Reading the Hugo packet

Cafe Society
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I mentioned this in the vorkosigan thread, and thought it might be worth starting a new thread to discuss it. I bought the Hugo packet again this year. (Technically, i bought “voting-only” access to the Hugo convention, but it comes along with a packet of digital access to most of the items that will be voted on.) For $50 i got a fat pile of epubs, and a few links to borrow books on Net Gallery, which is mostly a site to read pre-release copies of books and review them, i think, but is being used by a few of the more popular authors as a way to lend, rather than give away, the works.

You also get access to some movies and video games, but the video game links are limited and they ask people (like me) who won’t seriously use them to leave them for real voters.

Anyway, it’s really a lot of reading material for $50, and all of it is good enough to have been nominated for a Hugo award. I did this last year and loved it, so i did it again this year.

If anyone else is reading the Hugo packet, I’d love to discuss the books. (Or hey, if you want to discuss the movies, games, etc., go at it.) I’m going to ask that participants use spoilers, because i imagine if anyone joins me, people will read in different orders and at different paces.

There are a lot of categories, but the ones I’m reading are:

Best Short Story

“10 Visions of the Future; or, Self-Care for the End of Days” by Samantha Mills (Uncanny Magazine, Issue 63)

“In My Country” by Thomas Ha (Clarkesworld, Issue 223)

“Laser Eyes Ain’t Everything” by Effie Seiberg (Diabolical Plots, May 16, 2025)

“Missing Helen” by Tia Tashiro (Clarkesworld, Issue 226)

“Six People to Revise You” by J.R. Dawson (Uncanny Magazine, Issue 62)

“Wire Mother” by Isabel J. Kim (Clarkesworld, Issue 229)

Best Novelette

“Kaiju Agonistes” by Scott Lynch (Uncanny Magazine, Issue 62)

“Never Eaten Vegetables” by H.H. Pak (Clarkesworld, Issue 220)

“Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy” by Martha Wells (Reactor, July 10, 2025)

“The Girl That My Mother Is Leaving Me For” by Cameron Reed (Reactor, April 2, 2025)

“The Millay Illusion” by Sarah Pinsker (Uncanny Magazine, Issue 67)

“When He Calls Your Name” by Catherynne M. Valente (Uncanny Magazine, Issue 65)

Best Novella

Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz (Tordotcom)

Cinder House by Freya Marske (Tordotcom; Tor UK)

Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite (Tordotcom)

The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar (Tordotcom; Arcadia UK)

The Summer War by Naomi Novik (Del Rey US; Del Rey UK)

What Stalks the Deep by T. Kingfisher (Nightfire; Titan UK)

Best Novel

A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett (Del Rey; Hodderscape)

Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor (William Morrow; Gollancz)

Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Tor UK; Orbit US)

The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow (Tor US; Tor UK)

The Incandescent by Emily Tesh (Tor US; Orbit UK)

The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson (Orbit US; Hodderscape)

At this point I’ve read all the shorter works, and if the novels i have read
A drop of corruption
Death of the author
The incandescent
The Raven scholar

And about a third of
The Everlasting

About the Vorkosigan books
Time Travel in fiction
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Is that a Murderbot story?

That’s one of the authors I’ve been following lately, though I haven’t read that one. Is it science fiction or fantasy?

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Yes, the first is a murderbot story.

I’d call the second, hmm, soft science fiction.

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I usually look to the nominee list to figure out what to read for the next year, but I’ve already read a bunch from that list.

  • A Drop of Corruption I liked this one, and the preceding one in the series. If you haven’t read A Tainted Cup, then start with that. If you don’t like it, then no point in moving on. I don’t know if talking about sub-genre is a spoiler, so it’s fractured fairy tale.
  • Shroud I also liked. It is harder sci-fi and heavy on the biology, because it’s an Adrian Tchaikovsky novel. If you like his stuff, this is an excellent example. Also believable characters (not all human) and emotion to go with the hard sci-fi.
  • The Incandescent* I think I liked her earlier book Some Desperate Glory more, but this was still very good. I’d rather talk about Glory, though.
  • What Stalks the Deep I’ve only read the first one in this series, but I’ve added the second, and will get to this one. It’s a T. Kingfisher fantasy, so again fractured fairy tale related.

Of what I’ve read, I’m not sure which I’d vote for, if I could vote. Maybe Shroud if I had to pick, but that might be my genre preference showing.

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Oh, interesting. I started Shroud and switched to another book after a few pages. But i guess i should try harder to get into it.

I don’t think genre is a spoiler.

I would not have called any of those “fractured fairly tales”, although there are a few fairly takes on the list. I would call a drop of corruption sf-flavored fantasy, and what stalks the deep horror.

I liked a drop of corruption a lot, but i thought the first in the series was better. (I bought this one before the nominations came out because i read the first last year and liked it enough to buy the sequel.) I certainly agree that you should try a tainted cup first, and see if you like it.

I was a little disappointed with what stalks the deep. It’s also in the middle of a series, and i thought the first was the best.

I haven’t read some desperate glory, but i thoroughly enjoyed the incandescent, so I should probably buy glory. For those who haven’t read it, The incandescent is a romance, with a nicely worked out magical system set in a magical boarding school, but the protagonist is a teacher, not a student. There’s danger, but I don’t think it’s a serious spoiler to say that it’s the kind of book where you expect the protagonist to survive. (Like, there’s danger in the Lord of the Rings, but Tolkien literally tells you in the prolog that Frodo wrote the story and that half a dozen of the main characters have copies of the book or their offspring are corresponding with each other. It’s not much of a spoiler to say that Sauron doesn’t conquer the world.) But i would say that it’s a major spoiler that the demon survives.

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It is also set in a boarding school, sort of. It’s a space station boarding school which contains the last of humanity. Not nearly as much romance as Incandescent, but the protagonists are teenagers, so if I recall there is age appropriate angsty romance. Not the focus of the book, more just how could a bunch of teenagers be locked on a space station without angsty romance?

You’re right, I was completely confusing it with another series, maybe by T. Kingfisher, that is a twist on Snow White, where the protagonist isn’t Snow White, but is investigating Snow White (for a brief and wrong description).

Tainted Cup and Drop of Corruption are the kaiju stories. I read those, too, and liked them, possibly more than Shroud.

The first few pages of Shroud are not the main story, just setting it up. I guess you could call it a road story. If you don’t get to the part where they’re “on the road”, then you’re not into the heart of the book. Like I said, though, it is an AT book, and if you don’t care for his style, then you won’t like this one.

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Probably Naomi Novik. Uprooted and Spinning Silver both qualify. Although… T Kingfisher rewrote the Goose Girl. So maybe you are thinking of her. There is one twisted retelling of a fairly tale, and two stories that kinda could be, in this year’s crop. They are Cinder House, the River Has Roots, and the Summer War.

I like many hard science fiction stories. I’ll give Shroud another try.

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The first one wasn’t a fractured fairy tale; it was a fractured “Fall of the House of Usher” (Poe).

I’ve read this. Very good. In the vein of her Uprooted and Spinning Silver, but shorter, and pretty much structured as setup->payoff, but the “payoff” is very satisfying.

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Yes, but i thought that was a minor spoiler. :laughing: It’s a really effective and well written update of the story, too.

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Just to be safe, I edited my post to “spoiler” that, although I think it’s pretty obvious and not much of a spoiler and is mentioned prominently in many descriptions of the book.

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It’s certainly obvious pretty early in the story. Like the things i said above that probably didn’t need to be spoilered.

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No, Hemlock and Silver by T. kingfisher is the Snow White one.

I haven’t read that one. I read a whole bunch of Kingfisher, starting with A Sorceress Comes to Call, and including the paladin series (more romance, some are fluffy ish, others very much not.and needed a break.

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Oh, i haven’t read hemlock and silver. I didn’t realize she literally had done a snow white rewrite. Now that i know, I’ll probably read that one, too.

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Are all of these in the Hugo packet?

Are they in a format where we can send them to our Kindle or other ereader?

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aw yeah Hugo reading! In order of my ballot rating highest to lowest:

Death of the Author is a strange one, because it was probably the least fun of the nominees for me to read but the one I’m ranking highest because I think it’s doing a lot of interesting Hugo-worthy kinds of things.

I loved Incandescent, which I totally read as in conversation with the whole Harry Potter type magic school literature, and asking the question of, “What if the magical boarding school book narratively actually cared about pedagogy??” (Which the Harry Potter books manifestly Do Not.) I think it’s got its weaknesses, particularly near the ending, and I didn’t love it as much as I love Some Desperate Glory, but SDG is one of my favorite books in the last… decade?.. so that was always going to be a super high bar.

I also love both Tainted Cup and Drop of Corruption. I probably loved Tainted Cup better, as it introduced the world, but Drop does extend it in interesting ways and I’ll definitely read any further books in the series. I feel like Drop is probably the most well-written of the novel nominees but also playing things a little more straight, somehow? I can’t quite articulate what I mean, but it’s sort of a standard “OK, let’s worldbuild this thing with kaijus, and the worldbuilding is going to be meticulous and fascinating, and yes sometimes surprising, but nothing about the overall structure is going to be particularly surprising or groundbreaking,” if that makes any sense?

Raven Scholar was a mess, but an ambitious mess.

The Everlasting was a very weird book! Very, very tropey, and for that reason I actually enjoyed reading it a great deal, but seemingly unconcerned about anything but the tropes. There were only three actual characters; everyone else seemed like pieces moved around like scenery. The setting either seemed stolen from our world or also like it was a set design that probably didn’t exist when the characters weren’t moving through it.

I haven’t read Shroud, but I’m glad others have and liked it – I’ll try it.

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Most of the novels are in the packet. I think one of them only has excerpts, but I forget which one. One of the ones I’d already read, which means Incandescent or Drop of Corruption, I think. I know Shroud isn’t available in kindle format (I think maybe PDF?) as I had to put it on hold at the library. I did send Death of the Author, Everlasting, and Raven Scholar to my kindle, so I definitely know about those!

Most of the Related Works are too.

I don’t know about the others as I generally got them from the library or read them online (for the short story and novelette sections).

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I think drop of corruption wasn’t included. That didn’t matter to me, as I’d purchased it last year, after reading tainted cup

The prequels and assorted other works by these authors aren’t included.

A bunch of stuff that hasn’t been discussed is included. There are some whole series that got included (and others that just give you excerpts), some children’s books, comic books… I’ll lost the whole list of what’s included a little later.

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My order is going to be different. Yes, death of the author did some interesting things. But this ain’t the Nebulas, it’s the Hugos. And while it’s very ambitious, i felt it messed up a lot of things.

death of the author spoilers

I didn’t think the twist at the end was very well done. I felt betrayed by the book instead of surprised, though I haven’t been able to put my finger on why. And I know this is a slightly absurd thing to say about sci-fi, but it didn’t feel very realistic. Like the science/technology was unrealistic, and that’s totally fine. But the people kept behaving in ways that didn’t really make sense for how they had been developed so far or behaving in ways that people just don’t behave. And i know this sounds nuts, but the robot behavior felt unrealistic to me too. It all really took me out of the story. I did keep reading it, but i have to down-rate it for those things.

I must have liked the raven scholar more than you did.

Raven scholar spoilers

I thought it was great until the last few chapters, where it went haywire. The characters are too powerful. There are too many people sharing an enormous secret.

Also, i hadn’t realized it was book 1 of a trilogy, and felt a bit cheated by that.

I agree with you about Incandescent and Drop of Corruption.

And i felt much the same about Everlasting a you felt about Death of the Author. It did interesting things that i respect and that i feel should be recognized in awards. Yes, i agree with you in some of your criticisms, and also, i didn’t really get into it until ⅓ of the way through. But once i did, it grabbed me. Also, while there are only a few main characters, i think there are several other “actual characters” who have back story and character development.

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This is fun to read! Maybe next year I’ll get the packet, too.

Okorafor was one of my favorite authors for awhile. But I followed her on social media, which turned out to be a mistake: she comes across as really arrogant and kind of an asshole. Between that and really disliking the final Akata book, I’ve lost enthusiasm for her. Maybe I’ll give this one a try, though.

Incandescent was one of my favorite reads of 2025. I really, really appreciated the protagonist’s teacherly perspective. How rare is it to read a book about a teacher that simultaneously cares about her craft and her students, and also has an active private life, and establishes boundaries? Plus, y’know, magic and shit.

Drop of Corruption was super fun, but I agree: it doesn’t really break any new ground. That’s okay. It’s just entertaining. Robert Jackson Bennett knows how to tell a story.

I’m looking forward to the remaining books!

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My first exposure to Okorafor was “Binti”, which won a Hugo, but I thought was seriously flawed: It’s trying to be science fiction, but the science is all cargo-cult. But I thought that she’d be fine with fantasy, so I’ve been reading the Akata books, too, and have so far found the first two to be good (though I haven’t gotten the last one yet).