For those who missed it Monday, I have also published my ballot for the Hugo Awards for Best Novel. If you haven’t seen the preamble yet, I’ll quote it here. Otherwise, skip down one paragraph.
For the sixth straight year, I have read and reviewed the finalists for four print fiction categories in the Hugo Awards for the best of the year in science fiction and fantasy. It feels a little different this year, because I am a Hugo finalist (for Best Fan Writer), and my reviews suddenly feel a bit more visible. Now I’m here as a reviewer, and I’m going to keep reviewing, even if that means I criticize a book pretty strongly. But in the past, I’ve publicly explained the placement of No Award on my ballots, and I’ve decided to keep those thoughts to myself this year. I’m still ranking things and explaining my opinions, and you may be able to make educated guesses, but I do aspire to be kind in my reviewing, and what that means changes as the expected audience changes.
Unlike yesterday, I’ll be rolling with three tiers for the Novella category, though you may find the organization to be a bit of a cheat. But it’s my blog, so I make the rules. The tiers don’t go on the actual ballot anyways. Let’s get to them. As before, links in the titles go to full reviews of the novellas in question.
Tier Three
Sixth Place: Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite
A murder mystery on a generation ship, this one does a pretty nice job of establishing a cozy aesthetic, and it’s a breezy read that could easily be knocked out in a single session. But it’s a book that’s hurt by the added scrutiny that comes from being a book I read specifically for Hugo-voting. Because it’s simply not a story that you can think about too hard. The worldbuilding serves the aesthetic more than it makes any real logical sense, the mystery itself is uninspiring, and the supporting cast is shallow. Those can all be overlooked if you’re just looking for a pleasant way to spend an hour, but they’re harder to ignore when crafting an awards ballot.
Fifth Place: Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz
This also tries to capture a cozy aesthetic, but instead of sacrificing the worldbuilding to serve the aesthetic, it endeavors to tell a heartwarming story of cooking robots set against a post-apocalyptic world rife with prejudice. It’s a tricky balance to maintain, and Automatic Noodle tosses a whole lot of balls in the air trying to sketch four distinct leads, detail the world’s racism, sexism, and robophobia, and truly convey the joy of hand-making noodles. The result is a book that’s spread far too thin, gesturing at meaningful storylines without truly bringing them to life.
Fourth Place: What Stalks the Deep by T. Kingfisher
What Stalks the Deep is the third entry in its series to make the Hugo shortlist, and through the first third of the book, it was showing potential to threaten my top tier. The horror series exchanges an Eastern European setting for an Appalachian one, and the supernatural happenings in the depths only accentuate the natural horror of the claustrophobic mining setting. Unfortunately, the finish fails to deliver on the story’s potential, with an action-packed finale that lacks the focus to maintain the level of tension in the build-up. The start keeps it out of the bottom third of my ballot, but the finish keeps it in my third tier.
Tier Two
Third Place: The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar
The shortlist this year is heavy on fairy tales, and while The River Has Roots strikes me as the most popular of the three, it checks in third on my own ballot. El-Mohtar writes well, and it’s an entertaining story, but it feels a bit slight to threaten the top of my list. It’s a prose murder ballad heavy on the music and the riddles, but. . . well, that’s all it is. The characters play the role prescribed for them without much time to develop any real interpersonal richness, and the story goes about how one would expect. It’s skillfully executed, which is why it lands in the top half of my ballot, but there’s no aspect that really wows.
Second Place: The Summer War by Naomi Novik
The Summer War is a bit longer than The River Has Roots, and unless I’ve missed some references, it is an original (as opposed to a retelling), but it is unmistakably a fairy tale. The narration comes from over the shoulder instead of the tight, personal perspective so common in contemporary fantasy, and there are plenty of the classic hallmarks of the genre: war with the Fae—resting on a long-remembered injustice—a precocious sorceress who makes a tragic mistake before truly understanding her capabilities, a peerless knight unable to find rest and belonging, bits of prophecy sprinkled here and there. There are also quite a few plot points that are predictable here, but there are some genuine surprises as well, and it challenges expectations a bit more often than The River Has Roots. Messages about accepting those who don’t fit the stereotypical mold are common enough these days, but the way it addresses cycles of violence is not quite so common. Again, this is not a book that dazzles, but it’s well-written and offers a bit more character nuance and thematic development.
First Place: Cinder House by Freya Marske
Is this tier all fairy tales? Yes. Yes it is. Like the other two, Cinder House is probably not one of those books you’ll still be thinking about in ten years. But it’s skillfully written, by my lights showing a bit more creativity and verve than the two I’ve ranked behind it. In case it isn’t obvious from the title (and it wasn’t to me), this is a Cinderella retelling. But while Cinderella retellings are a dime a dozen, Cinder House subverts the expected narrative from the first page, with the lead dying and being bound to the house as a ghost. From there, it hits all the classic story beats, but the small matter of a dead protagonist twists the familiar story grooves into something fresh and exciting. There is one subplot that isn’t sufficiently developed, and that’s the main reason I haven’t put this in Tier One, but it’s a wonderful read regardless. The lead gets more interiority than in any other book on the shortlist, and nothing else comes close from a page-turning perspective. I hadn’t read this before the shortlists were announced, and it has proven my most pleasant surprise of the season. I’d love to see it take home the prize.
Tier One
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In the past, when I found an entire shortlist to be something short of excellent, I have voted No Award in first place. I won’t be doing that this year, because there are a number of things about this shortlist that feel like positive developments. For starters, the books aren’t all from the same publisher, and only one of them is a sequel. Are those low bars? Perhaps. But there simply aren’t as many novellas published in a given year as in the other categories, and sometimes you have to meet a category where it is. So while I wish there’d been something truly exceptional here (and that the list had a little more diversity than three fairy tales, two cozy novellas, and a sequel), I want to affirm the positives while also admitting that none of these six are books that hit the level I’d like to tag as top-tier. (I’ll also admit that my standards may be getting tougher, as I think Cinder House is as good as or better than A Spindle Splintered, which snuck into my top tier in 2022). Last year’s shortlist was truly tremendous, and there’s simply nothing on this year’s list that I’d take over any of my top three from the 2025 ballot. Perhaps I’m raining on the parade a bit, but I didn’t think it was an especially strong year for novellas. But such is life; I’ll still happily assign a first place vote to Cinder House.