sophia_sol | Entries tagged with author: alix e harrow

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.

Sequel to A Spindle Splintered! Featuring the protagonist of a version of the Sleeping Beauty tale who has taken to wandering the multiverse to save other Sleeping Beauties, but ends up in a Snow White variation by accident and meets with the Evil Queen.

When I started the book I was like, sigh, this is leaning real hard on simplistic versions of tropes and I'm bored. But then somehow I got invested and then I was THERE. Look, fractured fairy tale retellings were basically my first fandom, and this is a great representation of the genre, a lot better than much of the dreck I was reading and enjoying as a young kid!

Anyway: the importance of having agency over your own life and story, the value in connections with the people you care about and who care about you, getting to see a version of Snow White as a revolutionary leader overthrowing the monarchy, many great themes in this book. Also, obviously, Sleeping Beauty and the Evil Queen from Snow White kiss.

If you liked the first one, you will like this one! A very fun series, imo.

I was introduced to Harrow's writing in a previous Hugo year with her debut novel, Ten Thousand Doors of January, which was making a stylistic statement that REALLY didn't land for me. So I was a bit trepidatious heading into this book, which is on the hugo novella nominee list this year. But, although I don't love everything this book is doing, I actually really liked it, I'm glad to say!

A Spindle Splintered is a fractured fairy tale, and exactly the kind of thing I would have devoured as a kid. Characters from multiple versions of the Sleeping Beauty tale end up interacting and able to affect each other's stories! It's very fun, and I loved how clear it was that the author ALSO loves fairy tales and loves the inherent nature of mutability within them. And I loved the main character Zinnia and her various coping mechanisms for dealing with knowing she's a dying girl with a time limit on her life

However, I did not love the way that the book leaned so hard into the cliches for various of these stories, most especially the story of Primrose, the second-most-important Sleeping Beauty of the book. It felt like it was simultaneously trying to poke fun at the ridiculousness of the story and the setting AND ALSO take the difficulties of Primrose's life seriously, and the clash between those two modes made it feel really off-balance to me. It was basically fine for the various other Sleeping Beauties who show up at the very end to help save the day, because they're ultimately minor characters so it feels more okay for them to be avatars of cliche. But for Primrose....her story was central to the whole thing, as it's the story the main character Zinnia escapes into, and it just didn't work for me.

Also the author has fun putting in little easter eggs for the reader, like a "Harold, they're lesbians" joke, and you know what, memes like that stuck into books continue to be jarring imo.

BUT there are some things the book gets really right, and my favourite thing it does is the best friendship between Zinnia and Charm, where it's like, straddling the line between platonic and romantic, and the exact nature of it might be complicated, but the depth of love between them is NOT complicated and they just love and care for each other SO MUCH. Anyway, love that for canon, but for fanfic: post-canon (post Zinnia's finding-herself adventures) Primrose/Zinnia/Charm, am I right?

Hugo finalists are out, and alas I'm not hugely excited about the results in a lot of the categories. BUT She Who Became the Sun is a finalist for best novel, and that's the most important thing!!! I was also very pleased to see "Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather" and "Unknown Number" in the short story list.

I've now set up my spreadsheet of all finalists in the categories I am able to engage with cogently, to keep track of what I've read and what my opinions are! So get ready for posts to trickle out over the next months with hugo opinions.

Let's start with going through all the short story nominees, since those are quick reads that are all available to read for free online.

1. Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather - Sarah Pinsker
I may agonize a bit longer about which order to place my top two stories in this category, as both this one and the next one are SO brilliant, but they're doing such different things that it's hard to actually compare them head-on. I love the way it engages with the folk tradition, and internet message boards, and also how it plays with how to communicate information to a reader beyond what is explicitly stated in the text.

2. Unknown Number - Blue Neustifter
The other story that's tied for first place! I love the premise of two versions of the same person from alternate universes communicating with each other by text message, and it's full of so much of both compassion and radical honesty about accepting who you are, it's incredible.

3. Proof by Induction - Jose Pablo Iriarte
Over the years I've read a number of short stories on the topic of a recorded copy of a person remaining after they're dead, and the living loved ones of that person interacting with the copy, and although this one's fine, I just don't feel like it's top-of-the-line in its particular subgenre.

4. Mr Death - Alix E Harrow
I can see and appreciate what this one's doing, but it just doesn't work for me personally. Plus the ending really irritates me, it feels far too facile that in the end it's actually TOTALLY fine what he did and it just means he gets a different job, even though he was gearing up to make a real sacrifice for something he thought was worth it.

5. Tangles - Seanan McGuire
This appears to be Magic: The Gathering fanfic, so I come at it with a disadvantage of knowing nothing about Magic other than that it's a deck-building card game, but not knowing canon has never actually a barrier for me in reading fanfic, lol. But I just found this story so uncompelling! I think there was a kernel of something mildly interesting in it, but the way it was expressed didn't work for me at all.

6. No Award

7. The Sin of America - Catherynne M Valente
When this first came out I think I gave up on it PRETTY early on. I have now tried reading it again, to give it its proper chance against the rest of the slate, but I found it SO boring that my eyes glazed over enough while reading and I definitely missed things. So like. I tried to read it again but I don't know if that really counts! But no thanks, this one's not for me.

Well, time for me to talk about the Hugo novel nominees as a group. You may notice I have not posted reviews for all of them. This is because I did not even finish most of them! The novel options this year contain a lot of books that are just not to my personal taste.

The bottom two books in my ranking are ones I never would have bothered even picking up and trying if they weren't on the Hugo list, and the middle two probably would have languished on my tbr list forever due to there being so many other books that sound more appealing to me to prioritise. On the other hand we also have one of my favorite sci-fi novels ever written on the list this year, so hey, can't complain too hard!

My voting order is as follows. I've linked the book titles to my full review for the ones where I did read the whole book.

1. A Memory Called Empire, by Arkady Martine
Absolutely brilliant in so many ways and I completely adored it.

2. Gideon the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir
Mostly very compelling and I really liked it, but given that I'm too much of a wuss for horror, it was rather much for me.

3. The City in the Middle of the Night, by Charlie Jane Anders
I read about a quarter of it and got the distinct impression that it's very like the other Anders novel I've read: very well written, interesting, and unusual, but I can't quite actually LIKE it. So I didn't really feel inspired to continue.

4. The Ten Thousand Doors of January, by Alix E Harrow
I read the 100 page sample provided to voters. The ideas had potential but I bounced off of the narrative voice. Having a distinctive voice can be a gamble because either it really works for the reader or it really doesn't, and I admire the attempt, but this one's not for me.

5. The Light Brigade, by Kameron Hurley
Read more than a third in the hope that maybe at some point it would stop being boring but that was as far as my patience could take me, and honestly I'm impressed I made it that far. I'm told it does get more interesting once you get more into the meat of the plot, but if it takes that long to get there then you've lost me. Which is too bad because the time travel element at least sounded kind of interesting.

6. Middlegame, by Seanan McGuire
Read about a quarter of it and just.....did not care. Evil people manipulating children in order to take over the world is just not a plot I am interested in. And the child characters themselves were also not particularly compelling to me, even if I could have otherwise been interested in hearing about psychic friendship.

The Ten Thousand Doors of January is making very deliberate choices with its narrative voice, to have the voice be noticed, noticeable, rather than having a more transparent style that gets out of the way so you can focus on the story. And generally speaking I approve of these kinds of experimental voices, but this one doesn't quite land for me. It feels very self-conscious in a way that doesn't work for me.

The Hugo Voter's Packet only includes an excerpt of the first 100 pages, and there's too many holds on my library's ebook copy for me to have a hope of reading it that way, and my impressions of the first 100 pages are not strong enough for me to have any desire to buy a copy of the book. There's not enough else going on to draw me in beyond the voice, to want to put in the work of reading past what I don't like. I was just kind of bored. So here we go. This can't be a proper book review because I didn't actually finish the book, but figured I would record my impressions regardless as I make my way through the Hugo nominees.

I've started working on reading through the things on the Hugo nominations list, in preparation for voting this summer! I'm hampered right now in many categories by not all nominees being available either for free online or from my library as an e-resource, but I'm hoping that when the Hugo Voters Packet comes that'll help.

But I can do the short stories no problem.

I'd already read all but one of the short stories on the nominee list, because for the last number of years I have make it a regular practice to give a try to everything published by the major SFF magazines that provide their stories for free online. The one I hadn't read is is published by a horror magazine, and horror is really not my thing so I don't frequent horror venues.

I bookmark on my pinboard all the stories that I like well enough to want to be able to find again in the future. And none of this year's nominees are on my pinboard. Which means that none of them spoke to me when I first read them, which is disappointing when I think of how many stories I read in the last year which I loved and which are not a Hugo nominee. At least the nominees are all stories I found compelling enough that I actually read them all to the end when I first encountered them!

I've now given a reread to all the short stories I'd read before, and a first read to the one I hadn't. And looking at the stories together, I think that Hugo nominators as a group must be more interested in bleak or angry or violent stories than I am. Ah well.

Here's my (occasionally spoilery) thoughts about all the nominated stories, organized from my first choice vote to my last. None of these will go below No Award, because I do see admirable things in all of them, even if none are really to my taste.

( Read more... )

I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts if you've read any of these stories! (Except the cannibalism one. Please do not talk to me about cannibalism. Thank you.)