2020 Bingo Participants, Shill the Books You Read That No One Else Did

In order, more or less. Officially, I had nine. I included a tenth because I read two stories for Romance but only included one on the card because I felt it fit the spirit of the rules.

Also, a lot of this is copied from my review threads. Hope you enjoy.
The Wind in His Heart By Charles De Lint
Thoughts
I say this as the person who hates optimism in a lot of ways, or rather cheap, Hallmark Channel optimism and was dreading this square. But this is optimism that feels earned and is about mostly good people trying to do the right thing or getting better and by the end you find yourself saying, ‘these are the kind of people I would like to be like’.
This takes place mostly on or around the fictional Kikame Indian Reservation in Arizona nearer Las Vegas rather than Phoenix based on the description and shares the same universe as Newford.

Steve, a self-described desert rat sees a van that dumps a teenage girl on the side of
the road middle of the desert. He comes down and helps her. She ends up digging
up the secret from his past that pushes half the plot. Meanwhile, Thomas,
working at a reservation convenience store meets a strange woman in a 50’s
black Cadillac limo.
From there the book adds multiple PoV’s come in, weaving in together but following Steve (the Desert Rat) Sade (The Girl) or Thomas’ (boy minding the store) overall story, with the exception of bringing in one character related to Steve’s secret very early. Not all of the
protagonists are human.
It is one of my favorite bingo card read, period.
The Waking Fire (First book of Draconis Memoria) byAnthony Ryan
Thoughts— Okay, a distaff James Bond, an exploration to deepest darkest Arradsia (think colonial-era Africa or South America) to seek out the fabled white drake, and a naval plot, oh yes, and dragons in a steampunk setting. Oh yeah, the magic and much of the technology is powered by dragon blood. Dragons only native to the barely explored continent of Arradsia.
There are two major powers, the Ironship Trading Company and the Corvantine Empire who are at competing for control of the Dragon blood trade which includes a lot of worldbuilding, spycraft, and economics which in turn leads to war.
Then the Dragons chime in with their opinion, or rather, it becomes apparent that Dragons and are active agents in events, which knocks over the chessboard.
The book includes three interlinked plots that works surprisingly well and from what I’ve heard people tend to prefer the plots involving the spy (Lizanne Letheridge) and the exploration-based plotline (Clayton Talcreek) which make up most of the meat of the story while the naval story gradually takes a back seat and it ends at the point where we are just
starting to understand just that the entire underpinnings of this world/way of life are under threat in a way that reminds me of Battlestar Galactica, though in not as dire straits….yet.
I have finished the series now and can say I enjoyed it very much.
Six Gun Tarot by R.S. Beltcher
What I am using this for— Number in the Title
Thoughts—
Okay, this is a very weird west novel set in Golgotha, Nevada. This is a town where both Chinese gods and Native American Gods have ties and the heir of Anne Bonny walks. It’s a place where a fugitive carrying an ancient artifact he inherited from his father works for a sheriff who has rope marks from the three times hanging him didn’t work. Angels, who
may know the Angels Joseph Smith talked to live.
It is also a very American place and it has a very cool soft magic built on the American Dream, the one that may make all your dreams come true but may also leave you dying in an empty desert, depending on your luck, hope and gumption.
And of course, there are things in the dark, and sometimes miners dig too deep, things ready to undermine all those humans wishes and hopes and dreams.
Being the first book, it seems like it has some first installment weirdness where all the important characters are introduced and you end up with favorites.
Mine was the half coyote sheriff’s deputy and the heir of the pirate Anne Bonny.
That tells you what kind of place this is.
Dinosaur Fantastic
Edited by Mike Resnick and Martin
Greenberg 1993
What I am using this for—Five Short
Stories
Thoughts—
Yeah, it’s old but it is goody with 25 stories in a 331-page anthology. I was struck by the sheer variety of stories. Most are inventive and smart.
My favorites—
Disquisitions on Dinosaurs by Robert Sheckley
“Let all Romans know that I have had a visit from a representative of the gods. The city is going to be blessed with a visitation of dinosaurs. These will be free-ranging dinosaurs and they will be our honored guests. They are not human beings, but I have been assured they are intelligent in their own way quite tractable. Please be on your best behavior
with these dinosaurs.
Faithfully Yours, Nero, Emperor of the Romans.”
Nero hopes this will help with the resentment of the whole Rome burning thing.
I think that says enough.
Wise One’s Tale by Joesepha Sherman
Wise One, oldest of the winged hunters (humans call them eagles I think), tells the chicks of their ancestor, Quick Trickster, who faced down the ancient foes such as the sharped-fanged tyrant, the giant wader and the armored browser to gain a boon from the great fire being.
Yes, Dino heroic quest!
Whilst Slept the Sauropod by Nicholas A. DiChario
Three generations of teachers in the town of Sleepy Mountain react differently to the fact that one of the nearby mountains is not a mountain but has been sleeping for a very long time.
Rex by David Gerrold
A t-rex, a burglar, and a slow driving ambulance help a man renegotiate the terms of his dysfunctional marriage. This is hilarious and warped and tasteless.
Chameleon by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Wilhelmina, witch, and fifth-grader, isn’t fitting in well at her new school, which is a mundane school in a universe without Hogwarts or the equivalent. She’s managed to freak the mundanes and is now alone and friendless. With the help of a lost boa constrictor, the class rabbit, and a room full of discarded plaster-of-paris dinosaurs, she figures out how to solve this problem.
This is like a Studio Ghibli mini-movie, so I adore this one, with Wise One’s Tale the only one in the almost as good. I also read this to a friend’s kids as a bedtime story. Ms. Rusch, if you’re reading this and you know an illustrator, this would work very well as a kid’s book.

/r/Fantasy Thread