Managed another reading category for the Hugos this year! Will review the other categories I’ve read through after tonight’s voting deadline, but figured I’d start with the next fastest to read: the nominees for Best Novelette.
As is my wont (but not Doug’s!) we’ll go from my favorite on down. Tho I must say that I definitely noticed the difference between my enjoyment of this category vs the short stories this year, a conversation that Doug and I have previously indulged in regarding prior nominees. Some years the novelettes feel far superior; this was not one of those years, alas. Still some good reads here, beginning with Naomi Kritzer’s The Four Sisters Overlooking the Sea.
Morgan is a former academic who is justifiably annoyed by her husband Stuart’s old-fashioned attitude towards the distribution of their family responsibilities. Moving to the coast only makes things worse, as she learns of the local legend of the Four Sisters, the four large rocks that stand guard over the town of Finstowe. When her proximity to the water reminds her of whom she used to be, will she be able to fight to reclaim her true self?
The supernatural elements of this story work perfectly as a metaphor to remind people who lose themselves in relationships that it is possible to find yourself once more. It’s fascinating how the legend referenced here has so many variants worldwide, and almost never a bad time to retell it in hopes of finding a reader who desperately needs to apply its lessons to their own lives.
More than this, Ms Kritzer writes with the skill of a superlative horror author. I saw the twist coming quite early on with the foreshadowing and gasped even then, before spending the next few pages just savoring the mounting dread ahead of Morgan learning the truth too. For both story and skill, this novelette is my favorite of this year’s nominees.
My second favorite novelette was also tinged with folk horror. Sarah Pinsker’s Signs Of Life begins with a middle-aged news anchor on the verge of retirement going in search of her younger sister. They haven’t talked in decades, after Veronica, the older sister, betrayed Violet and left home as a teenager. Now she’s looking to make amends, traveling to the mountains of West Virginia for a reunion many years in the making. Nothing will prepare her however for what she discovers, both about her sister and, crucially, herself.
I loled at the terrible pun that features in the writing here, even as I was impressed with how Ms Pinsker effortlessly seeds her story with clues that I totally overlooked ahead of the big reveal.
Third on my list is a fascinating work of science fiction, Ann Leckie’s Lake of Souls. This dual perspective novelette revolves around the sentient inhabitants of a planet and their encounter with humans. Told from the points of view of Spawn, a nymph contemplating the idea of the soul, and a human anthropologist abruptly woken from cryosleep, this was a fresh take on first contact that focused more on the natives than the human visitors. I wasn’t hugely thrilled with the many dangling threads of the story, but I really enjoyed the diversion into xenobiology.
Next we have a story with some of the best writing on this list, Thomas Ha’s The Brotherhood of Montague St. Video. Set in a future where physical media is a rarity, a young man discovers that his own life has distressing parallels to the story of a lone rider wandering through a hostile land. The prose is occasionally gorgeous, with several interesting things to say about physical objects vs digital media, but the story itself felt more like a preamble than something complete unto itself.
Fifth is Premee Mohamed’s By Salt, By Sea, By Light of Stars, a charming coming-of-age story told from the point of view of a wizard losing her facility with magic. The novelette is cute and clever but slight, and tbh I had little sympathy for the narrator’s dangerous pride.
Finally, we have Eugenia Triantafyllou’s Loneliness Universe which reminded me uncannily of Shing Yin Khor’s excellent letter-writing game Remember August. The novelette adds an interesting dimension-shifting twist to the idea of friends lost to one another in time, and while I loved the depiction of how people will persist in finding connection, I wasn’t as enamored of the ambiguous and somewhat fatalistic ending.
This year, all the stories but one are available online, having been previously published in magazines. I’m hoping Doug will be able to chime in on these, too! The sole story not available outside of book format is here:
Al Singh
Doug Merrill
Doreen Sheridan
Emily Lauer
John Pitzel
Lars N. Goldschlager
Laura Eilers
Professor X
Robert Maedgen
Sylvere Ap Leanan
The Shire
3 comments
I almost bought that collection last week! Instead, I’m reading her Translation State, which is off to a good start. The Presger are as nicely bonkers as they were in the Ancillary trilogy, and I hope that doesn’t wear off as Leckie shows more about them over the course of this book.
This looks like a manageable category, and the novellas are sorely tempting, except for the whole buying-and-tbr aspect. I hope that the Singing Hills stories get an omnibus volume before long! Over in novels, I’ll probably read A Sorceress Comes to Call, just not right now because there are four other Kingfishers in tbr plus one in to-be-reviewed. The others aren’t really calling me, though I look forward to your thoughts, if you publish any.
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I don’t think I’ve read any of Leckie’s long form stuff, tho I certainly want to! I do recommend reading these nominees, especially as most all of them are the traditional sort of storytelling you prefer. I really should have done a better job of putting the voting deadline into my schedule, as I could have gotten to the Novellas had I been more organized, but that’s the reading life for you!
Over in Novels, I adored The Tainted Cup. I have a copy of the Wiswell that I need to read, and I always enjoy Kingfisher but, like you, have so much reading to get through!
I’ve only read Leckie’s three Ancillaries. I really liked them, and they made a big splash at the time, especially the first. But that’s also a dozen years ago, so I would say the field as such has absorbed what they were up to, and now they will have to stand or fall without being groundbreaking.
I seem to be bumping into good things about The Tainted Cup, though going in I know/knew nothing about the book or the author. I did also read a fair amount about the Wiswell, but I wonder a little if it won’t wind up being like The Saint of Bright Doors — buzzy, off-kilter book that sounds like the kind of thing I would like and then doesn’t do much for me at all. Only one way to find out, though maybe I should see about getting a library card. Soon there’s going to be more Tchaikovsky than I can ever hope to read, isn’t there?
In novellas, I would read three and a half just on the author’s name (the half being Premee Mohamed, whom I see on bluesky and think I would like to read). I don’t know anything about Samatar and Nayler, but y’know, novellas, why not?