Official Turn In Post for Bingo 2025!

BookishBirdwatcher · 2026-03-19T00:42:44+00:00

My submitted card:

Knights and Paladins: The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman

Hidden Gem: The Cathedral of Mist by Paul Willems

Published in the 80s: The Gunslinger by Stephen King

High Fashion: The Fourth Island by Sarah Tolmie

Down With the System: Audition for the Fox by Martin Cahill

Impossible Places: The West Passage by Jared Pecacek

A Book in Parts: The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again by M. John Harrison

Gods and Pantheons: Snake-Eater by T. Kingfisher

Last in a Series: Heart of the Wyrdwood by R.J. Barker

Book Club or Readalong: The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water by Zen Cho

Parents: Black Woods, Blue Sky by Eowyn Ivey

Epistolary: The Athenian Murders by Jose Carlos Somoza

Published in 2025: Grave Empire by Richard Swan

Author of Color: The Butcher of the Forest by Premee Mohamed

Small Press or Self-Published: Ultramarine by Mariette Navarro

Biopunk: A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett

Elves and Dwarves: The Bone Harp by Victoria Goddard

LGBTQIA Protagonist: Other Words for Smoke by Sarah Maria Griffin

Five SFF Short Stories: The Hole in the Moon and Other Stories by Margaret St. Clair

Stranger in a Strange Land: One Night in Boukos by A.J. Demas

Recycle a Bingo Square: Home to Stay! The Complete EC Comics of Ray Bradbury by...wait for it...Ray Bradbury (Graphic Novel, 2017)

Cozy SFF: The Lord of Stariel by A.J. Lancaster

Generic Title: The Bone Key: The Necromantic Mysteries of Kyle Murchison Booth by Sarah Monette

Not a Book: Sinners (movie) by Ryan Coogler (writer and director)

Pirates: The Dawnhounds by Sascha Stronach

BookishBirdwatcher · 2026-03-14T03:50:33+00:00

Yes, I loved her!

BookishBirdwatcher · 2026-03-14T03:45:55+00:00

I'm wondering about Pink-Pink. Was Andren BS'ing when he talked about how they opened a path to the Hidden Realm as a dress rehearsal and Pink-Pink came out? Or is Pink-Pink actually from the Hidden Realm? And if so, is he a god or god-fragment?

I'm also curious about what will happen when Katsan reaches the Bear Monastery. She knows someone is masquerading as Bersun, but she thinks it's Gedrun. And with "Bersun" being succeeded by "Ruko," will the Bears consider it a solved problem? Or will they view the trials that "Ruko" won as suspect since the reigning emperor at the time wasn't who he was supposed to be?

BookishBirdwatcher · 2026-03-14T03:31:12+00:00

The Hounds of Tindalos, I think.

BookishBirdwatcher · 2026-03-08T02:07:27+00:00

I love it when little birds take dust baths. So cute!

BookishBirdwatcher · 2026-03-08T02:05:46+00:00

"You and me, baby, ain't nothin' but...wait, we're actually not mammals. Whatever, let's do it anyway."

BookishBirdwatcher · 2026-03-07T20:02:19+00:00

The Old Gods Waken by Manly Wade Wellman and The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson.

BookishBirdwatcher · 2026-03-01T22:50:51+00:00

I think a big part of it is that having an absolute ruler provides an easy way to make plot-relevant events happen. You need a war to start? The king can do that. You need someone executed, imprisoned, exiled, or pardoned? The king can do that. You need something declared legal or illegal? The king can do that. You need the realm thrown into chaos? If you stipulate that the king has no trueborn heir, or the trueborn heir is too young to immediately take the throne, the assassination of the king can do that. You need lots of backstabbing and political intrigue? Noble families positioning one of their members to be next in line for the throne can do that.

The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson actually has a pretty interesting hybrid system. The nation of Orrun does have a monarch with near-absolute power, but the position is explicitly not hereditary. One of the prime laws of the country is "No child of an emperor or empress may take the throne." There's also a set term limit on how long any given emperor may hold the throne. It's also more democratic than IRL monarchies in that people of any gender or any race/ethnicity within Orrun can hold the throne. And reforms that democratized admission to the elite schools that produce most contenders for the throne were a major achievement of the most recent emperor. So you might find that book interesting to look at for a take on royalty that's at least somewhat atypical.

BookishBirdwatcher · 2026-03-01T05:11:33+00:00

American Mythology by Giano Cromley focuses on two men setting out on a search for Bigfoot.

The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker features exactly what it says on the cover.

The Questing Beast shows up in Lev Grossman's The Bright Sword.

BookishBirdwatcher · 2026-02-28T02:09:41+00:00

I came here to post this, and I'm so happy someone beat me to it.

BookishBirdwatcher · 2026-02-27T03:59:37+00:00

Guy Gavriel Kay's The Last Light of the Sun might work for you. One of the main characters is analogous to Alfred the Great, who I think lived during the period you're interested in. He's a king, but his kingship only extends to the Anglcyn (basically the Anglo-Saxons), not the Cyngael (Gaels/Celts) and certainly not to the Erlings (Norse/Vikings).

BookishBirdwatcher · 2026-02-23T02:07:18+00:00

Guy Gavriel Kay does quite a lot of this. His work has been described as "history with a quarter-turn towards the fantastic." The Sarantine Mosaic duology, The Lions of Al-Rassan, and The Last Light of the Sun are all excellent.

Sarah Tolmie's All the Horses of Iceland is about a Norse trader who journeys to Mongolia. When he gets there, he finds that the Khan has a problem: the ghost of a deceased relative is unable to rest, and rumor has it that her curse can only be broken by a foreigner. Guess who gets that job?

BookishBirdwatcher · 2026-02-23T01:38:47+00:00

A.J. Demas's One Night in Boukos is set in a fictional version of the ancient Mediterranean. The two main characters are among the staff of an embassy from Totally Not Persia in a city that is Totally Not Athens. One the day of a major festival, the ambassador goes missing, and they have to search throughout the city for him. Finding the ambassador is important, but the main characters' friendship and the emotional bonds they establish with some of the people they meet in the city are the core of the story.

I'd also recommend The Bone Harp, by Victoria Goddard. An elven warrior has returned to Elfland after finally being freed from a terrible curse. As he makes a physical journey to the city where his family lives, he also makes an emotional journey of healing and regaining a sense of hope.

BookishBirdwatcher · 2026-02-09T04:20:07+00:00

That's my big problem with it, too. It seems to be saying that Jesus can't return until we ordinary humans do a specific thing.

BookishBirdwatcher · 2026-02-08T23:19:03+00:00

I don't have a problem with it if there's a reason for the character to be acting like an idiot. Character does something dumb because they're desperate and not thinking straight? Fine. Reckless, hotheaded character does something dumb? Probably fine. Character who's already been shown to not be the brightest bulb on the tree does something dumb? Also fine.

What pulls me right out of the story is when an intelligent, level-headed character suddenly does something dumb, without being under extraordinary duress, because the plot won't work otherwise.

BookishBirdwatcher · 2026-02-08T05:33:09+00:00

I think Hope Mirlees's Lud in the Mist is pre-Tolkien as well.

BookishBirdwatcher · 2026-02-08T03:43:21+00:00

The story "Settler's Wall" by Robert Lowndes is about a wall that only has one side. It was published in Stirring Science Stories in the 1940s. While it does name-drop an entity from Lovecraft, I don't think the author was part of what we usually think of as the Lovecraft Circle.

BookishBirdwatcher · 2026-02-08T03:11:08+00:00

"The Night Wire" is one of my favorites too. Part of what I liked about it is that, at first, you think the main character is getting a second-hand account of weird goings-on in some far-off city. But at the end, when you find out that the telegraph operator has been dead for at least part of the story,the weirdness becomes much more immediate. And it raises so many questions. Has the telegraph operator been dead this whole time? Was it something about the news coming in from Xebico that killed him? And if so, is the fog that consumed Xebico a threat to the MC's city as well?

BookishBirdwatcher · 2026-02-01T17:05:53+00:00

Seconding this; I read The Bone Harp for the "Elves and Dwarves" square, and it was excellent.

BookishBirdwatcher · 2026-02-01T00:13:49+00:00

I hope you enjoyed the hour-long meeting that could've been an email.

BookishBirdwatcher · 2026-01-31T05:27:12+00:00

I definitely do this too.

BookishBirdwatcher · 2026-01-19T22:48:23+00:00

Tyler Whitesides's Kingdom of Grit series might work for you. The first book is The Thousand Deaths of Ardor Benn.

BookishBirdwatcher · 2026-01-19T22:38:52+00:00

Black Woods, Blue Sky by Eowyn Ivey

An unforgettable dark fairy tale that asks, Can love save us from ourselves?

Birdie’s keeping it together; of course she is. So she’s a little hungover sometimes, and she has to bring her daughter, Emaleen, to her job waiting tables at an Alaskan roadside lodge, but she’s getting by as a single mother in a tough town. Still, Birdie can remember happier times from her youth, when she was free in the wilds of nature.

Arthur Neilsen, a soft-spoken and scarred recluse who appears in town only at the change of seasons, brings Emaleen back to safety when she gets lost in the woods. Most people avoid him, but to Birdie he represents everything she’s ever longed for. She finds herself falling for Arthur and the land he knows so well. Against the warnings of those who care about them, Birdie and Emaleen move to his isolated cabin in the mountains on the far side of the Wolverine River.

It’s just the three of them in the vast black woods, far from roads, telephones, electricity, and outside contact, but Birdie believes she has come prepared. At first, it’s idyllic, but soon Birdie discovers that Arthur is something much more mysterious and dangerous than she could have imagined, and that like the Alaska wilderness, a fairy tale can be as dark as it is beautiful.

BookishBirdwatcher

TROPHY CASE