My favorite annual reading challenge is back for its 12th year! r/Fantasy has released their 2026 Bingo card, and I’m excited for the annual TBR reshuffling that ensues. For the past six years, I’ve done two cards, one themed and one with whatever is left over. But as my reading shifts more and more to short fiction and as I attempt to make sustainable decisions about reading goals, I’ve decided this year to do one official card and one cheater card filled out entirely with short fiction. With the exception of the Five Short Stories square, Bingo requires each entry to be at least novella-length. But I read a lot of short stories, and it sounds fun to fit them into a Bingo board! So why not do both?
So I’ll be looking for 25 different books by 24 different authors (usually this is 25, but the Duology square is new this year) fitting these 25 Bingo categories. And I’ll also be looking for short fiction doing the same! Let’s take a closer look at the board, where I’ll share both my recommendations and my TBR items! Fair warning, the “trying to make sustainable decisions about reading goals” means the TBR is a bit sparser, so I may be soliciting as many recommendations as I’m giving.
Trans or Nonbinary Protagonist
Story features a trans or nonbinary protagonist. Must not be an alien or robot. Hard mode: the story is set in premodern times.
My Recommendations
Shelley Parker-Chan’s She Who Became the Sun is excellent and will be a popular recommendation, as will Nghi Vo’s Singing Hills novellas. I also quite enjoyed R.B. Lemberg’s The Four Profound Weaves and S. Qiouyi Lu’s In the Watchful City, and I’m inclined to argue Indrapramit Das’ The Last Dragoners of Bowbazar counts, though I’m not sure the lead is ever officially labeled as such.
Candidates from my TBR
I’ve heard a lot of good about Ann Leckie’s The Raven Tower. I’ve also had book club friends shouting the praises of Isaac R. Fellman’s Notes from a Regicide for a few months now. I can’t think of a lot of others on my short-term TBR, though this is the sort of thing I often find without specifically looking. Still, I’m open to recommendations!
Short Stories Are Cheating
Nghi Vo’s “On the Fox Roads” is one of my favorite novelettes of the past several years, and Owen Leddy’s “Old Seeds” is also a fantastic choice.
Judge a Book By Its Title
Read a book based on the title. This can be a title so epic you had to pick it up or so weird and off-putting that you needed to know why it was called this. Hard mode: Dive in without reading the blurb or summaries.
My Recommendations
There Is No Antimemetics Division by qntm was one of my favorite reads last year, and I love A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher. R.A. Lafferty has had some wild titles, but the two short novels bound together in the Apocalypses collection are particularly noteworthy: The Three Armageddons of Enniscorthy Sweeny and Where Have You Been, Sandaliotis? There’s also Mizuki Tsujimura’s Lonely Castle in the Mirror, Alix E. Harrow’s The Ten Thousand Doors of January, and Jon Bois’ 17776.
Candidates from my TBR
Do I finally read How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu? Or The Gurkha and the Lord of Tuesday by Saad Z. Hossain? The Black Dwarves of the Good Little Bay by Varun Thomas Mathew? Again, I’ll probably find more as I go, but I’m up for recs!
Short Stories Are Cheating
There are so many short stories with great titles! Have you read “Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole?” by Isabel J. Kim? Or “Barbershops of the Floating City” by Angela Liu? Or “To Carry You Inside You” by Tia Tashiro? Or “Four People I Need You to Kill Before the Dance Begins,” “Numismatic Archetypes in the Year of Five Regents,” or “Three Fortunes on Alcestis As Told by the Fraud Baeliss Shudal” by Louis Inglis Hall? “26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss” by Kij Johnson is fantastic. “Open House on Haunted Hill” by John Wiswell and “A Compilation of Accounts Concerning the Distal Brook Flood” by Thomas Ha are great. And Lafferty is full of them: “The Six Fingers of Time,” “Seven-Day Terror,” “Frog on the Mountain,” “Thus We Frustrate Charlemagne,” “Or Little Ducks Each Day,” etc.
Translated
Story has been translated from a language you don’t read or speak. Hard mode: first translated into your language in the last five years.
My Recommendations
I don’t speak anything but English, and I’ve enjoyed several translations from other languages. Lonely Castle in the Mirror (Japanese) appears again here, Vita Nostra (Russian) by Marina and Sergey Dyachenko is weird and wonderful, and Shubeik Lubeik (Arabic) by Deena Mohamed is a fantastic graphic novel.
Candidates from my TBR
If We Cannot Go at the Speed of Light by Kim Cho-Yup (Korean) is a short story collection on my near-term TBR. I could also pull Amatka (Swedish) by Karin Tidbeck off my TBR, or maybe read the classic The Neverending Story (German).
Short Stories Are Cheating
I’ve read a lot of really great translated short fiction! From Russian, I love “Fly Free” by Alan Kubatiev and really enjoyed “Scissors” by Anastasia Bookreyeva, “Pollen” by Anna Burdenko, and “Lajos and His Bees” by K.A. Teryna as well. From Chinese, “Introduction to 2181 Overture, Second Edition” by Gu Shi is excellent, and “The Peregrine Falcon Flies West” by Yang Wanking, “Still Water” by Zhang Ran, and “Those Who Left History” by Wanxiang Fengnian. From Portuguese, “A Short Biography of a Conscious Chair” by Renan Bernardo is absolutely fantastic and has only gotten better after several rereads, and Anita Moskát’s “Liecraft” is a tremendously mind-bending novelette translated from Hungarian.
Small Press or Self-Published
Read a book published by a small press (NOT a Big 5 publisher or Bloomsbury) or self-published. If a formerly self-published book gets picked up by a publisher, you can only count it for this square if you read it before it was traditionally published. Hard mode: The book has under 100 ratings on Goodreads OR is by an author from a marginalized group.
My Recommendations
I’m a big fan of The Nothing Within by Andy Giesler, The Sword of Kaigen by M.L. Wang, and Tuyo by Rachel Neumeier. The Last Dragoners of Bowbazar fits here too, as does Rosemary Kirstein’s incredible Steerswoman series (formerly large press, but the author has bought back the rights), Mary Soon Lee’s The Sign of the Dragon, and Thomas Ha’s Uncertain Sons and Other Stories. For litRPG fans, Erin Ampersand’s Apocalypse Parenting is a whole lot of fun.
Candidates from my TBR
Part of easing up my reading commitments includes stepping away from judging a self-published sci-fi competition, so this is no longer a free square. But I’ve been meaning to read Sarah Pinsker’s debut collection Sooner or Later Everything Falls into the Sea, and Robert V.S. Redick’s Master Assassins has similarly been on my list for ages. And M. Rickert’s The Shipbuilder of Bellfairie. Or I could also just read the second Apocalypse Parenting book.
Short Stories Are Cheating
Honestly, almost anything probably works here. Rule out Reactor, which is owned by Macmillan, but pretty much every other genre fiction magazine counts.
Unusual Transportation
Story includes a surprising method of moving from place to place. By “unusual” we mean that it is out of the ordinary in real life AND uncommon to the book’s broader genre. This can include a highly unique take on a genre staple (spaceships with FTL wouldn’t normally count but the Infinite Improbability Drive from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy would) or be a completely original mode of transit (autoducks in The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy). Hard mode: Transportation is NOT combustion-powered or steam-powered.
My Recommendations
How do we feel about organic spaceships as unusual within the genre? Because Octavia E. Butler’s Xenogenesis series could work here. And Outlaw Planet by M.R. Carey is a Western with arthropods where you’d expect horses.
Candidates from my TBR
Asunder by Kerstin Hall doesn’t exactly sound like my cup of tea, but it’s been recommended by so many people as a perfect fit for this square that I should at least give it a look. Hyperion has also been a long-time TBR item that would fit here. And I could read the second Xenogenesis book. What else?
Short Stories Are Cheating
I don’t actually have too many off the top of my head, but “Liminal Spaces” by Maureen McHugh fits the bill.
The Afterlife
Story deals with the realm of the dead. This could be communicating with the dead, spirits transferring over, or being set in the afterlife itself. Hard mode: The afterlife does NOT depict a “Good Place” vs “Bad Place” dichotomy.
My Recommendations
The Reformatory by Tananarive Due is absolutely amazing, and so is Saint Death’s Daughter by C.S.E. Cooney. She Who Became the Sun features a protagonist who can interact with ghosts, as does Shen Tao’s The Poet Empress and Katherine Arden’s The Warm Hands of Ghosts.
Candidates from my TBR
I’m not super excited about Neil Gaiman these days, but The Graveyard Book has been on my TBR quite a while. So has Ghost Talkers by Mary Robinette Kowal. My nearer term TBR is a bit sparser in this regard, though it doesn’t feel like a square that would be incredibly hard to hit organically.
Short Stories Are Cheating
Honestly, this is the square that inspired me to do a cheating card, with Marie Croke’s “Our Echoes Drifting Through the Marsh” and E.M. Linden’s “The Tawlish Island Songbook of the Dead.” K.A. Wiggin’s “The Patron Saint of Flatliners” also works here, as does “We Used to Wake to Song” by Leah Ning, “Chị Tấm is Tired of Being Dead” by Natasha King, and “Spirits Don’t Cross Over Water Until They Do” by Jamey Hatley. And “The Thing About Ghost Stories” by Naomi Kritzer is wonderful.
Game Changer
Story features a game or competition. Hard mode: The protagonist bends or breaks the rules in some way.
My Recommendations
I love games in books, though I find that genre novels tend to do it poorly. Ender’s Game is a famous exception, as is The Hunger Games and Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah. In the Watchful City doesn’t do it especially well, but it’s only a subplot, and the novella as a whole is good. Apocalypse Parenting works here too, as does 17776.
Candidates from my TBR
Other than “could always just read the next Apocalypse Parenting,” I’m not sure I have a lot of ideas here! Like I said, I tend not to trust games in genre fiction. Anyone have recs that do it well?
Short Stories Are Cheating
“Man vs Bomb” by M. Shaw is an intense, chilling survival game. “Anais Gets a Turn” by R.T. Ester has an absolutely wild premise involving a game of tic-tac-toe against the literal Earth. “Dead Reckoning in 6/8 Time” by Sabrina Vourvoulias is a “competition with the devil” story featuring dance. And “That Game We Played During the War” is a wonderful story about building relationships across cultures via chess.
Vacation Spot
Story takes place somewhere you’d (subjectively) want to visit.
My Recommendations
This is a tricky square, because I (subjectively) have trouble getting past the fantasy dangers or lower standards of living when thinking about desire to visit. But The Ballad of Black Tom and The Changeling by Victor LaValle both take place in New York. And The Golden Key by Melanie Rawn, Jennifer Roberson, and Kate Elliott takes place in a Renaissance setting, which at least holds some appeal. Sublimation by Isabel J. Kim is split between New York and Korea. And The Memory Hunters by Mia Tsai is heavily inspired by the gorgeous mountains of Appalachia.
Candidates from my TBR
Kings of Paradise by Richard Nell has been on my list for ages, and it has a beautiful beach on the cover (albeit with a sword stuck through it). I’m sure I can find more books set in large contemporary cities, but there’s not a lot that immediately springs to mind.
Short Stories Are Cheating
On the “large contemporary cities” theme, “The Brotherhood of Montague St. Video” (New York) by Thomas Ha works here. And “Houyi the Archer Fights the Sun” by Cynthia Zhang takes place in Chicago, as does “The State Street Robot Factory” by Claire Humphrey. “The Four Sisters Overlooking the Sea” by Naomi Kritzer takes place in a New England coastal town, as does “A Lullaby of Anguish” by Marie Croke.
Five Short Stories
What it says on the tin. Hard mode: read an entire anthology or collection.
My Recommendations
I post my favorites list every year. Pick a few from 2025, or 2024, or 2023, or 2022, or last year’s backlist sampler. Or if you want to hit hard mode, check out Thomas Ha’s Uncertain Sons and Other Stories, or perhaps something by Sarah Pinsker or R.A. Lafferty, or The Digital Aesthete.
Candidates from my TBR
This is a free square for me, but I do still have If We Cannot Go at the Speed of Light on my TBR, as well as The Best of World SF, Volume 1 and The Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy & Science Fiction, where the editor graciously supplied me with a review copy and I ungraciously let it slip from the front of my mind.
Short Stories Are Not Cheating, They Are the Point
Older Protagonist
Story features a main character who is at least 50 years old. Hard mode: character does not have exceptional longevity or immortality.
My Recommendations
Nothing But the Rain by Naomi Salman is excellent. I also love The Long Price Quartet, but you have to wait until book four before the protagonist hits 50. Three Grams of Elsewhere by Andy Giesler is a perfect fit for hard mode.
Candidates from my TBR
A friend recommended Judith Tarr’s The Isle of Glass a few years back, but it appears to fit here. I could presumably read one of the Witches Discworld books. It feels like there ought to be more–especially if I eschew hard mode and allow long-lived sci-fi leads–but they aren’t springing immediately to mind.
Short Stories Are Cheating
I mentioned “Old Seeds” earlier, but it has one of those long-lived sci-fi leads. “Egoli” by T. L. Huchu features a more typical aged protagonist. “A Better Way of Saying” by Sarah Pinsker has an older protagonist telling stories from his youth. Her “Escape from Caring Seasons” has an older protagonist at the time of the main action. “Afflictions of the New Age” by Katherine Ewell is a dementia story.
Duology, Part One
Read the first book of a duology. Hard mode: by a new-to-you author.
My Recommendations
The Lighthouse Duet by Carol Berg is one of my favorites, and The Sanctuary Duet is another excellent duology set in the same world. Arkady Martine’s Teixcalaan is also quite strong. Shelly Parker-Chan’s Radiant Emperor series makes another appearance here. I also really enjoyed N.K. Jemisin’s The Killing Moon, which opens a duology.
Candidates from my TBR
Do I finally pull Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow off my TBR? I’m also seeing a lot of recommendations for The Cygnet Duology by Patricia McKillip, who I’ve been meaning to read for ages. The Invictus Duology by Rachel Neumeier isn’t on my TBR proper, but I did quite enjoy her fantasy. I’ve also heard a lot about Strange the Dreamer, and apparently The Expert System’s Brother by Adrian Tchaikovsky starts a duology, though sometimes he expands series unexpectedly. And Sherwood Smith has a book called Crown Duel that was originally published as a duology, which I’m inclined before further research to say counts.
Short Stories Are Cheating
I don’t have a lot of short fiction duologies off the top of my head, but “Morrigan in the Sunglare” and “Morrigan in Shadow” by Seth Dickinson immediately comes to mind.
Book Club or Readalong
Read any book featured in a past or present r/fantasy book club or readalong. Hard mode: participate.
My Recommendations
So many of my favorites have been book club material. Inda, The Long Price Quartet, The Lighthouse Duet, The Wheel of Time, I could go on. It’s easy.
Candidates from my TBR
I co-lead the Hugo Readalong, so I suppose I can pick a Hugo finalist once they’re announced in April.
Short Stories Are Cheating
I also co-lead Short Fiction Book Club, so. . . .
Published in 2026
Read a book first published in 2026. Hard mode: it’s the author’s debut novel.
My Recommendations
Sublimation and The Poet Empress are both excellent shouts for hard mode!
Candidates from my TBR
*glances at ARC list*. Just pick one of them? Perhaps the book I’m most excited about right now is The Republic of Memory by Mahmud El Sayed. But Jo Walton, Ann Leckie, Ray Nayler, and Emily St. John Mandel all have new releases coming this year. S.L. Huang’s The Language of Liars is coming out soon, and I think we’re getting a sequel to The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi.
Short Stories Are Cheating
Perhaps my favorite so far this year is Claire Jia-Wen’s mind-bending “A Sleeper Ship Is Like a Game of Go,” but there are a lot of good ones.
Explorers and Rangers
Story features an explorer (a character who travels to and investigates an unfamiliar region) or a ranger (a wilderness or forest-oriented warrior frequently specializing in things like stealth, bows, tracking, and other hunting-related skills). Hard mode: has an animal companion.
My Recommendations
The Steerswoman series by Rosemary Kirstein fits wonderfully here, and Adrian Tchiakovsky’s Shroud and Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation would work as well.
Candidates from my TBR
People have been recommending The Memoirs of Lady Trent for years. Is it time to finally read it? I’m not sure I have a lot of other options off the top of my head.
Short Stories Are Cheating
I’ve mentioned R.A. Lafferty several times, but he has a whole set of planetary exploration stories played in various different ways. My favorite is “Thieving Bear Planet,” but “Once on Aranea,” “Snuffles,” and “World Abounding” all work too. “Sarcophagus” by Ray Nayler also fits, as does “In the Time of the Telperi Flower” by David-Christopher Galhea.
Duology, Part Two
Read the second book in a duology. Hard mode: not the same duology as in part one. This square is excepted from the “no repeat authors” rule.
The recommendations and TBR items here are largely the same as in Part One, though I will shout out Bethany C. Morrow’s A Chorus Rises for people shooting for hard mode. You’d probably need a plot summary for the first book, but the second has a new perspective character and is IMO the stronger book.
One Word Title
The title, you know, has one word. Hard mode: not a proper name.
My Recommendations
Oh so many! Sublimation and Annihilation return here, as do Tuyo and 17776. Piranesi by Susanna Clarke is wonderful. So is Kindred by Octavia E. Butler. And Karin Lowachee’s Warchild and Sherwood Smith’s Inda. There’s Lavie Tidhar’s Neom, Frances Hardinge’s Unraveller, Nick Harkaway’s Tigerman, Nicola Griffith’s Spear, Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Ogres and Shroud, and Paolo Bacigalupi’s Navola.
Candidates from my TBR
Well, I’m currently reading Covenants by Lorna Freeman, so there’s a pretty simple one. A glance at the TBR also produces Nick Harkaway’s Gnomon, Kate Elliott’s Jaran, and Reddit darlings Blindsight and Unsouled.
Short Stories Are Cheating
How much do we want to cheat here? If we allow compound words, there’s Anita Moskát’s “Liecraft” and Isabel J. Kim’s “Freediver.” I mentioned “Scissors” and “Egoli” earlier. And then there’s Samir Sirk Morató’s “Ecdysis,” Thomas Ha’s “Cretins” and “Grottmata,” Carlie St. George’s “Jinx,” Sarah Gailey’s “STET,” Greg Egan’s “Solidity,” Anna Burdenko’s “Pollen,” Sameem Siddiqui’s “Driver,” Ray Nayler’s “Fostering,” Mbozi Haimbe’s “Shelter,” and H. Pueyo’s “Torso.”
Non-Human Protagonist
The main character is not human. Hard mode: there aren’t any human POVs at all.
My Recommendations
Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky is excellent, as is Richard Adams’ Watership Down and Sarah Zettel’s The Quiet Invasion. The Tusks of Extinction by Ray Nayler fits, as does Mechanize My Hands to War by Erin K. Wagner and Infinity Gate by M.R. Carey. The Books of the Raksura by Martha Wells are a lot of fun, and there’s always The Bone Swans of Amandale by C.S.E. Cooney.
Candidates from my TBR
The Raven Tower reappears here. The Best of All Possible Worlds by Karen Lord appears to fit from the blurb. And I have an ARC of An Ode to the Half-Broken.
Short Stories Are Cheating
“Man vs Bomb” works, and I’m inclined to argue “You, Me, Her, You, Her, I” by Isabel J. Kim does too. “The Laugh Machine” by Auston Habershaw has an AI lead, and there are alien leads in “Born Outside” by Polenth Blake and “Forever the Forest” by Simone Heller.
Middle Grade
Read a middle grade book (aimed at readers 8-12). Hard mode: a new-to-you author.
My Recommendations
The Chronicles of Narnia are classics, and Ella Enchanted is great as well. A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking fits here too.
Candidates from my TBR
I’ve been reading through the Nevermoor series with my oldest, so I could read the next one. I’ve also been keeping an eye out for other middle grade books for future reference, and the list appears to include The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill, Scary Stories for Young Foxes by Christian McKay Heidicker, and Cece Rios and the Desert of Souls by Kaela Rivera.
Short Stories Are Cheating
Okay. . . actually I don’t know that I know much middle-grade short fiction. Cast of Wonders is an explicitly YA magazine, but I’m not sure whether they dip into MG at all. Cheating got hard all of a sudden, I’m accepting recs.
First Contact
Story prominently features interspecies or interracial meeting for the first time. Hard mode: non-violent.
My Recommendations
I do love this theme. The Quiet Invasion by Sarah Zettel immediately comes to mind. The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler and A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine also work. And this is yet another square where Shroud is a great fit.
Candidates from my TBR
I’ve been meaning to get to Sue Burke’s Semiosis. Blindsight has also been recommended a bit here, and I’m seeing recommendations for Elizabeth Bear’s Remnant Population and Cadwell Turnbull’s The Lesson. And The Sparrow fits here too.
Short Stories Are Cheating
I like first contact! “Forever the Forest” is a great fit. Beth Goder’s “An Expression of Silence” fits. So does Marissa Lingen’s “Person. Place. Thing.” And Carrie Vaughn’s “Vast and Trunkless Legs of Stone.” And Ann Leckie’s “Lake of Souls.” There are surely others.
Murder Mystery
Main plot focuses on solving a murder. Hard mode: the main character is not a detective.
My Recommendations
I don’t tend to love mysteries, but I’ve quite enjoyed the first two books in Robert Jackson Bennett’s Shadow of the Leviathan series.
Candidates from my TBR
There’s always the third book in the Shadows of the Leviathan series. I’ve also had Mur Lafferty’s Six Wakes on my TBR for about as long as I’ve kept a TBR. The blurb of The Shipbuilders of Bellfairie indicate it could also fit?
Short Stories Are Cheating
“Murder by Pixel: Crime and Responsibility in the Digital Darkness” by S.L. Huang is as much fiction thinkpiece as it is story, but it fits here. Lavie Tidhar also has a series of short stories about vampire investigator Judge Dee.
Cat Squasher
Book is over 500 pages (no omnibuses). Hard mode: over 900.
My Recommendations
Well, I’m a big Wheel of Time fan, and they all fit. The Inda books do too. The Sign of the Dragon by Mary Soon Lee is excellent and doesn’t feel as long as the page count indicates. The Reformatory and Saint Death’s Daughter also fit, as does The Golden Key.
Candidates from my TBR
I mentioned being in the middle of Covenants? It fits. I could also finally get around to reading the second books in The Stormlight Archive, The Farseer Trilogy, or The Crossroads Trilogy.
Short Stories Are Cheating
And unless you get real weird about the formatting, you can’t read a 500-page short story. But those Best of World SF and Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy and Science Fiction anthologies I mentioned earlier both come out at over 500 pages.
Feast Your Eyes on This
Food or a meal is significant to the story’s plot. Hard mode: Attempt to recreate a dish.
My Recommendations
A Half-Built Garden by Ruthanna Emrys has one of the more memorable meal scenes I’ve come across in SFF. A Wizard’s Guide to Defensive Baking is also a great read, and The Poet Empress has some pretty plot-relevant food.
Candidates from my TBR
I feel like important food scenes are easier to stumble upon than to find in advance. Nothing on my TBR seems like an incredibly obvious fit, but I’m also not especially worried. Still, I’d take recommendations.
Short Stories Are Cheating
“A Seder in Siberia” by Louis Evans feels like a perfect fit here. “Reconciliation Dumplings and Other Recipes” by Sara Norja also includes recipes! And “So Much Cooking” by Naomi Kritzer is an all-timer. So is R.A. Lafferty’s “Ride a Tin Can,” but in a particularly dark sort of way.
Published in the 70s
The 1970s. Hard mode: written by a woman.
My Recommendations
I’ve mentioned Kindred, Watership Down, and The Three Armageddons of Enniscorthy Sweeny already. Nine Hundred Grandmothers is also one of my very favorite books ever if you can find a copy in print. The Princess Bride and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy also work.
Candidates from my TBR
Are there any? I’ve really liked a lot of 70s fiction, but I don’t have a lot that I want to read but haven’t yet. Ursula K. Le Guin and Joanna Russ were doing lots of work in that decade, but I’ve struggled to immerse in the works of both. I could give them another try, I suppose. It looks like Dreamsnake and Bridge to Terebithia came out in the 70s. This Reddit post indicates there are many, many more, but I have some work to do trying to figure out what my interest me in particular. I’m happy to take recommendations here.
Short Stories Are Cheating
All the Lafferty (well, much of the Lafferty). Also “Jeffty is Five” by Harlan Ellison is amazing.
Politics and Court Intrigue
Politics are central to the story’s plot. This covers everything from royalty, elections, and wars, to smaller local politics. Hard mode: city level or lower.
My Recommendations
So, so many. The Long Price Quartet is an obvious fit. Lois McMaster Bujold’s The Curse of Chalion is excellent. Laila Lalami’s The Dream Hotel is too. The Sign of the Dragon fits. Tuyo fits. Inda fits. M.L. Wang’s Blood Over Bright Haven fits.
Candidates from my TBR
Time to pull The Dagger and the Coin series by Daniel Abraham off the TBR? Covenants also fits here. Crown Duel fits. The Republic of Memory will surely fit.
Author of Color
Written by a person of color. Hard mode: Not from the US, UK, Canada, Australia, or New Zealand.
My Recommendations
The Broken Earth Trilogy by N.K. Jemisin is amazing. I’ve recommended Octavia E. Butler a few times here, and her work all fits. The Sign of the Dragon fits. The Sword of Kaigen fits, as does Blood Over Bright Haven. The Ballad of Black Tom, Lone Women, The Dream Hotel, The Memory Hunters, Sublimation, The Poet Empress. I could go on. I believe The Last Dragoners of Bowbazar and Lonely Castle in the Mirror hit hard mode, as does Lavanya Lakshminarayan’s The Ten Percent Thief.
Candidates from my TBR
The Republic of Memory is right there. Honestly, this is nearly a free square for me.
Short Stories Are Cheating
Have you ever heard of a little story called “Day Ten Thousand” by Isabel J. Kim? She and Thomas Ha are two of the most exciting newish authors in the field, and you can read anything by them. Or Angela Liu. Or Tia Tashiro. Or Ken Liu or Ted Chiang. And R.P. Sand is sneaky intriguing. Claire Jia-Wen. “The Bone Stomach” by Ziawa Jande is also great, as is Wole Talabi’s “A Dream of Electric Mothers.”