Like last year, I started my journey through the Hugo Awards with the Best Short Story finalists. Also like last year, two of the finalists were on my own nominating ballot, so whatever became of the pieces I hadn’t previously read, I was guaranteed to have a pair of strong choices at the top. Every… Continue reading 2022 Hugo Awards Ballot: Short Story
Aliette de Bodard has been all over the sci-fi/fantasy awards lists for the past decade—with three wins each in the Nebula and BSFA Awards and nine Hugo nominations by my count—but for whatever reason, I’d been yet to find any of her work that really stuck with me. But this year’s Hugo voting has given… Continue reading Fantasy Novella Review: Fireheart Tiger by Aliette de Bodard
Sometimes there’s a book that comes out to such acclaim that I feel like I don’t have to rush to read it, because it’s bound to appear on my Hugo reading list. In 2021, no book fit that mold better than Shelley Parker-Chan’s historical fantasy debut She Who Became the Sun. I didn’t read it… Continue reading Fantasy Novel Review: She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan
In about a month, I’ve gone from never having read anything by Becky Chambers to having read two novels and a novella. While neither of the other two hit the five-star threshold, I could see clear progression as a writer from her debut to her Best Novella finalist. And so I was looking forward to… Continue reading Sci-fi Novel Review: The Galaxy and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers
This summer is quickly taking me from not having read any Becky Chambers to reading three of her books, given a late-series Hugo nomination for Best Novel and a series-opener nominated for Best Novella. But A Psalm for the Wild-Built may be the novella that I had heard most about in 2021, so I was… Continue reading Sci-fi Novella Review: A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers
A Memory Called Empire won the Hugo Award for Best Novel shortly after I had gotten back into speculative fiction but before I started following genre awards. But with its sequel nominated for Best Novel this year, I figured it was high time to circle back and read Arkady Martine’s debut. A Memory Called Empire… Continue reading Sci-fi Novel Review: A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine
For the last couple years, the list of recent speculative fiction that everyone else seems to have read but that I hadn’t started with Becky Chambers’ The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. But when the most recent book in her Wayfarers series was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel, I finally… Continue reading Sci-fi Novel Review: The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers
This review is based on an eARC (Advance Reading Copy) provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Into the Broken Lands will be released on August 23, 2022. Tanya Huff is an author I’ve heard a lot about from her work in subgenres I don’t often read. So when the… Continue reading Fantasy Novel Review: Into the Broken Lands by Tanya Huff
I’ve finished a year of judging for the first annual Self-Published Science Fiction Competition, and it’s been both fun and instructive. I’ve learned a lot of things about myself as a reader, about slush pile reading, and about organizing a contest with such massive scale. So with this year’s competition in the books and the… Continue reading SPSFC Reflections and Ranking
We’ve made it to the finals of the Self-Published Science Fiction Competition (SPSFC), and six of the seven finalists are new reads for my judging team. The farther we get into the competition, the more highly recommended each book comes–each of the seven has been hand-picked out of a 30-book slush pile by one of… Continue reading SPSFC Finalist Review: Monster of the Dark by K.T. Belt
