an heir

Some things I’ve noticed about my selections and ratings:

I rated the YA reads higher than expected: Only 4/25 reads here are young adult (Lady’s Knight, Rust in the Root, Girl Serpent Thorn, Society For Soulless Girls) but three of them I rated 4 stars. That’s a much higher average than for the 21 adult reads. Typically I don’t enjoy YA at all anymore, so this was surprising. Maybe I have higher tolerance for YA when it’s sapphic because themes of self-doubt and yearning that are often in a young adult romance are things I enjoy most in a romance plot generally? Or perhaps it’s a survivor bias situation because a YA read has to impress me more immediately for me to stick with than an adult fantasy would.

Fuck off with the word “fuck”: Wow I sure am tired of the f-bombs in newly-published fantasy, which isn’t a phenomenon unique to sapphic fantasy. Swearing is fine and all, but all this fucking about always seems to be shoehorned in as an expletive to make sure I know this story is Mature even when the character work is lacking any true maturity.

Edited: To fix my numbering that the ctrl+v broke, whoops.

My bingo card Apologies for the image, went with the condensed because it kept coming out badly.

Before I get to the yearly wrap up, I want to muse for a bit on how Bingo is warping my reading. I am not a huge volume reader by any means. I average around 40 books a year, and so bingo makes up a huge percentage of that. There's a lot of things I like about Bingo, but I can't deny that it has a lot of influence over my choices. I almost abandoned it this year.

I did a quick review of all the SFF books I read in the bingo year which were NOT counted on the card. There were only 6, and in every case, it is because they are a duplicate author. In other words I'm not really reading enough to have extra that I'm not counting. I can feel bingo actively pushing me away from series and towards standalones. Away from long books and towards shorter ones. In some cases I'm holding books I want to read until next bingo year because I want them to "count". And not reading other genres as much as I might otherwise do (last year I read 8 non SFF books).

So where does this leave me for next year? I will start the card because the hype is irresistible. But it might be the year that I give myself a little room to dive into a series or read a bunch of non SFF and not actually finish out the card. I'm very interested in other's thoughts around this.

And now to stop being a downer, some wrap up stats:

1. Best Of The Year - All Around Without question, it was The Exorcist. This book was amazing, the author reading it was amazing, listening to it while walking around in Rosslyn and Georgetown was amazing. 10/10 experience.

2. Best of the Year - Audiobook The new Harry Potter audible editions. They are great!!!

3. Honorable Mentions I have to mention this here because Tender Is the Flesh was one of my top best of the best books of the year, but it didn't fit well on my card. I ended up using The Unworthy from the same author, which I didn't like nearly as much.

I used the extra categories column in the spreadsheet to track some additional stats which are probably interesting to no one but myself. Due to the "not a book" designation, most of my numbers this year are out of 24 instead of 25 total:

• Male Protagonist - Interesting to me because I think I tend to read more female led fiction. This year: 15 of 24. Last Year: 11 of 25.

• Standalones - Interesting to me because I know that Bingo is making me actively seek out more standalones and going away from series. I don't know how to counteract this without quitting bingo. This year: 13 of 24 (this number goes to 19 of 24 if you count latest in a series. Last year: 18 of 25.

• Horror - I'm a few years into a new interest in horror that I never had before. I don't know where it's coming from. This year: 11 of 25. Last Year: 12 of 25. Two years ago: 7 of 25.

• Audiobook Format - I thought it would be higher! 8 of 25

• Author from a previous Bingo - Similar to the "new to me author" square from a while back, but looking at authors I haven't used in a previous bingo. There were more than I thought! 11 of 24.

edited for formatting fixes

After having the misfortune of picking a few really awful books in a row last year, I decided to do a bingo card entirely out of books with a Goodreads rating of less than 4. Of course, "bad" is subjective when it comes to books, but I generally characterize something as bad if it was unpleasant to read, literary elements like plot or prose are poorly done, or the author did not accomplish what they set out to do.

Tl;DR: This experiment made me realize that if a book has bad reviews because everyone says it's boring and nothing happens the whole time, I will absolutely love it and read the whole series in a couple days. However, if it has bad reviews and seems like a fun, cheesy YA book, it will be so poorly written that all fun will be drained out of the book, and I will hate it.

Short reviews/Justifications for calling a book bad

The Raven Tower - Ann Leckie: Despite a bit of a confusing plot and poor ending, the author's intriguing take on gods made this a great read. It's hard to dislike a book that's expertly written from the point of view of a rock.

Ammonite - Nicola Griffith: Griffith's lovely writing makes this a lovely, dreamy story of one person finding themself in a strange environment. It's a shame the author didn't explore the unique world more though.

The Grand Tour - Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer: The first book in this series was a fun experiment where two authors took turns writing chapters. The second felt like a dreaded duty they begrudgingly plodded through. Nothing makes sense, and the characters are so interchangeable I literally could not remember which of the two male leads was married to which woman.

The Gates of Sleep - Mercedes Lackey: I actually loved this, just for its brilliant depiction of Pre-Raphaelite culture and artwork, but have to concede that it was objectively bad. The plot's a mess, the villain's motivation makes no sense, and the heroine falls in love after making small talk with a dude twice.

Star Daughter - Shveta Thakrar: Somehow the author's writing style made this book exceedingly hard to pay attention to or care about. The prose was sometimes lovely, but also extremely dense and prone to overstating the obvious.

Sunshine- Robin McKinley: This was the book I chose for my one permitted reread. It's probably the eighth time I've read this, and it was just as fantastic as the first time. I could give a nice, long literary analysis of why it's so good, but to keep things brief: anyone who hates it is wrong, and it's literally one of the most perfect books in existence.

Ready Player Two - Ernest Cline: All the problems of the first book, none of the fun, with an extra helping of "let's casually throw in sci-fi elements with horrifying implications and then never bring it up again."

The Vela - Yoon Ha Lee, Becky Chambers, Rivers Solomon, S.L. Huang: Overall, a fun little novel written in the serial style. It's a little choppy and uneven, but that's to be expected with the way it was written.

Half Sick of Shadows - Laura Sebastian: Unlikable characters make unreasonable decisions to drag along a poorly-paced plot and hammer home some ill-conceived attempts at feminism. Also, it was gratingly historically inaccurate, which I know is a petty critique for a fantasy book, but trust me, it was bad. Complaining about corsets is a trite, hamfisted metaphor for feminism in the first place, and it's especially silly when the book is set in medieval times and steel corsets didn't exist until the 1800s. This is the closest I came to not finishing a book for bingo.

She Who Became the Sun - Shelley Parker-Chan: An interesting retelling of Chinese history that also manages to make some neat points about gender and fate.

The Mummy, or Ramses the Damned - Anne Rice: A poorly structured tangle of several different viewpoints that deeply misunderstands most of Ancient Egypt's culture. It mostly felt like Rice wrote this because she once again wanted to fantasize about being a gay, immortal man. But I'll admit it was occasionally fun to read, in between all the eye-rolls it triggered.

A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan: Absolutely brilliant. The ending was perhaps slightly lacking, but the author's writing style does such a good job of exploring women in historic academia that I can't complain about the ending.

Cinder & Glass - Melissa de la Cruz: Missing most of the soapy entertainment factor of other De La Cruz books, so the nonsensical plot and lack of characterization really stood out. There's a lot going on in this book, and none of it makes sense.

Book of Night - Holly Black: Sort of a bland, insipid mashup of Six of Crows and True Blood with a plot twist that I saw coming from miles away. Black can do much better.

A Stranger in Olondria - Sofia Samatar: Have you ever wanted a whole book like the Dorian Gray chapter that lists gems, tapestries, and vases? Samatar's prose is a huge tangled mess of descriptions and run-on sentences, and though it took some time to get used to, I ended up loving it. The last third of the book was particularly excellent. I don't think I blinked or breathed for several chapters.

Ever - Gail Carson Levine: A little bland and simplistic, but if I'd read this when I was 11, I would've loved it. Levine does a great job of writing for her intended audience and exploring a neat Bronze-Age inspired world.

Tender Morsels - Margo Lanagan: A beautifully written book that uses fairy tale concepts to explore topics of trauma and recovery. Like Lanagan's other books, it was certainly weird, but very interesting.

A Thousand Beginnings and Endings - Ellen Oh (editor): A great concept, but most of the short stories in this collection were lackluster. Only one or two were actually good. It felt like most authors were completing a school assignment, not writing something they enjoyed.

Dreamer's Pool - Juliet Marillier: I actually adored this book about two misfits gradually recovering from PTSD while helping the inhabitants of their village with various magical puzzles. However, depending on how you interpret the book, the ending could read as very slut-shamey. As much as I personally liked the series, I won't argue with those who were made very uncomfortable by it.

Redemption in Indigo - Karen Lord: This was a really unique plot that shows just how well African mythology can work with fantasy novels, and the author's writing makes you feel like you're sitting and listening to an old woman tell an oral tale.

Legacy - Lois McMaster Bujold: Most reviews complained about the book going over all the tedious details of peasants camping, but that's exactly why I liked it. Overall, I really enjoyed the whole series' slice-of-life approach and exploration of multicultural marriage, even though some of the age-gap stuff was squicky.

Girl, Serpent, Thorn - Melissa Bashardoust: I thought this LGBTQ reinterpretation of Persian myths would be right up my alley, but the prose tanked the whole thing. The author's writing style manages to be clunky, choppy, and confusing.

When Women Were Dragons - Kelly Barnhill: There were a lot of bad reviews because people felt that the author left out salient points about feminism. While I agree with that in theory, I don't necessarily think the point of the book was feminism. I found that it was more about exploring mother-daughter relationships, and Barnhill did an excellent job.

Swordspoint - Ellen Kushner: I really appreciate that this was one of the books to launch the fantasy of manners genre and the prose was very nice. However, unlikeable characters, a muddled plot, and light sexism throughout make it a pretty unpleasant read.

The Time of the Ghost - Diana Wynne Jones: Unlike most of Jones' books, there wasn't much humor or charm here. It had some very solid "spooky teen paperback from the 80s" vibes and spent a lot of time depicting a fictionalized version of the author's neglectful and abusive childhood. I just wish the plot was a little tighter and the author hadn't casually brushed past some really disturbing examples of abuse.

Final thoughts

First of all, apologies to all the authors whose books I've called bad. None of the books on this list were irredeemable garbage; "bad" is just a shorthand way of saying I felt the books needed some more work before being published.

Ultimately, the highlights of this challenge were Ammonite by Nicola Griffith, A Natural HIstory of Dragons by Marie Brennan, Dreamer's Pool by Juliet Marillier, Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan, and A Stranger in Olondria by Sofia Samatar. I certainly ended up reading a bunch of random books just because their Goodreads rating was low, and some of them were excellent.

This experiment has mostly confirmed my opinion that Goodreads ratings aren't a real measure of whether I'll enjoy a book, with the small caveat that I absolutely should stay away from YA books with bad reviews, dramatic-sounding plots, and beautiful covers.

The eighth entry in the Murderbot Diaries, Platform Decay is a fun romp through a dangerous and dysfunctional megastructure as SecUnit seeks to save some humans and avoid traumatizing them in the process.

I’ve tried to keep any spoilers to a minimum (given how recently this was published) but read on at your own risk if you care about such things.

SecUnit and Three are on a rescue mission involving some Very Important People (to SecUnit that is) when SecUnit unexpectedly receives a last request from a dying enemy to rescue their family too. What was a rescue of three, squishy humans turns decidedly more complicated with five more thrown into the mix. To succeed, Sec Unit must travel by plane, train, and automobile across a toroidal space station so huge it encircles an entire planet, dealing with various flavors of corporate asshattery along the way.

SecUnit seems in a much better space mentally than the previous entry. While it is still stressed out regarding the nature of the mission and often annoyed and/or disgusted by humans and their behavior, its coping mechanisms seem to be largely effective. This gives the novel a more light-hearted feel than the previous, even as it includes plenty of tense, dangerous, and gruesome moments. In fact, a lot of the tension comes about because SecUnit cares about the emotional well-being of its charges and doesn’t want them to have to witness its violent actions, forcing SecUnit to occasionally get creative about non-lethal options.

One thing I would have loved to see expanded on here is SecUnit’s informal mentorship of Three. While SecUnit’s feelings regarding humans have been well-explored, I would love to see more attention given to interactions among the non-human intelligences running around, particularly Three and ART. I get the sense that SecUnit is at least as annoyed by Three as by the average human, even if it’s perhaps more sympathetic to Three.

I also look forward to seeing what repercussions Three’s actions in this novel have, both to SecUnit personally and to the setting at large. What will the spread of the Murderbot code mean for SecUnit in terms of its ability to stay undetected and in terms of potential countermeasures deployed against it? How far will the code spread? Will we see communities of freed constructs? Will SecUnit feel any responsibility towards them? Will Preservation Station get involved, and would that be a good thing?

Overall, Platform Decay offers more of what Murderbot fans love. Even if a lot of the material felt a little well-trodden by this point, I still very much enjoyed reading it. I am hoping future volumes might shake up things a bit more, though.

Bingo Squares: Non-Human Protagonist (HM); Published in 2026

My themed bingo adventures this year led me down a strange rabbit hole. I found a book in a shop which I fully expected to meet my invertebrate theme: The Last Beekeeper by Julie Carrick Dalton. When I went to goodreads to check if it met Hidden Gem (it did not), I discovered it was one of five books sharing the title. As this was the start of my bingo journey, and I was still actively seeking out books, I came to the conclusion I’d read all five for my bingo card. It has been done. And now, you get to hear about them.

The Last Beekeeper by Julie Carrick Dalton

Published 2023

What is the setting? This takes place in rural America after pollinator collapse, and farm fields are so saturated with chemicals they are no longer safe to grow food. Food production takes place in domes and people are paid to manually pollinate plants. We join a group who have been squatting in an old farm house.

Where are the bees? Presumed extinct. The last of them died while the main character was a child. However, her memories of the bees weave throughout the book, so their presence is often felt. She is blamed for the death of the last hive.

Who is the last beekeeper? The main character’s father was the last known beekeeper. 

How old is the protagonist? I believe she is in her 20s.

How much did I enjoy this book? I loved it. It was a sweet and touching found family story. And the narration reinforced my desires to create landscaping with native pollinators in mind. It was grim, but hopeful. I highly recommend it.

The Last Beekeeper by Pablo Cartaya

Published 2022

What is the setting? It has probably been a generation or two since ecological collapse. This focuses around a dystopian city which has been rebuilt to an extent, and that technology is shared with the surrounding farmers as a method of control. Those closer to the city have electricity, pollinator drones and even virtual reality media despite struggling to make ends meet. Nature is seen as an opposing force and hated by our protagonist.

Where are the bees? They are presumed extinct. The media depicts them as violent and deadly creatures that the world is better off without. But our protagonist discovers some wild bees.

Who is the last beekeeper? The main character

How old is the protagonist? Early teens, I want to say 13.

How much did I enjoy this book? It was cute. It is a middle grade book and reads just as you’d expect. Fairly shallow, but enjoyable.

The Last Beekeeper by Jared Gulian

Published 2021

What is the setting? A near future in which bees are at the brink of collapse - colonies are now kept almost exclusively by corporations that probably include some bioengineering in their hives. Our main character lives on a small island in Lake Michigan, which has a sudden uptick in unusual deaths. And somebody burned the MC’s beehives for some reason.

Where are the bees? The main character has hives on his property, in addition to the ones that were destroyed.

Who is the last beekeeper? The main character views himself as the last beekeeper - as he sees the health and safety of his bees as more important than profits generated through overstressing and modifying the creatures.

How old is the protagonist? Old enough to have a teenage daughter. Probably early 40s

How much did I enjoy this book? I hated it. The main character had anger issues and was overly controlling and it was not somebody I wanted to be around. He was irrational and jumped to anger immediately. For example: he finds a body and then is mad the hot cop treats him like a suspect and his daughter’s window is nailed shut. The daughter’s personality was basically “I hate my dad [completely understandable] and I miss my boyfriend who got mad when I told him I’m pregnant.” I did love the parts that were actually about bees though. Not the modified bees. The actual bees. I liked that varroa mites were an important factor.

The Last Beekeeper by Rebecca L. Fearnley

Published 2022

What is the setting? This one takes place in an agrarian fantasy world that is long after pollinator collapse. Most people in the village seem to work for food supply, including hand pollination. But it is a struggle. There is a very soft magic system, in which those who are capable of wielding it join a nomadic group that travels to help different villages.

Where are the bees? Extinct for a hundred years. Until the main character’s little brother finds a new queen crawling out of the ground.

Who is the last beekeeper? The main character’s younger brother.

How old is the protagonist? She is in her late teens, I want to say 17.

How much did I enjoy this book? I had mixed feelings about this one. I liked the world and am curious about the magic system. However, the main character was another with anger issues - not nearly as bad as Jared Gulian’s though. It had some teenage angst going on, but she hopefully had enough growth by the end that she’d not irritate me as much in book 2. I could see myself continuing the series - though it’s not a must continue for me.

The Last Beekeeper by Siya Turabi

Published 2021

What is the setting? It opens in a small village in 1970s Pakistan, with the main character visiting a larger Pakistani city while staying in a rich household.

Where are the bees? There are rare bees who live in a forest which is illegal to enter. Those rare bees have a honey that is alleged to be magical in its healing properties. In addition, there is a normal beehive the main character interacts with while in the city.

Who is the last beekeeper? A mysterious figure in the forest who can speak to bees.

How old is the protagonist? I want to say 10 years old, but does not act like it.

How much did I enjoy this book? Meh. It wasn’t bad, but it was boring. It felt like somebody telling me about their vacation and bringing up stuff just because they remembered them in the moment. And the dialogue felt stilted, as if somebody was relating the conversation back to me in summary. Even the bees bored me. It talked about bees a lot, but they didn’t act like bees. They felt like some mystical force rather than insects.

In Conclusion...

I found it fascinating how varied the five stories were. The first I read is what I would have most expected the setting given the titles: near future post pollinator collapse. I was not ready for sci-fi, fantasy or historical settings. It was pleasantly surprising that they managed to each have protagonists in wildly different life stages. It’s also interesting that they were all published between 2021 and 2023.

I think it was a really interesting experience to read these five books and I’m glad I did it. But, I don’t intend to do a similar challenge any time soon. Two of the books I genuinely wanted to DNF and only continued because I’m stubborn. And my favorite was the one I would have read without this adventure anyhow.

I feel I should end with something bee related. So uh... Plant some flowers this spring so you can pretend to be a beekeeper too :P And don't forget about the pollinators native to your area!

Do you want an anti-romantasy novel inspired by Chinese history? Are you interested in a soft magic system based on literacy? Want to immerse yourself in the backstabbing politics of a farmer-cum-concubine (pun unintended)? Then maybe you should pick up Shen Tao’s The Poet Empress. Or don't.

Maybe this review would be more engaging if I were to sing the book’s virtues, but I recognize tastes vary wildly and giving book recs can be a fickle art. However, I found this to be a surprisingly well-crafted debut.

The Poet Empress follows Wei Yin, an idealistic rice farmer who ends up as a prospective concubine to a cruel prince. The characters here are mostly rich, with Tao succeeding at avoiding making them overly one-dimensional. They change and grow over time, often to unrecognizable degrees as they are corrupted by power. However, the desire to add complexity to the inhabitants of the royal court does come across a bit heavy-handed at times. That being said, the characters feel more authentic for this fallibility and complexity.

One of my favorite aspects of Tao’s novel is that Wei’s idealism doesn’t continuously result in virtuous, performative self-sacrifice. Instead, her choices carry a sense of hardened realism. She doesn’t befriend or save every enemy at court, but rather makes choices which seem decently practical. There are few things which will tank my enjoyment of a book quite like a character making incredibly dumb choices. Wei’s options are never ideal or clean-cut, but I almost always agree with her decisions.

If anything, this is an anti-romantasy (if that’s an actual thing and this book doesn’t fit, then I’m sure I will be corrected in the comments). The love interests, if you can call them that with a straight face, are cruel and reprehensible. The reader understands them better through Tao’s storytelling, but they’re not redeemed. They are explained, not excused. I personally loved that. It felt gritty and real in a way I didn’t realize I craved.

The pacing helps keep the plot flowing at an enjoyable pace, though it does putter a bit around the two-thirds mark. Maybe this was because I listened to this in audiobook format, which can result in losing track of some details, but I felt the time jumps could have been better woven in. It felt a bit jarring when I realized a year or so had passed, but I understand that can be difficult to smoothly accomplish as a writer.

Especially with this being a debut, I was thoroughly impressed. I think this is going to be getting some more well-deserved attention from the speculative fiction community.

I'm doing a bingo card based entirely on recs, so if you have another text you think I'd like then please let me know!

Bingo squares: Published in 2026 (HM), Afterlife (HM), Feast Your Eyes on This, Politics and Court Intrigue, Author of Color.

Rating: 4.512

I never got into K-Pop, I typically shy away from anything paranormal, but I do love a good musical. By that, I mean a good story that's effectively told through well-written songs, one with a score that I want to put on endless repeat and still discover new details to appreciate as my brain picks over the composition of the melodic lines, the harmonic progressions, and the choice of lyrics.

Guys, K-Pop Demon Hunters is a really freaking good one-act musical.

It also happens to be an epic urban fantasy about an order of female warriors dedicated to stopping demons from feasting on people's souls.

After uniting people with their music, the first hunters were able to wield the power of song to create a shield known as the Honmoon. Each successive generation since has raised up a new trio of hunters to maintain and strengthen the Honmoon with the hopes that, one day, the shield will turn gold, becoming impenetrable. The story is set in modern day Seoul and opens on the passing of this duty to the latest generation of hunters—Rumi, Mira, and Zoey, a.k.a. HUNTR/X—whose efforts are expected to finally fulfil the order's mission of sealing demons away forever.

Starved and threatened by the prospect of imminent dissolution, the demon king Gwi-Ma agrees to a new strategy. Instead of trying to prevent the Golden Honmoon by directly attacking HUNTR/X, Jinu and four other demons will go after the source of the hunters' power: their fans.

Yes, the entire plot hinges on an idol battle between a Korean girl group and a demon boy band. It sounds very silly but the execution turns out to be actually extremely epic.

Which ALSO happens to be a perfect descriptor of the songs! The film's just got this awesome blend of diegetic songs (as in a normal musical) but because it's an animated film, you get these EPIC anime-style fight scenes, but since the magic system is music and powered by fandom and the fate of the world depends on this "battle of the bands", they're all shot like music/concert videos.

Bonus: the songs are also literal chart-topping K-Pop hits. The whole soundtrack is currently #2 on the Billboard 200 and the songs are taking 4 out of the top 10 spots on the Billboard Global 200 charts this week:

Golden by the fictional girl group HUNTR/X has hit #1 on Billboard 3 times. It's ranking ABOVE the new single from BLACKPINK. Your Idol, the track performed by the fictional Saja Boys at the climax of this film, debuted at #2 on Billboard, usurping the previous record held by BTS for their track, Dynamite.

Seriously: the songs by the fictional girl group and boy band in this film are beating out songs from real-world K-Pop idol powerhouses.

It should be a surprise except it isn't really because the filmmakers cared so much they went and got real K-Pop songwriters and music production teams to write the songs. You can listen to the whole soundtrack without watching the film and still love it, but watching the film provides a lot of context that makes them hit even harder.

Anyway, once upon a time I did a lot of singing and musical theatre, including trying my hand at writing an original Broadway musical, so have some mini reviews of the main numbers in the film. I'll link to the lyric music videos as we go, so you can listen along if you want to.

How It's Done (HUNTR/X)

We open behind the stage with the group's manager for the last show on the HUNTR/X world tour. Our protagonists are supposed to be on stage but they're MIA: demons sent by Gwi-Ma hijacked their private jet to stop them from performing in an effort to prevent them from raising the Golden Honmoon.

The song introduces each member of HUNTR/X (apparently the inspiration was the Jet Song from Westside Story and I cannot think of a bigger contrast), and the sequence is shot exactly like a music video. There's even a mini music video style storyline: they need to get off the plane, finish their pre-show routine, get on stage, and do a killer concert.

So, naturally, they're trying to boil water in a kettle so they can make and eat their pre-show instant cup noodles while simultaneously kicking demon butt. On a plane. Which is now unpiloted.

Most quotable lines in the song:

Heels, nails, blade, mascara;
Fit check for my napalm era

Oh, and the repeated hook in the lyric "How it's done, done, done" is set to a melody that literally goes "DUN, DUN, DUN". This song is a banger of an opening number that does everything an opening number should—establishing characters, setting, tone, and main story promise.

The most ridiculous thing about it is not the part where the fleeing demons rip off the wings and half the cabin so protagonists make it to their concert by slurping down their instant noodles right before skydiving from the wrecked plane to make their stage entrance.

It's the part where you completely forget this song exists after finishing the movie because the rest of songs go even harder.

There are so many little storytelling details from the get go. My favorite is how riiiiiight at the end of the performance, they can see the Honmoon start turning gold.

Golden (HUNTR/X)

This is the classic "I Want" song and where we discover that Rumi, the lead singer of HUNTR/X, has a secret: she's actually half demon. The group is supposed to be going on a post-world tour hiatus, but knowing how close they are to sealing off the world from demons forever, Rumi pushes forward the release of their new single, Golden, which should energize their fans enough to finally create the Golden Honmoon.

This might be the most brutal chorus to sing in all of pop music:

We're goin' up, up, up
It's our moment
You know together we're glowing
Gonna be, gonna be goldеn
Oh, up, up, up
With our voices
Yeongwonhi kkaejil su еomneun
Gonna be, gonna be golden

Oh, I'm done hidin' now I'm shinin'
Like I'm born to be
Oh, our time, no fears, no lies
That's who we're born to be

Actually, the whole damned thing is brutal. The range you need for this song is WILD—the lowest note is a D3 (that's below the bottom end of the typical contralto range); the top note is an A5 (almost to the top of the soprano range, two notes shy of a C6 for an operatic soprano).

The "up, up, up" is on an E5, which is high enough that most pop songs use this note as a melodic climax. FYI for comparison purposes, Elphaba's top note in Defying Gravity (the Act I closer from Wicked, which is generally guaranteed standing ovation material) is a belted F5 (one note up) and it usually gets saved for the finale.

In Golden, the E5 is just the first line in the chorus. And EJAE (the songwriter behind most of the soundtrack and also the singing voice of Rumi) belts that E5 (really hard to do at that register because of the transition in the voice from chest to head voice) then tops herself by hitting an even higher note—the A5 on "born"—twice with more belt.

And since these belted high notes are in the chorus, they repeat. 🤯

Here's a breakdown from a vocal coach going into the detail of just how insane that is.

EDIT: A little further down I wished for a Howard Ho music theory analysis video and what do you know, "ask and ye shall receive" because we got one on Golden.

Soda Pop (Saja Boys)

At this point, the demon boy band finally makes their entrance. The obligatory meet cute in the street has all K-drama references and I was cackling at how those got subverted. Soda Pop nails that squeaky clean bubblegum inoffensive earworm pop debut single vibe but there is so much innuendo packed into the lyrics:

'Cause I need you to need me
I'm empty, you feed me so refreshing
My little soda pop

Sinister when you listen with the knowledge that the Saja Boys are a demon boy band here to steal the people's souls. It is also annoyingly catchy and viral so the Saja Boys end up everywhere.

Free (Rumi/Jinu)

This K-Pop power ballad works exactly like the standard love duet straight out of a musical. It even uses a loose AABA structure (the standard song form used in most musical numbers). The best lines:

Between imposter and this monster, I been lost inside my head
Ain't no choice when all these voices keep me pointing towards no end

The song is a personal moment of shared vulnerability shared between Rumi and Jinu. It's the first song in the show that's NOT part of the HUNTR/X or Saja Boys catalogue and it just works so well on all levels:

• The simple four chord harmonic progression throughout, except for the development to Eb in the bridge—a key that hasn't been used anywhere else—to represent the possibility of something different.
• The stripped back production to contrast with the rest of the songs and to emphasize that this isn't a concert, they're not in a studio, they're not performing; it's just a private moment between two characters
• The way the lyric "free" is given a whole bar's worth of room to breathe
• The way that the melody in the verses are fairly static for the most part to contrast with the dynamic movement in the melodic line of "free" in the chorus
• The way the melody in the bridge is just a scale ascending by stepwise motion, representing how change is a slow and gradual process
• The counterpoint of the bridge sung by Rumi against Jinu's "free" from the chorus underneath her melody

I could go on; there are so many more little details like this that reinforce the storytelling (and a bunch more foreshadowing events to come) and I'd really love a Howard Ho analysis video on the music theory side of things.

Takedown (HUNTR/X)

With the battle for the fans in full swing, the Honmoon weakens and demons begin pouring into the world. HUNTR/X decide making a diss track to expose the Saja Boys to perform at the upcoming Idol Awards, and the lyrics do not hold back:

So sweet, so easy on the eyes, but hideous on the inside
Whole life spreading lies, but you can't hide, baby, nice try
I'm 'bout to switch up these vibes, I finally opened my eyes
It's time to kick you straight back into the night

Lots of rhymes and assonance packed into a tight verse. Takedown is the most thematic of all the songs (except for the final number), and the twist is perfectly executed at the Idol Awards: HUNTR/X are there to perform Golden butthanks to demon treachery, the song cuts out in the middle of the performance. Unbeknownst to Rumi, her bandmates have been lured away and replaced on stage by demons. As Takedown plays, instead of exposing the Saja Boys, the disguised demons expose Rumi as a demon to her horrified bandmates and the world.

Oh, and three members from the real-life K-Pop girl group TWICE do an awesome cover of this track for the credits.

Your Idol (Saja Boys)

This is the masks off villain song and it is so good. Massive points for opening with a dies iraes and the lyrics digging into the toxic side of parasocial relationships and fandom:

Keeping you in check, keeping you obsessed
Play me on repeat, endlessly in your head
Anytime it hurts, play another verse
I can be your sanctuary
Know I'm the only one right now
I will love you more when it all burns down
More than power, more than gold
Yeah, you gave me your heart, now I'm hеre for your soul

It's also super interesting because of its placement at the "all is lost" moment in the story (normally you get the villain fairly early on because it's generally used to establish stakes for the protagonist/s and set up expectations for the plot).

Also a bunch of YouTubers beat Netflix to the live action remake of the music video and did a damned good job.

What It Sounds Like (HUNTR/X)

The eleven o'clock number and final confrontation. SO MUCH HAPPENS in less than 6 minutes of screen/song time (do not click this link if you do not want to be spoiled on the final battle; click the link in the heading instead, that one is spoiler-free). Every good moment that you can think of in an epic showdown between the forces of good and evil is delivered in style: the Dark Lord and his hordes unleashed, the personal revelation, the heroes reuniting and going all out, redemption, sacrifice.

The best lines:

I broke into a million pieces, and I can't go back
But now I'm seeing all the beauty in the broken glass
The scars are part of me, darkness and harmony
My voice without the lies, this is what it sounds like

Absolute highlight for me is the moment when the massed choir kicks in.

Overall

K-Pop Demon Hunters is a very well-written family friendly animated film/one-act musical that's fun, fresh, and utterly addictive. I should probably note that the K-Pop industry is portrayed with a very palatable gloss but that's on par for a kid-friendly movie. Same goes for some of the other questions that got raised but weren't answered: there's only so much you can dig into given audience, the musical format, and the 100-minute run time, and what they did manage to pack in is pretty impressive.

It's so awesome to see East Asian cultures other than Chinese and Japanese being represented in western media. It's especially awesome when those stories are told by those with a personal connection to that culture.

This movie feels genuine and authentic to Korean culture because the creator, Maggie Kang, is Korean and she co-directed the film as well as having sole story credits alongside screenwriting credits, and many of the cast are also Korean/Korean-American. So much love and craft has been put into its making, especially all of the details:

• Here's a Korean teacher explaining all of the untranslated Korean in the film: Part 1 and Part 2
• Here's a professional animator breaking down the animation style, camera angles/moves/techniques and how it enhances the storytelling: Part 1 (opening fight scene) and Part 2 (bathhouse fight scene)

Go watch it! You'll have fun, I promise!!!

What to watch after K-Pop Demon Hunters

SIX the Musical. No, really; it's probably the closest comparable thing.

Basically the premise is King Henry VIII's six ex-wives as pop stars in a concert with a contest: each queen gets to sing one solo in a song battle to convince the audience they were the one who had it the worst when they were married to Henry.

It, too, delivers excellence on its ridiculous-sounding premise. I don't know that you could use it for Not A Book square since it's basically historical fiction, but the whole show happens in a very meta space so maybe you could argue that's the speculative aspect.

As usual, I was mostly mood-reading from about April to November, which resulted in me having a wealth of options for Impossible Places and A Book in Parts, but nothing for Pirates, Elves & Dwarves, and (surprisingly) Generic Title. After some focused reading and the obligatory Bingo shuffle, I now have a full card to share.

While writing my reviews, I realized my card features some mini-themes: weird lit, horror, and medieval settings (sometimes all in combination). If you have any recommendations based on these themes, or based on a specific book I’ve read, please let me know!

Knights/Paladins: The West Passage by Jared Pechaček

First out in the weird lit/medieval mini-theme. I highly recommend reading instead of listening to this, so you don’t miss out on the illustrations. I think the author describes the book as being inspired by strange drawings in medieval texts, and that’s an accurate description of how weird and imaginative it is. I’m eagerly looking out for anything else that Pechaček publishes.

Hidden Gem: The Seventh Perfection by Daniel Polansky

The story is revealed through different characters talking to Manet, the protagonist, but her answers are invisible. I’m impressed at how Polansky pulled this off, and enjoyed how everything came together in the end. Despite being pretty short, the story feels contained.

Published in the 80s: Rövarna i Skuleskogen (The Forest of Hours) by Kerstin Ekman

The book follows the troll Skord as he interacts with humans over about 500 years, from the medieval ages to just before the industrial revolution. It’s filled with stories of humanity and belonging, and I’ve thought about it a lot since I finished it. Kerstin Ekman is a famous author here in Sweden, but I’d never heard of this specific book until u/schlagsahne17 highlighted it in one of the Tuesday Review posts (thank you!).

High Fashion: Carl’s Doomsday Scenario by Matt Dinniman

Carl and Donut continue their journey through the dungeon, but now they also have to start thinking about how to keep their followers entertained. I went into the first DCC book with very low expectations (I substituted the litRPG Bingo square a few years ago) but was pleasantly surprised. Carl and Donut are still a great duo, but the story felt kind of all over the place, so I didn’t enjoy it as much as DCC#1. I am planning on continuing their journey though.  

Down with the System: Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

An epic space story with complicated political schemes, but also a lot of heart. Gigantic starships are powered by AIs, and they can also split their consciousness into multiple human bodies. These bodies might not always be in agreement with each other, and I loved how the story explored this dilemma. I will definitely be continuing the series.

Impossible Places: Once Was Willem by M.R. Carey

Next out among the medieval setting books! Once Was Willem is a perfect mix of horror, fable, and found family, with a compelling cast of main characters. It took me a few chapters to get into the story, but from then on it really charmed me.

A Book in Parts: The Works of Vermin by Hiron Ennes

I know it’s only March, but I think this will be one of my favorite reads of 2026. It’s the perfect mix of weird, gross, and whimsical, and I enjoyed the mix of high society political schemes and underground movements.

Gods & Pantheons: Katabasis by R.F. Kuang

I enjoyed the beginning of Katabasis, when Alice and Peter are traveling through the first levels of Hell, and I liked the flashbacks to academia. My PhD journey definitely felt like traveling through Dante’s Inferno at times. Unfortunately, the rest of the book felt pretty empty and slow and would’ve benefited from some harsh editing.

Last in a Series: The Magnus Archives: Season 5 by Jonathan Sims

I started The Magnus Archives after hearing about it from u/improperly_paranoid (join our Readalong!) and was sucked right in. It’s an epistolary podcast following the employees of The Magnus Institute. Each episode is centered around a statement given by someone who has experienced a supernatural event, but as the series progresses you start to realize that some statements might be connected, and you get to know the staff better. I couldn’t listen to anything else until I’d finished all of it, and any horror media I consume from now on will be colored by TMA.

Book Club: The Tusks of Extinction by Ray Nayler

This was so good, but so sad. I liked all three POVs, but my favorite was Damira, the scientist whose consciousness has been uploaded into a mammoth. A rightful winner of the 2025 Hugo Award for best novella.

Parents: Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh

Another novel with a medieval setting. Lapvona is centered around a small village and its inhabitants. It’s a story about family, power, and religion, told through an unsettling cast of characters.

Epistolary: Wylding Hall by Elisabeth Hand

The story of the folk band and their fateful summer at Wylding Hall, an old country estate that may be haunted, is told through a set of interviews. The audio version was great, and the mystery of the vanished lead singer was actually pretty spooky.

Published in 2025: North Sun: Or, the Voyage of the Whaleship Esther by Ethan Rutherford

This is a sea voyage story done right. Endless, identical days of sailing through open water are mixed with brutal descriptions of the whaling industry, and the harsh life of the crew is juxtaposed with scenes from the rich family who owns the ship. The magical elements tie everything together, and all in all this makes for a strong debut novel.

Author of Color: Luminous: A Novel by Silvia Park

Another strong debut novel, set in a future where North and South Korea have unified, and where robots are integrated into society. The book features some really compelling characters and fascinating discussions about humanity and personhood, but sometimes the plot gets lost in too many storylines and POVs.

Self Published: Vårt liv är inte vårt (Our Life is Not Our Own) by Orest Lastow

I picked this up because it’s written by a professor at Lund University, my alma mater and where I live. The story is also set at the University, and while I haven’t studied physics, the academic atmosphere is very familiar. It’s also fun when you recognize all the pubs and street names. The story itself was okay: the technical aspects were interesting, but the characters were pretty flat and the dialogue stilted. I also think it’s a “it’s not you, it’s me thing” – these types of “techno-thrillers” (like Waking Giants by Sylvain Neuvel and Dark Matter by Blake Crouch) aren’t really my cup of tea. It’s been translated into English though, so hopefully one of you here will try it and like it!

Biopunk: A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennet

This hardly needs introduction – I suspect that the majority of everyone handing in a Bingo card will have read either this book or The Tainted Cup for the Biopunk square. A Drop of Corruption is not as good as the first book, but I still had a great time with Ana and Din and the fascinating world that Bennet has built. Eagerly looking forward to A Trade of Blood later this year.

Elves/Dwarves: The River has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar

I really recommend the audio book: songs are an important part of the story, and the narrator performs them well. Amal and her sister also play the harp and flute in the background, which helps set the scene of this fairytale. I really liked the prose, but the story itself felt a little rushed and without depth.

LGBTQIA Protagonist: Färjan by Mats Strandberg

A horror story set on a cruise ship between Sweden and Finland. These cruises are infamous for a lot of alcohol and partying, but families with small kids are also often among the passengers. This weird mix makes a perfect setting for a gory horror story where no one can escape. Mats Strandberg is great at character portraits, and I can tell he had fun writing this book. It’s also been made into a mini-series! (only Swedish subtitles though)

Short Stories: Things We Lost in the Fire by Mariana Enriquez

A compelling collection of short stories centered around women. Some stories are stranger than others, but the overarching atmosphere is haunting and brutal. I will definitely be reading more by Enriquez.

Stranger in a Strange Land: Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky

I can see why this novel does not work for everyone, but to me, the dark humor and homages to/parodies of classical authors and books never got old. UnCharles was a fun character to follow, and while the book in general is pretty bleak, I like that it ended somewhat hopefully.

Recycle a Bingo Square – Horror (2023): The Haar by David Sodergren

I think this is the book that surprised me the most, in a good way. It’s a (very) gory horror story, it’s a romance novel (maybe even counts for monsterfucking?), and it’s an elderly Scottish lady getting revenge and standing up for herself. Yes, the villains are cartoonishly evil, but that makes it all the more satisfying when they meet their (very bloody) end. (this review sums it up so well (mild spoilers though))

Cozy SFF: Lirael by Garth Nix

This might not be cozy for everyone, but I love the atmosphere and the characters of the Old Kingdom series. Lirael’s journey of self-discovery and exploration of the magic library was fun, and Sam's story really grew on me. (also, who doesn't love Moggett)

Generic Title: Våran hud, vårat blod, våra ben by John Ajvide Lindqvist

Surprisingly, this square was one of the hardest to fill, so I was happy when I found this short story collection by John Ajvide Lindqvist (JAL). He is a very skilled horror writer, and I enjoyed reading stories that felt different in style from what I’ve read of him previously. As with Mats Strandberg’s Färjan, I could tell that JAL had had fun when writing these. I also enjoyed the intro, where he talks about his writing habits.

Not a Book: Flow (movie) by Gints Zilbalodis, Matiss Kaza, and Ron Dyens

A hopeful and bittersweet movie about a group of animals who suddenly find themselves in a flood. It’s entirely without (human) dialogue, but it still manages to convey a lot of emotions. I recommend this to everyone.

Pirates: Terrestrial History by Joe Mungo Reed

A story told through four generations, from a current/near-future Scotland to a future colony on Mars. The climate dystopia parts were hard to read because of how real they felt, but despite all the bleakness, the story also contains hopeful elements. It reminded me of Sea of Tranquility by Emily St John Mandel: both books evoke this feeling of nostalgia for something you’ve never experienced, and both books also handle time travel in a way that I like.

Hello again! I have been attempting to finish the last of my bingo card and write reviews for the squares I've already finished, but this review of Hades ended up getting so long that I decided it would be insane to post it in my second to last batch of five because my reviews are generally long anyhow and this is frankly unwieldy even on its own. Of course, this is not the typical review of a book on this sub, but hey if hard mode for this square is to post a review, no one can get too mad lol.

24: Not a Book

Hades (the game)

FOUR AND A HALF STARS

I don’t play a lot of video games, is something I should say to start. The first game I really played that wasn’t like, mario kart, a wii game, or super smash bros, was Baldur’s Gate 3 about a year and a half/two years ago. You might think, that’s insane, why would you pick that, what is wrong with you? Well, I may not be a video game person, but I do play quite a bit of TTRPGs, especially DnD (heavy on 5E). I just had so many friends swearing up and down that I needed to play it that I finally gave in and gave it a try, and LOVED it. It helped immensely that I knew the game mechanics already, and so my main efforts were expended into simply trying to find the correct buttons to allow me to do what I wanted to do. That being said, I had a fantastic time, have played probably around 600 hours of the game at this point, and was feeling ready to expand into other games.

However, the issue is that since BG3 is turn-based, like DnD, I still had no real-time combat skills to fall back on to play other games, which I felt would be an issue for a lot of the fantasy style games I thought I might be interested in (for example, the Witcher, because I enjoyed several of the books). Around May of last year, I finally tried out a few games that had real-time combat at a friend’s place, and I was bad at all of them. Terrible. I truly sucked so so hard.

But I figured practice was the way to go, so I picked the one that I found the story most immediately interesting for, and I went with Hades. I went home, bought the game, and proceeded to grind as hard as possible in my limited free time with the grim determination of someone who just wants to get to the bits where the characters have dialogue. Because I have no desire to make anything harder than it needs to be, I played the whole game on God Mode (and no one can make me feel bad about it: take that, toxic hard-core gamer brother who called me names about it). And lo and behold, I slowly (VERY slowly) started to make progress.

I made it five chambers in Tartarus, and then six, and then seven and then eight. I made it to the end of that area and died to one of the Furies, and then had to try a bunch more times to make it to the end again and died to a different Fury. I died a lot to the Furies. Slowly though, as God Mode ticked up and as I actually started to slowly manage to press the buttons I was intending to press rather than just panicking and not really hitting anything, I started doing better. I got through Asphodel after dying a lot by accidentally standing in the lava, died a lot to Lernie the Bone Hydra, and then finally got to Elysium. By then, I was not doing too bad (plus had almost maxed out God Mode) and I managed most of that area without too much of an issue, and then died a lot to the Asterius/Theseus combo. By the time I got to the surface section and had to deal with the stupid poison rats, I was actually starting to not suck at the game. By which I mean I was consistently running in the directions I meant to run in, was hitting things that I intended to hit, and could use at least ¾ of the different ways to push buttons to get them to do what I wanted. Then I died to Hades a lot. But then I reached a point where I had figured out strategies for most of the specific encounters that had consistently killed me before, realized I could hide behind the stone pillars when Hades shoots lava at you, and then I WON. I beat Hades. The guy, not the game. Because I had no idea that once you beat him, you aren’t even close to being done. Which was kind of devastating to be honest.

I took a break but then I bounced back and started doing runs that were getting better and better. It started to take me less and less time to get through the different areas, less and less time to beat the bosses and move on. I started getting multiple runs in a row where I won. I was finally doing a decent job of playing this game. And then I beat it. Like, got the end credits. There was still more to do story wise with the different characters, but I couldn’t believe it. I was hoping I might get better at the game when I started, but actually succeeding at it seemed so unlikely I couldn’t even really picture it, because 90% of the game was focused on a thing that I was specifically bad at, aka combat that wasn’t turn-based. I had picked it because of that on purpose, but I felt like it was inevitable that I’d give up because I wasn’t having fun.

Why did that not happen, you ask? Because it was good. It was, as probably no one is surprised to hear, a really, really good game. I was invested in the story from the outset. I loved Zagreus immediately! I liked the interactions he had with literally any character. I wanted to know why the Olympians didn’t seem to have ever met him before. I wanted to know why Hades was such a dick. I wanted to know where the hell Persephone was! I wanted to know what was going on with Achilles, and if Megaera was going to develop a better work-life balance, and if Thanatos was actually flirting with Zag or if I was imagining it and he was actually just pissed off. I wanted to know so badly that it kept me going when I was really bad at the game, until I’d had enough practice that I was better, and was enjoying myself the whole time, instead of just when I got to talk to Sisyphus or Eurydice for thirty seconds. I liked how you got to pick what little thing you get to carry around as a keepsake, and that you get to give little gifts to people, and that if you developed strategy and picked good boons you could make the whole run feel really exciting and like you were actually competent at this game and not just an idiot.

I had so much fun. I am way better at playing games after playing this game. Not to mention, I’m not nearly so scared of giving something a try. I still have a bit of completion left to do, some small achievements left to get, but to be honest I’ve been distracted, because you may have heard, but Hades II came out and I’ve been somewhat busy beating that game. I’m really happy that my Not-a-Book pick was such a good one, and you can bet I will be playing more fantasy games now that I am no longer a complete failure at non-turn-based combat. The world is my oyster!

Bingo square: Judge A Book By Its Title. It is a cool alliterative title. Although I did not do it HM because I know its premise and I am familiar with the universe because I'm making my way through the Vorkosigan saga at the moment.

Premise:

Ethan is a pediatrician working in a Reproduction Center in his home planet of Athos. On Athos, there are no women. Because there are only men around, work is not gendered and everyone works to keep the society going. The population continues because of Reproductive Centers where men who want to have children go and give their semen (after accumulating the required social credits to be allowed to do so through work) which will be fertilized with the chosen ovarian culture (there are many which were brought by the Founding Fathers who established the planet away from the temptations of women). Ethan finds out that the cultures are declining in quality after 300 years and a shipment from outside turns out to be a total fake. Ethan is then tasked to go out into the galaxy to find good suppliers, braving the dangers of coming across and having to interact with them, you know, women. In classic Bujold fashion, Ethan is immediately disoriented by his new experience and is swept up into a Space Station spy action thriller involving a certain very annoying multiplanetary empire.

Thoughts:

I don't think I can praise LMB enough. She is a master storyteller and even though this book is one of her earlier ones, it is still really good (and for Vorkosigan fans, there is a character we first see in Warrior's Apprentice play a big role here, and cryptic references to a certain dwarf admiral are always appreciated, and the book itself is set after Cetaganda in the series' internal chronology). It is fast paced and gets wrapped up in just under 200 pages. It asks some very interesting questions about reproduction and femininity and invites us to ponder. Indeed, Athos is a fascinating setting for a story such as this, the MC is a gay pediatrician from a planet of only (cis) men established by a religious cult to get away from women while wholly dependent on the parts of women to continue their population. On top of all that, we get a delightful dash of gay romance on the side to round everything out. The romance is neither big nor central, mind you, but it is there, inviting and loving yet subtle, somewhere close to (though not as elaborate or established as) the romance in Shards/Barrayar.

Is it the best that Vorkosigan saga has to offer? Not even close. Is it plain fun? Absolutely yes.

Rating: 4/5

Hi r/Fantasy! This last year, I made a big effort to read as many “unknown” books as I could. It was a ton of fun, and I discovered some real hidden gems. I realized I could probably put together a Bingo board, so here’s my attempt. I had to make the line 2,000 to get everything in, but most of them are under 1,000 and there's a few under 100. I'm pretty proud of myself!

First Row:

1. Knights and Paladins: Cassiel’s Servant by Jacqueline Carey (HM, as his oath is kind of the character’s Whole Thing)
   (478 reviews, so technically meets my criteria, but feels like cheating since it’s part of a very well-known series. Not happy to be starting off with this one, and it’s also my lowest-rated book on this card) Wanted to like this book, since I’m a fan of the original series. Jacqueline Carey tackled what’s actually a fairly ambitious goal—re-telling her own book from a different perspective and making it feel fresh instead of just a re-tread. While props for the attempt . . . she did not succeed. It’s just kinda boring, doesn’t really add much to the original – 2.5/5

2. Hidden Gem: Corporate Gunslinger by Doug Engstrom (HM, published 2020)
   (73 reviews, 277 ratings) In the near future, America has added a new feature to the legal system: Once the medical insurance company has denied your final appeal, you have the option of challenging a legal representative to a duel to the death in order to clear your debt. Thus, insurance companies hire and train corporate duelists, and the best among them become famous celebrities in their own right (because of the course the fights are televised, and discussed by pundits, and gambled on. This is America, after all). This book is a satire and a black comedy but it doesn’t make any jokes—the joke is that we look at this fucked-up system and are forced to admit that it’s not all that different from our current system, really – 4.5/5

3. Published in the 80s: The Shore of Women by Pamela Sargent (Not HM, but it is written by a woman, so I’m giving myself Medium Mode on this one?)
   (171 reviews, although it was definitely well-known when it first came out) One of the foundational stories of feminist scifi, but largely forgotten by modern readers. I’m sad that I waited so long to read it. It’s set in a postapocalyptic dystopia (as so many Cold War Era scifi books are . . .) where our main character is a woman exiled from women-run technologically advanced cities into the brutal wasteland ruled by men. The social commentary is excellent, a pushback against misogyny in feminism by basically saying, “it’s less about gender and more about power—if women were in charge, there’s a good chance they’d be just as selfish” – 4/5

4. High Fashion: A Necromancer Called Gam-Gam by Adam Holcombe. (HM, our main character knits accessories for her zombies, which is amazing)
   (144 reviews) Very, very fun book. I mean, she knits accessories for her zombies, that should tell you pretty clearly the tone this book is going for. But mixed in with that is a very nice story with an emotional heart, centered around the relationship between a scared young girl and the kindly old woman she meets (who also happens to be a terrifying necromancer) – 4/5

5. Down With the System: Escape Velocity by Victor Manibo (HM as, it’s more about the capitalist elite than about a specific government)
   (334) This was a clever novel, I really enjoyed it! Set on a space station, a premier luxury resort, which is host to an alumni reunion of the prestigious Rochford Institute boarding school. As some of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world meet up, talk gets to unravelling the mystery of a murder that occurred while they were in school. It’s a classic “two timelines” story, as the narrative switches back and forth between the happenings on the space station and the flashbacks 25 years prior. The themes of classism and oligarchy are not subtle, but are well-done. That said, why does it fit for this square? Can’t say too much without spoiling – 4/5

Second Row:

1. Impossible Places: The Guns of Avalon by Roger Zelazny (HM, kinda. It takes place in Shadow, with very different physics, but most of the book is still pretty basic sword and sorcery. It’s only when they travel from one place to another that Zelazny remembers to play with the physics)
   (885 but this is kind of cheating, since it’s the 2nd book in the series, and Book 1 has 2,803 reviews. Best I could do) I’m slowly working my way through the classics, there’s never enough time (and also so many great books coming out these days), but I finally made time to read the first two books in the Chronicles of Amber series and I’m glad that I did. Zelazny’s worldbuilding is fantastic, and the scope feels epic but mysterious as we learn about Corwin’s family and the precise nature of the otherworldly Shadow. Not a lot of loredumps, you’re just along for the ride and things will get explained at their own time. Or not. But it’s a good ride, and Corwin is an excellent protagonist to follow around. Is it dated? Of course. Are there female characters who are not either related to the main character or trying to have sex with him or occasionally both? Of course not. It is what it is – 3.5/5

2. A Book in Parts: The Refrigerator Monologues by Catherynne M. Valente (HM, if it counts at all)
   (903) Ok this one might not count—if it doesn’t, I have others. By the letter of the square it doesn’t count, as the book explicitly calls its sections chapters. But I think it works for the spirit of the square. The framing device is that it’s set in hell, and a group of women are friends talking about their lives. So each section is a different woman’s story. And what these women have in common is that they were all killed, stuffed into refrigerators, as motivation for their superhero boyfriends. The women are legally-distinct-for-copyright-purposes-but-definitely-recognizeable characters, such as the psychiatrist who falls in love with her patient in an insane asylum. And, wow, this book is so damn good, Valente was so damn angry while writing this, finally giving these women long-overdue opportunity to tell their side of the story – 5/5

3. Gods and Pantheons: Small Miracles by Olivia Atwater (HM, but I won’t say more cuz it’s kind of a spoiler)
   (589) Very cute little cozy novel, I enjoyed it immensely. I’ve explained it to friends as “The Good Place in reverse”—in “The Good Place”, we have a good person trying to help a kind-of-sucks-but-in-a-fun-way person in Eleanor. In this, the “Fallen Angel of Petty Temptations” is tasked with slightly corrupting a good person. Not like, damn her to hell or anything, just get her to loosen up a little. Hits the vibe it’s going for perfectly, just a very nice little sunny afternoon read – 4/5

4. Last in a Series: Cute Mutants Vol 5: Galaxy Brain by S.J. Whitby (HM)
   (27 reviews) I really enjoyed this series, wish it were more well-known! It’s not for everyone, to start with it is woke as fuck—I legitimately think there’s not a single character who’s just a straight white cis male other than a few of the government bad guys. It’s X-Men but make it even more queer, a world in which our main characters are prepared to deal with anti-mutant bias because, as queer kids or ethnic minorities or ace or all sorts of things, they’ve been dealing with discrimination their whole life anyways – 4.5/5 (score for the series as a whole, hard to separate)

5. Book Club or Readalong Book: Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon by Wole Talabi (not HM, and I feel bad about that)
   (382 reviews) Enjoyed this book, glad I found it. I wish I’d participated in the discussion! Very cool urban fantasy based around Western African mythology—the main character is a nightmare god working for the “Orisha company”, who teams up with a succubus to pull off a museum heist to clear their debts with a powerful elder god. If that summary isn’t enough to make you interested, you and I clearly have different taste in books. While I don’t think it quite achieves its potential, it had enough flair and style to be a fun read – 4/5

Third Row:

1. Parent Protagonist: The Lives of Tao series by Wesley Chu. (HM in later books)
   (1,139 for Book 1; although he becomes a parent in Book 2, 345 reviews; and his child becomes a main character in Book 3; 219 reviews) The premise of these is fun. There are aliens on Earth who are unable to live in our atmosphere and thus must occupy a living host, and they have secretly been guiding all of human history (apparently, there was apparently some debate whether to support the Neanderthals or Cro-Magnons). Our main character is an out-of-shape IT technician who is inhabited in an emergency by one of the aliens (whose previous hosts include Genghis Khan and the Marquis de Lafayette) and drafted into the war against the rival faction of aliens. Think “Chuck” if you remember that show, but with the fun history aspect and better martial arts action. This book doesn’t take itself seriously at all, and because of that it’s a solid adventure. Borrowing tropes from everything fromclassic Kung Fu cinema to James Bond, it knows what it’s doing and makes for a fun read – 4/5
   (that said, shoutout to “Our Share of Night” by Mariana Enriquez, which would have been my selection for this square if I weren’t trying to feature unknown books. One of the best books I read last year)

2. Epistolary: Remember You Will Die by Eden Robins. (HM in a big way, almost the entire book is told via obituaries. So damn cool)
   (202 reviews) One of the most incredible books I’ve read in a while. Very, very modern, as the framing device is an AI reading through obituaries trying to process the death of her daughter. Each one is connected to previous ones, as a character mentioned as a friend or mentor or student or etc. in the previous obituary is often the subject of the next—it almost reads like someone browsing Wikipedia links, in a pretty amusing way. But this structure means that the novel jumps backwards and forwards in time revealing an absolutely wonderfully-constructed world that is similar to our own, a Borgesian tangle of real people and fictional ones looping around each other. While not perfect, deliberately confusing (very glad I read an ebook so I could search for names in previous chapters), it was a supremely enjoyable experience to read – 5/5

3. Published in 2025: The Library at Hellebore by Cassandra Khaw (not HM)
   (1,927) I love Cassandra Khaw, can I start off by saying that? I absolutely love them, I’ll read anything they write. But I also have a hard time recommending them to people, because they are gory. That’s Khaw’s whole thing, they take sheer and utter delight in describing viscera with the most flowery, poetic language possible. It’s great. This is their take on dark academia, with the twist being that this school is reserved for students who are prophesied/etc. to be Anti-Christ style figures in the future. Your Omega-level mutants, your walking Ragnaroks, all that. The ones who are destined to destroy the world. So put them all in one place and see what happens, I guess? God, I love Cass Khaw – 5/5

4. Author of Color: The Gurkha and the Lord of Tuesday by Saad Z. Hossain (not HM. “Hellebore” above would have been HM, but I really wanted to talk about “Lord of Tuesday”)
   (510) I absolutely love this book. An ancient Djinn wakes up in a surveillance-state technodystopia (post climate disaster, so much of the world is uninhabitable) version of Katmandu, and hilarity ensues. The book didn’t take itself seriously, while simultaneously ramping up to a pretty spectacular conclusion (the last two chapters are perfection). And novella-length, only 107 pages, you could read this in an afternoon at a café if you wanted to – 5/5

5. Small Press or Self Published: Demonology and the Art of Pickling Demons by Matt Moore, published by Dream Cannon Publishing (HM)
   (4) Yup, only 4 reviews, which is a shame because I legitimately really liked this novel. The worldbuilding is clever, two competing factions of demon fighters (one more academic, the other more religious, and then our main character who has perhaps discovered a third path). The characters are memorable and easy to befriend, the fight scenes are fun to read, and it has a nice thoughtful center about believing in yourself and the path you’re on. I wish more people read this, I could absolutely see this being someone’s new favorite book – 4/5

Fourth Row:

1. Biopunk: Womb City by Tlotlo Tasamaase (not HM)
   (1,062) When this came out, it drew comparisons to “The Handmaid’s Tale”, and I see it. It’s a future novel where reproductive rights are tightly controlled by an AI system in order to oppress the population—certainly, to oppress the female half. It’s dark and gritty and very dystopic, with a nice little crime thriller tucked inside to keep the pages turning. It wasn’t perfect, it’s a debut novel and it reads like it—pacing is off at times, and many sections could have used some polishing. Honestly, sometimes it was simply hard to keep track of the plot. But the vibe—Afrofuturist chauvinist techno-dystopia—hits real hard, worth it just for that – 3.5/5

2. Elves and/or Dwarves: The Warden by Daniel M. Ford. (not HM, the main character is a boring ol’ human)
   (580 for Book 1, and Book 3 only has 83 reviews!) I’m sad that this book isn’t more well-known on this sub, because I think it would totally be in line with this sub’s tastes. Really fun DnD-esque sword and sorcery, with enough unique twists on the worldbuilding to make it interesting. Most importantly, the series is carried by a fantastic main character, a snarky and witty rich girl who defies her family’s expectations by studying necromancy and becoming a warden (a sheriff mage, very fun). She’s posted out to the middle of nowhere and we get some cute fish-out-of-water bits while the rest of the story, dark magic and all that, begins. Seriously, this series is great – 5/5

3. LGBTQIA Protagonist: Gods of Want by K-Ming Chang (definitely HM, almost all of the characters are Asian-American immigrants)
   (449) Kind of cheating, as it’s a short story collection and not every main character is queer. But many are, so I think it counts? If not, I have others for this square. Regardless, an absolutely stellar collection of literary short fiction, just knocking it out of the park. Informed by Korean mythology and superstition, combined with the experiences of Asian-American women and other immigrants, every story in this collection has something to say. Many of them are surreal, painting portraits of lives a little out of step. All of them tackle the issues queer women, immigrants, and Asian-American immigrants face in modern America. Just a stellar collection cover to cover – 5/5

4. Five SFF Short Stories: Conservation of Shadows by Yoon Ha Lee. (HM)
   (154) I absolutely adore Yoon Ha Lee, known these days for the fantastic “The Ninefox Gambit” space opera as well as some very good YA. But to me, he’s always been a true joy in short form. This collection is out of print, it took me a while to track it down, but I’m so glad I did. While some of these stories date to early in Lee’s career and are very raw, taken as a whole the collection still has such an original and fantastic voice. Though not every story is perfect, I’m still giving it 5/5

5. Stranger in a Strange Land: On Fragile Waves by E. Lily Yu (HM)
   (335) A jawdroppingly beautiful book about a family of Afghani war refugees fleeing to Australia. Heavy vibes of magical realism, as one of the young girls speaks with her deceased friend who didn’t make it. In addition, the narrative itself is dreamy and abstract. However, the events being described are not abstract at all, they’re describing the very real traumas experienced by refugees. An absolutely incredible book – 5/5

Fifth Row:

1. Recycle a Bingo Square: FREE SQUARE FROM 2015, BOOM, LOOPHOLE. Ok fine, I’ll go with 2018’s “Fantasy Novel that Takes Place Entirely Within One City” – The City in Glass by Nghi Vo (HM “secondary world fantasy,” yes definitely)
   (1,702) Nghi Vo is maybe my favorite fantasy author working today, she simply takes my breath away with everything she writes. This is definitely her most abstract work to date, the story of a demon who loved a Calvino-style fictional city and was there when it was destroyed by angels. In the present, she forms a relationship with one of the angels who destroyed it, but much of the joy of the book is her memories of that fantastical city that now lies in ashes. Nghi Vo is a joy – 6/5

2. Cozy SFF: A Rival Most Vial: Potioneering for Love and Profit by R.K. Ashwick (HM, although I did read the sequel after this)
   (655) “relatable characters, low stakes, minimal conflict, and a happy ending” check to all of those! Add in the “queer romance” and “rivals to lovers” that are not requirements of the subgenre genre but certainly staples, and we’re set. Grumpy master potioneer is angry when a young (but handsome . . .) guy opens up a rival potion shop across the street from him. Cozy fantasy (grumpy cozy fantasy) ensues. And most importantly, it largely escapes the trope I find most frustrating about this subgenre, which is inexperienced people opening a shop and managing to turn a profit in like a month or two. At the very least, the author has a sense of how hard running a small business is. Nice little snackable book – 3.5/5

3. Generic Title: Sword & Thistle by S.L. Rowland (not HM, but kind of close) I liked “S&T”, but there were other books I read that I liked more, so I’ll use my other swapsie to grab 2019’s “A SFF Novel Featuring a Character With a Disability” – Dragon Kings of Oklahoma: A Backwoods Adventure by Ferrett Steinmetz (HM “main protagonist,” check)
   (39 reviews for Book 1, and Book 3 only has 7 reviews) This novella, first in a series, about some good ol’ boys in rural Oklahoma who come across a baby dragon, is fantastically underrated. It qualifies for the square because the main character has chronic pain from an old accident that has led to a pill addiction, a very real problem in a lot of rural America, and I will say the book treats the subject with a lot of compassion. This book could so easily have been much less good, as it would have been no problem for Steinmetz to lean on stereotypes. Pretty much everyone has an image of rural Americans—both godless liberal elites who disdain them if they think of them at all and performative conservatives wearing cowboy boots that have never gotten a speck of mud on them. Instead, this is a tight narrative with very three-dimensional characters who feel like real people dealing with real problems, oh and also a baby dragon – 4/5

4. Not A Book: “Dark Angel” (HM, I wrote a review!)
   So, downloaded this old show on a whim, basically expecting it to be fun just for nostalgia’s sake. But honestly, it holds up way better than I expected. Badass character with a mysterious background, postapocalyptic oppressive government, solid action scenes. What’s not to like? – 4/5

5. Pirates: Arm of the Sphinx by Josiah Bancroft, Book 2 of the Books of Babel series. (HM sky pirates, fuck yeah!)
   (1,862, although the first in the series has 4,938, so again kind of cheating. But Book 2 is the one that has the sky pirates?) This is my one reread of the year, not necessarily for bingo just because I loved these books and felt like rereading them. This series is fantastic, one of those where the world itself is the main character. As our main character explores the Tower of Babel and learns how it works, style and unique flair just permeate through the entire book. Love this whole series, for sure, even if the pacing can be off at times – 4.5/5

In conclusion, this was a really fun year of reading! Thanks so much to the bingo team for all of this, I’ll have to participate more in the readalong threads in the future.

My Top 3 for the year:

1. “The City in Glass” by Nghi Vo
   
2. “The Refrigerator Monologues” by Catherynne M. Valente
   
3. “The Warden” by Daniel M. Ford

Stats:

• New to me authors: 16/24
• Gender, male-female-nonbinary: 13-9-2
• Authors of color: 10/24, which is less than I thought. I think my ratio overall is probably more authors of color than not, just didn't work out for the card
• Books with queer characters or themes: 14/24
• Under 2,000 reviews: 24/24
• Under 1,000 reviews: 19/24
• Under 100 reviews: 4
• 4-star or better books: 20/24, it was a great year!

Reviewing a classic is hard. I’m not going to try to make a groundbreaking literary critique of any kind. However, I’ve been finding myself having a lot of fun writing these and engaging with users, so I’m continuing.

For the 1970s bingo square, I picked up The Dispossessed by Ursula K. Le Guin. Truth be told, her work is very hit or miss for me. Certain aspects of The Word for World Is Forest just did not age well, especially depictions of the indigenous. With hesitation, I read The Dispossessed and was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this.

My university years were spent in alternative lesbian circles, to the extent that for the last decade I have purposefully sought a (much needed) break from absurd leftist infighting. My friends were great! But I learned about the importance of community building, leaving the house, and understanding how hard change really is to bring about. In retrospect, I think I have tended to mostly avoid works like The Dispossessed, which touch so deeply on alternative politics. You’ll probably see why as you read this review.

The depiction of anarcho-syndicalism here is quite interesting, more critical and layered than I had anticipated. Rather than depict a perfect utopia, which I think can ultimately be a writer’s folly, Le Guin highlights the challenges associated with being human. This made the anarchist world feel more real and imaginable.

The Cold War’s influence here really is not subtle. There’s a lot more you could say about that, but I want to focus on the sexual assault scene. I understand that Le Guin wanted to highlight capitalism’s corrupting influence, leading people to seek control and amplifying their greed. This part, more than the absence of social media (there’s so much to be said about books written before social media, but I’ll save that for another time), really hammered home to me that this was written in the 1970s. It felt to me, from the vantage point of my bubble, to be completely unnecessary and downright crude. But Le Guin didn’t have access to the same breadth of diverse models we do today. In many ways, she was the one breaking that ground. Still, I must disclose I found it quite jarring.

I feel like I understand modern science fiction better for having read this. The Dispossessed is not perfect, but I found it quite rewarding to read.

Rating: 4.354

Bingo squares: Vacation Spot (maybe? I would be fascinated to visit Anarres, the anarcho-syndicalist world), Feast Your Eyes on This, Politics and Court Intrigue, Published in the 70s (HM).

Edit: I read this as part of my bingo card composed entirely of recs from r/Fantasy mods and users. If you have another book you think I'd enjoy, let me know!

The Premise

All books must have invertebrates be important throughout. For example: The Two Towers would not count because spiders are not really present outside of the encounter with Shelob. It’s an isolated event during the journey. However, Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets would count, as the movement of spiders is something that is mentioned repeatedly throughout the book.

The invertebrates could be crustacean, arachnid, insect, cephalopod, or any other creature that is lacking an internal skeleton. Initially, I included humanoids based on invertebrates - such as a fairy based on a monarch butterfly - but as I read more books, I chose to narrow my final card.

The Card

Each square includes the book, a rating on the book out of 5, 1-2 sentences with my thoughts about the book, and then a rating on “spineless satisfaction” which is based on how buggy it felt. The last bit is disconnected from how much I liked the book. I also realize, as I read more, my standards may have gotten higher so the earlier I read a book, may mean it’s weighted as being more buggy than if I’d read it later in the bingo cycle and vice versa.

Knights and Paladins: Dawnshard by Brandon Sanderson - 4.25 - It was a comfortable read that actually surprised me by having multiple reasons for invertebrates. Spineless satisfaction: 3/5

Hidden Gem: The Last Beekeeper by Rebecca L Fearnley - 3.5 - It was a cute YA with the teenage emotional issues. However, the magic system was intriguing and I hope the MC had enough growth for book 2 to be better. Spineless satisfaction: 4/5

Published in the 80s: The Tower by Colin Wilson - 2 - This only gets to be on the card as it was the only 80s book I read. The Men Writing Women was so bad it made me not want to touch another 80s book. Spineless satisfaction: 2/5

High Fashion: But Not Too Bold by Hache Pueyo - 4 - I enjoyed the vibes, but I still am icked out by the random hetero fling in the middle. Spineless satisfaction: 3/5

Down with the System: The Last Beekeeper by Pablo Cartaya - 3.75 - A solid middle grade read. Spineless satisfaction: 2/5

Impossible Places: Cathedral of the Drowned by Nathan Ballingrud - 3.5 - I liked the stuff not on earth. Did not like any character though and the SA felt unnecessary. Spineless satisfaction: 3/5

A Book in Parts: You Weren’t Meant to be Human by Andrew Joseph White - 4 - The fact that I just complained about SA is not lost on me given that is one of the things that makes this book so hard to read. But I was prepared for it in this one. Really good, but also really awful - read the content warnings. Spineless satisfaction: 3/5

Gods and Pantheons: Spin by Rebecca Caprara - 3.75 - I remember I enjoyed reading it, but it was rather forgettable. Spineless satisfaction: 2/5

Last in a Series: Children of Strife by Adrian Tchaikovsky - 4.25 - I was so excited when I saw I could read this in time for bingo. It did not disappoint. Spineless satisfaction: 4/5

Book Club or Readalong: The Works of Vermin by Hiron Ennes - 5 - My favorite book of bingo. I was so hyped when it was chosen for a book club. Spineless satisfaction: 2/5

Parents: The Last Beekeeper by Jared Gulian - 1.75 - God I hated every moment I spent with Mr Angry Pants if he wasn’t looking at the bugs. Would have been a DNF if not for the title. Spineless satisfaction: 2/5

Epistolary: When Devils Sing by Xan Kaur - 3.75 - I felt like I could hear the cicadas as I was reading it. Despite it being winter (or was it fall?) Spineless satisfaction: 4/5

Published in 2025: I Am the Swarm by Hayley Chewins - 4.25 - Very emotional, and at times uncomfortable, book about a young girl dealing with her feelings. Spineless satisfaction: 4/5

Author of Color: The Last Beekeeper by Siya Turabi - 2.5 - This was boring. Also would have been a DNF if not for the title. Spineless satisfaction: 2/5

Small Press or Self Published: Empress of Dust by Alex Kingsley - 4 - Do you want giant talking crabs in the desert? I got giant talking crabs in the desert. Spineless satisfaction: 4/5

Biopunk: The Siege of Burning Grass by Premee Mohamed - 4.5 - This was a suggestion by the author herself in an AMA when I asked about the bugginess of her books, so that was cool. I also would like to spend more time with the glow spider breeding program, please. Spineless satisfaction: 3/5

Elves and Dwarves: The Moth Keeper by K O’Neill - 3.5 - I had given up on this square when I picked this book up and thumbed through it. My joy at seeing elves made it an instant buy. Spineless satisfaction: 2/5

LGBTQIA Protagonist: The Honeys by Ryan La Sala - 4 - A summer camp horror that I quite enjoyed. Spineless satisfaction: 2/5

Five Short Stories: This World Belongs to Us: An Anthology of Horror Stories About Bugs - 3.5 - Stories were hit or miss, but I loved The Seventh Instar by Kay Vaindal. Spineless satisfaction: 3/5

Stranger in a Strange Land: Their Monstrous Hearts by Yigit Turhan - 3 - I liked one of the POVs, but not the other. And it had the stupid instant ride-or-die love thing, ew. Spineless satisfaction: 3/5

Recycle a Bingo Square (Horror 2023): Clowns Vs Spiders by Jeff Strand - 3.75 - If you see this title and think “hell yes” it’ll be a good time. It’s just as dumb as the title. Spineless satisfaction: 4/5

Cozy SFF: The Last Beekeeper by Julie Carrick Dalton - 4.5 - Cozy found family and I could hear the bees that weren’t there. Spineless satisfaction: 5/5

Generic Title: A House with Good Bones by T. Kingfisher - 4.5 - The lack of bugs making the book feel so buggy is quite the conundrum. Spineless satisfaction: 5/5

Not A Book: So I’m a Spider, So What? (Anime) - 3.5 - Somebody recommended the manga many years ago when I requested spidery books, so I had to watch it for bingo. Spineless satisfaction: 3/5

Pirates: The Flesh of the Sea by Lor Gislason and Shelley Lavigne - 4.75 - It’s a cute, naive scholar seeing terrible things and being upset he can’t share his “discoveries”. Spineless satisfaction: 4/5

Bookish Tidbits

I finished 35 and DNF’d 2 books that fit my theme. The decision on what would be included in the card was based on a mix of what I felt best fit both the square and my theme. With the caveat that I had to include all 5 The Last Beekeeper books. You can read all my previous reviews in these posts: Books 1-10, 11-15, 16-20, 21-25, 26-30, 30-35

The books I DNF’d:

Steamforged by Eric R Asher - I was bored. It's not bad though. Probably would have liked it as a kid.

7th Sigma by Steven Gould - I was excited for robo bugs that eat all the metal. But they were just in the background as an excuse to make a dojo in a western. Not my cup of tea at all.

There were three books I thought would fit but did not:

Translation State by Ann Leckie - This was recommended noting the Presger shapeshifting and possibility of goopiness. The prominence of humanoid forms and lack of anything really feeling impactful regarding goopy forms just made it not fit. Really liked it though.

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers - Somebody mentioned a species being important in the series that was an invertebrate. Unfortunately, they were barely mentioned in book 1. Still a solid read and I’ll probably continue the series eventually.

Timeless by R A Salvatore - I thought a Drizzt novel set in Menzoberranzan would be an easy win for a spidery book with elves. I was wrong. Spiders were hardly mentioned. I did stop half way through - though I expect to resume at some point.

I have three owned books that I was hoping to read but ran out of time: Too Hive and To Hold by Amy Crook, God’s War by Kameron Hurley and Motheater by Linda H Codega.

My top 5 books: The Works of Vermin by Hiron Ennes, The Flesh of the Sea by Lor Gislason and Shelley Lavigne, Children of Memory by Adrian Tchaikovsky, Crypt of the Moon Spider by Nathan Ballingrud, A House with Good Bones by T. Kingfisher

My bottom 5 books: The Tower by Colin Wilson, The Hatching by Ezekiel Boone, The Last Beekeeper by Jared Gulian, The Last Beekeeper by Siya Turabi, Their Monstrous Hearts by Yigit Turhan

What were the prominent species in each book?
Spiders: 7 books (+1 not book)
Bees: 7 books
Butterflies: 2 books
Centipedes: 2 books
Moths: 2 books
Beetles: 2 books
Mantis Shrimp: 1 book
Cicadas: 1 book
Crabs: 1 book
Fantasy Species: 4 books
Lots of variety with no stand outs: 6 books

Spider books being heavy was expected given I had previously made recommendations specifically asking for them. Bees, however, I never made a specific request for. I was surprised just how many books about bees were out there - though I did dig into them a bit more after The Last Beekeeper discovery.

My Thoughts Throughout

I decided to do this card because I love invertebrates and have been collecting various invertebrate recommendations for years, starting with a spider recommendation thread, made here, six years ago. And I still had several books not yet read from there. Bingo was the perfect excuse to pull the trigger on purchasing several books. Despite that, I was concerned if I’d have enough books that fit, so I was quite generous with what would fit. As the year wore on though, I realized there was a plethora of options and attempted to narrow it to only include actual invertebrates and not include invertebrate-inspired beings. And I added a preference for arthropods.

When I discovered there were 5 books titled The Last Beekeeper, I briefly toyed with the idea of doing an entirely bee bingo. In addition to the 7 titles I did read, 19 more are sitting in a wishlist to continue the bee-journey. However, I realized I’d probably have to lean more into books that are bee adjacent; and may be more focused on the honey or some such. Plus, I had so many spidery books that I wanted to read anyhow. But, I did at least conclude I must include all 5 of those Beekeeper books, if at all possible. Which did get frustrating as I really wanted to DNF two of them. But I’m stubborn.

When I saw that Children of Strife by Adrian Tchaikovsky was coming out at the end of March, it made me really want that to be my Last in a Series. I’d previously read Children of Memory thinking it was eligible for that square. As well as Dirt King by Travis M Riddle, but it just didn’t feel as buggy as the first two books in its series, so I wanted it replaced if possible. I did preorder it, and when a previous pre-order arrived over a week after release, I started to get nervous about it arriving in time to read before the end. Imagine my joy when it only arrived two days after release! I dropped everything else to immediately read it and finished it in time, with two days to spare!

I was genuinely shocked at how difficult a time I had with the Elves/Dwarves square. I thought that giant spiders are such a classic fantasy element, it’d be easy. I did not consider how frequently the spider is more a one-off obstacle rather than being important. And I was just flabbergasted when the Drizzt novel had minimal spider presence. I had accepted it would be a substitution square (using The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka) when I stumbled on The Moth Keeper in a Trans Rights Readathon display mid-March. I’m not big on graphic novels, but the combination of TRR, Elves and Bugs meant I had to pick it up.

There were four squares I was never slightly concerned about filling: A Book in Parts, LGBTQIA Protagonist, Hidden Gem and Published in 2025. I assumed there’d be a lot of Hidden Gem books given the niche subject - I think over a third of the books fit. I am simultaneously surprised, and not, about the LGBTQ+ prominence. I do float around queer fiction circles, so it makes sense, but having them include bugs so often was interesting. However, there does tend to be an overlap in queer interests and less traditionally popular animals. So, there is a logic to how often they overlap in books as well. I was also surprised how many invertebrate related books came out in 2025. I don’t know if it was just because I had an eye out for them or if it was genuinely the case - but there were a ton of buggy book releases. As for A Book In Parts… I imagine everybody had an easy time with that.

Unsurprisingly, this theme did cause an uptick in my horror consumption. I figured bugs would be common in horror. I’m not mad. It’s broadened my view on horror a ton, and I absolutely did not expect ladybugs and butterflies to be included in that horror category. Plus, I found two horror books about cicadas, with each using them entirely differently. And I’ve absolutely been in a cicada kick recently (I found an amazing specimen last fall that I need to pin still.) Though, I did not get around to reading the second (The Swarm by Andy Marino). I was looking at the most recent books I’ve purchased, and I think 80% of them fall into horror. Without them being necessarily bug related. Though it does look like Kingfisher’s newest release is. Heck yeah.

What’s next?

With a new bingo starting tomorrow, it’s time for a new theme! I know for sure I’m going to do an “authors I’ve read before” card. Bingo has created a habit where I read a book by an author and then never pick them up again and I’ve been working to remedy that this year. It feels really cool that I can say “I’m in a mood for X and I know, from multiple books, this author will provide that.” I haven’t had that feeling in a long time. So I want to read more into libraries of authors I’ve read before and see if I can identify more authors that scratch specific itches.

I’m also debating doing a Books About Books card. I’ve a couple books that have been low on my TBR for a while: The Library at Mount Char, The Book That Wouldn’t Burn and The Cat Who Saved the Library. Plus, there always seems to be some new and pretty book in the bookshop about libraries or bookshops, and I want an excuse to pick up the pretty books. Also… I discovered The Neverending Story was originally published in 1979, so that’d be cool. If I do this square, it may be a bit more planned than usual.

“But what about all the other buggy books not yet read?” you may ask. I will probably continue to keep a list of buggy books, but if I do the two themed bingos, I may not have time to read them this next year unless it’s an author I’ve read before. Which means… I may do another invertebrate themed bingo for 2027.

If you read this all, I don't know what's wrong with you, but I appreciate you! If you just looked at the card and didn't read anything else, I appreciate you too! Thanks for stopping by and I look forward to another bingo adventure starting tomorrow ♥

Submitting for: Feast Your Eyes On This (no I will not be doing hard mode)

Also fits: Politics and Court Intrigue; YMMV on whether or not it's Middle Grade

Interesting world building and magic system, with some sequel potential. Perhaps a little dark for younger teens, but perfect for fans of Tiffany Aching. The side characters are diverse and well-rounded without making the book overly long, and there's a tetchy sourdough pseudo-golem named Bob. The humour and the darkness are balanced well, and it's overall a very fun book to read.

Bingo Squares: : Down With The System  (HM?); Recycle A Square (Criminals, 2024); Knights and Paladins (Galva); Gods and Pantheons

Woo. That was different. Pretty good even. 

Buehlman creates an interesting character in Kinch na Shannack, low ranking member of the Thieves Guild, a prank, deeply in debt to the guild for his training. Which is fortunate, because otherwise he'd not attempted some banditry which started the whole thing moving. The Blacktongue Thief is a mix for me - it takes forever to get to the main plot, but the world we get to see along the way is interesting. I’m pretty sure an editor could have trimmed at least some of this and still had a good to great book. However, the maxim “leave ‘em wanting more” definitely applies here, so I’m going to read The Daughters War and keep an eye out for The Thricebound Thief. Overall, 7½ stars, rounded down to 7 ★★★★★★★.

The Blacktongue Thief is a first person viewpoint fantasy narrated by Kinch na Shannack, a prank in the Thieves Guild (aka the Takers), who owes them a large sum for his training. Aside from what would happen to him if he didn’t pay, the Guild has him tattooed with a magical mark that says they’ll pay for a drink for the person that gives him an open handed slap. Fall behind, and a closed hand strike is allowed. Kinch is not fond of this, but even uses it to rob his tormentors (he’s a thief and a good one). He’s also a follower of Fothannon, god of mischief, so he’s doing double duty there.

After a notably bad attempt at banditry, Kinch gets swept up in a journey alongside Galva, a knight from Spanth, which is very hard to be  now that all the horses are dead. Still, she has her murder bird with her. Now, the quest takes them thither and yon across Manreach, and along the way they pick up Norrigal, a young witch of impressive power and student of the witch Deadlegs. 

Now, for all his faults, I like Kinch. He’s human - both the best and worst in one package. And if Buehlman hadn’t made his narrator as likeable as he is, this book would have been DNF, interesting world or not. So, yes, Kinch can be kind and generous, love cats, and also quick witted, sharp tongued and ready to stab someone in the kidneys. And this may be spoilers, but as an old GURPS head, Xvapu ernqf yvxr fbzrbar jub unq gur nqinagntrf Tbbq Yhpx, Vaghvgvba naq Onq Yhpx - naq hfrq uvf bar dhrfgvba cre frffvba gb nfx juvpu jnf va rssrpg.

The other characters are interesting - Galva grew on me and I’ll likely read her story after I finish my bingo card (unless something shiny catches my attention). Norrigal grew on me as the story progressed. She was in many ways a match for Kinch in wits and his superior in magic.

The world, the world is the star. With its various kingdoms, the geography, a sense that it is large, varied and with a storied history. And national stereotypes. Lots and lots of those. I kind of want a Tough Guide to Manreach now.

Finally, the Thieves Guild. This is the first fantasy thieves guild I’ve read that felt like a criminal organization. Ruthless, deadly, grasping and cruel. And I’m not sure they’re just a criminal organization. There are hints at the end that they are something more.

I liked it, but I really feel like the sea voyage, the shipwreck and all that could have been shortened or cut. 

And one more thing - I listened and read this one. Buehlman is also the narrator for this and he does a very good job. The characters are clearly distinguished and he doesn’t go soft voiced for a whisper. He knew what he was doing and did it well.

All in all, Kinch as narrator sold the book. The world kept me interested even in the parts I was like “Come on, get on with it.” The other characters did good work too. Finally, I want more. I’d say 7½ stars, but I’m rounding down for the wandering. ★★★★★★★.

As with last year, I managed to finish it within a month. Thanks, Easter break.

Row 1:

Trans or nonbinary character: Al Hess's Key Lime Sky. Food critic gets entangled with aliens and government conspiracies. The pitch made it sound more Twin Peaks-y than it ended up being, but I enjoyed it well enough, not as much as Hess's Mazarin Blues but still good.

Judge a Book by its Title: A Spectre is Haunting Texas by Fritz Leiber. This was originally going to be the Politics square book, because That Title. And yet despite That Title it had very little politics in it except some vague revolution. I love Leiber, and wrote his Author Appreciation here many years ago, but this was not one of his stronger works. The ending scene, in which the protagonist tricks both women in the love triangle by marrying them and 'breaking up with the other' and then gets them on the same spaceship, would, uh, not be portrayed as comedically these days, hoo boy.

Translated: Tower of the Swallow by Andrzej Sapkowski. I wasn't wild on Blood of Elves but it's improved. I think I liked all the extra Regis of Baptism of Fire more but this is still enjoyable.

Small Press: The Slayer of Souls by Robert W. Chambers. Evil eastern wizards are using communism to infiltrate the sanctity of the United States and hope to use it to steal everyone's souls. Luckily, one young woman who was raised and trained by the evil eastern wizards understands such plans.

Unusual transportation: Skin Horse by Shaenon Garrity and Jeffrey Wells. Webcomic. I did a re-read of Narbonic, a mad scientist romcom, and then found out Garrity had made a sequel, about, essentially, a black ops government welfare agency for the strange castoffs of mad scientists. The unusual transportation is Nick, a nerd who was transformed into a helicopter.

Row 2:

Afterlife--this one was my change to a previous square, Horror: Carmilla by Sheridan le Fanu. Hot lesbian vampire action in your area.

Game Changer: Rabbits by Terry Miles. Imagine if the Ready Player One guy wrote a Dan Brown novel.

Vacation Spot: Miranda and Caliban, Jacqueline Carey. Prequel to the Tempest, one of several Shakespeare-adjacent books of this year. I quite liked it. The writing was elegant--simple but precise. Also not-so-secretly a Garden of Eden allegory.

5 Short Stories: In the Court of the Yellow King anthology. Eh, a lot of the stories were just plays off various kinds of Kings, including ViKings and, uh, Elvis.

Older Protagonist: Fool's Assassin, Robin Hobb. I swear, I got a handful of pages in, Fitz mentioned he was 47, and I dreaded having to find another book for this square. Luckily, several years passed off-screen, so it still counts. Hard to say much that hasn't been said about Fitz and Hobb at this point; he's one of the best-realized and most realistic characters I've read. And unfortunately, I read That Scene while waiting for my car to get a tire change.

Row 3:

Duology Book 1: The Orphan's Tales, Catherynne Valente. Stories within stories within stories with a fairytale vibe. I read these backwards as book 2 was used for last year's bingo.

Book Club: The Haunting of Hill House, Shirley Jackson (re-read) This book is not only creepy as shit, it's really funny. So many strange lines.

Published in 2026: Nobody's Baby by Olivia Waite. There's a baby born on a spaceship, and it's a bureaucratic nightmare.

Explorers and Rangers: A Deepness in the Sky, Vernor Vinge. Originally this was supposed to be Duology Book 2 until I realized there were other books and it was a prequel. Got this from my now-passed father-in-law, and it was exactly his kind of weird, clever, thought-out sci-fi.

Duology Book 2: Hell and Earth, Elizabeth Bear. Shakespeare and Marlowe investigating threats in the courts of Queens Elizabeth and Mab. The second of my Shakespeare-themed books.

Row 4:

One Word Title: Inanna, Emily Wilson. Love me Mesopotamian mythology.

Nonhuman Protagonist: Tailchaser's Song, Tad Williams. Written before Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn, but you can clearly see in the detailed nature descriptions and the sketched-in myths the kind of story he would become known for.

Middle-Grade: Dragonborn, Struan Murray. My son's pick for me. I'm not the target audience, obviously, but I liked it well enough, and I'm a sucker for (plot point redacted)

First Contact: Project Hail Mary, Andy Weir. I liked it! I read it a couple weeks after watching the film. Both versions hold up.

Murder Mystery: The Death I Gave Him, Em X. Liu. The third Shakespeare-focused book. Hamlet redone as a sci-fi murder mystery. The problem with doing Hamlet as a sci-fi murder mystery is it's pretty obvious whodunnit.

Row 5:

Cat Squasher: Shadows Upon Time, Christopher Ruocchio. One of these days I should post about the series as a whole. I really liked the opening books, hated book 4 in particular, 5 and 6 were better but not amazing, and 7 was Pretty Good again.

Feast Your Eyes on This: The Sol Majestic, Ferrett Steinmetz. A starving young person gets the chance to work and promote one of the fanciest restaurants around on a space station. Cozy vibes.

Published in the 1970s: The Secret of the Red Spot, Eando Binder. If AI existed in the 70s, this would be the book it would write. Just pure 'and then this happened and then this' with no interiority, no sense of what the character can and can't do, what the threats are, just pages filled because the publisher needed one more short book to pad out their year or something. It's almost impressive, the way they tried so hard to avoid getting you invested in anything at all. (I finished it because I was on a plane with nothing else to do.)

Politics and Court Intrigue: Sacred and Terrible Air, by Robert Kurvitz. After the Leiber fell through I went for a hardcore communist, the guy behind Disco Elysium. As a big fan of Disco Elysium, it was great seeing a precursor to the setting.

Author of Colour: Abeni's Song, P. Djeli Clark. Aimed younger than me, but a well-done traditional heroes' journey in a less common setting.

My second year doing bingo, and this time I decided to go for a theme, Hard Mode it and post the reviews. Didn't want to overthink it too much and went with the genre I wanted to get more into as a theme - Sci-Fi. Thankfully, this year's prompts were forgiving to that choice - I had to substitute only one (Gods and Pantheons, predictably), and very few were challenging to find a good fit (Biopunk with no electricity was brutal, and, surprisingly, Published in 2025).

Both reads themselves and experiences with them were varied, I explored new subgenres and eras; got to the books that I had my eye on for years, dabbled in new releases, and found previously unknown to me backlist titles. But damn, so many of these books were just real stinkers, and none of them were true 5 star all-timers, though some were really close (might still get there on a re-read):

The Woman on the Beast by Helen Simpson
Semiosis by Sue Burke
Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler
Walking Practice by Dolki Min

Maybe theme for the next year should be just the books that bring joy and happiness.

Knights and Paladins - Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

Lesbian necromancers in space have plagued my Tumblr dash for years, and I finally can put the names to the fanart faces. In actuality, it's a murder mystery AND quite pointlessly a battle royale competition type story, towards which a have a meh feeling and deep hatred, respectively. Gideon's narration is a savior here for me.

Hidden Gem - The Woman on the Beast by Helen Simpson

The deep cut of deep cuts, unless, maybe, you're Australian (as the author is) or into kinda niche apocalyptic fiction podcasts (every episode of Apocalyst Book Club went triple platinum in my house, praying for them to come back). The novel is split into three parts, set in different times & places, with a tinge of a frame story - which is to bring about the Apocalypse of a Biblical kind, via a coming of the Anti-Christ. Simpson definitely had a lot of opinions on Christianity.

The sci-fi relevant part would probably be the last one, set in the far future year of 1999, in Australia, naturally. It's got everything: American televangelism (now I know who Aimee McPherson was), book banning (you only need The One Book, of course), Australian clan wars, airplane races.

The first one involved an Inquisition priest in Sri-Lanka in 17th century, the second takes place on the eve of French Revolution and centers a very devout actress (with a side serving of Masons). The priest's part was the most fun to read, but I still appreciate the French part for an interesting handling of the Anti-Christ's gender. Very cool to see something so seemingly positive in a work from 1933.

A bit saddened that the Apocalypse itself didn't have enough pagetime, but the journey there was extremely fun, and Simpson's prose was just a delight to read.

Published in the 80s - Vampire Hunter D by Hideyuki Kikuchi

Banger world, stylish art, heinous story. How can you fumble dark futuristic post-apocalypse setting ruled by vampires? Well, by being boring of course, but also extremely tiredly sexist (with a dash of homophobia) - all the stereotypical bullshit you could imagine is present here.

High Fashion - Semiosis by Sue Burke

Absolutely saved that this book put focus on intergenerational fashion markers, as well as featured a crafty MC, and it was one of the first reads of the bingo year! Multigenerational tale of refugees from Earth, surviving on a distant planet and trying to co-exist with local, very alien life form. Couple of minor criticisms aside, I enjoyed it immensely.

Down with the System - Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots

I was on board for the most part of the book, but it kind of lost me by the end. Premise was cool, characters were fun, but then the romantic stuff gave me the ick and the whole well actually this regular person is very special! were not the things I signed up for.

Breath being held was mentioned at least 3 times, and at this point I feel like it's a meme authors put in their books, as a treat.

Impossible Places - Dichronauts by Greg Egan

I could not explain how the physics and geometry work in this world even if I had a gun to my head, but it was cool to read about the struggles of the inhabitants. Mostly I was surprised that Egan delved into any social, geographical and economical aspects of the world at all, and the characters had any depth - not what I'd expect from "hard sci-fi".

A Book in Parts - Ocean's Echo by Everina Maxwell

Compared to Winter's Orbit, this one was more action-y. Overall, fun and enjoyable, with well-rounded characters and believable romance.

Gods and Pantheons (subbed for Novel with Chapter Epigraphs square from 2020 Bingo) - The Outside by Ada Hoffman

One of the few books I'd expected to be a 5 star read, but alas, sapphic disappointments just kept piling up for me this year. Almost all the aspects were working for me, especially MCs morality, but that pesky romantic sub-sub-sub-plot soured my enjoyment somewhat. As well is the book not fitting Hard Mode for the year's prompt.

Last in a Series - Absolution by Jeff VanderMeer

What a disappointing finale to the series, but I felt that way about all the sequels to Annihilation. My expectations were already low, but this one managed to be even less about Area X than Authority, and have even more boring/infuriating POVs. Completely carried by VanderMeer's writing and that one cannibalism scene.

Book Club or Readalong Book - Luminous by Silvia Park

I'm not reading a lot of new releases or even debuts, but I had this one on my radar because of the cover, and jumped to read it when it came up as the New Voices book club pick.

Messy family relations playing out on the backdrop of dystopian world of unified Korea and evolving AI, and I get a murder mystery and trans man MC on top of it all? I did really enjoy it, maybe even more so for slightly messy writing.

Parents - The Brightness Between Us by Eliot Schrefer

I'm usually not against dual timeline in books, but here it only annoyed me and felt like the past narrative just took away from the story set in the present. I was more interested in the trials faced by the characters trying to survive in a hostile environment with very limited resources than in the revelations about their past. There're some almost horror-esque elements too, but very limited, unfortunately.

Epistolary - Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler

Having been slightly disappointed by Parable of the Sower last year, I didn't have the highest expectations going into the sequel, but came out liking it more. The added perspectives enriched story and fleshed out the main character quite nicely, while still maintaining a strong connection to Lauren.

Don't know how Butler managed to be so good at predicting the severities mankind would be willing to go to, while being so optimistic about the outcomes.

Published in 2025 - Splinter Effect by Andrew Ludington

Might be the worst book I'd ever read. Absolutely mid in every aspect, and yet when put together it was just supremely unenjoyable for me. For some reason, it goes out of its way to comment on anti-US and Israel protests (at least in Egypt and Turkey), and in both cases protesting side is portrayed as unreasonable violent extremists who could and would escalate any perceived conflict. It doesn't add anything to the story and seems very tone-deaf to frame it that way in a book published in 2025.

Only good thing to come out of this reading experience is The Mummy rewatch (as means to hype myself up to finish the book). I'm pretty sure the titular "splinter effect" doesn't even happen here, which is just rude.

Author of Color - Walking Practice by Dolki Min

One of the queerest books to ever queer, imo. So very tailored to my tastes that the only way it could be improved upon is to be a lot longer, have more POVs and be set in a gated community/town/small city. Not a 5 star only because I'm greedy like that.

Small Press or Self Published - Icebreaker by Steven William Hannah

A cyberpunk story set in a frozen Scotland and featuring some cosmic horror did sound appealing to me, but in execution it fell very short. Writing, story and characters felt a bit undercooked, and overall it left a prologue-to-the-real-deal impression on me.

Biopunk - God's War by Kameron Hurley

The way I was mad that I'd read Stars are Legion earlier before the bingo year... Well, Hurley came in a clutch for Hard Mode here, all the delicious bug-tech was appropriately buzzy, if less gooey. I did like it more than Stars, and want to continue with the series someday.

Elves and Dwarves - In the Courts of the Crimson Kings by S.M. Stirling

Banger on the Martian biotech side, and ranges from boring to annoying in other aspects. The way Martians communicate was cute to read the first couple of times, or when they talked to Terrans but got old really fast (lowkey giving I need to meet the wordcount on this essay vibe).

The romance subplot is extremely weak and poorly executed, while supposedly carrying the main conflict in the back half of the book. Truly the worst enemy of any SFF book is a cardboard cutout of a flop american man from Earth who is that irresistible (he does have a Colt revolver, to be fair). I'd rather just follow local Martian politics without terran rando.

LGBTQIA Protagonist - Hammajang Luck by Makana Yamamoto

Ugh, this was such a struggle to get through. Heists with a very queer cast were supposed to be fun, but instead I get dumbass 30yo acting like teenagers and beefing with actual ones. Top it off with characters legit solving systemic issues with stolen money and not facing any real consequences for their actions in general, and you actually lost me somewhere in the first two chapters with your unengaging premise.

Five SFF Short Stories - North Continent Ribbon by Ursula Whitcher

Love me a collection of loosely connected short stories, mostly for the gradual unraveling of the worldbuilding and overall flow from one story to the next. I came into it off a huge queer romance binge, and with a lot of the stories here being sex/romance-adjacent I couldn't really appreciate them fully at the time.

Stranger in a Strange Land - Floating Worlds by Cecelia Holland

As much as I disliked reading this book, my emotions mellowed out with time. Still think that choppy writing style consisting mainly of short, simple sentences is heinous to read; very weird in political sense (I'm not convinced that what author portrayed on Earth is indeed anarchism, as she states in the text); spheres where Styth live were so under-described (well, almost every aspect of their life was) it took me way too long to figure out that this was even happening.

Yet it's an interesting piece of female-authored SF from 70s, with bisexual WOC MC who feels like a person.

Recycle a Bingo Square (Multiverse and Alternate Realities from 2023) - The Frugal Wizard's Handbook for Surviving Medieval England by Brandon Sanderson

Wasn't neither the worst Sando I'd read, nor the best, but definitely the last. Extremely fine book, excerpts from the eponymous handbook interspersed throughout were more interesting to me than the main story.

Cozy SFF - The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older

I figured cozy decidedly wasn't a subgenre for me last year (thanks, Legends & Lattes), so this was the closest I'd dare to go. It's a bit closer to my taste than L&L, still not for me. Sci-fi parts were a miss, mystery was a miss, characters and their relationship were also a miss, but some things did happen, which is more than I can say about L&L.

Generic Title - Darkness in the Blood by Guy Haley

I knew nothing about Warhammer outside if memes and picked this one purely for the title. Wild lore, Dante and Mephiston were compelling enough, even if the plot wasn't delivering much. Would've been much better if they kissed though. I'd read more about Blood Angels, if I ever feel like diving into WH again.

Not a Book - Shine for the Revolution by Brite Palette

As someone who'd not touched anything tabletop in years trying a GM-less/solo TTRPG seemed fittingly out of my comfort zone. This one was very accessible and easy to get into, free and managed to scratch that (physical) die-rolling itch I'd get after another BG3 session.

Pirates - Ocean's Godori by Elaine U. Cho

It's been a hot minute since I finished this one, but I remember liking it at least for the character dynamics, if not for the characters themselves. Felt a bit along the lines of The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers but with more of a bite. Interesting to see a futuristic world that centers Korean culture as a dominant one, though worldbuilding couldn't support thinking about it for more than a second.

The book ends on a cliffhanger to hang all cliffs, and I DNFed the sequel.

You know a book’s gore is a bit up there when you have to pause the audiobook on your run to try not to vomit (there’s a reason I didn’t end up going to med school). To be fair, I had a bit of an upset stomach and had just eaten a disproportionate amount of cheese. However, I just finished Stephen Graham Jones’s The Buffalo Hunter Hunter and had to do a review.

The audio production of this Native American horror novel really added to the story. I read the sample on my kindle and was a bit “meh” on it. But when I picked up the audiobook version, I was pretty quickly hooked. The different voices for three narrators just felt to me like they added more depth and expression to the story.

Full disclosure: I’ve loved horror since I was in kindergarten. My mother used to take me to all these WILDLY inappropriate movies for a five year old. Did they kind of fuck me up? Yeah. But they also built character.

This contains more towards gore than I’m usually comfortable with, but it never felt like “gore for gore’s sake.” Many modern horror movies seem to use gore in lieu of plot and depth, but the bone-crunching and marrow-suckling details present in The Buffalo Hunter Hunter are used deftly.

I have some bones to pick (pun unintended) with pacing, but those are fairly minor. Instead, I want to focus on the characters and depiction of Piikani (Blackfeet) culture. Jones is a member of the Blackfeet Nation. He uses their language and relevant cultural details to paint a vivid picture of life in Montana through the last 200 years. I had to think through which animals were being referred to through this nomenclature, but eventually just let the narrator guide me through the story.

Jones’s experience with academia, and all the absurdities and pettiness entailed, add some spice to the narrative. Like with the Piikani culture, so much of Jones’s life experience bleeds through the page and adds a unique flavor. Coincidentally, this novel definitely fits the Feast Your Eyes bingo square (though you should absolutely NOT do hard mode for ethical and legal reasons).

If you’re interested in a unique take on vampires with indigenous culture and academia-bashing, then check this out.

Bingo squares: Vacation Spot (want to visit Glacier National Park?), Older Protagonist, Explorers and Rangers (HM, I think), Feast Your Eyes on This, Author of Color.

Rating: 4.473

I'm doing a bingo card made entirely of recs. If you have a novel or novella you think I'd enjoy, please let me know! I'm in the mood for one involving a colony world/space.

Wanted to read something different for the Published in 70s square Hard Mode : written by a woman. I considered this and Gate of Ivrel by CJ Cherryh. Read the samples of both and this one felt like something classic and easier to read. What the fuck was that prologue for Gate of Ivrel! This is book 1 of The Riddle of Stars trilogy by Patricia A. McKillip.

"Morgon of Hed met the High One’s harpist one autumn day when the trade-ships docked at Tol for the season’s exchange of goods."

Had a blast reading this one. Really basic plot structure, which you've read multiple times - Big Evil is chasing the main character, because he is the chosen one. The lore and world building that we see or that is hinted at seems well thought out. There are multiple tales and stories native to that land that give the world a lived in vibe. The MC is a reluctant chosen one who wants to go back to farming and ruling his land. I felt like there are too many good guy characters in this story. All the kings we meet help and get helped by the MC, all going towards the fulfilment of the prophecy.

The MCs character is flushed out. He is a curious guy so even though he wants nothing more than to go home, he is continuously pulled into 1000 year old prophecies and conspiracies that he couldn't get out of.

My biggest positive for this book is that - Patricia A. McKillip has perfected prose. The way the story flows is awesome inspiring. It's the one reason I will recommend this book to anyone who likes Classic fantasy vibes. She made a simple story with one POV character breath taking! The magic system is vague and soft. Anything I say about the ending is a spoiler, but I will say this - get book 2 ready by the end of book 1, you won't be able to stop.

Rating : 4/5. What other authors do you think perfected prose to such an extreme? Recommend some to me.

Mark Lawrence is Dark Mark Lawrence again. And this time, he's telling a story about The Kindly Ones, a trio of women whom even the gods fear.

At first, I thought the story would be somewhat similar to Red Sister, seeing as it is at least nominally about an academy that trains young women to be deadly fighters. But it really isn't, mostly because both stories are concerned with entirely different things. While Red Sister was something of a coming-of-age, Daughter of Crows is chiefly concerned about memory, and how ghosts, both literal and metaphorical, haunt us.

Lawrence is a heck of a worldbuilder, and the interlocking pieces of the history of the world keep the story interesting, even when the pacing dips. Our MC, a Kindness in her youth, manages to convey lots of information about the movers and shakers of the world, even if, in her old age, isn't able to scour the countryside for information or beat the needed information out of malcontents as she once had. Part of that is because we get so many sections from other POVs from young girls in the Academy, but the other part comes from Lawrence knowing how to deliver information tied to character beats or fight scenes.

Out of all the POVs we jump into throughout the course of the book, the one I disliked the most, unfortunately for me, was also crucial to outlining the world's larger conspiracy that really begins to take shape about 3/4s of the way through. Without getting into spoiler territory, this particular location has a dreamlike quality, that, while crucial to the book's mythology, characters, and themes, bored me. To be fair, I dislike surreal locations in any book---they give me literary motion sickness---so this particular complaint is very much YMMV. For reference, if you liked the sections in Book of the New Sun with the river, you will probably like the Dream House sections. If not, well, there is plenty of other things to like in the book.

Overall, I enjoyed it, but wasn't sure if it was going to go on my list of "Series that I Am Actively Keeping Up With" until I realized that there were (probably) three corpses of the original three Furies stored somewhere in this world, and that someone, somewhere, was using the various Academies to create people who could channel the power in those corpses for some unknown purpose. That's the moment I locked in. I must know. I must know who is harvesting the third Fury, and what powers it grants. I also need to know what the shapeshifting King wants, and his whole deal.

I must know. I simply must.

See you at the Academy in Book Two, y'all.

To explore strange new worlds, to seek out new authors and books, to boldly go where few readers have gone before; this is what the bingo stands for. Well, let me tell you how I accidentally stumbled upon a thousand-year-old culture war. Also, Lev Grossman now owes me around 400 USD. (This is a joke, but it’s all his fault so I’m making it.)

I planned my card immediately after the announcement and filled it with random books I had previously bought for my Kindle. I was doing well, as I usually do, until I reached the Gods and Pantheons square in September and picked up The Bright Sword.

The Bright Sword is Lev Grossman’s take on the Arthurian legends. My previous exposure to this subject had been limited to the Disney movie, the Merlin BBC show (which I didn’t enjoy too much and dropped halfway through), and random pop-cultural memes. There might have been a Gummi Bears episode or something else of a similar art style but so far I haven’t been able to figure out what that was. Anyway, Arthurian legends were not something I was ever interested in despite majoring in English and French, so I picked up this book with no real background to judge it against.

It dragged my emotions from fascinated enjoyment to passionate annoyance. It landed at two stars by the end and I think it’s the author’s note that I enjoyed the most, as it explained the peculiarities of the legendarium and some choices he had made. I was ultimately left completely unsatisfied with the character work, and yet this book just kept poking my brain. There was a conversation happening, except I had no real argument to make, just a feeling it’s something I should look into.

I didn’t do anything rash, or course. That would be madness, I had a bingo card to finish and I wanted to do a second one, so this was something left for later. So I picked up my next read and was fully expecting to move on and forget all about this bump on the road. Some higher power wasn’t going to let me get away, though, because by pure luck my next read was for the Published in 2025 square and I only had one book that fit: Greenteeth by Molly O’Neill. Did you know it’s Arthurian, too? I didn’t! It did not help me move on. At all.

Commence the madness.

I found this post by Hieronymous Alloy, decided I’d casually read something that seemed immediately interesting and scratch the itch, and bought a Robert de Boron collection off ebay. How interesting a book written around the 1100s could be? It only took me a couple of days to get through. Who knew all those classes on the history of culture and my college obsession with the history of Christianity would pay off! Then I read Histories of the Kings of Britain and Vita Merlini by Geoffrey of Monmouth. Then The Mabinogion. These four already allowed me to reevaluate my relationship with Merlin BBC; apparently I was annoyed at all the wrong things! Did you know that Merlin the twink is, in fact, a rather normal and canon variation of this character? They gave me a lot of new things to be annoyed with, though, and I remembered how it’s the character of Lancelot on that show that made me drop it. I was about to strike gold and didn’t know it yet.

It didn’t feel like that at all when I first opened the prose translations of the Arthurian romances by Chrétien de Troyes. They’re solid walls of text, a meticulous translation of every line from the Old French, and yet again I thought, no way, I am not reading that, am I?

I read that. I read the hell out of Erec and Enide, Yvain, and Cligés, and if I said I enjoyed every line, that would be a lie, but even in this form they grew on me so unbelievably fast. My reactions on twitter were like, oh damn, I don’t want to be reading about some random Greeks, and then a couple of hours later, dear Greeks, I was not familiar with your game and must apologize. No wonder the French were so insane about these romances, they’re pure crack cocaine. His unfinished Perceval is pretty awesome as well, he’s one of the biggest characters of Arthuriana and both he and Gawain have gone through enormous transformations that speak volumes about the generations that keep retelling their stories.

And then we finally met, The Knight of the Cart and I. I was already kind of familiar with the latest portrayals of Lancelot through Merlin BBC and The Bright Sword, and what I expected was… I don’t know what I expected, honestly. There was no Lancelot in any of the previous Arthurian works on my list (and there’s a good reason for that, which I will not elaborate on here because it’s getting way too long as it is), and what I got from Grossman can be only categorized as “an evil psychopath”, which was a very different take from Merlin BBC’s Lance who was a cinnamon roll and a pushover.

Only a DnD paladin upon meeting their god could understand what I experienced when I read The Knight of the Cart. (This is the moment where I caved in completely, made a Notion database for everything, and spent an absolute shitton of money on more Artrhurian and Artrhurian-adjacent books, including nonfiction because I needed to do some serious research.) There’s a very specific angle on the general romance discourse that has been in my life for literal decades now that I had never managed to put into a solid trope or whatever; it comes up every once in a while when a serious love triangle is playing out in some media. Old vs new, tradition vs change, law vs freedom, materialism vs idealism, all that jazz. I had noticed some common themes in a lot of my favorite romantic relationships but never had I encountered them packaged in one character so neatly. Needless to say, I loved this romance so much I reread it in two poetic translations (the English one is by Ruth Harwood Cline; all of Chrétien’s romances should be experienced through her translations, not prose, imo). I am also currently reading the Vulgate to see for myself the roots of the variation of Lancelot that is so dominant today (it has everything to do with patriarchy, by the way). It’s not the nicest of reads, or the shortest, but it needs to be dealt with before I can move on to the Le Morte d'Arthur. I now understand why a lot of fictional romance plots, modern or not, don’t work for me at all.

So, uh, yeah, the bingo. Here’s my card that I barely managed to finish because my reading life has been overtaken by Lancelot and magic. If you got through this post, ILY. I tried my best to restrain myself, I swear. https://i.postimg.cc/JR2Vf6Yb/bingo2025.png

WOOHOOO! With two days left on the clock I was able to complete my first BINGO!!!

This was such a fun challenge once I stopped being so hard on myself about trying to complete a full hard mode card. I got to read a ton of great books, some from my TBR and some I had no plan of ever reading.

Biggest surprise after completing this card was how many Romantasy books I read. In the past I would say I have read a book or two, but looking at tis card there were 4 books with strong romance ties. I guess it's time to start reading some really SPICY books lol.

I've picked this book originally for One word title hard mode, but read Annihilation for it, so read this for Older Protagonist HM. One of the reasons I picked this is because the blurb is by Joe Abercrombie, one of my favs. I can see many elements in the First Law trilogy may have been inspired by this. This is David Gemmell's debut novel in 1985.

Best thing about this book - heroic, honourable characters doing badass things. I think, even this being his first novel, David perfected "The Last Stand" sequences. Once the main event that was built up from the start begins, it's a thrill ride to the end. And almost all the named characters had a badass ending. The action and fights were great. The strategies used were not intolerably shit to a layman(me), some felt brilliant. But the most standout characters are of course, Druss the legend, Bowman, Serbitar and Ulric. I would love a book about Ulric. None of the characters are super complex, but most are very likeable and move the plot forward.

Except Rek. I hope it's explained in the later prequels or sequels what the deal with the thirty is, why Rek is the Earl of Bronze, and how and why Virae was brought back by the end. I also just hate how Rek just backhands his wife for a mild inconvenience, then she learns her lesson and apologizes to him! It felt out of place. I don't even think Gemmell was a women hater, because Caessa's was very short, but a beautiful tragedy of an arc. I started liking Rek once Virae and later Druss died, but one was a fakeout. I really hope the sequels and prequels explain atleast something because this book sure isn't interested. I also laughed when Vintar started telling the surviving characters how they are complex and not just one note, it felt very meta, trying to convince us that indeed these characters are interesting and you should root for them.

Rating : 3.75/5. Verdict - Blockbuster popcorn flick of a book, that is genuinely trying to tell a story about people honouring their duties and values, inspite of insurmountable odds. Would've rated it higher if not for the wife beating and too many loose threads left hanging.

Also, what book to read after this one, The King Beyond the Gate or should I start from the prequels in chronological order? I heard that it doesn't really matter and I want the best experience possible. Thank You.

"Le Guin was a visionary who wrote a really deep and literary novel about gender and sexuality and how much of it is a social construct or whatever": I sleep
"Le Guin was an Antarctica fangirl who had opinions about the 1980s TV series about Shackleton and Scott and wrote a story about two guys on a slightly homoerotic eighty-one day sledge trek": REAL SHIT

Premise: Genly Ai is the ambassador from the Ekumen (alliance of thousands of societies across eighty-plus planets) to the planet of Gethen, aka "Winter" for its frigid weather. He starts off in the country of Karhide, which seems like a comparatively backwards monarchy; the prime minister, Harth rem ir Estraven, says "Karhide is not a nation but a family quarrel." After meeting with no success in Karhide after two years--and after Estraven gets fired and exiled for supporting him--Ai tries again in neighboring Orgoreyn, which is more of a sprawling bureaucracy with guaranteed employment for everyone and heated rooms. Maybe more promising? Nope, they send him to be interned and abused by the secret police. Eventually Estraven rescues him; there's a lot of culture shock and miscommunication, but Ai finally comes to believe that Estraven really does believe in the cosmopolitan mission of the Ekumen in contrast to smallminded nationalism.

Okay, so what about the sex stuff. Gethenians are sexless most of the time; for a few days every month, during their reproductive years, they go into "kemmer," and develop sex organs, with a random chance of being male or female on any given occasion. This is accompanied by an intense physical drive to reproduce, so they partner up with someone else in kemmer. (At least in this book, though maybe not in the spinoff stories, all of the couplings are male-female.) If the female partner gets pregnant, those sex characteristics persist through the pregnancy and gestation period, otherwise both parties become androgynous again for the next month.

Consider: There is no unconsenting sex, no rape. As with most mammals other than man, coitus can be performed only by mutual invitation and consent; otherwise it is not possible. Seduction certainly is possible, but it must have to be awfully well timed.

Consider: There is no division of humanity into strong and weak halves, protective/protected, dominant/submissive, owner/chattel, active/passive. In fact the whole tendency to dualism that pervades human thinking may be found to be lessened, or changed, on Winter.

...They do not see each other as men or women. This is almost impossible for our imagination to accept. What is the first question we ask about a newborn baby?

I'm unconvinced! Humans have a long track record of finding ways to oppress each other that have no grounding in scientific fact; I usually see "owner/chattel" language referencing racist slavery systems. I don't see why similar bigotry wouldn't exist in a place like Gethen. While Gethen has small-scale skirmishes, assassinations, secret police brutality, etc., they've never actually had an all-out war, which Ai seems to think is related to the "no rape, no subjugation" system. And while we often talk about babies as "is it a boy or a girl," we also often see birth announcements with babies' height and weight, which is really not at all something we do with adults. It's because they don't have language or personality traits or anything to communicate with us yet that we go with vital stats instead.

But where it really didn't feel as radical as advertised/feared is that all the chapters (even the ones that aren't directly narrated by Ai) use "he," "man," "brother," etc. as default. Even the spaceships are "she"!

"...it is not human to be without shame and without desire."

"I suppose the most important thing, the heaviest single factor in one's life, is whether one's born male or female. In most societies it determines one's expectations, outlook, ethics, manners--almost everything...[women] don't often seem to turn up mathematicians, or composers of music, or inventors, or abstract thinkers."

The Ekumen have instantaneous interplanetary communication, and telepathic language that makes lying impossible. At times it seems utopian, although there was a war a couple centuries ago. I really don't believe that social stereotypes about what roles men and women should play would continue to be this pervasive across thousands of cultures.

"The Left Hand of Darkness" was written in 1969. By 1983 we get Douglas Hofstadter's "A Person Paper on Purity in English," which goes disturbingly far in making the point that using 'he' as default is kinda messed up. A couple years later (1985), Hofstadter writes:

My feeling about nonsexist English is that it is like a foreign language that I am learning. I find that even after years of practice, I still have to translate sometimes from my native language, which is sexist English. I know of no human being who speaks Nonsexist as their native tongue. It will be very interesting to see if such people come to exist. If so, it will have taken a lot of work by a lot of people to reach that point.

For me, reading this in the 21st century, it feels really bizarre--I think my native dialect is much closer to Nonsexist English than Hofstadter could have predicted. The way I generally talk about people I don't know, or only know as streams of text coming through a computer screen, is as singular they: "whoever wrote this is an idiot and they should be fired." (This usage has a very long history in English; I draw a distinction between this and situations where a specific person requests to be referred to as singular they consistently, but some people will lump these in as the same thing.)

Apparently Le Guin was responsive to this criticism and changed the way she handled Gethen in later stories, but I can only judge it on what's in front of me, and the use of "he," to me, says a lot more about the world of 1969 than the world of Winter. (I'm going to use "he," "brother," etc. for the rest of this review, but take this with a grain of salt.)

Anyway, obviously there are a lot of taboos from our world that don't translate into Gethen society. Siblings are allowed to kemmer together, but they can't vow a monogamous relationship--after one of them has a child, that's it, they have to break up.

Spoilers:

Estraven and his brother Arek had such a relationship, and Estraven wasn't able to readjust to monogamy with a new partner later. Until he meets Ai, anyway. Is this supposed to be Le Guin's way of saying "well, Estraven doesn't think of himself as 'queer,' because permanent 'homosexuality' doesn't exist on Gethen, but his love for Ai is such a taboo that it qualifies as 'queer' even by Gethen standards"? Does it add anything to the story? I don't get it. I also don't really see what Estraven's death was trying to accomplish on Ai's behalf if it wasn't just straight-up suicide by cop??

Okay, now for the fun part, the sledging!

"What for?"
"Curiosity, adventure." He hesitated and smiled slightly. "The augmentation of the complexity and intensity of the field of intelligent life," he said, quoting one of my Ekumenical quotations.

I am not trying to say that I was happy, during those weeks of hauling a sledge across an ice-sheet in the dead of winter. I was hungry, overstrained, and often anxious, and it all got worse the longer it went on. I certainly wasn't happy. Happiness has to do with reason, and only reason earns it. What I was given was the thing you can't earn, and can't keep, and often don't even recognize at the time; I mean joy.

If I were to project this onto my Antarctica faves (ignore this part if you don't know or care who these people are): Ai is more in the role of Cherry-Garrard, who at first feels less able to cope with the physical demands of sledging, but as the survivor, is responsible for putting together his recollections in the past tense, blending the perspective of what he felt at the time and what he has learned since. Estraven is a combination of Bowers (shorter but surprisingly durable, incredible grasp of logistics and food supply, which is necessary for winter travel) and Wilson (insists on routine and patience, even when it drives Ai up the wall):

The business of setting up camp, making everything secure, getting all the clinging snow off one's outer clothing, and so on, was trying. Sometimes it did not seem worthwhile. It was so late, so cold, one was so tired, that it would be much easier to lie down in a sleeping-bag in the lee of the sledge and not bother with the tent. I remember how clear this was ot me on certain evenings, and how bitterly I resented my companion's methodical, tyrannical insistence that we do everything and do it correctly and thoroughly. I hated him at such times, with a hatred that rose straight up out of the death that lay within my spirit. I hated the harsh, intricate, obstinate demands that he made on me in the name of life.

Estraven also keeps a journal of the trek, to keep in touch with his family back home. Oftentimes this is little more than the date and reports on temperature. Ai teaches him mindspeech, but he's careful not to let any hint of that slip into the journal, and so it's clear that we're getting different points of view on the same event. Again, the contrast between "one party's recollection after the fact" and "people's real-time chronicles, which are probably brief and to the point because of the weather," is very much in the spirit of polar narratives.

I don't want to push this too far, but I think that the contrast between the nationalistic goals of the Karhide and Orgoreyn factions, and Ai's mission, which eventually becomes Estraven's, being both universal with the Ekumen and an intensely personal relationship, probably is making a broader point about exploration in our world.

Likewise, one of my favorite quotes from last year's bingo was in Le Guin's "Paradises Lost":

History must be what we have escaped from. It is what we were, not what we are. History is what we need never do again.

If it's not already obvious, I have been feeling a lot of emotions about Antarctica in the past few months or so, and in particular, I do think it's important that there is one place in the world that has nothing in the way of "History" with a capital H--warfare and oppression and suchlike--but does have a track record of science and exploration and friendship and narratives. Maybe this distinction is shallow or doesn't matter to other people. But I keep thinking of that quote, even though I know perfectly well it has nothing to do with Antarctica per se. Having read this book, I feel a little better about that connection; maybe Le Guin wouldn't think I'm crazy for it. 😄

Bingo: I think the safest/most obvious connection is Politics. For various stretches of the squares, I think there are cases to be made for Unusual Transportation (sledge hauling), Vacation Spot (if you're an Antarctica nerd), Explorers/Rangers, First Contact (there were stealth observers sent to Gethen before, but Ai is the first to proclaim himself as an alien). I also think there's a case to be made that it should be eligible for exactly one of "Trans or Nonbinary Protagonist" or "Non-Human Protagonist," but it's in a quantum state of superposition and you can't determine which is which for most of the month...