I saved the short stories for last this year, hoping for a little light summer reading to wrap up the Hugo Award reviews. Things didn’t quite work out as planned, because there’s a surprising amount of death in this year’s finalists. Also transformation, and working through grief, and an in-depth study of a folk song,
On its surface, Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Hugo-nominated novella Elder Race sounds like a standard coming-of-age fantasy-adventure. Lynesse Fourth Daughter is the only person in her mother’s court who still believes in the old stories, and the only one who doesn’t want to just wait out the strange demon infestation in the Ordwood and hope it goes
“…nothing.” That is what the fortune teller says when the girl gets up the courage to ask “Will you tell me my fate?” Her favored older brother Zhu Chongba is destined for greatness; the only surviving daughter of the Zhu family is destined to starve to death along with most of her village. But then
Next up for the Hugo Award finalists is Aliette de Bodard’s story of political intrigue, familial conflict, and reckless romance in a fantasy version of pre-colonial Vietnam. Imperial Princess Thanh was sent to the country of Ephteria when she was still a child. Being a royal hostage was one of the only things she was
Romantic girls like Beauty and the Beast; vanilla girls like Cinderella; goth girls like Snow White. Only dying girls like Sleeping Beauty. Alix E. Harrow is up for two Hugo awards this year, adding to a long list of nominations for her novels and short stories. In her Hugo-nominated novella this year, young Zinnia Grey
Souls are cheap. The trick is finding the right soul. Katrina Nguyen, a transgender teenager from a very unaccepting family, decides that her latest beating is one beating too many. She climbs out of her family’s apartment and boards a bus to Los Angeles, bringing along not much more than her laptop and her treasured
Three more novelettes, these ones by Caroline M. Yoachim, Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki, and John Wiswell, and I can safely say that these are quite a bit darker in tone than the first three. We’ve got a dreamlike trip through time as seen by the eyes of an immortal painter (immortality in this case granted by
This is sort of a travel-edition of my usual reviews; I’m away from home for a few days and needed something suitable for reading on a plane. The first three Hugo-nominated novelettes fit the bill nicely. This year we have stories of an exclusive boutique clothing store run entirely by fairies, a tiny robot who’s
The Hugo Award finalists for 2022 were announced today, and I somehow managed this year to read three of the novels (got Project Hail Mary read just under the wire), two of the novellas, one of the novelettes, a Lodestar Award candidate, and an entire series! Winners will be announced on Sunday, September 4. Check