I read a lot of great books in 2021. In total I read 71 books, with a total of about 14,634 pages. This year I was marking off books on a randomly generated book bingo card, and I got three bingos. I almost finished the card, but there were a few easy tiles I missed. Most of the books I read for this challenge I have reviewed on this blog already. Normally I would compile all the reviews here, but some of them are a bit long, so I’ll just supply links.

To see reviews, check out these links:

Book Bingo Reviews #1 (Column 4)

Book Bingo Reviews #2 (Middle Row).

Book Bingo Reviews #3 (Diagonal Starting Top Left).

Harrow The Ninth Review (Set on a Space Station).

Women Write SFF Readathon Reviews (Epic Quest, Short Story Collection, and Has Vampires).

Hugo Novella Nominees 2021 (Starts With F).

Brave Little Toasters (Set on Mars).

I originally had Harriet Porber and the Theatre of Love as my ‘Read This Year’ book, but have at the last minute moved it to ‘Any Romance’, and put Project Hail Mary as ‘Read This Year’. The Harriet Porber review is therefore on the Book Bingo #1 page, and the Project Hail Mary I did as a bonus Free Square Review on the Book Bingo #2 page.

This leaves three books that I have read for this challenge but not reviewed. So, let’s tackle them now:

Has Superheroes: The Vision Vol.1: Little Worse Than a Man

By Tom King (writer) and Gabriel Hernández Walta (artist)

I read both this collection and the sequel, Little Better Than a Beast. Really good story, especially for a character that I wish we got to see more of in the MCU. Also felt a bit of Wandervision vibes, so maybe this comic provided some inspiration.

Dystopia: Parable of the Sower

Original Work by Octavia E. Butler. Adaptation written by Damian Duffy and Illustrated by John Jennings

I haven’t read the original book by Octavia Butler, but this seems like a good adaptation. I guess I just wasn’t in the mood for a dystopia when I read it; hit too close to home. Still, really brutal and powerful.

Sun-Daughters, Sea-Daughters

By Aimee Ogden

A retelling of The Little Mermaid in space. There was nothing objectively bad about it, but for some reason this story didn’t grab me at all. Despite being a short novella, it felt long and all over the place. Not long after I read Yoon Ha Lee’s novelette The Mermaid Astronaut, and that felt like a much better Little Mermaid retelling.

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Bingo challenges are fun, and if anyone else used this card I hope you had fun with it. I’ve rolled a new bingo card for this year, and I should have it ready to show off tomorrow, and I’ll talk about my plans for the rest of the year then too.

~ Lauren