Tomorrow is the Hugo Awards Ceremony, so I have just about
run out of time for putting up thoughts on the novel nominees! Here’s a quick rundown of my opinions
on the nominees for both the Hugo and the John W. Campbell Award for Best New
Writer. I’ll have an update
congratulating the winners after Loncon3 is over!
Hugo Award
For the Hugo Award, my first choice for the winner would be
Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice. As
you’ll see in my next review, I really loved this novel. It may not have brought all that much new to space opera, but it
served up a story with all of my favorite ingredients. I also really liked some of the
themes—loyalty, anti-classism, and responsibility people have to act on their
convictions. Of course, I have to
mention the default-female language quirk, where everyone in the story referred
to as “she”, regardless of their gender.
It highlighted how irrelevant gender was to the story, and I found the
complete lack of gender roles and gender-based characterization refreshing.
I would also be happy to see Charles Stross win the Hugo
Award for Neptune’s Brood. I read
this one without reading the first book of the series, Saturn’s Children, but I get the impression that the book stands
well on its own. Neptune’s Brood is an intelligent,
far-future heist story, but one that was also delightfully humorous. I was not a fan of the long
future-economics infodumps, but I’m not sure how well the heist would have come
across without them.
The other three contenders also have their strong and weak
points. I’ve read roughly 80% of
the Wheel of Time series, mostly back
when I was in high school. I
remember enjoying the adventures, but I also remember thinking that the
characterization was a bit weak.
Mira Grant’s Parasite was a
neat (if gross!) idea, but I noticed a lot of similarities to the Newsflesh books. Larry Correia’s Warbound reminded me a bit of X-Men,
and it was a lot of fun in a supernatural action-movie way.
John W. Campbell
Award for Best New Writer
I was really excited by this year’s nominees for the John W.
Campbell Best New Writer Award, because I have heard good things about all of
them. My first choice for the Best New Writer award would be Max Gladstone, who
now has three novels in his Craft series (Three
Parts Dead, Two Serpents Rise, and Full
Fathom Five). I have currently
only read his first novel, but the rest are on my (very long) to-read
list. My review of his debut novel, Three Parts Dead, can be found here.
As for the other entries, I have to give the disclaimer that
I have not quite finished A Stranger in
Olondria and The Lives of Tao,
though I am over halfway through reading both of them.
Ramez Naam’s Nexus is
a fast-paced near-future techno-thriller. I have some philosophical
disagreements with the main character, but I really enjoyed the exploration of
the consequences of the existence of mind-altering/linking technology. Sofia
Samatar’s A Stranger in Olondria has
some lovely writing, though the story moves at a very slow pace. I’m not sure I yet understand the
reasoning behind some of the decisions of the main character. Wesley Chu’s The Lives of Tao is a funny and exciting secret-society/spy story so
far, though I’m not a huge fan of the whole ‘everything important that happened
in human history was because of aliens’ idea. Benjanun
Sriduangkaew is
also nominated for her unusual short fiction, of which a lot is available for
free online. I was most interested
by “The Bees Her Heart, the Hive Her Belly” (which can be read here).
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