Solo Hugo Reading Club: Novella

[leonidskies]

I'm working my way through the Hugo shortlist! I've done poetry and fan artist and now I've finished reading all of the nominees in the novella category. Interestingly, this is the category I've seen (mild) discourse about, owing to the high level of representation of books published by Tor. I have no real opinions on this, though I would note that the Tor novellas included both my favourite and my least favourite nominees and also that I liked all of these books at least a bit.

I've come to like novellas a lot generally recently, and I've read a lot of them this year so far. There's a lot of very fun and exciting work being done with novellas and I think I might try and pay more attention to them in the future. I'd also note that every single one of these novellas is queer, and three were trans (as in, had a major trans character), so I was pretty pleased while I was reading them.

Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz. This was an interesting one for me! Out of all of the novellas I read, this was the one where I most would have liked to see it as a full book. Not because I liked it the most, but because it admittedly felt the least complete as a novella. There was so much going on with the characters especially and I wanted to see more. This is a cute and fun and cozy book packed with some big feelings.

Cinder House by Freya Marske. I did not expect to like this book as much as I did, but it ended up being one of my favourites. I'm not huge on retellings and I'm especially not huge on dark retellings of what lives, to most people, as a Disney movie or a picture book. But there was something very emotionally affecting about this book, and it took care to put a dark spin on several elements of the story while not making it crude, and the system of magic that existed within the world was great too.

Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite. I have quite conflicting feelings on this one, I think. It was very good - a very classic detective story in a way I recognise from half-remembered snatches of television my parents watched when I was a child. It played very interestingly with its speculative elements and was very creative. I wasn't super convinced by the romantic relationship it was developing for its series, though, and its setup dragged a little longer than I would have liked.

The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar. This was phenomenal. I adored this book. I can't say enough good things about it. It was very emotional, and I'm a sucker for stories about siblings, and music, and fae, and basically this hit every button for me. It's a beautiful work of art and I wholeheartedly recommend it.

The Summer War by Naomi Novik. Having written about The River Has Roots, I realise that this book also should have been my thing absolutely. And I thought it was very good at what it was doing and especially came together very well at the end, but there was something missing for me I couldn't quite put my finger on. I think it was something to do with the way it was playing with very traditional trappings in a nobility-kingdoms way that rubbed me the wrong way. (Separately, the absolute whiplash of getting to the end of this book and seeing the Archive of Our Own namedrop. What a thing to have to your name!)

What Stalks the Deep by T. Kingfisher. I was a little worried about this one because it's the third book in a series, but it worked out just fine and I understood what was going on just fine! The protagonist grew on me throughout the book, and the narration was charming and funny. This was horror in a way none of the others were and it stood out for that. Kingfisher is clearly a deeply skilled writer - it was a thoroughly well-executed book.