Hugo Award voting is open and will continue through the November 19, 2021 (The voting period is extra long this year due to COVID delaying the convention till December). 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 four 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.
This is the seventh and final part of this series. You can find all the parts of this series, going over each category of the Hugo Awards HERE.
Today I'll be looking at the nominees for the biggest award, the award for Best Novel. It's an.....interesting ballot this year, which featured none of my own nominees, even if a few of these books came close. It's also one that really badly lacks new blood - the six nominees feature three sequels to prior nominees/award-winners and three books from authors who have won Hugo Awards previously with prior works. There usually aren't too many newcomers on a best novel ballot, but there's often 1 or 2 (2 last year), and we lack that this year.
Which is not to say that there isn't some really good stuff on this ballot, or that the nominees aren't worthy. Nearly all of them are. So let's take a look at what made it, below the jump: