This year’s bingo was a bit of mess for me. I planned out almost 2 full cards and then I read all the books I was really excited for, and all the audiobooks and then I fell into a comfort reads only slump. So there was a lot of reorganization around … September(?) I ended up replacing a lot of my more “serious” plans with comfort reads and audiobooks.

Here’s the big post with all the information & square definitions.

I ended up with three cards, one featuring only BIPOC authors, one was meant to be only owned books, but that one strayed a lot, and a third that was mostly unplanned, just mood reads, book clubs, and then a little bingo reading towards the end to round it up.

Larger pics included below, but if you’re inclined to zoom in on the picture of my cover collage, here’s a higher res one. A legend of the icons is below, it’s a weird way to do stats but I just found it easier to count visually, because this year I HAD NO SPREADSHEETS. I started with one but it was too complicated wrangling 3 cards so I just alternated between using Canva and printed out image and a marker to show what I’ve read or make changes.

I’m rating this on a scale of heart ❤️, smiley face ☺️ and meh 😐, based mainly on enjoyment.

Stats

(but I counted without a spreadsheet so I’m sure I counted some books twice/not at all etc.)

• Books owned before bingo: 31, new books: 44. I do see it as a failing that my “owned books” card ended up with only 48% owned
• Only 19 of my original 45 planned books ended up being read for their original square, and 4 got bingo shuffled elsewhere, 20 didn’t get read at all, 2 I apparently lost in counting
• (closer to) SciFi: 12, (closer to) Fantasy: 63
• Adult 55, Young Adult 15, Middle Grade 5
• First in series: 25, Further in series: 16, Stand Alone 34 (including short stories and non-fiction)
• Print book 25, Ebook 19, Audiobook 31
• Repeat authors (across cards) 7

The books in italics were already covered in my midway post, but I figured it made more sense to leave them in now too.

First Row Across:

• Five SFF Short Stories

  • ❤️Love After the End: An Anthology of Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction by Joshua Whitehead – loved it, the stories are generally pretty optimistic, for stories about the end of the world, and I loved the relationship to the world that they showed
  • ☺️Hugo Finalist Short Stories – read as part of the hugo readalong … and tbh that was so long ago I don’t remember much, except that my favs were “A Guide for Working Breeds”, Vina Jie-Min Prasad a cute robot chat, and “Open House on Haunted Hill”, John Wiswell, a wholesome haunted house
  • ☺️Hugo Finalist Novelettes – I remember liking “The Pill”, Meg Elison, about a weight loss pill with high risks and Two Truths and a Lie, Sarah Pinsker about a creepy TV show.

• Set in Asia

• • ❤️The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart – loved it for the interesting world with bone magic constructs and the twisty plot. I liked how the different PoV characters switched between different views of the empire. Melphi is super cute.
  • ❤️Black Water Sister by Zen Cho – book club read, loved it, listened to the audio which was great because the local language sounds so well. I liked the way it showed the city and the MC’s relationship with her family and her girlfriend.
  • 😐The Cat Who Saved Books by Sōsuke Natsukawa – fell just short of having the right vibes for me, but it’s a cool story for lovers of cats and books

• A Selection from the r/Fantasy A to Z Genre Guide

  • ☺️Imaro by Charles Saunders – Enjoyed it a lot, the African-inspired world was great and I loved the evil creepy magic, will read on
  • ☺️ The Hidden City by Michelle West – I liked it, but I’m really over the street urchin and dangerous mentor combo atm. It does what it does very well, and the world is interesting, just not too keep to continue atm.
  • ❤️Invader by C.J. Cherryh – Oh gosh my new obsession. Book 2 is where it really gets into swing, I love Bren, I would die for him, just let him have a nap and a friend. Really fun diplomacy sci fi, I love the grumpy old gran character that shows up every so often.

• Found Family

  • 😐Catch Lili Too by Sophie Whittemore -a found family urban mystery, it’s got cool and unusual creatures/species but the pacing didn’t work for me
  • ❤️Jewel of the Endless Erg by John Bierce – I ended up binging the whole series, I love the found family and the ever-increasing epic scale of the magic stuff, so much cool and flashy magic.
  • ❤️Into the Labyrinth by John Bierce – Loved it, I am very rarely in the mood for progression fantasy but this time it hit just right, loved the magic school and found family

• First Person POV

  • ❤️The Everlasting Rose by Dhonielle Clayton – Another rare case of me reading past the first book in a series, and I really liked where this one went, now that all the curtains had been pulled back.
  • ❤️The Belles by Dhonielle Clayton – wonderful dark fairytale that does an excellent job with the “everything looks too good, there must be a dirty secret” vibes
  • ❤️Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer – didn’t have a clue what was going on most of the time, still loved it. Interesting and pretty unique society, set in a future but told in an anachronistic style

Second Row Across:

• Book Club OR Readalong Book

  • ☺️Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia – this book won me over when the hot nekkid god arrived and because I am a sucker for death/underworld mythology
  • ❤️Pet by Akwaeke Emezi – short and full of heart, a youngish YA story feeling somewere between comforting and bittersweet, loved the titular Pet character
  • ❤️A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny – so much fun, cats and dogs and other companions oh my

• New to You Author

  • ☺️Exit West by Mohsin Hamad – really liked it, had no clue what it would be about and was pleasantly surprised. It showed the migrant life through a very interesting perspective.
  • ❤️Conjure Women by Afia Atakora – set in slavery time and shortly after, this book deals with heavier subjects, and from a closer focus, than I usual read, but I ended up liking it a lot. It treats the subject very well and I loved the way it showed women’s power in the context.
  • ☺️The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle -TiL I might actually be into horror cause I keep loving the ones I try. Creepy cosmic horror

• Gothic Fantasy

  • ☺️Under the Pendulum Sun by Jeannette Ng – dripping with atmosphere as any good gothic book should, I loved the world here and, oddly, how weird and uncomfortable the romance was
  • ☺️ Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia – Nighmares for days! I like gothic, but I really gotta look up what to expect, still haunting me. It was very good at what it set out to do.
  • ❤️The Bone Houses by Emily LLoyd Jones – a cosy gothic? It was small scale, a really nice pairing of the main characters, and good vibes, despite all the corpses and ruins.

• Backlist Book

  • ❤️The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jemisin – this series is quickly becoming a favorites, loved learning so many new things/exploring motivations of the people in this world
  • ☺️Midnight Robber by Nalo Hopkinson – Another one I’m really glad I got in audio because it does interesting things with language.
  • 😐Age of Myth by Michael J. Sullivan – meh, not great not terrible, didn’t feel it lived up to Sullivan’s other series as the characters weren’t as charming

• Revenge-Seeking Character

  • ❤️Black Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse – the world was the star of the show in this one and I’m here for it. I felt like it kinda both delivered what it promised and ended on a cliffhanger, liked it, can’t wait for the next.
  • ❤️The Vor Game by Lois McMaster Bujold – Miles is miles of fun as always, great chaos energy, laughed out loud
  • ☺️The Eternal Champion by Michael Moorcock – liked it much better than expected, dark and violent but not graphic, felt a lot fresher than its age

Third Row Across:

• Mystery Plot

  • 😐The House of Shattered Wings by Aliette de Bodard – much as I loved the murder husbands novella set in this same world (Of Dragons, Feasts and Murder) it took me sooo long to slog through this one. It’s perfectly fine, the magical ruined Paris with declining great houses is still interesting, I think it was just too serious for my mood? And murder husband is more scary than fun when he shows up.
  • ☺️ Ophie’s Ghosts by Justina Ireland – a middle-grade historical murder mystery. I enjoyed it a lot, especially because it focuses domestic staff in the 1920s, and I feel like most books I come across set in that period show the more glitzy and/or gangster side
  • ❤️Paladin’s Grace by T. Kingfisher – I dunno why I put reading this off for so long. It was so much fun, the romance between mature but hesitant people was sweet. And I’ve recently started knitting so ofc I loved the big paladin that makes socks for his friends.

• Comfort Read

  • ❤️Amari and the Night Brothers by B.B. Alston –  Loved it, such a great fun and magical MG novel. Gave me the feeling of being a young one discovering magic again
  • ☺️ Oathbreakers by Mercedes Lackey – first book in the series was bleah, this one was great though, back to the feel good vibes I came for
  • ❤️Mooncakes by Suzanne Walker, Wendy Xu – reread! this graphic novel is just so feel-good and mushy and accepting, I love the granny witches and the visiting family, the budding romance, super cute

• Published in 2021

  • ☺️ Escaping Exodus: Symbiosis by Nicky Drayden – lots of fun, I was thinking it was more light-hearted than the first but then it hit me with some body horror
  • ❤️A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark – I just love steampunk djinn in Cairo, and this was fun (if kinda predictable) mystery. Fatma is so stylish, and the whole book really, very much here for the fashions. Honestly I would probably love anything Clark writes at this point
  • ❤️The King of Faerie by A.J. Lancaster – great series ender, everything scales up and the plots all come together in interesting ways, great payoff.

• Cat Squasher: 500+ Pages

  • ❤️ Thorn by Intisar Khanani – a retelling of the Goose girl fairytale, which I was not familiar with and kept expecting someone to turn into a goose, or a goose to turn into someone. None of that, but there was a very sensible MC and a portrayal of class politics that’s uncommon in fairytale retellings.
  • 😐Age of Swords by Michael J. Sullivan – meh again, way too much rapid tech growth for my tastes
  • ☺️The Winter King by C.L. Wilson – a romance novel that has a lot of strange sex writing in the first half, but the second half turned truly epic, I got much more invested that I was expecting

• SFF-Related Nonfiction

  • 😐Broken Places and Outer Spaces by Nnedi Okorafor – a novella-length non-fic, it was interesting, very focussed on her own experiences and recovery from injury and how that wove in with her love of Sci fi
  • ☺️Hustlers, Harlots and Heroes: A Regency and Steampunk Field Guide by Krista D. Ball – loved it, it’s not as fun as the food book, since it covers a lot about people living in poverty and what sort of jobs they might have had, but it’s still got Krista’s very readable style and has a lot of interesting info.
  • ❤️Darkly: Blackness and America’s Gothic Soul by Leila Taylor – this book took a while to get to the sff-related part, but it was a very intersting read, I’m not very knowledgable about gothic stuff, but I find American gothic very interesting and I really liked reading about it from the Black perspective.

Fourth Row Across:

• Latinx or Latin American Author 

  • 😐Cradle of Sea and Soil by Bernie Anés Paz – I loved the creative world, the giant dangerous forrest and the mother-son relationship, but the story didn’t quite grab me
  • ☺️ Miss Meteor by Tehlor Kay Mejia and Anna-Marie McLemore – I picked this up because I’ve wanted to read something my McLemore for a long time, and I’d heard one of the MCs is pan, so it was relevant to my interests. I loved how the queerness part was handled, and how the two main characters came into their own, some very satysfying scenes, but it still took me a long time to read this book because the beauty pagent aspect of the story didn’t really work for me.
  • ❤️A Dash of Trouble by Anna Meriano – a cosy middle grade book, quick fun read, lead to unscheduled baking of cookies

• Self-Published 

  • 😐Elemental: Shadows of Otherside Book 1 by Whitney Hill – Something just didn’t click with me here, I think because elves and vampires being in the same universe apparently confuses me cause I associate them with the same sort of stereotypes.
  • ❤️The Lord of Stariel by A.J. Lancaster – I binged this whole series in a little over a week, a secondary world regency-vibes romance with faeries and great characters that I rooted for so much
  • ☺️Night Shift Dragons by Rachel Aaron – fun end to a series, it was good to have more dragons in this one

• Forest Setting

  • ❤️The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri – loved it! it took me a good chunk to get used to the switching PoVs (my epic fantasy is rusty) but once I got the hang of them I loved every character, the creepy woods and creepier magic system were great and I’m a huge fan of stories showing how women wield power in situations where they’re not meant to have any.
  • ❤️Into the Wild by Erin Hunter – Antoher series I binged in my great comfort read phase of 2021. It’s warrior cats in a forrest. They are very cute and cat-like. Yes it’s for children, no I don’t care, meow.
  • ❤️Fire and Ice by Erin Hunter – Honestly, I read 4-5 of these in quick succesion, I don’t distinguish between them at all, there’s more cats.

• Genre Mashup 

  • ❤️The Midnight Bargain by C.L. Polk – loved it, such a great mix of infuriating and comforting. A regency-like secondary world fantasy of manners book in a very sexist society with a main character who’s not having it and makes friends with two greats foreigners.
  • ❤️The Relentless Moon by Mary Robinette Kowal – this series was already great in my book but this entry took it higher. I loved the new main character (I was a bit worried about that) and the plot was gripping and relentless
  • 😐The Philosopher’s Flight by Tom Miller – good book that I read at a wrong time for me. It sort of gender-flips sexism in a world with conflict brewing and something about it was too frustrating to read in shitty times.

• Has Chapter Titles 

  • 😐Lost in the Never Woods by Aiden Thomas – a Peter Pan retelling, it was alright but kinda underwhelming compared to how much I loved Thomas’ other book.
  • ☺️Lightless by C.A. Higgins – a small scale scifi, in some ways reminded me of Long Way to Angry Planet, but less cosy, still optimistic, I think. I don’t remember it very well, and the parts I do were spoilers, but it was fun and I might continue the series.
  • ❤️Piranesi by Susanna Clarke – unlike anything else, very atmospheric, quiet weird, focussed on big house, less you know the better

Fifth Row Across:

• Title: _____ of _____ 

  • ☺️Kingdom of Souls by Rena Barron – a dark YA inspired by African folklore, I liked it a lot, actually finished listening to it between after I started this long ass post, so it’s greyed out in pics. A good mix of some really nice moments in between lots of very nasty ones. I love gods in books so very into all the orisha stuff.
  • ☺️The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin – brrr brrrr cold. I liked this, but as usual with Le Guin I found it a slow read. I think at its time it was a revolutionary take on gender, but reading it now it really was the cold that stuck with me more, I think I’ve just read more books with non-binary characters than with ice-planets.
  • ❤️Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold – I love the world of the five gods so much! It was great to be back, I admit I went through the entire audiobook in one day so it’s very mushed together in my mind I need to relisten
  • (did I just last-minute consider shuffling around so that I’d have Reaper of Souls for this square too, and have them all be of souls? yes but too lazy)

• First Contact

  • ☺️The Sound of Stars by Alechia Dow – Very much liked the characters even though the alien colonization setting is most grim. Music was woven into the tale in an interesting way.
  • ❤️Foreigner by C.J. Cherryh – yes hello, u/KristaDBall made me do it. I’m already on book 8. I was planning to just read one. This is my life now. I haven’t read 8 consecutive books in a series since WoT in … 2014?
  • ☺️Substitution: Historical Fantasy: Trouble the Saints by Alaya Dawn Johnson – this is one of the gangster/crime life 1920s(ish) books I was talking about above. It has such an interesting structure, 2/3 through the book and I had no clue where it was going. It’s not at all similar to what I’m used to in SFF. I didn’t really like the first PoV character, but luckily that ended up changing and the book grew on me a lot.

• Trans or Nonbinary Character

  • ❤️The Undertakers by Nicole Glover – sequel to The Undertakers, I liked it a lot, loved having more time to get to know some of the side characters.
  • ☺️ The Four Profound Weaves by B.R. Lemberg – liked it a lot, a very atmospheric novella with the feel of an old tale. The characters are older people which makes for an interesting change.
  • ☺️Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey – I loved the concept of the book, wild-west librarians distributing books among isolated towns. I wish the lens were a little wider and we got to know the side characters more.

• Debut Author 

  • ❤️The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson – loved it, it’s post-apocalyptic, multiple-universe book with some heavy heavy stuff and some Mad Max vibes. Found it very creative and well written.
  • 😐Child of the Daystar by Bryce O’Connor – This started off great with a young dragon-like kid in a travelling merchant sort of culture, nice family, lots of fun. Then it got all serious and grim on me and I’m just not into that, so lost me in the second half, too much mudering left and right.
  • 😐Finna by Nino Cipri – fun furniture-store multiverse novella. It’s an interesting concept with some fun worlds and unsubtle criticisms, it was fine but not quite great

• Witches 

  • ☺️ The Shadow Glass by Rin Chupeco – good ending to the series, I liked how it showed the contrast between what the MC has been and what she’d become, also there was one bit where I laughed out loud and was m
  • ☺️Season of the Witch by Sarah Rees Brennan – Lots of fun, super quick read, characters I know and love from the TV show, really good tie-in novel
  • ☺️ Reaper of Souls by Rena Barron – sequel to Kingdom of Souls, the two books kinda blurred together in my memory, but I do remember it doing some interesting stuff with memory and loyalty.

Pfew, that was long, enough words from me, carry on.