2022 marks my second year voting in the Hugo Awards for the best science fiction and fantasy published in the previous year. Today I will be looking at Best Novel, for works greater than 40000 words. Last year’s Best Novel shortlist was my favorite of any category, with three different novels that I absolutely adored.… Continue reading 2022 Hugo Awards Ballot: Best Novel
This review is based on an eARC (Advance Reading Copy) provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Babel will be released on August 23, 2022. I’m not sure there’s a more anticipated release in my corners of sci-fi/fantasy spaces than R. F. Kuang’s Babel, or The Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History… Continue reading Fantasy Novel Review: Babel by R.F. Kuang
2022 marks my second year voting in the Hugo Awards for the best science fiction and fantasy published in the previous year. Today I will be looking at Best Novella, for works between 17500 and 40000 words. Last year’s Best Novella shortlist was my least favorite of the categories I read, with one outstanding entry… Continue reading 2022 Hugo Awards Ballot: Best Novella
Arkady Martine won the Hugo Award for Best Novel with her debut A Memory Called Empire—a book with some fascinating cultural work to go with a solid-but-unexceptional thriller plot—and has returned to the Best Novel ballot with the second half of the duology: A Desolation Called Peace. [Note: while I always try to stay away… Continue reading Sci-fi Novel Review: A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine
Alix E. Harrow has become one of the more notable names in fantasy over the last several years, riding a tendency to tug at heartstrings and a prose style that’s simultaneously beautiful and easy-to-read to five Hugo nominations (one win) across three separate categories since 2019. Best Novella finalist A Spindle Splintered was my second… Continue reading Fantasy Novella Review: A Spindle Splintered by Alix E. Harrow
2022 marks my second year voting in the Hugo Awards for the best science fiction and fantasy published in the previous year. Today I will be looking at Best Novelette, for works between 7500 and 17500 words. A full half of last year’s Hugo shortlist for Best Novelette were the kinds of stories you remember… Continue reading 2022 Hugo Awards Ballot: Best Novelette
I got started with Hugo voting a couple years after perennial nominee Seanan McGuire broke through with a Best Novella win for Every Heart a Doorway, so I haven’t read the entire Wayward Children series of portal fantasy novellas, but last year’s nomination of Come Tumbling Down and its associated backstory for me two-thirds of… Continue reading Fantasy Novella Review: Across the Green Grass Fields by Seanan McGuire
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
