Hugo Award voting opened last month and continues through the end of July. 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 last year, 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. As I mentioned in my Hugo Packet post, all of the short fiction nominees are available in the Hugo Packet, though many of these pieces are also available for free online already - if they are, I will link those stories in the post.
My Reviews/Rankings of the Nominees for the Campbell Award for Best New Writer can be found HERE:
My Reviews/Rankings of the Nominees for Best Short Story can be found HERE:
My Reviews/Rankings of the Nominees for Best Novelette can be found HERE:
My Reviews/Rankings of the Nominees for Best Novella can be found HERE:
This is the first year for an award for Best Young Adult Genre Novel on the ballot and it's a good one. Annoyingly the award this year doesn't have a name (it's not a Hugo* technically) but it will have one next year, but regardless, there's five incredibly good candidates for the award out of six nominees here, and the book I have fifth won the equivalent award (the Norton Award) at the Nebulas. The Young Adult Novel is a flourishing industry these days, and genre YA works are only becoming more and more common, making this award a welcome addition to the Hugo Award Ceremony, and this ballot does it incredible credit.
It should be noted though that the "Young Adult" designation encompasses a wide variety of books for a wide variety of age groups, making these books hard to compare. So on this ballot, we have two books I'd consider for more mature readers, one for younger (think early middle school) readers, and three that fall somewhere in between.
*From what I understand, the reason the Campbell and this award aren't considered "Hugos" is because each Hugo Nominee should only be eligible to win one category, whereas nominees for this award can also win the nominee for Best Novel, although none are nominated for both awards this year*
7th Place: The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage by Philip Pullman (Knopf)
My Review of this Book can be found HERE:
Thoughts: La Belle Sauvage is the only nominee that would disappoint me to win the award. The first of a spinoff trilogy of Pullman's famous His Dark Materials, this book is a prequel to Pullman's more well known trilogy, though it's supposedly meant as a stand-alone. And....it doesn't work. At all. Half of the book is setup/easter-eggs for fans of HDM, and the other half follows a pair of not to interesting characters and frequently comes across plot points that just seem to come up from nowhere. It's not a cohesive book - it's possible LBS will work when read with its sequels, but as a single book, it just doesn't work, and as such it falls below No Award for me. This isn't me being against sequels being up for such an award btw - there's another sequel on this list below - even sequels need to work as their own stories.
6th Place: No Award
5th Place: The Art of Starving by Sam J. Miller (Harper Teen)
My Review of this Book can be found HERE:
Thoughts: Let's be clear, The Art of Starving would be a fine winner for this award, even if I have it ranked 5th on my ballot. It won the Norton Award - which is the Nebula equivalent of this award - so it's probably the favorite to take this award as well.
This book is one of two what I might call mature YA books on this list - as in, they contain sex and more adult themes. And it uses this content extremely well - this is the story of a gay teenage kid with some major problems - (depression, loneliness, megalomania, suicidal thoughts, and more) - as he tries to sort himself out in a quest that starts out as one for revenge and turns instead to one where he finds love instead (and it's not nearly that simple). Written as if it's a diary or manual for other kids to read, it features an incredibly strong voice for its main character (a boy named Matt) who I came to care about quite strongly, which made Matt's self-destructive tendencies particularly hurt.
Still, while I can see why it won the Norton Award, The Art of Starving comes in 5th for me because well...it kind of fizzles in its ending, where it seems to set up a big climax only for it all to just.....pop. Not every book needs a big climax (indeed, I don't think any of the four books ahead of this one have a big climax), but when one is sort of set up like this, it just felt dissatisfying for it to end the way it did, with things being a bit too neatly wrapped up in a nice bow.
4th Place: Akata Warrior by Nnedi Okorafor (Viking)
My Review of this Book can be Found Here:
Thoughts: The sequel to Okorafor's "Akata Witch," Akata Warrior is my bet as to what actually will win this award, and again, I'd be okay with that. Unlike La Belle Sauvage, Akata Warrior is a successful novel in its own right and doesn't simply feel like a piece of a larger series (in fact, you could start with this book if you want) and well, it's pretty damn good.
Akata Warrior falls in the middle in terms of the maturity of the expected reader - while there are suggestions of more mature things happening off screen, younger readers probably won't catch these and won't miss much if they don't. It's to some extent the story of a 13 year old girl, named Sunny, and her friends (aged 13-15 roughly) trying to save the world, but really it's the story of Sunny simply trying to find out who she is as she learns about her own magical powers, her destiny, and struggles with not trying to harm her ignorant non-magical family. It has some dark parts and some light points, ending on a rather light note, and teases a sequel, but overall forms a very complete package that I enjoyed a lot, from a background (it's Nigerian-inspired fantasy, if you didn't know) that is not that familiar to me. The fact that it's fourth on my ballot has more to do with the books ahead of it being fantastic than any faults of its own.
3rd Place: A Skinful of Shadows by Frances Hardinge (Macmillian UK / Harry N. Abrams US)
My Review of this Book can be Found Here:
Thoughts: A Stand-Alone novel I'd never heard of prior to its nomination, A Skinful of Shadows is another story that falls in the middle of the YA genre in terms of the expected maturity level of the reader. The story takes an unusual historical background and fits in some pretty interesting worldbuilding to create a story that frequently surprises with characters who are likable and interesting to follow.
I really don't have much more to say about this one - I don't want to simply duplicate my review, which is linked above. I liked this just a tiny bit more than Akata Warrior, as it was a it more of a complete package, although some of that may be just because this isn't a part of a series. Still, it's a nice complete story from beginning to end that reads incredibly well and - while certainly relying upon some classic tropes - does some things I don't think I'd seen before with its not-unique concept, that of a family whose special genes allows them to be possessed by others' ghosts.
2nd Place: Summer in Orcus by T. Kingfisher aka Ursula Vernon (Sofawolf Press)
My Review of this Book can be Found Here:
Thoughts: Summer in Orcus is the youngest-aimed book of the nominees in this category (despite being written by Ursula Vernon's more adult pen-name), following an 11 year old girl into a portal fantasy land filled with creatures and things from Vernon's incredible imagination. Again, it's hard to judge such a book, which would honestly be fine reading for late elementary school kids, against books clearly meant for older fare, but Summer in Orcus is just in general a triumph of out-there storytelling.
This is a book where Vernon spits out some of her craziest ideas onto the page, and they somehow combine to make a very coherent portal fantasy story, with our heroine being an 11 year old girl sent by Baba Yaga to help a fantasy land and joined by a bunch of anthropomorphic animals who are absolutely charming. But unlike classic portal fantasies like say...Narnia....this is not a book where that girl, the titular Summer, learns to fight and battles against evil - instead, she is simply an 11 year old girl, and the key to her path is her own kindheartedness. This could sound incredibly cheesy, but Vernon/Kingfisher makes it work - it should be noted this book isn't totally light in tone, but the overall result is lighter than some other books, and the combination works again wonderfully. It would be a worthy winner, but for the last book on the ballot.
1st Place: In Other Lands by Sarah Rees Brennan (Big Mouth House)
My Review of this Book can be found HERE:
Thoughts: In Other Lands was my favorite book of ALL of last year, and thus was on my nomination ballot for Best Novel, not just for this award. So yeah, of course it was going to top my vote for this award, it's that damn good. Of note, this is the second more mature novel on this list (and like THe Art of Starving, features a LGBT protagonist) after The Art of Starving - sex is not a minor part of this story, so even though the book starts with its main hero at age 13, it's not even close to a middle-grade novel.
But it's oh so damn good. It's another portal family to some extent, and one where our hero strives to solve problems with means other than fighting, but is otherwise so different from Summer in Orcus. Our hero, Elliott, is an obnoxious geek who doesn't like fighting and wishes the problems of this fantasy land, where humans, elves, dwarves, harpies, mermaids, trolls, etc. have frequent conflicts could be solved not on the field of battle, but by treaties and negotiations....and is willing to above and beyond to make it happen. He may be smarter than most others, but god does he let everyone else know it, to everyone's annoyance. But he's also a lone boy without friends in the real world or parents who love him, and he's also just searching to find a person who can love him first and foremost unconditionally. The result is a character who somehow never seems as annoying as he should be, whose dialogue and internal monologues are absolutely hilarious, and whose actions are often heartfelt and sometimes heartbreaking. But it all works out in the end and it works oh so well. And the other characters in this book, seemingly "golden boy" Luke Sunborn, the gay friend of Elliott's whose legacy is of that of the land's most famous warrior family; elf warrior Serene-Heart-In-The-Chaos-of-Battle (who Elliott initially crushes on; and all the others are just so absolutely wonderful. Again, this book is so often absolutely hilarious, while at the same time being incredbily heartfelt. I can't really talk about this book without babbling, it's that good, and I'm rooting for it so hard to win this award.
No comments:
Post a Comment