Reviewing the 2020 Hugo Nominees: The Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book

Hugo Award voting should open soon and will continue through the July 15.  For those of you new to the Science Fiction/Fantasy genre, the Hugo Award is one of the most prominent awards for works in the genre, with the Award being given based upon voting by those who have paid for at least a Supporting Membership in this year's WorldCon.  As I did the last three years, I'm going to be posting reviews/my-picks for the award in the various categories I feel qualified in, but feel free to chime in with your own thoughts in the comments.

ConZealand has basically dropped the ball this year, and Hugo voting is not yet open at the time of this writing, meaning voters will have basically a month to vote on the award, so I'm starting these posts before I even get a chance to log my votes.  I know COVID has given them the difficult task of switching to a virtual convention, but they really don't have an excuse for not opening voting even yet, especially when the convention and voting end dates are the earliest in years.  Oh well.

The Lodestar Award is in its third year at being awarded with the Hugo Awards.  It's the Hugo equivalent of the Norton Award - the Nebula Award for the Best Young Adult (YA) Science Fiction or Fantasy Book of the year - and I remain really glad it was added, because YA has added a ton of excellent works to the genre - and deserves extra recognition for it.  I keep waiting for one of my favorite books to make both the Best Novel and Lodestar Award Nomination shortlists, and the quality of YA in the genre is so high that it's only a matter of time....but we're not there yet.

Which is not to say this year's nominees aren't high quality, because this is another tremendous slate of award worthy books, that are really worth your time.  I have no idea what's going to take home this award, but am pretty sure whatever will do so will be a worthy winner.  But since I have to rank the books in question, here's my ballot....after the jump.




I think my breakdown of books in this category falls into three tiers, with it being difficult to rank books within the same tier.  All six nominees are however worthy of the award, so I do not have "No Award" on this ballot.

Bottom Tier:

6.  Deeplight by Frances Hardinge (Review Here)
5.  Dragon Pearl by Yoon Ha Lee (Review Here)

Both Deeplight and Dragon Pearl are solid Middle-Grade/YA novels although both are very different in where they come from.

Deeplight is a story of gods under the seas, pirates, gangs, and a young man who has to learn to stand up for himself, as he gets caught between multiple forces, some claiming to be friends, who want to abuse that friendship.

Dragon Pearl is a middle grade SF novel inspired by Korean myths (as part of Rick Riordan's wonderful series) as a fox spirit teenage girl uses her powers in a galaxy featuring goblins, dragons and other creatures to try and find and save her brother.

They're both fun novels, but neither really stuck with me after reading.  They're good for their audiences I guess, but I don't think I'd ever say that either were reads I'd feel obligated to recommend, and I've really enjoyed both authors previously.  Dragon Pearl is a bit above Deeplight in my opinion, mainly because I really enjoyed Dragon Pearl's protagonist, whereas Deeplight has a secondary character who i just couldn't keep thinking should've been the heroine instead.

Middle Tier:

4.  The Wicked King by Holly Black (Review Here)

The Wicked King is the second book in a Fae Fantasy trilogy I really enjoyed (the concluding volume, The Queen of Nothing, also came out last year) and might be the favorite in this category simply by virtue of popularity (there are over a hundred thousand ratings of the book on goodreads, compared to no more than 7000 for any of the rest in this category).

It's one of two books in this category most clearly YA (at least in terms of sexual content), and well, it's pretty damn fun - a scheming human girl tries to maintain her hold on the crown of Faerie, through a Fae King who has always been the one she hated....except maybe there's more going on between them than just hate?  Add in her stepfather, a Redcap general who wants the throne for himself, and you have a really great set of characters, a great setting, and a plot that eventually moves to a stunning cliffhanger ending.

Alas, it doesn't quite hit the top tier for me - while the book never "drags", it does feel a bit slow/retreading old ground in the first act, until it all storms to a conclusion.  This is not a negative - I really loved this trilogy, but it just doesn't hit the heights of my top 3.

Top Tier: 

3.  Minor Mage by T Kingfisher (Review Here)
2.  Riverland by Fran Wilde (Review Here)
1.  Catfishing on CatNet by Naomi Kritzer (Review Here)

Any of these three could win and I'd be happy (I mean I wouldn't be that upset about the others either), and I struggles as to what order I should put them in.  When I graded each of them after reading them, I gave them an 8.5, a 9, and another 9 respectively, so yeah they're all pretty damn close to one another.  But they're all also very different books.

Minor Mage is arguably a novella rather than a novel, but it's an incredibly fun read from T Kingfisher - the "adult" pseudonym of Hugo favorite Ursula Vernon.  Following a kid mage, armed only with three spells of a mostly useless nature & his armadillo familiar as his town in fear of dying out due to a lack of rain forms a mob and sends him onto a journey to bring back clouds to the town.  A journey that includes a magical forest, a harp maker who makes his harps out of human bones, cannibals, gangs of thieves....the works.  It's tremendous fun and very enjoyable, even if there isn't really much of a message (people do stupid things in fear).

Riverland and Catfishing on CatNet by contrast are both tales that clearly are aimed at target audiences who could need something from those books - which is not to say they're not good stories themselves.  Riverland is a tale of parental abuse, as a middle-school age girl desperately tries to be a good girl for her and her younger sister as she deals with a father with an anger problem who yells and destroys things and a mother who blames his tantrums on her children.  There's a portal fantasy in there, but really it's a story of how a young girl tries not to internalize that abuse, learns that she does have value and that she can tell other people the truth, and not to bottle everything inside, despite the fear of her parents and of becoming like them.  It's a powerful story, even if the fantasy elements aren't quite the strongest, and I can easily see way too many kids in America, and the World, needing it.  But man is it hard to read.

Catfishing on CatNet is similarly targeted at helping kids, although an older demographic (this is firmly YA).  It's the story of a high school girl never allowed to stay in one place and make friends, as her mother keeps moving her to stay away from her supposedly abusive and dangerous father.  Instead, her only friends are online on a cat picture forum, which is secretly run by an AI.  It's the expansion of Kritzer's previous Hugo winning short story (Cat Pictures Please) from a years back, and it expands it incredibly well into a story about kids and people finding themselves, their sexuality, their friendships, and really just who they themselves are.  For any teen who finds themselves uncomfortable due to their parents or peer pressure and isn't sure about expressing themselves, this is a book for you.  And it's still a good amount of fun and heartwarming through it all.

All three of these novels are top tier YA/Middle-Grade work, but int he end, I gave my top spot to Catfishing on CatNet, even if its original score tied with Riverland, simply because I actually enjoyed reading it, whereas Riverland was deliberately painful.  Riverland won the Norton award for this category mind you (Catfishing was also nominated there) so it could totally sweep here too, and I would totally not be against it.