My Wyrd & Wonder wind down … or, how I did with that bingo challenge in the end

Banner by imyril; Image credit: Svetlana Alyuk on 123RF.com

 

Wyrd and Wonder is always such a blast and this year has been no different – I’ve made some new friends, read swathes of awesome posts by awesome people (and I’m still catching up), and seen my TBR list double in size (yet again) – what more could a book blogger want?

Maybe only a book bingo. Which one of our three most excellent hosts, imyril, provided, and which I possibly spent a disproportionate amount of time agonising over. Because, you know, lists and achievements are how I work. So I did some extracurricular reading – crammed into lunch breaks and those evenings when I was supposed to be doing laundry and cooking (we’ve eaten so badly this month – sorry T, I’ll totally make it up to you!) – and here are the results:

 

For Unreliable Allies I thought that Mordew by Alex Pheby best fit the bill. Nathan meets not one person in the course of his adventures who doesn’t want to use him for their own ends making them all untrustworthy.

With a little creativity I think I can argue for Delilah Bard being a Reluctant Hero(ine). Lynn and I may not have loved A Darker Shade of Magic by V E Schwab during our buddy-read, but we both agreed that Lila was the best thing in it. She is a heroine-in-embryo in this first book, but that she helps Kell when she could have just walked away speaks to her basic goodness.

My Freebie was a literal freebie, an ARC of Seven Deaths of an Empire by G R Matthews (post coming next week) which is due to be published 22^nd June in the US and 24^th June in the UK.

To Finish a Series I squeezed in Spirits that Walk in Shadow by Nina Kiriki Hoffman (post still to be written) which finishes off the loose Chapel Hollow trilogy. This book also gets my Prettiest Cover Art of the Month prize (which I just made up) because just look at Daniel Dos Santos’ work:

(And you’ll recognise a lot of Dos Santos’ work if you take a look at his website here).

Finally, I struggled a bit with Chosen One. I was going to use Mordew, but that left me without any unreliable allies. Tem and Laurence saved the day (with a little interpretation). If Throne of Jade by Naomi Novik is about anything it’s about Temeraire making it clear that Laurence is his chosen companion, whether he’s ‘worthy’ of being so or not. And, of course, Tem himself is pretty darn special too, intended for imperial company as he was.

 

So that gets me my debatable diagonal line, (a bingo!? … A flush?? … Snap!?). Then I completed the Read-along by reading The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart with you all (yay), and The House of the Stag by Kage Baker definitely fitted the bill for I Never Knew My Father. I also tackled an Award Winner by starting The House of Shattered Wings by Aliette de Bodard, but I’m savouring every minute of this one and haven’t actually finished it yet, so that box doesn’t get crossed off, I just want you to know that I tried!

 

 

I hope everyone has enjoyed Wyrd and Wonder as much as I have this year. Did you have a go at imyril’s bingo? If so, how did you do? Or what else did you have fun doing this month for W&W?

 

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