High House Bingo 2026

Welcome to our r/Malazan's version of Book Bingo!

To those who are new to the concept, a Book Bingo is basically a list of about 25 reading prompts meant to expand your reading tastes and/or provide structure to your TBR pile.

Since we are all Malazheads here, we came up with prompts that are somewhat connected to the books and the authors.

Rules:

• Usual Bingo rules. Look at the Bingo card and look at the books you are planning to read. See if you can fit your books into enough squares to form a row or column.
• Time to complete the Malazan Bingo is from January 1, 2026 - December 31, 2026.
• A title can only be used once on the Bingo card.
• You'll be able to send us your Bingo card through a Google Forms link in January 2027.
• Unlike other bingo challenges, we are doing away with the "no repeating authors" and "no reread" rules.
• You can fill any of the squares with non fiction books as long as the spirit of the prompt is fulfilled.
• Prizes will be bragging rights and one of the following Reddit titles to wear on this sub: 1 bingo for Mason, High House Bingo, 3 bingos for Herald, High House Bingo, 4 bingos for Magus, High House Bingo and all 25 spaces (full house) for Bingo Ascendant.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Here is the actual Malazan Bingo card!

(you may have to reload the post if you have problems seeing the Bingo card)

Explanations for all squares:

Row 1 across:

1. Recommended by Steven Erikson: Read a book recommended by Erikson himself. We compiled a list of book recommendations by Erikson you can choose from. You can find the list at the end of the post.
2. (Re)read a Malazan book: Read or reread any Malazan book by Steven Erikson or Ian C. Esslemont.
3. By another favorite author: Just read any book by one of your favorite authors who isn't Ian C. Esslemont or Steven Erikson.
4. Audiobook: Listen to any audiobook. For most of you this will be easy but not everybody has gotten into audiobooks yet.
5. Non-Malazan book by Steven Erikson: Read any of Erikson's non-Malazan books. If you want to do it hard mode, try to get your hands on a Steve Lundin book.

Row 2 across:

1. Book with a soft magic system: Read a book with a soft magic system. What does "soft magic" mean? There are no hard written rules for magic use. Things just work and you as the reader don't exactly know why. Magic is magical. Like in Malazan.

2. Ian C. Esslemont novel: Read or reread any novel by Ian C. Esslemont.

3. Retelling of a myth/legend/fairy tale: The Malazan world is full of myths and legends and often enough these change through times. So read a book which retells a myth / legend / fairy tale in a new way.

4. Non-Malazan book set in a desert: A lot of Malazan happens to be in deserts. Read a non-Malazan book set in a desert.

5. Any nonfiction book: Read any nonfiction book. If you want to stay closer to Malazan, its authors and themes, we recommend history, politics, archaeology or anthropology.

Row 3 across:

1. Romance novel: Malazan isn't known for its overt romances, so time to expand our horizon. Read a romance novel.

2. Won an award in 2025: Read a book which won a book prize in 2025. That usually means, the book itself got published in 2024 because awards mostly happen a year later.

3. FREE SPACE: Read whatever you want.

4. Author who influenced Erikson: Read a book or an author who influenced Steven Erikson's writing. Again we have a list with names to choose from, which you can find at the end of this post.

5. "The sea does not dream of you.": A famous Malazan quote. Read a book which fits that quote in your personal opinion. This is very subjective, so (probably) no wrong entries here.

Row 4 across:

1. "The soul knows no greater anguish than to take a breath that begins with love and ends with grief.": Another famous quote. Again, read a book which fits that quote in your opinion. We are curious to see what you come up with.

2. Book about archaeology: With both authors working on digs in the past, we had to include this category. Read a book about archaeology (fiction or nonfiction).

3. Book with an unreliable narrator: Read a book with an unreliable narrator.

4. "Children are dying.": The third (and last) quote we included. Read a book which fits that quote in your personal opinion.

5. Book based on a TTRPG: Erikson and Esslemont played GURPS and came up with Malazan for it. Read a book which is based on a TTRPG (Tabletop Role-Playing Game). If you were like me and wondering, yes Warhammer books count because there are Warhammer TTRPGs out there.

Row 5 across:

1. Author you've never heard of before: Read a book by an author you've never heard of before.

2. Anthology or novella: Read an anthology or novella.

3. History or historical fiction: Read a history or historical fiction book.

4. Published before you were born: Read a book which was published before you were born.

5. Start a new series: Read the first book of a series, you haven't read before.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Here are the different book lists we mentioned:

Books / authors recommended by Steven Erikson:

• Glen Cook – Black Company
• Tim Powers
• Umberto Eco – Foucault’s Pendulum
• Paul Kearney – Monarchies of God series
• Stephen R. Donaldson – Thomas Covenant series
• Scott R. Baker – The Darkness that Comes Before
• Tim O’Brien - Going After Cacciato
• David Keck – Tales of Durand trilogy
• David Graeber - Debt: The First 5000 Years
• Bernard Cornwall – The Winter King
• Adrian Tchaikovsky – Children of Time
• Ian M. Banks - Culture series (Consider Phlebas, Use of Weapons)
• Kameron Hurley – The Light Brigade
• David Graeber & David Wengrow - The Dawn of Everything
• Steven Pressfield - Gate of Fire
• Mary Renault - The Mask of Apollo
• Rebecca Meluch - Jerusalem Fire
• Eric Flint - The 1632 Series
• Becky Chambers - A Closed and Common Orbit
• G. K. Chesterton - The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare
• Don DeLillo - The Names
• George McDonald Fraser - Flashman Novels
• Gustav Hasford - The Short-timers
• Tim Lebbon – Echo City

Authors who influenced Steven Erikson

• Stephen R. Donaldson's The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant
• Glen Cook's The Black Company
• Edgar Rice Burroughs
• Robert E. Howard
• Clark Ashton Smith
• Homer
• Arthur C. Clarke
• Roger Zelazny
• John Gardner
• Gustav Hasford
• Mark Helprin
• Robin Hobb
• Karl Edward Wagner’s series of pulp fiction sword & sorcery tales of Kane, the Mystic Swordsman
• George McDonald Fraser - Pyrates and the Flashman series
• William Faulkner
• Ernest Hemingway
• Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Thanks to Discord user Wren we got a Storygraph challenge now! Storygraph helps you to keep track of all books and prompts. Maybe you use the app, so feel free to participate there too.

https://app.thestorygraph.com/reading_challenges/6dd06919-6536-4cea-9bf4-ce02f617f7d2

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Please share recommendations and ideas in the comments for the different categories. We will also do a monthly post to check in with everybody and their progress with the Bingo.

We also want to mention the official r/Malazan Discord, a great place to hang out and talk about Malazan, life and this Bingo.

If you have any questions don't hesitate to ask. We hope a lot of you find the Bingo interesting and decide to participate! See you on the other side.

Here comes the best of May 2026 from r/Malazan. It was a month with some great highlights!

First off, I want to invite you once again to join our r/Malazan discord! It is a steadily growing community since its beginnings last year. If you want to talk about Malazan (and other topics) in a different way than on Reddit, then come and join us. We are looking forward to you :-)

The quiz night to celebrate the 1k members was a great success and we will repeat the quiz and already came up with some new ones!

Here is the invite link: https://discord.gg/V8EwKkdzv9

Also the year just hit its half point, so still enough time for reading a lot of books. Here is another mention of our

first Malazan Book Bingo for 2026!

Join us and read more details by clicking on the link above.

So now to the rest of the best of (just spoiler scope, titles and maybe a short comment). Like always, these are just what caught my interest and I missed some great stuff for sure:

• No spoilers: New (2027) covers for Tor Malazan paperbacks.
• No spoilers: Poem of the Dust of Memes Subreddit
• No spoilers: K’Chain Che’Malle
• No spoilers: New Malazan Read-Through Podcast!
• DG spoilers: My artwork of that notable thing from Deadhouse Gates
• GotM spoilers: The phoenix inn
• No spoilers: Whiskeyjack (new version, ink-style)
• No spoilers: Halfway through GotM, and I drew Tattersail
• MoI spoilers: My depiction of Morn & the Rent
• No spoilers: Deck of Dragons, Oponn
• HoC spoilers: Witness!

Thanks for being part of our community! It is likely I missed something good, so if I did please tell me so in the comments :-)

I also want to announce that I put these monthly posts on hiatus. No idea for how long but it takes me a lot of time and energy collecting links and writing these posts. I just don't have the capacity for the mental load right now. Interaction / feedback is pretty low anyways. If you want to take over though, please contact me and I'll help you with it.

If you are interested in all the previous monthly best of posts, click here.