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2017 Hugo nominees: best novel
I'm voting in this year's Hugo Awards (and going to Worldcon in Finland, WOOOOOO), and having just finished the last of the novel nominees, am logging my thoughts. All reviews are pasted from my Goodreads account, so if you follow me there, this post should look familiar.
All the Birds in the Sky, by Charlie Jane Anders
A really sweet-natured story of two misfits – a scientist and a witch – who share a rocky journey from adolescence through adulthood and manage to save the world. Anders' writing style is breezy and witty, but manages to pack a fair bit of emotion in as well, and Laurence and Patricia felt realistically awkward: hugely talented people who can't quite find their place, and who can barely successfully deal with each other despite their long-term bond. This won't be my top pick for the 2017 Hugos – that slot still belongs to NK Jemison's The Obelisk Gate, at least unless one of the three remaining nominees I haven't read somehow turns out to be better – but All the Birds in the Sky may wind up my #2 choice.
A Closed and Common Orbit, by Becky Chambers
I got a little worried about picking this up for the Hugo reading when I realized it was book #2 and I'd never read book #1 – but I never had a problem following along with this book, and in fact, I enjoyed this one enough that now I'm curious about what happens in the first part of the series. Most of the book alternates between the ultimately intertwined stories of Sidra, the AI trying to get used to life in an (illegal) human facsimile body, and Jane 23/Pepper, the young genetically engineered slave worker who unexpectedly finds freedom and is raised by an AI on an abandoned spaceship. Both characters have to work out what it means to be human, and have to unlearn what it means to be their original selves, and Chambers' style is breezy and sweet-natured enough that I instantly cared about her protagonists. I have no idea where she'll take a third book (if there is one), but I'd like to read more of her work.
Death’s End, by Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu
While this book continues to show off Liu's imaginative use of physics, it's also far too sprawling, with so many crises and cataclysms that I ultimately found it boring instead of tense or gripping. And while I was pleased that the protagonist with whom we spend the most time is female, she also felt wooden to me, as did her faithful (female) assistant. I suspect the whole book is meant to be a meditation on what it means to have to play God, voluntarily or not, but without any real stakes to care about – every time something terrible happened, I knew I had several hundred pages left to go – it left me cold. It's going somewhere on the bottom of my Hugo rankings, that's for sure.
Ninefox Gambit, by Yoon Ha Lee
I want to give this three and a half stars, because while I found it really slow going for about the first half, the closer to the endgame we got – and the closer to the truth about Shuos Jedao's motives – the more interesting I found the book. The worldbuilding is intriguing and complex, although I still have a hard time visualizing how the Hexarchate's calendrical rot could affect attack type and success rate outside of a virtual world. But that aside, I loved Cheris and Jedao and their prickly relationship, and that alone will probably get me to read the next book.
The Obelisk Gate, by N. K. Jemisin
Not quite as stunning as the first installment in the series, but if anything is going to come in second place to The Fifth Season, the best book I've read [in 2016], it seems fitting that it's The Obelisk Gate. I still love the characters and that Essun's prickliness has extended to her daughter; the plot and worldbuilding just felt a bit too overcomplicated to me, as if they might topple under their own weight. Even so, I'm dying to see what happens in the third one.
Too Like the Lightning, by Ada Palmer
It's not like me to give up on a book, but nearly 100 pages into it, I flat-out hated it. What I wrote on June 18: "So far, this feels like one of those books that mistakes incomprehensibility for worldbuilding. I'll keep going, though." And on June 19: "I'm done. This is incomprehensible and unreadable, though I suppose someone with a lot more patience and more of a taste for dry political intrigue than I have might enjoy it."
Final verdict:
Next up: can I finish the novellas, novelettes, and short stories before the July 15 deadline? Well, I'm going to try to read each one in a day (and the short stories in a single day), so maybe? We'll see, I guess.
All the Birds in the Sky, by Charlie Jane Anders
A really sweet-natured story of two misfits – a scientist and a witch – who share a rocky journey from adolescence through adulthood and manage to save the world. Anders' writing style is breezy and witty, but manages to pack a fair bit of emotion in as well, and Laurence and Patricia felt realistically awkward: hugely talented people who can't quite find their place, and who can barely successfully deal with each other despite their long-term bond. This won't be my top pick for the 2017 Hugos – that slot still belongs to NK Jemison's The Obelisk Gate, at least unless one of the three remaining nominees I haven't read somehow turns out to be better – but All the Birds in the Sky may wind up my #2 choice.
A Closed and Common Orbit, by Becky Chambers
I got a little worried about picking this up for the Hugo reading when I realized it was book #2 and I'd never read book #1 – but I never had a problem following along with this book, and in fact, I enjoyed this one enough that now I'm curious about what happens in the first part of the series. Most of the book alternates between the ultimately intertwined stories of Sidra, the AI trying to get used to life in an (illegal) human facsimile body, and Jane 23/Pepper, the young genetically engineered slave worker who unexpectedly finds freedom and is raised by an AI on an abandoned spaceship. Both characters have to work out what it means to be human, and have to unlearn what it means to be their original selves, and Chambers' style is breezy and sweet-natured enough that I instantly cared about her protagonists. I have no idea where she'll take a third book (if there is one), but I'd like to read more of her work.
Death’s End, by Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu
While this book continues to show off Liu's imaginative use of physics, it's also far too sprawling, with so many crises and cataclysms that I ultimately found it boring instead of tense or gripping. And while I was pleased that the protagonist with whom we spend the most time is female, she also felt wooden to me, as did her faithful (female) assistant. I suspect the whole book is meant to be a meditation on what it means to have to play God, voluntarily or not, but without any real stakes to care about – every time something terrible happened, I knew I had several hundred pages left to go – it left me cold. It's going somewhere on the bottom of my Hugo rankings, that's for sure.
Ninefox Gambit, by Yoon Ha Lee
I want to give this three and a half stars, because while I found it really slow going for about the first half, the closer to the endgame we got – and the closer to the truth about Shuos Jedao's motives – the more interesting I found the book. The worldbuilding is intriguing and complex, although I still have a hard time visualizing how the Hexarchate's calendrical rot could affect attack type and success rate outside of a virtual world. But that aside, I loved Cheris and Jedao and their prickly relationship, and that alone will probably get me to read the next book.
The Obelisk Gate, by N. K. Jemisin
Not quite as stunning as the first installment in the series, but if anything is going to come in second place to The Fifth Season, the best book I've read [in 2016], it seems fitting that it's The Obelisk Gate. I still love the characters and that Essun's prickliness has extended to her daughter; the plot and worldbuilding just felt a bit too overcomplicated to me, as if they might topple under their own weight. Even so, I'm dying to see what happens in the third one.
Too Like the Lightning, by Ada Palmer
It's not like me to give up on a book, but nearly 100 pages into it, I flat-out hated it. What I wrote on June 18: "So far, this feels like one of those books that mistakes incomprehensibility for worldbuilding. I'll keep going, though." And on June 19: "I'm done. This is incomprehensible and unreadable, though I suppose someone with a lot more patience and more of a taste for dry political intrigue than I have might enjoy it."
Final verdict:
- The Obelisk Gate
- All the Birds in the Sky
- A Closed and Common Orbit
- Ninefox Gambit (though honestly, I may yet switch this with #3; haven't decided yet)
- Death's End
- Too Like the Lightning
Next up: can I finish the novellas, novelettes, and short stories before the July 15 deadline? Well, I'm going to try to read each one in a day (and the short stories in a single day), so maybe? We'll see, I guess.