What Do I Mean by a 3-9-3 Card, Hopefully Helpful, No Suckage Card?
Each book will fill at least three bingo squares clearly.
The whole card will be done by the end of September, the ninth month, to be hopefully helpful to those struggling.
Every Square will have at least three recommendations, and if after 25 books are finished, this is not the case, I will read or pull books from my past reviews. I suspect this may result in 1-3 bonus reviews.
Also, every book will be something I would actually recommend. Hence, No Suckage.
First Book:
I’m Afraid You Got Dragons by Peter Beagle
This is a book about one of them, Gaius Aurelius Constantine Heliogabalus Thrax (AKA Robert), who has inherited his father’s job as a dragon exterminator yet dislikes it and seems to have a magical connection with dragons. The local royalty’s daughter, Cerise, is set on marrying Crown Prince Reginald, who is despised by his own father.
This is a book about roles, roles you no longer fit into, ones you must embrace and what you become when the shit hits the fan. To quote Cerise, “you may not want to be a hero, but you are one, you have no choice.”
I enjoyed this quite a lot. The setup is very YA, and the characters feel young while being people of their time and place. The characters then become adults and feel like adults, and best of all, freed from the preconceptions of their childhoods, are willing to do things they would never consider before.
This book does feel a little old-fashioned, which isn’t a bad thing, but it explains why the book has a low Goodreads rating, understandable considering Beagle is in his 80s.
Bingo Squares: Robert is a ranger with the knowledge and lore of dragons, who are technically Animal Companions (HM), Court and Politics, Vacation (VIP Hunting Trip)
Second Book:
Chalice By Robin Mckinley
This is labeled as YA, yet all the MCs are in their mid-twenties or older. Marketing? Yeah, marketing. That’s what Blue Sword and the Hero and the Crown will do for you.
Mirasol is a beekeeper, a honey-gatherer, and essentially a well-to-do unmarried peasant, when both the Master and Chalice (chief priest and priestess of the Willowlands) die suddenly; the Master with an heir who might not be able to fulfill the duty and a Chalice with no apprentice at all. After magical divination refuses to name anyone else, Mirasol becomes Chalice. The new Master, brother of the old one, has spent the last few years as a fire priest, and is borderline no longer human, as in she gets burned when they touch at the initial meeting.
Both Mirasol, and the new Master are learning on the job, dealing with a court of lesser priests who mostly look down on them, and work that is neglected by both the former Master and Chalice, leading to a land that needs to be brought into harmony again, and a feudal lord who wants to remove the Master to place his own, unqualified candidate, in the role. In addition, Mirasol is the first honey Chalice, chalices being linked to a liquid, usually wine or water, but sometimes things like blood.
This is a book about being thrown into an office without preparation, learning a job, getting comfortable with it, learning there are nuances you missed because you were busy mastering other details, and finally growing into a role you accept as part of yourself.
There is a scene from The Crown, where Elizabeth is reading a letter from her grandmother, saying the Crown must come first. This book is about Mirasol becoming a person for whom the Chalice position comes first. This is very much Mirasol’s novel.
In fact, you could write another book from the Master’s PoV.
It is easy to see why she is chosen by the land, as she has natural instincts in this regard, though she is weak on politics. However, the magical aspects are the number one priority in the early part of the book.
Its flaw is that it concentrates a little too much on Mirasol as a PoV character, and while the Master and the Senechal are both important characters, they are distant, as are the villains, making this more of a character study than anything else.
The magic is tied to the natural cycles of the land, and while never called Druidic, I think it fits the spirit of that square from a couple years back. The fact that Mirasol intuitively gets bees and honey magic was one of the unique and very enjoyable aspects. I personally love magic tied to the natural world.
Bingo Squares: Feast Your Eyes on This (easy HM), One Word Title, Politics and Court Intrigue (HM), Book Club
Third Book:
Paladin of Souls By Lois McMaster Bujold
This was the last of the main Five Gods books I’ve gotten to and my most disappointing read. But that is because Bujold is one of my favorite authors.
Sharing Knife is in my top five series. Penric and Desdemona is something I’m always get the second it comes out. Loved Hallowed Hunt, and Curse Of Chalion, and I will get to Vorkosigan Saga.
Sequel to Curse of Chalion, following the Queen’s Mother, Ista, who has been treated as a mad invalid most of her life >!due to the Curse removed in Curse of Chalion. !<Her issue is no longer being insane, but people still treating you as if you were insane.
Her solution for breaking the cocoon of well-meant ‘protection’ is going on a pilgrimage and leaving before her protectors are unable react. She shanghais a female courier to be her companion/lady-in-waiting and ditches her attendants back at the castle.
This is something that matches my own biography and I can say Bujold gets the feel of this situation right.
Oh yeah, she’s pissed at the gods for the curse she and hers lived under that was solved in Curse, dealing with the hurt of years and people lost. That’s when the gods, particularly the Bastard, draft her and her companions into dealing with a nasty situation with international politics, a fortress, and demons, and the passage to death and ghosts.
What works is Ista and the other characters are competent, with some sly humor, the right balance of serious, bitterly humorous, and thoughtful. Characters are believable people of medieval Not! Spain/Chalion down to small details. Ista, in a fight, directs her horse to disrupt a crossbowman's shot rather than drawing a sword. Liss, the shanghaied companion, is an expert horsewoman, but a barely credible lady-in-waiting.
Everything is well done because she is Lois McMaster Bujold!
Except for one thing. >!A secondary female character SAs a male character who is in a coma and gets a “goodish” ending, with no consequences.!< In the past, I have defended Bujold’s choices and appreciate that she writes complicated situations without ‘correct’ answers. I will continue to read her. But her missing the wrongness of this is uncharacteristic of her.
>!What’s doubly disturbing is that so few reviews called it out, it being invisible to so many, just like real life SA of males.!<
Bingo Squares: The Afterlife, arguably HM, Vacation Spot (It’s a road trip and a visit to a castle, I read it on a road trip), Politics and Court Intrigue, Not old age. She is forty, a detail I like.
Fourth Book
Gathering of Ravens by Scott Odem
This is the story of Grimnar, To the Danes, he is skraelingr; to the English, he is orcneas; to the Irish, he is fomoraig. He is Corpse-maker and Life-quencher, the Bringer of Night, the Son of the Wolf and Brother of the Serpent. He is the last of his kind--the last in a long line of monsters who have plagued humanity since the Elder Days.
He is a monster of legend, kinsman of Grendel, on a mission of revenge. But he has a code of honor. He is capable of odd friendships, including with a young foundling Etain, who he kidnaps because she knows where his nephew, Bjarki Half-Dane and revenge target is. She is a devout follower of the White Christ, the Nailed God, whose faith is a threat to his world. She is capable of meeting the stuff of mythology, look it in the eye, and eventually wrap her head around it in a way that deepens her faith and develops her as a character. She’s my favorite.
First off, of all the books I’ve read in several years, this book feels like a work of love.
Oden knows history and mythology and most of all, made the effort to get his mind around the mentalities of the past. This is high-caliber historical fantasy.
That is why this book is not for everyone.
That means describing the time and the place fairly accurately, including its vices. >!SA assault, for example, happens in the background and is threatened. !<Religious conflict is second only to revenge as a plot point, and Odem does a great job of showing both Norse Pagan and Christian characters who act with both great character and utter cruelty. It is a book that quotes the Eddas and Sagas in ways that make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, and Odem understands them and expects readers to wrap their heads around that meaning.
For such readers of the right mindset, Lo, this book will call to them. It will bid them to read and to take its place on the shelves of Bookhalla, where great books live forever!
If you are not such a reader, it is indeed a small thing.
Bingo Squares: Unusual Transportation (HM), Vacation Spot (Ireland, Britain), Older Protagonist, r/Fantasy Bookclub, Non-Human Protagonist
Fifth Book
The Faith of Beasts by James S.A. Corey
The Captives War Book Two
This focuses on the survival of a human population, made up of mostly older individuals (though not most of the MCs) from a recently conquered human colony which the Carryx Empire/Species is using to see if they can be domesticated into a useful servitor race, of which they have many they’ve
The humans in this book are playing a double game as a new Carryx Servitor, trying to survive and to do so be useful, yet also plant the seed of a long term resistance to the Carryx. This is a book of hard socially sciencey questions with no easy answers, like is it better to be a chicken or corn, domesticated and plentiful, rather than facing a constant threat of extinction. How do you balance raising a generation to both be loyal servitors and rebels when the time comes? How can the Carryx, who are very alien, be made vunerable? What do you do as a conquered population that encounters humans on the other side of a war and has been separated for thousands of years?
It is complicated as we see that other species besides the humans are dealing with these same issues. One of the major PoV characters is an infiltrator into the human herd, an intelligence agent. We get many of the same characters from the first book growing into leadership positions or just personally tougher, wiser versions of themselves, or sometimes not.
In the end, enough victories are won, and leaving the readers and characters with a sense of hard-won hope going into book three and no idea of how it will turn out in the end.
Clearly, this is a book for hardish SF fans. But even if that’s not you, I would say it’s still worth a look. These are characters living through and adapting in interesting times and, most importantly, imagining a future they wish to create. In interesting times, imagining a future we wish to create is important. The present is not boring.
Bingo Squares: Non-Human Protagonist, First Contact, Published in 2026, Arguably Older Protagonists: >!as the "median age" of the humans is over fifty, but most of the MC's are not.!<