r/fantasy 2023 Book Bingo Wrap-Up
A year's worth of recommended reads!
It’s April, which means one round of the yearly r/fantasy Book Bingo Challenge has ended and another one has begun! I managed to complete the whole square, but with one substitution (as allowed by the rules). So I thought I’d do a round-up of what I read for the challenge last year.
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Title with a Title: David Mogo Godhunter by Suyi Davies Okungbowa: I’d been meaning to read this for a long time, as I loved Son of the Storm, and Suyi is brilliant in so many ways. (Listen to him on Episode 97 of Worldbuilding for Masochists!) This godpunk novel is intense and a fascinating exploration of axes of power when magic’s in the mix.
Other books I read which fit this square: Shieldmaiden by Sharon Emmerichs, The Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison.Superheroes: Maya and the Rising Dark by Rena Barron: I read this one for work to see if it’d be a good recommendation for our campers. And it is! A wonderful one, involving modern kids and the Orishas fighting an encroaching darkness. I may have slightly stretched the bounds of the prompt for this one, but the kids certainly do have superpowers
Other book I read which fit this square: Starter Villain by John Scalzi (which felt sort of like a cheat, since there aren’t really superpowers in it, persay? The supervillany is more Bond-style, but I did see others had put it on their list, so… ::shrug:: )Bottom of the TBR: Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi: This one had really been on my list forever, and I’m so glad I finally got to it! Really wonderful worldbuilding. (And yes, you are starting to notice a bit of a theme with all three of these first books centering on the Orishas, though it was only semi-intentional.)
Magical Realism or Literary Fantasy: The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna: This book is quite charming, with some lovely elements weaving the real world together with a magical world. I liked the elements of fantasy with found family elements more than the romance, I confess, but I’ll still be very interested to read the next in the series.
Young Adult: Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo: I feel like I’m destined to not read popular YA series until years after their publication, then tear through them in a single weekend. I did it with Hunger Games years ago, and it’s exactly what happened with Shadow and Bone last summer. I found them delightfully
Other books I read which fit this square: Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard: The Sword of Summer and The Hammer of Thor by Rick Riordan.Mundane Jobs: Sailing to Sarantium by Guy Gavriel Kay: Another one that had been on the list a long while! I’ve read lots of Kay by now, since he was recommended to me years ago as a good comp author for my own books. I really enjoyed these. The mundane job in question is that of a mosaicist who gets pulled from northern Italy—an absolute backwater in the 6th century—to Constantinople, center of the Eastern Roman Empire. In working on the mosaics for the Hagia Sophia, he gets entangled with the politics surrounding Justinian and Theodora, as well as a fair bit of dangerous magic. Naturally, I loved it!
Published in the 00s: The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman: A rare piece of Gaiman’s that I’d never read, and which someone recommended to me when I was flailing about towards the end of the challenge for something written in the 00s (that I had not read but actually wanted to).
Angels and Demons: The Scandalous Confessions of Lydia Bennett, Witch by Melinda Taub: This was one of the year’s great surprises, because as much as I enjoy Austen retellings, the quality of them can certainly vary, and attempting to make Lydia a compelling POV character seemed a dicey premise. But this book was so clever and engaging! A strong voice throughout, and it’ll certainly make you look at Lydia a different way.
5 Short Stories: Fit for the Gods edited by S. Zainab Williams and Jenn Northington: Well of course I was going to read this collection! (I’d love to have written for it, come to that). And reading an anthology makes this square simpler to achieve. The recontextualizations of ancient myths are wonderfully inventive throughout.
Horror: Wayward by Chuck Wendig: The sequel to the thoroughly unnerving Wanderers is every bit as darkly captivating as the first. It’s also a fascinating exploration of what, exactly, would happen in the wake of a truly devastating plague, the sort that wipes out 99% of the population. How much can be recovered from what’s left behind?
Other book I read that fits this square: The Butcher of the Forest by Premee MohamedSelf-Published: A Coup of Tea by Casey Blair: I enjoyed this so much that I immediately seized upon the rest of the series. These books blend elements of cozy fantasy together with political fantasy in a way that thoroughly delights me. The characters are a fascinating lot, and the narrative gently explores a lot of interpersonal dynamics and how axes of power and privilege are levered and can be negotiated.
Set in Space: Station Eternity by Mur Lafferty: This was my replacement square. The original was “Middle Eastern SFF”, and I very nearly made it. By March 31st, I was halfway through The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty, but I didn’t quite finish it. Fortunately, the challenge allows one substitution, and I had read this late in 2023 when Mur was a guest on Worldbuilding for Masochists. As we discussed in that episode, this book has really alien aliens—not just humans with prosthetics on, as it were. It makes for some really interesting biology, and those components end up coming together in the plot in very satisfying ways.
Published in 2023: The Weaver and the Witch Queen by Genevieve Gornichec: This book takes an interesting and under-examined historical setting and gives it a fantasy flourish that still managed to feel very much a part of the world. It’s set in tenth-century Norway, and it centers on a blood oath between three young women—one of whom is destined to be a queen to quite a fearsome king.
Quite a few other books elsewhere in this list were also published in 2023; so many that I am not going to try to list them here!Multiverse and Alternate Realities: Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands by Heather Fawcett: I have been thoroughly enjoying this series with its scholarly take on the Fae! It’s reminded me a little of the Lady Trent series by Marie Brennan, although the tone is somewhat different (and of course the focus is fairies, not dragons). And it really couldn’t get more patently multiverse/alternate reality than a book where the whole focus is on finding portals to other realms!
POC Author: Adia Kelbara and the Circle of Shamans by Isi Hendrix: Another one I read for work! This one is Afrofantasy drawing from Igbo lore, and it’s definitely going on my middle grade rec list for our campers.
Book Club or Readalong Book: An Unkindness of Magicians by Kat Howard: This is the sort of modern day fantasy that I just eat up with a spoon. The magic is both impressive and terrifying; the revenge plot is thrilling; the antagonists make you want to just reach into the book and strangle them. Very happy I finally checked this (and the sequel) off the TBR!
Novella: A Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers: Like the first in the series, this book is quiet and charming, a gentle exploration of identity and finding one’s purpose in life.
Mythical Beasts: Untethered Sky by Fonda Lee: Rocs! This book is basically falconry on steroids, and it’s a wonderful read, exploring the relationship between humanity and nature — but magnified through the lens of a fantastic creature. It’s like I’m always saying: magic in a story literalizes power dynamics and societal structures.
Elemental Magic: Tales of the Orishas by Hugo Canuto: This is one of the things I currently cannot shut up about. This graphic novel is exactly the sort of thing I’ve been looking for to give my campers, to introduce them to Yoruba lore. Canuto takes the Orishas and sort of superhero-izes them. The story is active and engaging, making these characters every bit as exciting as they deserve to be, while also weaving in the origin stories of several of the Orishas. I love sneaky education! I don’t know if the publisher currently has a plan to produce more of these, but I hope they will.
Myths and Retellings: Morgan is My Name by Sophie Keetch: It should probably come as no surprise that this was the square I had the most books fulfilling! So Morgan is My Name was the first one I read during the year that didn’t end up fulfilling a different square. I both love and am often hesitant about Arthurian retellings, because while I want to gobble them all up, they are make-or-break on the interpretation of Morgan. (It’s why I only got a little into Bernard Cornwell’s series that many people love so much; I just bounced off of that Morgan so hard). This one delighted me! I loved the character, and the story has a very political focus. It also featured Accolon, my obscure Arthuriana fave, more heavily than most retellings do, so it scratched a particular itch.
Other books that fit this square (that aren’t elsewhere on this list): Queen of None by Natania Barron; Asgardians: Odin by George O’Connor; Cursed by Thomas Wheeler and Frank Miller; The Witch’s Heart by Genevieve GornichecQueernorm Setting: Bookshops & Bone Dust by Travis Baldree: Like the first in the series, this was cute! All the pastries made me hungry while reading.
Coastal or Island Setting: Psyche and Eros by Luna McNamara: A thoughtful and intriguing updating of the Psyche myth. Psyche has a strong voice and an interesting emotional journey, and McNamara weaves in a lot of other myths as well. (I thought the Demeter, Persephone, and Atalanta elements worked better than the Trojan War elements).
Druids: Hounded by Kevin Hearne: I was scrambling toward the end of the challenge to find a druid-oriented book, so I ended up going with what was apparently the default option. 😅 This was fun! The male gaze is heavy, with more “boobily breasted down the stairs” descriptions than I care for, but the book is witty and I enjoyed the worldbuilding.
Robots: All Systems Red by Martha Wells: I’ve finally started this series and have been doing them in audio. Just as I always enjoy the explorations of personhood that Star Trek gives us through Data, the EMH, and others, I’ve liked riding along with Murderbot as it navigates that question for itself.
Other books I read which fit this square: Star Wars: The Halcyon Legacy by Ethan Sacks and Will SlineySequel: Furious Heaven by Kate Elliott: The second of the “genderflipped Alexander the Great in space” series! And this one sees Sun truly taking charge and beginning the analog to Alexander’s conquests. This book is a heckin’ chonkster and an excellent read, well worth the investment.
Other books I read which fit this square: Siege and Storm and Ruin and Rising by Leigh Bardugo; The Witness for the Dead and The Grief of Stones by Katherine Addison; Tea Set and Match by Casey Blair; A Restless Truth by Freya Marske
So there you have it! 25 of the 91 books I read last year actually fulfilling squares, and a fair few others as duplicates.
If this seems like a fun challenge to you, then I encourage you to go check out this year’s Book Bingo!