A Fan's Playground

EVEN MORE just under the wire, here are my thoughts on the hugo nominees for best series!

1. The World of the White Rat, by T Kingfisher

I have read every single book in this series, some more than once. Do I find Kingfisher's obsessions with paladins and with large breasts irritating? I do. But everything else about the series is delightful, and I just find her writing to be immensely comforting/comfortable to read. I've been following her work since I was a teenager reading her weird extensive descriptions that were more like mini-stories about her deviantart paintings, and I just like how her brain works.

2. The Green Bone Saga, by Fonda Lee

Well, I've only read 20% of the first book in this series, but from that sample I can tell that what the author is doing here is very well done and very compelling. I really enjoyed what I was reading, but I just cannot handle reading books about crime families, I'm afraid, and when I looked up spoilers for the rest I was like NOPE. Not what I want to read, even if it is good! I definitely recommend this series, but for other people, lol.

3. The Kingston Cycle, by CL Polk

I've only read the third book in this trilogy, Soulstar, and although it was basically fine, it felt too simplistic and too lacking in the feeling of weighty reality in the various hard and bad things the book addresses.

4. Terra Ignota, by Ada Palmer

I have adored Palmer's blog Ex Urbe for many years; her extensive posts about florentine history are fascinating to me, though she hasn't been doing much of that for the past few years, I'm assuming because she's busy with other things. (Her series of posts on machiavelli and his context is particularly excellent, and I find her spot the saint series great fun!) So I was excited when I heard she was writing novels! But. I tried the first novel and was soooooooo bored. I could tell it was probably doing interesting things, and I think I might have even eventually found my way round to finding it worthwhile, but I just could not force myself to keep my attention on it despite multiple attempts.

5. Merchant Princes, by Charles Stross

I read the first book in this series when it came out in 2003, more or less enjoyed it at the time, but never felt strongly enough about it to keep up with the series as it kept coming out. This summer I gave it another go, and got a decent way into the first novel, and my main reaction was that it's so very, very much of its era that it feels out of place to be in conversation with the current genre. And to me it didn't even feel INTERESTINGLY of its era, but just kind of dated and boring. I don't know where he's gone with the series since then, whether the newer books feel more relevant and exciting, but tbh I found the first book tiresome enough that I didn't bother finishing it, and felt no motivation to keep going.

6. No Award

7. Wayward Children, by Seanan McGuire

I've read multiple books in this series for past hugos, and what I've read of it actively frustrates me enough that I do not personally feel able to countenance voting for it to receive an award, though I know it speaks to other people.

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.

I have read enough Seanan McGuire by this point in my life to know perfectly well that she's not to my taste, but she keeps showing up in the hugos, and so I keep reading her out of a sense of duty, and thus keep writing negative reviews of her books. Sigh. Her books clearly speak to a lot of people, and that's great! But I am just not one of them. Her sensibilities and mine do not jive. We have different priorities.

All of which is to say that I did not have high hopes coming into Come Tumbling Down, the latest in the Wayward Children series, and I was right in my expectations for how well it would work for me.

I actually didn't have much to argue with thematically in this one; unlike the last Wayward Children I read, I thought the ending appropriate to the story being told. But the overall vibe of the book was "vaguely creepy atmospheric set pieces interspersed with the author moralizing to the reader," plus too many viewpoint characters whose viewpoint didn't seem important to the points being made. Which doesn't provide a lot for me to get attached to or interested in!

So yeah. This book: not for me, yet again. But I knew that. Maybe in future hugo years I will give myself the gift of not bothering to read any Seanan McGuire books that show up on the list of finalists. Reading her books doesn't work for me, and I don't think continuing a series of reviews saying "nope didn't like this one either" is actually helpful to anyone!

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.

Is this another lunchtime post? IT IS!

Today's post is... let's see. How about ANOTHER BOOK POST. Today's will be a collection of short reactions to books where I didn't have a lot to say after finishing!

( Team Human, by Justine Larbalestier and Sarah Rees Brennan )

( Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury )

( Discount Armageddon, by Seanan McGuire )

( Changes For Samantha, by Valerie Tripp )

( Wild, by Cheryl Strayed )

( Redshirts, by John Scalzi )