Hugo Awards Extravaganza 2023 – Novella

Works in the Hugo Novella category are almost always short novels (17500-40000 words).

In 2019 I wrote that this category had been revitalised by digital publishing and it continues to be true – novellas seem more accessible to consumers and more vital than ever, and the quality of this section has in previous rounds been exceptional.  I’m really looking forward to this category as it is a mixture of authors I am extremely familiar with (McGuire, Tchaikovsky, and to a lesser extend Kingfisher) and some new (to me) faces.

Read More

Hugo Awards Extravaganza 2023 – Novelette

Hugo novelettes tend to be long short stories (7500-17500 words). I used to bag on this category as slightly too long short stories, and that’s certainly true for the bulk of nominees, but for the last few rounds I’ve reviewed, the top stories have been really excellent; the best entries are super short stories that benefit from the extra space while still being compact and not overstaying their welcome.
Reviews of the Novelette Nominees.

Read More

Hugo Awards Extravaganza 2023 – Introduction

It’s been a while since I’ve done this, (2019) so I hope I’m not too rusty.  As is my want, I’ll stick to the Fiction categories, prioritising Novel, Novella, Novelette and Short Story (the last two generally being my favourite categories), then if I have time hit Series, Graphic Novel, New Writer, and Young Adult (the last two technically not being Hugos).  I’ll also dip my toes into the presentation categories if I’ve already covered off most of the entrants.

Read More

Series Review – October Daye by Seanan McGuire

October Daye is an urban fantasy series starring a PI who bridges the gap between fairy and humans.  On its face, there is nothing to distinguish it from any of the other long running series like Dresden/The Hollows (PI), True Blood/Mary Gentry (fairies), etc, except it is a perennial best series nominee for the Hugos.  Indeed, I’ve read and briefly reviewed the October Daye series not once, but twice before, putting them in the middle of my Hugo Series ballot in both 2017 and 2019.  After the last round I praised them as “weapons grade escapism”, but given I enjoyed them enough this year to reread the series, they deserve a bit more than that.  In particular, it misses what is the key strength of the series – a family of characters that I want to hang out with each instalment, the lexical equivalent of a great sitcom or procedural.

Read More

Series Review – October Daye Books 8-12

In for a penny, in for a pound. I reread an October Daye book and posted old reviews for the first seven books, and I’ve ended up rereading the series and figured I would fill out the rest.  Obviously once you get to book 8 of a series, the only people reading are the hard core fans, so assume that you should go back and read the earlier books before getting to these ones, and that later reviews might contain spoilers for earlier books.  Thanks to The Unkindest Tide being overdue, this completes the current run of novels, and just leaves the short fiction to review…

Read More

Hugo Awards Extravaganza 2019 – Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form

Obviously the companion category to Long Form, Short form here means shorter than 90 minutes.  Unlike its longer cousin, this category often has a diverse range of media beyond tv and short film, and as such is the more interesting non textural category.  Unfortunately this is also the category that, as I predicted at the beginning of the Hugo season, I couldn’t get to all of the entries in.

Read More

Hugo Awards Extravaganza 2019 – Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form

In theory, this category can include just about any medium (TV series, Game, Street Performance) as long as it is longer than 90 minutes.  Disappointingly, it end up as the best movie category.  Given my scarcity of going out time, I generally only see films that appeal to my wife (horror), or my kids (superheroes), but this year that covered four of the six, and I watched Annihilation when it dropped on Netflix.  On the upside, this means that I only had to watch Sorry to Bother You to vote in the category, on the downside, a lot of these films are a bit fuzzy in my recollection.

Read More

Hugo Awards Extravaganza 2019 – Novel

The marquee category, prima inter pares, what people mean when they refer to “The Hugo Award”, the novel category is open to works greater than 40,000 words (~80 pages plus).  It is also the category I dread the most; no matter how bad a short story is, it will be gone in a moment, while even a good story can drag at novel length.  This year I’ve read two going in, Trail of Lightning and Revenant Gun.

Read More

Hugo Awards Extravaganza 2019 -Graphic Story

This is a pretty self explanatory category typically composed of graphic novels and trade paperbacks.  The big story of 2019 is how stagnant the selection is; half of the Graphic Story slate has been locked in since 2017, in the form of Saga (six time nominee), Monstress (two time winner), and Paper Girls. Fortunately two of the repeats (Monstress and Saga) were my top picks of last year, so it is hard to begrudge them their perennial status.

Read More