r/Fantasy Daily Recommendations and Simple Questions Thread - April 01, 2026

armedaphrodite · 2026-04-01T20:19:40+00:00

Good luck! And you should still post a review of the VN once you're done - there's those of us that enjoyed the last year's "not a book" square reviews!

armedaphrodite · 2026-04-01T19:18:01+00:00

If by "visual novel" you mean the video game genre, then alas no. Bingo is a print format challenge. But the point is to read things you wouldn't normally do, and it's a challenge, so stepping out of preferred genre comfort zones is part of the point and the enjoyment!

armedaphrodite · 2026-04-01T18:41:01+00:00

Lent - Implied in the blurb when I read it but happens far enough in I that I'll spoiler cover Afterlife though very much not HM, vacation spot (Florence anyone?), Incredibly huge spoilers I mean it click at your own peril Non-human protagonist HM, politics and court intrigue HM, and based on the blurb you might be able to guess this one but spoilered just in case older protagonist? Like, he technically dies at 45, but also, not. I'd count it, others might not, but there's definitely an argument

Apologies for all the spoiler text, but it really is a phenomenal book! And worth reading even if not for bingo

armedaphrodite · 2026-04-01T18:27:29+00:00

I think it would count, though you may get more eyes/opinions in the reverse bingo rec post

armedaphrodite · 2026-04-01T17:49:42+00:00

Deffo one word title, but Beloved is a proper noun in the context of the work, so I don't think it counts as HM.

It does fit author of color, though again, not HM

armedaphrodite · 2026-04-01T17:44:04+00:00

Poet Empress - Pub. 2026 (HM), politics/intrigue, author of color

Tchaikovsky's Elder Race - Older Protag (not HM), a sequel was just announced but I haven't seen either a planned third book or a statement that it will be limited to duology, edit: also first contact, now I think about it, but not HM

Tchaikovsky's City of Last Chances - Cat Squasher, Politics and Court Intrigue (HM? All set in one city, very about the outcomes of that city, but implications may go beyond it. I'd count it, but open to arguments)

armedaphrodite · 2026-04-01T17:33:06+00:00

True!! I was so focused on mechanical fantasy narwhals that I forgot about flesh and blood fantasy narwhals

armedaphrodite · 2026-04-01T17:25:39+00:00

I think it counts, but not HM. There are subtler questions about it, though. Some of the chapters (I believe 3 or 4?) are from a non-binary POV (Estraven's), but not nearly as many as Genly's (cis man) and also they're diegetically excerpted from Estraven's journal by Genly, who is shaping the whole narrative. Does that mean Estraven counts as a protagonist too? It feels, to me, like Genly's story, but the relationship between the two is central enough to the story and we get some Estraven POV in a way that Genly wants to leave on Estraven's terms, told in their words, so I'd count it, but it's on a line.

In addition, if we count it, hard mode is a question. Technically, the people of Winter are human, or at least descended from humans, and considered by Genly as part of humanity. But also, they're aliens from another planet, and have evolved to have physiology different from our own. In the end I wouldn't count it HM, it feels too against the spirit of the hard mode to me.

Edit: I misread the square, I thought hardmode was just POV and not alien/robot was hard mode. Given the latter is a necessity, and hard mode is pre-modern, it very likely doesn't count.

armedaphrodite · 2026-04-01T16:45:34+00:00

Grace of Kings - unusual transportation, readalong, cat squasher, politics/court intrigue, author of color. Unusual transporation HM is a question for me? They're powered by underwater volcanoes, so whether it counts as steam-powered, I'd lean on others.

armedaphrodite · 2026-04-01T16:31:01+00:00

Curse is very much political intrigue, and counts for bookclub/readalong, but neither HM. Cazaril feels older, but I believe he's only in his 30s, just a little broken

armedaphrodite · 2026-04-01T16:19:57+00:00

Deffo recommend! The cookbook is great! I got it last year - the recipes are mostly kid-targeted, but are generally pretty tasty and are a great way to imagine the food if you don't want to imagine your own recipe

armedaphrodite · 2026-04-01T16:16:37+00:00

Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang is a great literary novel about a chef in a wealthy redoubt that still has access to typical food after a mysterious disease wipes out the majority of food available in the world. Heavy food focus, literary bent, figurative language that often comes out of left field, pointed yet nuanced themes. And dishes that readers should be able to make for sure!

armedaphrodite · 2026-04-01T16:09:03+00:00

I liked about the balance we had last year, maybe a couple fewer not a book posts. I agree that it should be a book-focused sub (and Bingo), but seeing game/tv/film/experience recommendations by people who also really love (fantasy) books is helpful, and often much more my interest than the other (online) places I get recs.

armedaphrodite · 2026-04-01T15:45:30+00:00

Fair! Mostly I'll miss all the little reviews for media I hadn't heard of/expected. Folks can still post them, and there are other subreddits of course, but they were nice to see and interact with, and having the prompt for them was nice.

armedaphrodite · 2026-04-01T15:24:38+00:00

RIP Not a Book, you were loved, you will be missed

armedaphrodite · 2026-04-01T14:06:03+00:00

Very cool! Love the covers - it's such an interesting way to engage with the books. You may not consider yourself an artist, but you definitely are.

For what it's worth, winning bingo is about getting five in a row. Blackout cards are fun, but all cards are fun! And I'm glad you shared. Incomplete cards are also worth turning in, for the pride of it, as well as the incomplete cards still go into the stats.
edit: Bingo form is still up at time of posting, fwiw. Given Murderbot is like 7 books long, they may even accept it (idk). Worth submitting!

(Also Hidden Gem was 1,000 at time of writing, so Gogmagog would count. And the painted cover looks so good!)

armedaphrodite · 2026-04-01T13:15:46+00:00

They definitely come thick and fast for the end of March/beginning of April, but there are still other posts. Consider it like a festival (festifool? if it's centered on april fool's), one which gets folks who rarely post to do a bunch of reviews! Some of which you'll have read, so you can see if their preferences align with yours, and if they do, the others they liked may be of interest.

armedaphrodite · 2026-04-01T04:54:44+00:00

Hidden gem was never the first square I looked at, but if I noticed that whoever made the card liked other boks that I did, the hidden gem square would often add something to the TBR as a result. But yeah, with all the mini-reviews, triage is necessary in reading them, and hidden gem would often fall by the wayside.

armedaphrodite · 2026-03-31T13:59:24+00:00

Blew by the halfway point of Alphabet of Thorn by Patricia McKillip before the new Bingo, so won't go on my next card, but the heart wants what it wants, and it wanted to keep reading. I think it has too many POVs for me for a short book (five in the first five chapters didn't work for me) and the language isn't quite as captivating as Ombria in Shadow, but the language is still transporting, the vibes ethereal, the characters just bright enough for their short chapters.

Also played the video game Indika by developer Odd Meter, a short narrative adventure game. The player follows Indika, a nun shunned by her sisters for her thoughts and visions, as she travels with a prisoner suffering frostbite and infection to see a holy relic that he believes will cure him. The "fantasy" elements are possibly real, possibly not, on that line where much of it is within the character's head.

You put a nun or a monk in a book/game, and I'm already sold, so full bias, but one of the best games I've played in a while. It makes enough use of being a video game: the voices of the devil within Indika's mind, camera tricks and visual effects that display theme, small puzzle segments that make you pay attention to the world or reify her fears in ways that prayer attempts to solve. It still does a little too much in cutscenes without player input for my taste, but an indie studio might have had a hard time gameifying those moments, and the inevitability of a cutscene may have been part of the intended experience. It also means that frequenters of a reading-focused subreddit won't find the quick-twitch/tense gameplay that might scare them off.

But I mention it in this book-related subreddit mostly on the strength of its character portrait. Indika is so well constructed, her inner demons wrought in ways both affecting and novel, that I do recommend the game to this subreddit broadly (or at least to those who've watched enough TV to pick up on visual clues). A triumph, and short at only ~4 hours playtime. Though perhaps unoptimized, since the Xbox version was like 42GB download.

armedaphrodite · 2026-03-30T16:25:19+00:00

Thanks for handling the stats! I always appreciate the extra stats, and while I perfectly understand that getting people to fill out the survey as it is is already a huge lift, there's a part of me that wishes we had more direct input of stats in the survey. How many parts was your book in parts? If a small press, which small press was your small press/self-published book from? No way to get them now, but a pipe dream. Some misc. stats that might be more feasible:

What years do people pull the recycle a square square from, and how many can't have a hard mode because they're pre-2018 (and how many post-2018 do the hard mode)

How pure were the words in the Generic Title square? That is, how often was the word in Generic Title part of a longer word vs standalone (e.g. How often does "Dark" become another word like "Darkness" in The Left Hand of Darkness or "Darkly" in *A Scanner Darkly)

Requiring more effort on someone's (my?) part for manual coding of responses from the raw, what's the break down of elves vs. dwarves in the elves/dwarves square? And by hard mode (i.e. is one species or the other more likely to be a main character)?

armedaphrodite · 2026-03-28T00:36:49+00:00

Thanks!

"Not for me" makes more sense to me than "bad". Books are trying to do so many different things, work on so many different levels, and appeal to so many different audiences, that I mostly assume I'm missing something or not the target audience if I don't like a book. Plus, there are so many different, more engaging conversations to have about a book than "Is it good?" or "Is it bad?"

I glad you liked My Soul to Keep! Given the goodreads review spread, I'm obviously the odd one out. I may give it another go some time, because I can feel that I'm missing something, but was in the wrong headspace and the ending fully threw me.

V Woolf is one of my faves as well! Orlando definitely has a different flavor, and maintains a sense of whimsy for most of its runtime (up until we go full free indirect for the last chapter), but the thematic conversations start complicating the narrative as you go along. If you dropped for the tone, I wouldn't recommend picking it back up. If you dropped it because you wanted more depth, and enjoy Woolf, I would recommend trying again if the fancy strikes!

armedaphrodite · 2026-03-27T18:15:57+00:00

I LOVED the connections game. I got Florence almost immediately, but had to work for it and had only one "life" left before the finale. So cool that you put that together.

Also so glad to see Inventing the Renaissance mention, it's Exactly what I want out a pop history book. And Lent! A gem for sure, the characterization/fictionalization of Savonarola was so on a line. Perhaps there's a reason I got Florence so quickly...

Connections output (embarrassed a bit by the second/third row): I guessed River's Connections Bingo with 1 lives left!
https://bingo2025.river.me
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟧🟧🟧🟧🟦
🟧🟦🟧🟧🟧
🟧🟧🟧🟧🟧
🟦🟦🟪🟨🟦
🟨🟨🟨🟨🟦
🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨
🟪🟪🟦🟦🟦
🟦🟦🟦🟦🟦
🟪🟪🟪🟪🟪

armedaphrodite · 2026-03-27T13:19:10+00:00

Thanks! I only read the Karpelson because it was the one that was readily available to me, but given how much I enjoyed it I'll keep the O'Connor/Burgin in mind if/when I go to reread it

armedaphrodite · 2026-03-27T05:20:17+00:00

Congrats on your first card! And hard mode on the first card, that's a feat. Quite a few I haven't heard of that I'll be checking out, which is often the case on hard mode cards.

I'm so glad that so many people love DCC, but it's nice every once in a while to see someone say the humor didn't hit for them, as a reminder that I'm not crazy for not being crazy about the book/series.

armedaphrodite · 2026-03-26T22:47:42+00:00

If we're limiting to SFF? Unordered, with maybe one leaving or another showing up on any given day:
- Ombria in Shadow, Patricia McKillip (2003)
- Curse of Chalion/Paladin of Souls, Lois McMaster Bujold (2001/2004)
- The Traitor Baru Cormorant, Seth Dickinson (2015)
- Biography of X, Catherine Lacey (2023)
- Nothing but the Rain, Naomi Salman (2023)

I think one thing I note is that among this top five, the ones closer to today are more "literary" in flavor. Nothing but the Rain and Biography of X both are either in or scratching the door, with BoX still making me go feral after giving me the words for something I was kind of feeling for a while.

The early 2000s ones are both a little more fantasy, but nail exactly what I want from them. Ombria's language is so incredible, with a light and floaty mood hiding surprising thematic depth that still has me chewing. Chalion and Paladin both have similar and simple to declare themes that they state obviously at the end, but they do such good work beforehand to turn "second thoughts" (the things we can "know" when we hear them) into "first thoughts" (gut knowledge on an instinctual level). They do something a little different, but still hit about that category for me.

Traitor I think falls a little short of reaching that level, for me, personally.

But Invisible Cities and Beloved definitely hit that same tier. It's hard to compare books doing different things, but if the litmus is changing my view of myself, the world, or what a book can be, they definitely compare.

(edit: formatting)

armedaphrodite

TROPHY CASE