2020 Hugo Award: Lodestar (YA)

[sophia_sol]

Alrighty, next up on the Hugos ranking docket for me is the YA category. Technically speaking not a Hugo (it's the Lodestar Award) but voted for on the same ballot, so hey.

This was a strong category! A good proportion of the books in this one are worthy and admirable, even if not all of them are perfectly to my taste.

Here's my final ranking, with links in the titles to full reviews for the books I finished:

1. Deeplight, by Frances Hardinge
Amazingly inventive and captivating and just great all around and I love it.

2. Riverland, by Fran Wilde
Superbly written and effectively emotional.

3. Catfishing on CatNet, by Naomi Kritzer
A fun, quick, easy read.

4. Minor Mage, by T. Kingfisher
Good and grounded and kind of upsetting (in an appropriate way).

5. Dragon Pearl, by Yoon Ha Lee
Doesn't take the dangers faced by its preteen protagonist seriously enough, but an interesting setting/worldbuilding.

6. The Wicked King, by Holly Black
I read the first couple chapters and the last couple chapters and it's just not up my alley. It's about a mortal girl in Faerie and being involved in the various complicated backstabbing politics of that realm; so far so promising. But: a) as I feared there don't seem to be any characters I actually like, AND b) the mortal girl doesn't actually appear to be....very good....at the kinds of necessary machinations and manipulations. Which means that I don't have any reason to want to hang out in her head, if I don't like her and can't even get pleasure from watching her be really good at being bad. So I didn't bother reading the rest.

Comments

[chestnut_pod]

I've been waiting to embark on my grand Fran Wilde journey once my thesis is defended, so I'm glad to know Riverland is another good one!

Have you read Naomi Kritzer's short story about Little Free Libraries? I thought it was adorable.

[sophia_sol]

Oh good luck on your thesis defense, and I hope you have a lovely time diving back into pleasure reading afterwards!

Yes, I did see that short story, and thought it was really charming :)

[cahn]

I really thought this was the strongest category this year!

heh, I bounced hard enough off the first book in the Black series (trilogy?) that I didn't even start this one. I guess I'm glad to have that validated, lol.

I would not be sad if any of these won (except the Black) but I'm still really hoping Deeplight wins though!!

[sophia_sol]

I'd put this as a tie with the novellas for strongest category, I think! I'm also interested to note that in this category we have ranked all the options exactly the same.

I think the Black probably has some sort of merit. It's just really not to my personal taste!

[cahn]

I switched Catfishing and Riverland from you! But I think in a year where I didn't prioritize a lighthearted tone quite so heavily (which is most years) I would rank Riverland second. I still might go back and do that :P (Which is also why I liked the Lodestars better than the novellas too, I imagine -- they were somewhat lighter overall.)

But yeah, it is interesting as I think we have pretty different rankings for all the other categories! I think that we have pretty similar broad tastes but can differ on specifics :)

[sophia_sol]

I switched Catfishing and Riverland from you!

oh oops, I missed that!

I don't personally think that I find the Lodestars lighter than the novellas overall -- Deeplight, Riverland, and Minor Mage all felt pretty thematically dark to me, whereas in the novellas I'd say only The Deep and In An Absent Dream.

I think you're right about our tastes :)