Reviewing the 2019 Hugo Nominees: Best Novel

Hugo Award voting just opened at the start of May 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 the last two 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.

First up, my picks for Best Novel!  A quick note: The Hugo Awards Voter Packet, which is provided as part of the $45 membership required to become a Hugo Voter, contains all six nominees for Best Novel (in addition to quite a number of other works).  So tracking down these works should NOT be hard for anyone interested.

I'd actually read all six Hugo Nominees when they were announced, though none made my nominating ballot (you can find that HERE).  Still, three of the nominees came close to making my ballot, so I'm not really dissatisfied with the results, even if my favorites didn't make it.  There's definitely some works I don't really think are Hugo Worthy, though I can see how others might enjoy some of those more than I did.  But there's a few clearly worthy potential winners here as well.

After the jump, my final ballot, with quick thoughts on each and links to my fuller reviews:



7.  Space Opera by Catherynne M Valente

My Review can be found HERE.

Thoughts: Space Opera didn't work for me.  It's a straight up SciFi comedy, with a Douglas Adams-esque plot of the fate of the Earth depending upon a washed up one-hit wonder band managing not to finish last in a galactic version of Eurovision.  But really the book is filled with constant asides and even main-plot related jokes, with practically nothing taken seriously, and I can see how others might enjoy it more than I - humor is obviously taste dependent.

But the humor got old for me by around the midway point, and unlike say Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, where I liked the characters and found them entertaining, the characters in Space Opera were uninteresting and kind of annoying (with an ending one could see coming a mile away).  So yeah, when a book just straight out doesn't work for me, it goes below No Award on my ballot, as I can't justify it for the award.  I've enjoyed Valente's short fiction in the past, but this longer (and it's not a long novel) work just exhausted its welcome.

6.  Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik

My Review can be found HERE.

Thoughts:  Spinning Silver is probably one of the favorites for this award, so my rating is definitely well off base with the majority opinion (it's one of three works on this list that also picked up a Nebula nominee).  Essentially a spiritual successor to Uprooted, Spinning Silver loosely re-adapts Rumplestillskin, with a couple of young women in Eastern Europe (mainly a young Jewish woman, but also the daughter of a noble and a poor young woman with an abusive father) taking center stage as protagonists.

Unlike Uprooted, however, Spinning Silver doesn't focus on a single protagonist and her point of view, and that's where it lost me, with the number of point of view characters increasing throughout the book to the point where it really lost focus for me.  One of the characters who seems like she'd be a major protagonist early on winds up going nowhere, and the book's opting to make potential antagonists into more misunderstood and potentially viable love interests in the end just didn't land for me.  There's a lot of interesting potential here, but the lack of focus made the book just not land for me, with me not winding up very satisfied in the end and I kind of had to force myself to finish it.  So it goes below No Award for me, even though I know that's very likely to be a big minority opinion.

5.  No Award

4.  Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse

My Review can be found HERE.

Thoughts: Trail of Lightning is the first novel from last year's Campbell Award winner for Best New SF/F writer (and Hugo Award winner for Best Short Story) Rebecca Roanhorse.  It also picked up a Nebula Nomination, so it's not a surprise to see it here so nominated.  The story is a post-apocalyptic fantasy told after global warming destroys the world as we know it, and takes place on what was once a Navajo reservation (Dinétah) and features both Native characters and Gods out of Native myths, which is obviously a different take than the usual.

And this works really well, although there are some flaws.  The setting is truly great, and the main character is a angst-ridden heroine who has to try to learn to come out of her shell, despite the horrors that still occur around her, and she works really well as a result.  The plot ends in a satisfying way that makes sense and is a little heartbreaking, but also teases the possibility of sequel novels (one of which was just released this past month and I've actually just started).  The book coming in fourth on my list is simply due to two factors: one, I felt there was some weird out-of-character actions from a major character and two, while I really enjoyed this book, it never truly rose into a level where I felt it really hit that "greatness" level.  Which is a rough critique because what makes a book "great" is kind of subjective and I can't really explain it, but basically it means that I enjoyed the book but didn't feel like I HAD to recommend it to others, which isn't necessarily the case with the other three books I have ranked above it.

3.  The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal

My Review can be found HERE.

Thoughts: The next three books were books I gave a score of 9 out of 10, so the gap between my top three is very small, although I think there's more of a gap from this book in 3rd to the other two than my top two choices.  But The Calculating Stars is probably the favorite here (Post-Publication Update: The Calculating Stars wound up winning the Nebula, so this seems to be correct), as the most obvious crowd pleaser from a well regarded author in the community.  And it's a deserving choice in my opinion, a novel telling the story of an alternate world in which a meteor strike in the 50s resulted in the Earth being obviously doomed, and the space race becomes a matter of survival for humanity.  In that context, computer and pilot Elma York has to fight sexism, and for her non-white friends racism, which abounds in the space program of this age (and really in our age) to ensure opportunities for all....resulting in her uncomfortably taking a center spotlight to promote the program.

It's definitely well written with a plot that rings true as to the racial and gender dynamics of both that era in the US as well as today, and some pretty good characters - It's pretty hard not to like Elma York.  Honestly, that was my biggest problem with the book, which kind of felt like Elma, a White Jewish Woman is too perfect of an "ally" character.  She's not one of those unfortunate "allies" you see in Hollywood movies who perfectly overcomes racism (cough Green Book cough), and the book never pretends that racism (or sexism) can be easily overcome and isn't a pervasive force.  But I don't know, it just felt like things were too perfect in how Elma could both be so often naive to these forces at first and then correct herself as soon as she's made aware.

2.  Revenant Gun by Yoon Ha Lee

My Review can be found HERE.

Thoughts: I'm going back and forth on this book and the next one on my 1 and 2 slots, but for now, I'm putting them in this order.  Revenant Gun is the conclusion of Lee's Machineries of Empire trilogy, which is also deservedly nominated for Best Series.  I think it's actually more likely to win that award, given that all THREE books in the trilogy have been nominated for the Hugo in back to back to back years, without ever taking home the award.  As you might imagine from a trilogy-ender, Revenant Gun takes the open threads from the prior two books, namely the mysterious still-existence of the main antagonist Kujen, and brings them together to a satisfying close.

I'm not going to go into the plot here because well, I don't want to spoil the prior two books in the series in case you somehow haven't read them either.  But after a 10 year time jump from the book's predecessor (Raven Stratagem), the book picks up with all of the main characters from the prior books, adds a few new ones, and then really develops the series' antagonist into a tragic villain who is understandable, even if he absolutely has to be destroyed for anything to have been worth it.  It's a pretty fantastic bit of character work (although one main character from the 2nd book does get a little shafted) and a satisfying ending for this world, even there are a few threads that could possibly be picked up later (and there's a sequel novella coming out in Lee's anthology collection later this year which does just that).

Still, Revenant Gun is not quite as good as its predecessor, and is not stand-alone in any way.  Neither of those things are really black marks in any way, but I needed a tiebreaker for choosing my #1 vote, and the fact that I can't quite recommend this book without the others is what I'm using for that tiebreaker.

1.  Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers

My Review can be found HERE:

Thoughts:  Like Revenant Gun, Record of a Spaceborn Few is the third book in a series, which has already had at least one prior Hugo-Nominated work (A Closed and Common Orbit, last year).  Unlike Revenant Gun, the Wayfarer series is a series in a shared universe without a clear beginning or end, with each book, including this one, being stand-alone.  Record of a Spaceborn Few features a few allusions to a character in the first book of the series, but otherwise you could read this book cold and be totally fine.  And if you do so, I think you'll have an incredible time.

Like its predecessors, and unlike many of the books above, Record of a Spaceborn Few is entirely character focused, with little to no overarching plot to speak of.  But Chambers does such a wonderful job with each of the characters' arcs, with growth and development in interesting ways, and a universe that is optimistic towards human existence in the future.  There's nothing wrong with more cynical works (there's a hell of a lot of cynicism in Machineries of Empire above for example), but the fact that this series can make me smile repeatedly, and have me come through hopeful, is something I could use once in a while - and there are few series that can do that as well as this one.

And Record of a Spaceborn Few is just as good as its predecessors, showing Chambers isn't slowing down in her ability to put out tremendous quality any time soon.  Of the books on this shortlist, this is the one that I've picked up and reread the most (Revenant Gun is close though), which I think is a good way for me to pick which one of these novels deserves my top spot.  Characters are the most important thing for me in books I read, and this book has the best character work here.  I would be very happy if it took home the award.