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 sixth 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 Best Series. This is a newer category, although a popular one, which was originally introduced in theory to reward long running series whose individual works might not merit Best Novel consideration, but whose combined value might merit some sort of award. In practice of course, that's not quite how the award has worked, with the award going to series that have had award winners and nominations in basically every year it's been awarded, and the nominations also featuring trilogies and shorter series quite frequently.This year really isn't any exception - of the six nominees, five of the six featured a nomination for either Best Novel (or one of the other short fiction categories) or Best New Writer for individual works within the series. The one exception is a long runner that's been nominated twice before. But these are the six nominees I have, so they're the ones I will rank.
I've read at least two works in each of these six series, which means I can actually judge these works on their own merits without guessing. Note that where I have series that I consider around equal, I will prioritize on my ballot the works that have not won other awards for individual works, which better exemplify the spirits of this award. As with my other rankings, I have organized the works into tiers, which is a bit tricky this time, as I don't actually have that many ties.
Tier Four:
6. The Interdependency by John Scalzi (Tor Books)
This is the only series that I was tempted to put below No Award, although I'm clearly in the minority as this series also earned a Best Novel nomination a year or two ago. I just....well, really didn't like this series - the dialogue was fun for a book, but the characters were kind of one beat, the series kept repeating plot points (books 1 and 2 feature basically the exact same kind of political treachery despite the potential for galactic destruction making it better for everyone to work together), and really it felt like it could have been two books - especially with how short each book was rather than a trilogy.
I used to really love Scalzi's work, and this trilogy isn't offensive or bad in any way - but it just to me very much fits the opposite of a Best Series work, a series whose weaknesses only become apparent the more volumes there are. So yeah, noping this one right into last place on my ballot.
Tier Three:
5. The Lady Astronaut Universe by Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor Books/Audible/Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction)
This series actually features a Best Novel winner as well as a Best Novelette winner (in the original story that inspired the series). It's also on the Best Novel ballot this year. So yeah, people realy love this series, and it might win, although I don't expect it to (for reasons I'll lay out later).
It's another series however that I feel shows a bit cracks as it got longer. I enjoyed the first book quite a bit, even though I considered its protagonist Elma York kind of a bit too perfect, as it dealt with Elma fighting against sexism (for herself and her friends) and racism (for her friends) in a desperate alternate history drive for space. But I couldn't finish book 2, because I got bored at seeing the same conflicts seemingly repeated in the same way for the same protagonist in its first act. The third book fixed this problem by switching the protagonist, becoming more of a thriller (set on the moon!), and I liked it a bit, although not nearly enough for me to love it.
And well, that's the problem, I really enjoyed the other four series a lot more, and never wanted to DNF any of their volumes. Still, I liked books 1 and 3 enough that it's clearly a tier above the last spot on my ballot.
4 The Daevabad Trilogy by S.A. Chakraborty (Harper Voyager)
I gave serious thought to putting this in the next tier, as I really enjoyed this series, especially in audiobook format. The trilogy earned Chakraborty a nomination for best new writer, and it was well deserved, as The City of Brass was truly a strong epic fantasy, based on a muslim-myth inspired world filled with various types of djinn hidden away in their own little world, with themes of racism, mixed-blood heritages, inequality, cycles of revenge, and more. It also featured not just two (well three kinda) really great main characters, but a set of secondary characters who were really strongly developed, making everything that happened in the trilogy hit really hard, as you absolutely cared for everyone involved (or hated their guts in some cases).
The reason this isn't in the next tier though is well, again this is another series where the series sort of doesn't build too well on each other in additional volumes - particularly in the final volume, The Empire of Gold. The book was good, don't get me wrong, but it very much cast away the series' more interesting themes of dealing with different peoples and cultures and forging lasting partnerships among distrust for a new world....in favor of a more generic epic fantasy ending.
Tier Two:
3. The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells (Tor.com)
If you're reading this post, it'd be stunning if you HAVEN'T read this series already. And I will be surprised if this series doesn't win the award, honestly, as Murderbot has deservedly been an awards and popular darling since the first novella came out - with two Best Novella wins and a Best Novel nomination this year.
Moreover, like a lot of Wells' work (her Raksura series, which was nominated for this series in 2018, being a good example), each volume in the series absolutely builds upon one another, as characters develop from story to story, first in the original four novellas and then in the follow up Novel Network Effect, which makes terrific use of Murderbot's development over the course of the story. And this series is almost certainly not over, which makes its nomination here somewhat in the spirit of the category.....
Except again, it's already won two Hugos for individual works, was nominated for another (Exit Strategy's nomination was declined by Wells), and will likely be nominated again in the future for this year's novella. This isn't a series that needs this award, even if it might very well deserve it, so it doesn't quite make it for me.
2. The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang (Harper Voyager)
So on one hand, The Poppy War doesn't fit the concept of the category, since this is a concluded trilogy that wraps everything up in three books, with nothing new to come. It also earned Kuang two nominations and a win for the Astonishing Award for Best New Writer, so it's not like the series is unrewarded entirely.
On the other hand, the trilogy is incredibly good and powerful, if you're able to handle the very triggering events contained within - as the series is a fantasy inspired by atrocities suffered by the real China, such as the Sino-Japanese wars (the Rape of Nanjing among other atrocities), the colonization of China by the West, and more. Each book does build upon the others, even if book 2 is a slight dropoff from an incredible beginning volume, and the main character of Rin and this world (and two secondary characters Nezha and Kitay) grow tremendously...in brutal and often depressing, but very real ways.
This is not an easy series to read, but it comes together to a tremendous conclusion, which makes it more than worthy for the second spot on my awards ballot.
Tier One:
1. October Daye by Seanan McGuire (DAW)
Seanan McGuire's two biggest eligible series, this one and InCryptid, have earned nominations every year due to their high popularity, but have never come super close to winning. I expect that the same this year thanks to Murderbot, but I will absolutely be putting this top on my ballot. Let me explain:
First it's a series who, fifteen books in (14 of which are eligible for this award - which is a shame as I loved the 15th as a capper on the latest arc of this series) has developed its cast, especially its main character October Daye, tremendously from book to book, both in her skillset and in her emotional and relationship developments. Then there's how McGuire uses long running plot threads and mysteries over multiple books to tantalize readers and get them excited and speculating about the future. Then there's how McGuire's short stories in the series, from those on her patreon to those available for free or included in the backs of novels, expand the series' setting and characters further. And none of the individual novels will ever be up for Best Novel, because they don't stand alone in that way.
Basically, this is the perfect example of what this award is for: a long-running series, whose individual works would otherwise not get recognition, that uses the series length to build something special that gets its readers invested and caring, and promises more to come. And well, I kind of love this series, from the time I devoured the first ten books in like a week (when it was first nominated in 2017) to every year since when I've gotten to read another volume.
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