I haven't started voting yet but as of right now, Wire Mother and KPop Demon Hunters get my vote.
EDIT: I forgot all about ranked choice somehow, so I added Laser Eyes as my runner-up short story and Sinners as my runner-up film.
I’ve been downloading Hugo nominees this morning, and here’s what I got:
NOVELS
Two of them provided excerpts only:
A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett
Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky
The other four provide either the whole novel or links:
Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor
The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow
The Incandescent by Emily Tesh
The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson
This is annoying since Tchaikovsky is the one I’m interested in and it looks like I’ll have to buy it. I do have Nnedi’s already, I just haven’t read it. I will get to the Harrow, Tesh, and Hodgson novels time permitting but I reserve the right to do my mystery-bounce after the first several pages if I’m not intrigued.
NOVELLAS
Everything was provided EXCEPT The Summer War, by Naomi Novik.
Here’s the AI summary I got when I googled it:
The Summer War is a 2025 fantasy novella by Naomi Novik about a young witch, Celia, who accidentally curses her brother to a life without love, leading her to uncover secrets about an ancient war between mortals and immortal "summerlings" to break the spell and heal the land. The story, told in a fairy tale style, follows Celia as she grows into her powers and tries to undo her mistake, which is tied to the ongoing conflict with the summerlings.
I’ve enjoyed Novik’s writing before but I’m skipping this one, absolutely does not sound like something I’d like. I guess I will be slogging my way through the rest, and preliminarily I like T. Kingfisher a whole lot; can’t say that about any of the others.
Automatic Noodle, by Annalee Newitz
Cinder House, by Freya Marske
Murder by Memory, by Olivia Waite
The River Has Roots, by Amal El-Mohtar
What Stalks the Deep, by T. Kingfisher
NOVELETTES
“Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy” by Martha Wells
Is provided and is the main one I’m interested in.
With regard to the others:
“Kaiju Agonistes” by Scott Lynch – read it, lukewarm, this is a story for people age 65+
“Never Eaten Vegetables” by H.H. Pak – robots that raise babies: a standard sci fi trope useful for colonizing distant planets or abhorrent misogyny? It really depends on who you ask. Today a lot of writers on my social media are talking about RF Kuang getting cancelled for having a sympathetic Israeli character, and some people are even talking about the cancellation mob’s hair trigger when it comes to women/minority writers while letting lots of people like Neil Gaiman get away with all kinds of bad behavior before raising some limits. I can’t review a story about this impartially because I’m still annoyed over a conflict I had with regard to the subject matter.
“Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy” by Martha Wells – woohoo, a free copy! Looking forward to this. Really like the Murderbot stories and am glad Martha’s achieving some success.
“The Girl That My Mother Is Leaving Me For” by Cameron Reed – the more I think about this story, the more I loathe it. Silly action scenes, dorky soapboxing, the main character only seems to be trans in a clickbait sense, like if you added the line “I, the main character, am trans by the way” into any random novel without ever referring to it again you could game awards by claiming you’re doing representation. Like since Moby Dick is public domain, I could download it, change the first sentence to “My post-transition name is Ishmael, so call me that” and claim it’s my inclusive retelling. I will probably think of more aspects of this story to dislike if I devote more mental energy to it, so I’m going to head into avoidant denial mode. When they announce the winner of this award I will probably be enjoying a Dole Whip at Disneyland.
“The Millay Illusion” by Sarah Pinsker – this is the one I glanced at earlier, Victorian magic and a trans character. I read something sort of like that before that I vaguely recall, about a girl-who-wants-to-be-a-boy helping a stage magician with a medium act where she’d hide under the table and do ghostly stuff during staged seances. I might go back and give this one another chance.
“When He Calls Your Name” by Catherynne M. Valente – she’s extrapolating on a Dolly Parton song and I found it kind of eye-roll-inducing; this is a dad joke that will mystify future readers.
LODESTAR YA
Everyone provided novels except Suzanne Collins, but I already bought hers. Margaret Owen even included the two previous books in the trilogy and I kind of like that.
Among Ghosts by Rachel Hartman
Coffeeshop in an Alternate Universe by C.B. Lee
Holy Terrors by Margaret Owen
Oathbound by Tracy Deonn
Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins
They Bloom at Night by Trang Thanh Tran
To recap, I’m going to get stuck buying the Tchaikovsky book but I hope I get a couple hundred bucks worth of entertainment from the rest of these so I can render a vaguely intelligent vote.
Meanwhile, I am halfway through book five in my Dungeon Crawler Carl re-read, which I hope to finish before book 8 drops on Tuesday, so all of these lesser works are going to have to just wait in their holding pattern for a little while as I wait to see what happens to Samantha, and Prepotente.
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