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.
This is the Sixth part and probably final part of this series, since I don't think I'm going to get to Best Series this year. I have previously reviewed the nominees for Best Young Adult SF/F (The Lodestar Award) and for Best SF/F Short Story, Best SF/F novelette, Best Novella, and Best Novel.
You can find all the parts of this series, going over each category of the Hugo Awards HERE.
This post will look at the nominations for The Astounding Award for Best New Writer, formerly known as The Campbell Award (and good riddance to that name). I normally mock the awards like the Lodestar that are technically "Not-a-Hugo" but awarded alongside the other Hugo Awards (cmon, seriously?) but the Astounding Award is actually different in that it covers two years of eligibility: these are writers who debuted in the genre over not just 2019, but 2018 as well. This means that one of the nominees here were nominated last year, while others may be nominated a second time in the future if they haven't won already.
I'd actually only read four of the six authors on this ballot before the awards were announced, which was a pleasant surprise: it meant I had two new authors to check out! And I was not disappointed when I did.....
As with my other posts, I'm going to break down the nominees into tiers rather than focus too heavily on directly ranking them (though I will as well because I have to). Unlike my other posts however, I can't quite directly compare each author's body of work, since they come in different forms. In prior years I'd ranked these nominees based upon the following scheme:
1. All else being equal, I will put ahead nominees who are in their last year of eligibility, as nominees in their first year on the ballot are likely to return next year.
2. I mostly read long fiction, and unless short fiction work of a writer blows me away, I will rank novel and novella writers higher than short fiction. This is not a value judgment that I expect everyone will share, and I don't mean to knock short fiction - it's really hard to write as a craft! I just tend to consider more effort involved in getting novels and novellas into print.
That said, let's get on with the rankings:
Tier 3:
6. Emily Tesh (1st year of eligibility) - Silver in the Wood (Review Here)
I very much enjoyed Silver in the Wood, which I'd missed originally when it was published but picked up after Tesh was nominated here. It's a lovely M-M novella taking a spin on the old Green Man story by flipping the perspective from which it's told. On the other hand, it didn't wow me, and Tesh is in her first year of eligibility, and the rest of the ballot features works I liked more. So she's alone in last on my ballot, which is not a knock.
Tier 2:
5. Sam Hawke (2nd year of eligibility) - City of Lies (Review Here)
4. Jenn Lyons (1st year of eligibility) - The Ruin of Kings (Review Here), The Name of All Things (Review Here)
Again, the fact that these two authors are not in my highest tier isn't a critique upon them, but more a love of the other authors ranked above. Both authors feature epic-like fantasy settings, although Jenn Lyons' two novels are true epic doorstoppers.
Hawke's novel was the first in a series which will continue later this year, featuring a pair of young adult protagonists (though the book is not marketed as YA) in a city-state where the order they've come to know and love is really built on a system of class oppression to which the two have grown up blind. It's very well done and enjoyable, and in this day and age the protagonists' ignorance of the systemic oppression is surprisingly believable, and I look forward to the sequel. Still, it didn't really stand out tremendously like some of the below work.
I actually think I like Lyons' work a bit more than Hawke's here, to the point where I considered creating her a separate tier. Both of her novels belong to her five book epic fantasy series, A Chorus of Dragons, with a third book coming out next month. I actually didn't love The Ruin of Kings, which Tor gave a lot of hype too, finding it hard to care too much about the lead character, even if the world showed promise. But the second book, The Name of All Things, is a significant improvement and I really loved its protagonist - which has me pretty much all in on the series. Both books came out in 2019 and thus qualify for this award, but Lyons is again a first year nominee, so I drop her into this tier with Sam Hawke as a result - if the third book is as good as the second though, I'm likely to nominate her myself next year and may even put her on the top of my ballot.
Tier 1:
3. Nibedita Sen (2nd year of eligibility) - Various Short Fiction
2. R.F. Kuang (2nd year of eligibility) - The Poppy War (Review Here), The Dragon Republic (Review Here)
1. Tasha Suri (2nd year of eligibility) - Realm of Ash (Review Here), Empire of Sand (Review Here)
I'd be happy if any of these three authors win, and I do expect this year's winner to come from here. R.F. Kuang was nominated last year and deservedly so for her The Poppy War, and now with its sequel is nominated again. Nibedita Sen has put out a number of short fiction pieces in the past two years and is nominated for the Best Short Story Hugo Award this year. And Tasha Suri has put out two novels in her Books of Ambha duology over the past two years.
Sen's work even outside of her Best Short Story candidate (see my breakdown there for that story) is really great - just in the Hugo Packet alone we have Never Yawn Under a Banyan Tree - a very cute story of a young woman, a ghost in her stomach, a historical tree in India, and the girl she's too shy to ask out; as well as Leviathan Sings to Me in the Deep - a Lovecraftian horror story of a whaling crew led into dangerous waters by a maybe mad scientist which is very well done. There's also Advice for your First Time at the Faerie Market (not in the Hugo Packet) which is a really well done story of a young mother, domestic violence and what she has done for her child in regards to the demands of the Fae. It's all very good but as I noted above, I resolve tiebreakers in favor of long fiction instead of short fiction.
RF Kuang's two novels in the eligibility period follow a fantasy version of China dealing with first the occupation of a fantasy version of Japan in the horrifying vein of the Sino-Japanese wars (The Poppy War) and then the country's attempt to rebuild with the help of fantasy westerners (The Dragon Republic). All of this through a protagonist, who begins the series as a young woman, who soon learns she possesses a magical power based upon rage and soon faces such horrors and abuse that she gives in to its dark powers of vengeance. Like its real world inspiration, the series is often incredibly brutal to read, and its protagonist does a number of things that are absolutely not "good" in any way. I'm really curious how this is all going to be wrapped up, because I cannot see a happy ending coming in the trilogy's conclusion, but Kuang has kept me enraptured throughout, even if the second book isn't quite as powerful a the first since I was kind of used to how the series worked by that point.
But my winner is Tasha Suri for her Books of Ambha duology, which I think resulted in me nominating her for this award LAST year. Both books take place in the same Southeast Asian (India I think) inspired world, and feature heavy themes of the impact of imperialism and oppression on minority peoples, and what it means to be biracial - especially in such a world when one half of one's heritage belongs to an oppressed people and a person may be able to pass for someone who isn't mixed. Both books also feature very solid romance, as well as issues of consent, standing up for oneself and free will - to go along with even more really interesting themes. And each book deals with these themes in their own unique and really well done ways, with the books being related but otherwise stand-alone. I'm still surprised neither picked up a major award nomination, because they both did deserve it. But they lead me to put Suri #1 on my ballot, even if I would not be upset if either Kuang or Sen managed to pull out the win.
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