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(Rolling update: have now finished Spinning Silver, reviewed with an assortment of others under the cut)
I'm going to return to this post and update/date boost as I have things to add.
The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor)
Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers (Hodder & Stoughton / Harper Voyager) – already read! This has to be maybe the first time I've already read any of the finalists before the Hugos. From my tiny write up back in October: I liked it - all of the many characters had time to breathe and got satisfying arcs - but I cannot overstate how little plot there is. It is not necessarily a bad thing: Chambers clearly wanted to do a character novel, and that's fine, but there was very little narrative drive as a result. This is my second favourite of the three novels (the second being my most favourite) and I'm still very keen to see what she comes up with next. Hell knows where I'm going to rank it, though.
Revenant Gun by Yoon Ha Lee (Solaris) This is the third in the series, and while I've read the first one, I didn't really feel like I understood it, and while I really liked the first half of the second one, I wasn't interested in it enough to persevere to the end. So I'm politely leaving this finale off my ballot. It's a shame, I fucking loved the short story "Extracurricular activities", and there was such good potential in the series for me. I'm willing to believe I'm just not smart enough for it, frankly.
Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente (Saga)
Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik (Del Rey / Macmillan)
Pre-read thoughts: I'm going to read this one with a touch of trepidation – I loved large parts of Uprooted and was furious with other parts. I'm really hoping for a smitten experience rather than the latter.
First page thoughts: oh holy shit what was that opening fucking paragraph? What the hell? I'm so glad I got this from my local library. I'm giving this 50 pages (my standard taste-test length), but it's going to have to do something real special to keep me going.
40-ish or so pages in. Goddammit. I really like this. I don't trust Novik with feminism or to do any sort of queerness, but this worldbuilding is tantalising and her writing is really fucking good. Ugh. Fine. Still reading.
Finished! Okay, despite all my initial and pre-read misgivings, I loved this. I knock a star off for some silences and some moderately confusing moments (I'm willing to believe the latter is just me), but that was still four stars of really good, skilled writing, and skilled novel as a whole. I'm so lowkey impressed at how well she handled that many points of view, even if some weren't as necessary as others. There was some moments of devastatingly good, emotional writing, and so many different women doing so many different things. This was very much a book about women surviving in the patriarchy, and it did it very well. Still don't trust her to write queerness (a passing mention of the bisexuality of one of the antagonists doesn't count as representation in the slightest to me), but I'd interestedly pick up her next work based on this. With two books left to engage with, it's at the top of my ballot so far.
On a purely personal level, I finished this in 9 days. It's legit reassuring to me that I can actually/still read 50 pages a day of moderately dense writing as long as I plan ahead a little.
Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse (Saga) Native American gods and monsters have arisen in a post-apocalyptic, climate-fucked United States. I'm very here for that specific concept, and interested in the shapes that society reforms into after disaster. I have several writeryly sads about this book, all of which can be summed up as "this is the author's first novel-length work, and it shows", which I can't really begrudge. I'd be interested in reading whatever comes after this series, to give the author more time to find her feet with long works, given how good her shorter work was last year.
I'm going to return to this post and update/date boost as I have things to add.
The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal (Tor)
Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers (Hodder & Stoughton / Harper Voyager) – already read! This has to be maybe the first time I've already read any of the finalists before the Hugos. From my tiny write up back in October: I liked it - all of the many characters had time to breathe and got satisfying arcs - but I cannot overstate how little plot there is. It is not necessarily a bad thing: Chambers clearly wanted to do a character novel, and that's fine, but there was very little narrative drive as a result. This is my second favourite of the three novels (the second being my most favourite) and I'm still very keen to see what she comes up with next. Hell knows where I'm going to rank it, though.
Revenant Gun by Yoon Ha Lee (Solaris) This is the third in the series, and while I've read the first one, I didn't really feel like I understood it, and while I really liked the first half of the second one, I wasn't interested in it enough to persevere to the end. So I'm politely leaving this finale off my ballot. It's a shame, I fucking loved the short story "Extracurricular activities", and there was such good potential in the series for me. I'm willing to believe I'm just not smart enough for it, frankly.
Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente (Saga)
Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik (Del Rey / Macmillan)
Pre-read thoughts: I'm going to read this one with a touch of trepidation – I loved large parts of Uprooted and was furious with other parts. I'm really hoping for a smitten experience rather than the latter.
First page thoughts: oh holy shit what was that opening fucking paragraph? What the hell? I'm so glad I got this from my local library. I'm giving this 50 pages (my standard taste-test length), but it's going to have to do something real special to keep me going.
40-ish or so pages in. Goddammit. I really like this. I don't trust Novik with feminism or to do any sort of queerness, but this worldbuilding is tantalising and her writing is really fucking good. Ugh. Fine. Still reading.
Finished! Okay, despite all my initial and pre-read misgivings, I loved this. I knock a star off for some silences and some moderately confusing moments (I'm willing to believe the latter is just me), but that was still four stars of really good, skilled writing, and skilled novel as a whole. I'm so lowkey impressed at how well she handled that many points of view, even if some weren't as necessary as others. There was some moments of devastatingly good, emotional writing, and so many different women doing so many different things. This was very much a book about women surviving in the patriarchy, and it did it very well. Still don't trust her to write queerness (a passing mention of the bisexuality of one of the antagonists doesn't count as representation in the slightest to me), but I'd interestedly pick up her next work based on this. With two books left to engage with, it's at the top of my ballot so far.
On a purely personal level, I finished this in 9 days. It's legit reassuring to me that I can actually/still read 50 pages a day of moderately dense writing as long as I plan ahead a little.
Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse (Saga) Native American gods and monsters have arisen in a post-apocalyptic, climate-fucked United States. I'm very here for that specific concept, and interested in the shapes that society reforms into after disaster. I have several writeryly sads about this book, all of which can be summed up as "this is the author's first novel-length work, and it shows", which I can't really begrudge. I'd be interested in reading whatever comes after this series, to give the author more time to find her feet with long works, given how good her shorter work was last year.
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I'd been really confusingly burned reading Uprooted, her previous fairytale novel. (Paragraph of review and feelings here). I very nearly passed Spinning Silver over because of it, and opened the book already on guard and actively looking for hope that the author was going to be less victim blamey. To have the opening paragraph, at first glance, be about a woman using wily charms to bed a guy and then who runs an innocent man out of town for her own gain seemed Not A Great Start, Bob. Having read the entire book, I've softened towards that paragraph, and read it as being ...potentially more sympathetic to her plight? but there's some substantial reading between those lines to get there.