I’m reading Feist - Magician. I was hesitant to go back into my past because I thought it would just read like d&d. I’m having an absolute blast. All the old tropes. Does David Eddings still hold? Please recommend old fantasy that still holds the line.

WELCOME TO BINGO 2025!

It’s a reading challenge, a reading party, a reading marathon, and YOU are welcome to join in on our nonsense!

r/Fantasy Book Bingo is a yearly reading challenge within our community. Its one-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new authors and books, to boldly go where few readers have gone before. 

The core of this challenge is encouraging readers to step out of their comfort zones, discover amazing new reads, and motivate everyone to keep up on their reading throughout the year.

You can find all our past challenges at our official Bingo wiki page for the sub.

RULES:

Time Period and Prize

• 2025 Bingo Period lasts from April 1st 2025 - March 31st 2026.
• You will be able to turn in your 2025 card in the Official Turn In Post, which will be posted in mid-March 2026. Only submissions through the Google Forms link in the official post will count.
• ‘Reading Champion’ flair will be assigned to anyone who completes the entire …

What’s the funniest line you’ve come across when reading fantasy? For me, it’s one in the Red Queen’s War series.

“I’m telling the truth!” I lied.

Makes me chuckle every time I think about it.

Welcome to BINGO 2025! 

r/Fantasy Book Bingo is a yearly reading challenge within our community. Its one-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new authors and books, to boldly go where few readers have gone before…. Well, this year we are asking to go where we have been before! Each square was specially and thoughtfully designed by one of the lovely members of r/Fantasy’s Bingo team!

The core of this challenge is encouraging readers to step out of the subreddit’s hivemind, discover amazing new reads, and motivate everyone to keep up on their reading throughout the year.

You can find all our past challenges at our official Bingo wiki page for the sub.

RULES:

Time Period

• 2025 Bingo Period lasts from April 1st 2025 - March 31st 2026.
• You will be able to turn in your 2025 card in the Official Turn In Post, which will be posted in mid-March 2026. Only submissions through the Google Forms link in the official post will count.
• ‘Reading Champion’ …

Background: Last year, George RR Martin wrote a (now deleted) blog post (archived here) criticising the changes some of the showrunners made in season 2 diverging from the source material, referring to how they will likely lead to unintended consequences (e.g. the butterfly effect). The post ended with the ominous line, “And there are larger and more toxic butterflies to come, if HOUSE OF THE DRAGON goes ahead with some of the changes being contemplated for seasons 3 and 4…” The post was unusual for Martin, who is typically quite exuberant about the adaptations and has almost entirely avoided criticising the original Game of Thrones show, even when its ending was being panned.

Condal, the showrunner for House of the Dragon, has now addressed the post in a recent EW interview. While he reiterated that he is a long-time fan of A Song of Ice and Fire, and of Martin, he defends his creative decisions and process.

I will simply say, I made every effort to include George in …

I honestly feel a bit embarrassed even writing this post. Part of me feels like everyone here already knows all of this. However, I am a lifelong reader, and I’m just realizing this in my late twenties, so maybe there are others here who could use the gentle reminder:

Libraries are amazing and we should make the effort to use them!

I’m someone who is on booktok/booktube a lot and who is constantly, impulsively buying books to keep up with trends. I used to believe that I was building my home library (and I have no judgement towards anyone who wishes to do that). However, I personally found that I was rarely returning to books, other than a few favorites, and the books in my home were just taking up a lot of space after I’d finished them. Additionally, I often fell into the trap of buying off of amazon because it was so quick and easy (again, no judgement if you do this).

As a teacher who doesn’t make much, this was really starting to impact me financially.

I went to my local …

I’ve been out of the sf game for a while and looking to jump back in. Looking for personal recommendations on your top 5 sf books that you consider absolute top-tier peak of the genre, that I haven’t already read.

I’ll provide below my own list of sf novels that I’ve already read and loved, and consider top-tier, as reference, so I can get some fresh recs. These are in no particular order:

- Hyperion

- Rendezvous with Rama

- Manifold Time/Manifold Space

- Various Culture books - The Player of Games, Use of Weapons and Excession

- The Stars My Destination

- Peter F. Hamilton’s Night’s Dawn trilogy and Commonwealth duology

- First 3 Dune books

- Hainish Cycle

- Spin

- Annihilation

- Mars trilogy

- House of Suns

- Blindsight

- Neuromancer

- The Forever War

- A Fire Upon the Deep/A Deepness in the Sky

- Children of Time

- Contact

- Anathem

- Lord of Light

- Stories of Your Life and Others

So hit me with your absolute best/favourite …

It’s funny but I have not thought of her in years! Even though clearly remember loving many of her novels, like Passage and To Think Nothing of The Dog when I was in high school. Back then I classed her easily among my top favourite women speculative fiction writers. Up there among Robin Hobb, Lois Bujold and Jo Walton. But have not seen much mention of her on Reddit in recent years. Are there any other Willis fans, or anyone enjoying her books lately? Would love to read some of your thoughts 😃

I was expecting good things - I had lived the Martian, and all the SF subreddits were super positive about this - but I have to say it totally blew me away. First time in 5 plus years that I did the “I’ll sleep when this book is finished” move. No regrets.

AW really knows his niche and executed very well on it.

One Q - >!How did Rocky’s species develop so much astronomy knowledge with no vision?!<

Gone back to read some of my older books as I’ve been disappointed by a lot of newer popular stuff. Picked up Pandoras Star of the Commonwealth Saga and made the grave error in thinking the Primes were in a whole other series.

Reached THAT chapter last night and bloody hell, I forgot how absolutely terrifying it is.

Typical horror like ghosts, monsters etc doesn’t bother me but that is seriously horrifying.

Don’t read before bed if you want sweet dreams 😁

It seems my favorite author has dropped off the map. I know he published a sort of non-fiction religious book a while back, but I haven’t seen any SF from him since “Last Year” in 2016. I loved his books. The Chronoliths, Spin, Mysterium, Blind Lake, this is all legit stuff. Anyone know if he is working on anything?

Looks to be a good one too! As possibly his biggest fan it was a beautiful suprise to see a new Rich Larson story. Clocking in around 3k words it was a quick read. Wonderful as almost always. This guy just gets how to write stories in a way that most authors just cant.

Ive also seen Thomas Ha is published in this months too. He always has some great writing. Pretty sure he is short listed on many best ofs for 2024. Perhaps this new story will be one for 2025?

I havent even checked out any of the stories but one so far in this months edition. Im optimistic it will be better than last months. Which was one of the weakest in recent memory. Almost every single story from that was set in space or on a spaceship. Felt like a theme and ive never known them to do such. So i assume it was just an anomaly.

If anyone else has any thoughts or reviews for this months edition id love to hear them.

I watched Season 1 of White Lotus and I just can’t tolerate all these shows that are wealthy people doing ridiculous.

I love Bobs Burgers because the kids are pretty much always playing with junk and the family enjoys life despite obvious issues/struggles.

I’m going through cancer treatments and have a lot of free time at home, trying some new stuff to keep occupied but it’s god damn infuriating sometimes.

What’s up with these AI Ghibli pics recently? Wherever I go, I just cannot escape it. Being a guy who loves the cinematic art in any form, seeing this trend getting this scale of traction is simply sad. I have profound respect for the studio and I was amazed by their work when I discovered movies like Castle in The Sky, Grave of the Fireflies, Spirited away, etc. And when I got to know how these movies are made and how much manual effort it takes to produce them, my appreciation only increased. But here comes some AI tool that can replicate this in a matter of minutes. This is no less than a slap on the faces of artists who spend hours imagining and creating something like this.

I am not against AI, or advancements it is making. But there must be a limit to this. You can cut a fruit as well as stab someone with a kitchen knife. Right now, it is the latter happening with the use of AI tools just for cheap social media points. Sad state of affairs.

What do you think? Do you guys …