Brainstorming my Hugo nominations: Best Novel and Best Series

by Doctor Science

Hugo nominations have to be in by Friday, so I'm going to put up my longlist and hope the process of writing helps me make up my mind. I'm resurrecting my goodreads account to better keep track of what I've read (and what I started but did not finish, and why).

I thought I had already written and posted reviews of most of these, but apparently I wrote many only in my head. Way to drop the ball, brain.

The long list, in alphabetical order by author:

a. The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden. Historical fantasy set in 13th-C Russia. Wonderfully atmospheric: I kept needing to huddle under a blanket to combat the Russian winter. I especially liked all the little spirits, the household fay that keep things running smoothly--or not.

Beautifully written and with coherent world-building, but not, I think, quite what I want in a Hugo-level novel.

b. * # City of Miracles by Robert Jackson Bennett. Deeply moving and complex conclusion to The Divine Cities, which definitely goes on my Best Series ballot. An exploration of colonialism, imperialism, and the cycle of abuse for groups and individuals. Best of all, the conclusion is (without spoilers) NOT to look to Gods or a Rightful King or a group of Best People to take care of the rest. An important book for a stressful time. (If only there was a map...)

c. # Within the Sanctuary of Wings by Marie Brennan. Deeply satisfying conclusion to The Memoirs of Lady Trent series. The world-building and the plot march together, Connecting All This Up to lay out the core secret of dragons, and to show how this world can move forward.

One thing I love about this series is that it's about dragons, the quintessential fantasy creature, but it is clearly science fiction. Not just SF, but fiction *about* science, about how science is a way of addressing the question of how our world is put together. Lady Trent's life work doesn't answer all the questions about dragons, but the unanswered ones will have scientific answers, not magical ones. As you can tell from my user name, this is precisely My Jam.

Brennan's style is consistently just antique enough to sound "authentically Victorian", though much less long-winded. What an excellent series overall.

d. Persepolis Rising by James S. A. Corey. Previously reviewed here. The Expanse is an obvious pick for Best Series, as well.

e. * Winter Tide by Ruthanna Emrys. We are truly living in a golden age of Lovecraft fanfic. Facing up to how problematic Lovecraft (and his writing) were has freed writers to explore, in depth, the kind of people HPL was afraid of, the people he thought of as monsters. When you flip the script, you can see how monstrous HPL's racism--and the racism baked into the American cake--really are. HPL's Shadow Over Innsmouth ends with the town's inhabitants being sent to a concentration camp (in so many words); Winter Tide is the story of Aphra and Caleb Marsh, the only survivors. Count me on Team Deep Ones!

f. # The Ruin of Angels by Max Gladstone. Part of The Craft Sequence, an obvious choice for Best Series. Previously reviewed.

g. The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter. Previously reviewed.

h. * Terminal Alliance by Jim C. Hines. There's a viral tumblr post about how aliens would think humans are hideous and terrifying. This Janitors of the Post-Apocalypse series is set in that universe, where humans are the most feared military troops in the galaxy...but stars the humans who do the boring, dirty work. I've found Hines hit-or-miss in the past, but he's finally hit the Pratchettian sweet spot: funny, witty, thoughtful, and where the heroes aren't Chosen Ones.

i. # The Stone Sky by N.K. Jemison, conclusion to the masterful Broken Earth trilogy. For me, this didn't work 100%, because the proportion of fantasy (magic) got higher, the proportion of science lower. Also it never stopped baffling me to have Earth called "Father", not "Mother". Nonetheless, one of the great achievements of our day.

j. * Provenance by Ann Leckie. Reviewed here.

k. * Raven Strategem by Yoon Ha Lee. Ninefox Gambit plunged you straight into the story, making you figure out the world on the fly. Raven Strategem carefully gathers building blocks, until Surprise! you see the whole picture of the Hexarchate, the violence inherent in the system, and what our protagonists want to do with it. Another book that felt very necessary, this year.

l. Barbary Station by R.E. Stearns. Previously reviewed.

m. The Delerium Brief by Charles Stross. I really hate it when a Lovecraftian satire starts to seem kind of realistic. It's good, but I'm not sure it passes my 2017 Rule: No Fictional Dystopias I Get That from the News.

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There will be six nominees for each Hugo, and we get to nominate five things each. I'm going through the above list, marking * for each novel I'll nominate, # for each series. I may leave off works (e.g. Persepolis Rising/The Expanse) that I'm certain will be on the ballot without my vote.

[pause for decision-making]

So, that makes 5 novels and 4 series. I think I'll also nominate Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos series, because it's really long and varied, starts out being about an assassin but then looks at the violence inherent in the system, yet doesn't get enough love.

Comments

[wj]

What's cool about these posts is that I keep going off to my local library site to put in requests....

[cleek]

i liked the Stone Sky trilogy. i'd give it a solid B. but i gotta say Jemison's writing style started to grate on me; it's very chatty & bratty at times.

[Hartmut]

Looks like Stephen Hawking left the mortal plane. He missed the ride on Elon Musk's car to Mars by a few days it seems.
Wouldn't that have been a spectacular combo?

[Girl from the North Country]

Hadn't seen this thread, when I posted on the other one:

In other news, RIP Stephen Hawking. His serious contributions are well-known, but I liked this:

On June 28, 2009, he threw a party for time travellers. Surrounded by bottles of champagne and plates of hors d'oeuvres, Professor Hawking waited … and waited … but no-one showed up.

In his television series, he said:

"I have experimental evidence that time travel is not possible.

"I gave a party for time travellers, but I didn’t send out the invitations until after the party."

[wj]

Contrary evidence for time travel: in the late 1960s, Stephen Hawking was give 2 years to live. Half a century later, Stephen Hawking was still occasionally observed, alive and moving about the earth. What else but time travel can explain this? ;-)

[cleek]

did Hawking make it to (American) pi day?

[Countme-a-Demon]

Not sci-fi, but still a book, though I wish it was fiction:

I want to thank Doctor Science for recommending (she was the one, wasn't she?) Edward Baptist's "The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism" some long time ago.

I'm finally reading it, and it is a harrowing story, sumptuously researched and cited, on a par with the best of Holocaust memoirs and histories by writers like Primo Levi.

Without mentioning the word thus far .. I'm 2/3rds thru ... and not attempting to make a case for it, it is the finest marshaling of evidence in support of reparations I've ever read.

This country was built upon, and formed our literal capitalist bones, and profited from unimaginable, inhumane cruelty, on the basis of the perverted ideals of property rights, to an extent that is sickening.

That all of our white forbears were not slaughtered in their beds shows superhuman forbearance on the part of the victims.

The narrative regarding the Presidency of Andrew Jackson is especially apt since we now have a President for whom Jackson, about whom mp owned a coloring book some time in his childhood, is the a hero and role model.

I'll be reading "Sundown Towns" by James Loewen soon as well.

Thanks.

[CharlesWT]

That all of our white forbears were not slaughtered in their beds shows superhuman forbearance on the part of the victims.

That's what many slaveholders and whites in general feared. Either through a slave revolt or being freed, the former slaves would take revenge on their former masters. The slaveholders thought they had a tiger by the tail that they couldn't let go of even if they wanted too.

[wj]

And that fear appears to have been passed down to their descendants. Even though it has been several generations since their slave-holding ancestors.

[wonkie]

Thank you for the recommends. I will be trying some of them out. ARe you familiar with Kate Griffin's Midnight Mayor series? Or the Rivers of London books? I have a fairly narrow niche of fantasy lit; urban British nd contemporary.

[Doctor Science]

Rivers of London is definitely a fave, it only *just* didn't make either list this year. I shall now take a look at The Madness of Angels & see how I like it.

[wonkie]

I liked the Charles Stross books unp until the ast one. Too realistic, so I didnt finish it.