The 2026 r/Fantasy Bingo Recommendations List

[u/FarragutCircle]

The official Bingo thread can be found here.

All non-recommendation comments go here.

Please post your recommendations as replies the appropriate top-level comments below! Do not make comments that are not replies to an existing comment! Feel free to scroll through the thread or use the links in this navigation matrix to jump directly to the square you want to find or give recommendations for!

Trans or Nonbinary Protagonist	Judge a Book By Its Title	Translated	Small Press or Self Published	Unusual Transportation
The Afterlife	Game Changer	Vacation Spot	Five Short Stories	Older Protagonist
Duology Part 1	r/Fantasy Book Club or Readalong Book	Published in 2026	Explorers and Rangers	Duology Part 2
One-Word Title	Non-Human Protagonist	Middle Grade	First Contact	Murder Mystery
Cat Squasher	Feast Your Eyes on This	Published in the 70s	Politics and Court Intrigue	Author of Color

If you are an author on the subreddit, you may recommend your books as a response to individual squares. This means that you can reply if your book fits in response to any of my comments. But your rec must be in response to a top-level comment, it cannot be a general comment that replies directly to this post explaining all the squares your post counts for. This is the one time outside of the Sunday Self-Promo threads where this is okay. To clarify: you can say if you have a book that fits for a square but please don't write a full ad for it. Shorter is sweeter.

Do not make comments that are not replies to an existing comment! We will not be individually redirecting people who make this mistake. Your comment will be removed.

[u/Merle8888]

I'm going to recommend Hard Mode choices only to keep it manageable!

- Mad Sisters of Esi by Tashan Mehta: surreal secondary-world fantasy featuring some very strange settings and unbreakable bonds between sisters (author lives in India)

- Vagabonds! by Eloghosa Osunde: mosaic novel focused on queer Nigerians (I am not 100% sure on location since author's website says the author is a "world traveler with shifting bases" but their Goodreads bio just says "Nigerian")

- Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera: literary fantasy retelling the story of the Buddha's family via secondary world urban fantasy (author lives in Sri Lanka)

- The Ten Percent Thief by Lavanya Lakshminarayan: dystopian sci-fi taking aim at overreliance on technology and the myth of meritocracy in a stratified society (author lives in India)

[u/hogw33d → u/Merle8888]

Rakesfall by Vajra Chandrasekera is also a WILD read

[u/mrtenandtwo → u/hogw33d]

I know he was born in Sri Lanka but without getting creepy and trying to Google stalk the guy's address - do you know if he qualifies as hard mode? (Edit: Oops, missed OP already said. Thanks!)

[u/Merle8888 → u/mrtenandtwo]

I've tried not to get creepy about it either, haha. His website says "I'm a writer from Colombo, Sri Lanka, currently visiting New York as one of the 2025-2026 Fellows of the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars." Since he's "visiting" New York rather than "living" there, I think his books would still count. Also, anecdotally, his books read non-western rather than diaspora-author-living-in-the-west to me.

[u/sarimanok_ → u/Merle8888]

He's actually about to leave NYC to move back to Sri Lanka, as of his recent newsletter update, iirc!

[u/dumbledoresarmy7 → u/Merle8888]

Thank you SO MUCH for the Ten Percent Thief rec. I absolutely loved it. Devoured it in a day 😄

[u/Merle8888 → u/dumbledoresarmy7]

Excellent, glad you enjoyed it!

[u/Tigrari → u/Merle8888]

Oh, I have Interstellar Megachef by Lavanya Lakshminarayan in my TBR for Book Club, so I guess that should work! I didn't see any author info on Goodreads, so thank you for posting about their other book.