Hugo 2019 novels, now complete!

[maharetr]

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. This was a really good, solid read. I feel like I’m damning it with faint praise, maybe. But as someone who thought I didn’t like Kowal’s longer works, enjoying this was a surprising relief. I was genuinely tense when things were Tense (no small feat), and there were several moments that made me choke up (remarkably easy to do, but still worth mentioning). The sex scenes were moderately charming in context, but oh boy, taken out of the book and put into the literary bad sex award nominations? They’d be a close contender.

I really, really appreciate what Kowal has done, along with Hidden figures, for pointing out how much human – specifically women’s – work went into the space program and on getting humans into space and to the moon. That comment about how there’s more computing power in our phones than took us to the moon is technically correct but also deliberately erases the countless hours that the human computers – all women – did, with bonus erasure of the fact that women are really goddamn good at maths. *snarls* Women got us to the moon, and wow has history worked real hard to get to forget that fact. This is definitely worthy of going on my ballot, although it’s going to be a complicated middle ballot now.

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. I've been aware of this author, but not picked up any of her works since attempting Palimpsest, so I was pleased to be given this opportunity on a silver platter. One of the blurb reviews says she's the next Ray Bradbury, which is patently bullshit; she's the new Douglas Adams, and a deeply worthy successor at that. This was a wild ride of paragraph-long sentences and competent fourth-wall whispering, and while I think Adams had better breath/pacing control, Valente still sings her deceptively sharp-witted heart out. It took me longer than it should have to read <300 pages because the word density required a fair amount of brain, and I'm not sure all of the dangling baits were tied up satisfyingly – what happened to the cat? – but the ending made me fucking cry. So that's a thing. A vying for first place on my ballot Thing.

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.