Fantasy Bingo 2019 | Update 1

Hi! Back in March/April, I mentioned that I had completed Fantasy Bingo 2018, which is a year-long reading challenge hosted by r/Fantasy over on reddit. On April 1st, the new bingo challenge began, and I’ve been reading books towards in since. Last year, I did monthly updates in my wrap up posts but I noticed I didn’t always read towards it every month, so this year I’m going to do more sporadic updates when I actually have new books to add onto the thing.

If you are interested in participating (It runs from April 1st 2019 – March 31st 2020 and you can add books you’ve read between April 1st and now retroactively), check out the full announcement post here for the rules and whatnot. Also, check out the huge post of recommendations if you need ideas to fill topics.

Here is this year’s card:

When I signed up, I decided to attempt Hard Mode when possible, which is when the prompts are further restricted (hard mode prompts can be found in the post I linked) and I also wanna do Hero Mode, which is where I write a review for each book read. Now if you’ve been following my blog lately you’ll notice I haven’t written many reviews in the past couple months. I’ll get there… They’ll show up, hehe. If they’re not written yet, the Hero Mode will be shown as not struck out, but also not bolded.

Keep in mind I might juggle squares around as the months go by, but here is my progress so far:

Novel featuring a character with a disability: Fool’s Assassin by Robin Hobb (Hard Mode | Hero Mode) I didn’t expect this book to count for really anything, buuuuut one of the characters ended up being injured, resulting in the loss of one of their senses. I won’t say who or why or what, for spoilers. But it made this book count for this square.

SFF novel by a local to you author: Dark Matter by Blake Crouch (Hard Mode | Hero Mode) According to Goodreads, this author lives about 400 miles from me. Being from the United States, 400 miles is a 7 hour car ride and would definitely be considered ‘local’. I didn’t go out of my way to find a closer author though, so no hard mode for this one.

Novel featuring an AI character: Cinder by Marissa Meyer (Hard Mode | Hero Mode) One of the main character’s friends is a robot with a witty AI personality. So, totally counts.

Retelling: The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden (Hard Mode | Hero Mode) This is a retelling of a Russian folktale!

SFF novel by an Australian author: Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff (Hard Mode | Hero Mode) Pretty sure both authors are Australian, but I know at least Jay Kristoff is.

Final book of a series: League of Dragons by Naomi Novik (Hard Mode | Hero Mode) This is the ninth and final book in Novik’s Temeraire series. It was a long time coming and I’m pining for it now. I miss it.

#OwnVoices: The Poppy War by R. F. Kuang (Hard Mode | Hero Mode) This is a fantasy book based on the events of the Rape of Nanjing. It was really good and rather intense.

Five SFF Short Stories: A Thousand Beginnings and Endings by a buttload of authors (Hard Mode | Hero Mode) To be honest I kinda dreaded this square. I’m not a huge fan of short stories and this collection just reiterated that to me.

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And that’s it so far. All future posts will only mention new books added, and if any books have been moved to different squares. Happy reading!