monkeys and ponies

Am I gonna have time to read everything in all the main literature categories before voting begins? Very definitely not! But I did get through 5.1 of the novel nominees and have a few opinions. ( after the cut )

Again, no surprises if you follow me on Goodreads: ( some very brief reviews, and the ranking )

With six novels to read, I figured I'd be lucky to get the four major fiction categories done before the July 15 voting deadline. But it's June 22, and I'm done! Onwards to graphic novels after this.

( the reviews and ranking )

It took seven weeks for me to get through all the Hugo novels, what with not having read any of them – but I finished the Hugo novella reading in three days, because I'd read three of them already. A WINNER IS ME. (And what a relief it is to know I'll have read everything in the four main fiction categories well before the deadline.)

Anyway, all but one of these reviews already appeared on Goodreads, but the Ted Chiang one only appears here, because the novella was part of his Exhalation collection and not trackable separately. (I'll be making my way through the rest of Exhalation after Hugo season is over, though, that's for sure.)

( the reviews and ranking )

Really short this time, because as with the novelettes, I never bothered taking notes. Fortunately, they're all online, and all good. (Well, STET isn't my favorite, but it's powerful nevertheless and will work better for other people than it did me.)

ANYWAY.

“The Court Magician,” Sarah Pinsker
This is essentially a fairy tale/cautionary tale about getting what you wish for, and let's face it, the most interesting fairy tales are also cautionary tales. Here, a boy discovers that there's a physical and emotional price for learning real magic instead of the stagecraft he's already mastered, and even though that might sound like a clichéd premise, the bitter weight of the magician's plight transcends its premise. Four and a half stars.

“The Rose MacGregor Drinking and Admiration Society,” T. Kingfisher
I basically always love T. Kingfisher/Ursula Vernon's work, and this is no exception. It's a story in which various magical creatures reminisce and lament about the Human Who Got Away, and the sense of humor and tight writing frankly make me jealous I didn't write this first. Five stars.

“The Secret Lives of the Nine Negro Teeth of George Washington,” P. Djèlí Clark
Nine short-short stories tell the tales of the slaves who "donated" Washington's teeth, and the effect they would have had upon them. It's every bit as clever and well-written as Clark's other Hugo nominee, The Black God's Drums, and is therefore one of my three five-star ratings in this category.

“STET,” Sarah Gailey
WARNING: If you read this on a mobile device, as I first did, you won't get the full impact of this story; only now, trying to add a link to it on my computer, do I see how much I missed. And yet, even with the missing content more obvious, this story doesn't quite hang together for me, not in the least because it describes something awful that could literally happen today, not in 2046, as the story indicates. Two and a half stars.

“The Tale of the Three Beautiful Raptor Sisters, and the Prince Who Was Made of Meat,” Brooke Bolander
It's another Bolander story I genuinely enjoyed! I can't describe it any better than the title does, so if you feel like the kind of person who'll enjoy a fairy tale that stars three dinosaurs, please read this. In fact, even if you're questioning whether you're the kind of person who thinks you'll enjoy this, please read this. Five stars.

“A Witch’s Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies,” Alix E. Harrow
A librarian – or more accurately, a witch – helps wayward, troubled teens find the books they most need. It's a perfectly fine story, but it's up against some strong competition, and can't quite hold its own against those. Four stars.

My rankings:

1. "The Rose MacGregor Drinking and Admiration Society"
2. "The Secret Lives of the Nine Negro Teeth of George Washington"
3. "The Tale of the Three Beautiful Raptor Sisters, and the Prince Who Was Made of Meat"
4. "The Court Magician"
5. "A Witch’s Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies"
6. "STET"

Huh, could have sworn I'd posted here about Best Novella already, and I guess not? Well, that and Best Short Story will have to wait until tomorrow or sometime afterwards, 'cause I'm going to bed after I post this.

Besides, this is the strongest category of any of the four primary fiction categories, so hey, you luck out tonight, and maybe you'll have an easier time choosing a top story than I did; I keep switching between my first two choices. Anyway, I've added links to read the stories that are available online, and I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

"The Only Harmless Great Thing," Brooke Bolander
Bolander can be hit or miss for me, but this one was a hit: a bittersweet alternate history story in which humans and elephants can communicate – yet the US still uses elephants in pre-nuclear weapons radium experiments. The modern framing device in the story didn’t work quite as well for me, but the relationship between Topsy the rebellious elephant and her trainer, a young woman rapidly decaying from radiation poisoning, was compelling right up to the end. Four stars.

"If at First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again," Zen Cho
Goddammit, how is everything in this category so good? This starts off as a folk tale in which an imugi, a mythological Korean creature, tries to ascend to become a dragon. And tries. And tries. And keeps failing, for thousands of years, until finally it seeks out a human who can help, and eventually falls in love. I’ve read other work of Zen Cho’s in Uncanny and always liked it, and this is no exception. Five stars.

"The Last Banquet of Temporal Confections," Tina Connolly
This ticked a lot of my favorite boxes: detailed food and flavor discussion! Slow burn storytelling! Memory! Revenge! A solid four stars.

"Nine Last Days on Planet Earth," Daryl Gregory
Okay, well, I was going to give “The Thing About Ghost Stories” my top pick, and then this swooped in with its beautifully characterized prose and a story about spaceborne invasive plants that slowly but surely wreak famine and havoc across Earth. It’s a little too believable, in fact, but LT is so very human and his relationships so real that the nagging threat of planetary extinction almost felt secondary to the story of one small person trying to understand how our entire ecosystem would shift. Five stars, utterly amazing, can’t believe how good this field is.

"The Thing About Ghost Stories," Naomi Kritzer
I read this in Uncanny when it first came out, and it remains one of the best stories I read last year. It’s less SFF than the other entries, but the characterization is so solid, and the speculative fiction aspects so subtle and well-placed, that it easily deserves to be on this list. Five stars.

"When We Were Starless," Simone Heller
I kept thinking I’d landed in the middle of a Fourth Doctor-era story; honestly, since this one covers a civilization that’s lost track of its explorational roots and devolved into tribal nomads at war with an implacable force, it would be a nice companion episode to “The Face of Evil.” Unfortunately, I also found it a bit slow, and the worldbuilding too opaque, at least at the beginning. Three stars.

My rankings (at least right now):
1. Nine Last Days on Planet Earth
2. If at First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again
3. The Thing About Ghost Stories
4. The Last Banquet of Temporal Confections
5. The Only Harmless Great Thing
6. When We Were Starless

As with the novelettes, many of these are available for free online, so I've provided links where I can.

( after the cut )

As before, if you follow me on Goodreads, none of this will be a surprise except for the rankings. I will say this: I think this is a stronger field than the novels. You can't really go wrong with any of these options, so it's just a matter of which I preferred more than the others.

( the reviews and rankings )

Hooray, each of these entries is readable online! And a good thing, too, as there isn't a bad choice in the bunch.

( after the cut )