sophia_sol: photo of a 19th century ivory carving of a fat bird (Default)
Woohoo I finally got through another Hugo category! Here's how I'm voting for the novellas this year. Links to full reviews in the titles.

1. Elder Race, by Adrian Tchaikovsky

I LOVED THIS. I was not expecting it at all and it blew me away!

2. The Past is Red, by Catherynne M Valente

Yes, I'm surprised as you are that I'm ranking a Valente this high, but you know what, every now and then she manages to write something that really works for me, and this does.

3. Fireheart Tiger, by Aliette de Bodard

Loved everything about this one except that the romance felt too rushed.

4. A Spindle Splintered, by Alix E Harrow

Although I don't love everything this book is doing, I still really liked it!

5. No Award

6. A Psalm for the Wild-Built, by Becky Chambers

I've loved most of the Becky Chambers books I've read in the past, but this one just really rubbed me the wrong way in a number of aspects. DNF.

Not ranking: Across the Green Grass Fields, by Seanan McGuire

I find myself so deeply irritated by something or other about every single book in this series I've read over the years for the Hugos and I'm not gonna keep on trying.
sophia_sol: photo of a 19th century ivory carving of a fat bird (Default)
It's for moments like this that I work my way through the Hugo lists every year: that feeling when I pick up a book I probably would never have otherwise bothered with, and discover that it is actually 1000% my thing. This book! This book!!!!!!!!!!!

It is a book about the struggles to communicate between people of very different cultures and experiences and frameworks for understanding the world, and about what happens to a colonized planet that is no longer in contact with the rest of the universe, and about being haunted by your past, and about trying to do things and believe in things and make a difference, and about the importance of human connection and the stories we tell. It's beautiful and fascinating and emotional and so, so good.

Highly recommended!!

(also...the Dragonriders of Pern books were my first and most formative exposure to the notion of a planet colonized and then abandoned, and interacting with the technology left by the original colonizers without understanding it -- so throughout the book I kept on being inescapably reminded of how much I once loved the Pern books, except this book is uhhhhh actually good, unlike Pern, lol)

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