Reading the Hugo packet

[raspberry_hunter]

Ooh, interesting!

Death of the Author spoilers

I actually liked the ending and felt that it retroactively made the rest of it make more sense to me. (I really disliked the robot chapters because they did not at all make sense to me to be a best-selling book, so once I didn’t have to hold that in my head anymore I liked it much better.) I actually thought the people made a fair amount of sense, they just didn’t behave in ways that I personally would behave, and I didn’t like them very much. Zelu in particular I thought behaved very consistently like someone that I would never ever be friends with because she would drive me absolutely insane.

Raven Scholar spoilers

I actually did like it! I thought it was very compelling. I thought it was also a mess both in terms of the characters (all of whom are supposed to be in their 30’s to 50s, but all of whom act like they’re in their 20s) and the plot was very entertaining and compelling but didn’t always make sense with the characters, to me.

Soooo… the thing about Everlasting is that I read a lot of fanfic. And everything that Everlasting did, I would say, is very very familiar to me from fanfic, to the point where I started to be like “oh, cool, it’s that trope showing up.” So to me it’s not really doing anything new, and I also struggle with thinking it should be recognized in awards, even though I had a ton of fun reading it (and if I’d seen it on AO3, would absolutely have unabashedly loved it).

But this book is by far the most polarizing one on the ballot in my experience, so I think there are a lot of people who disagree about it. I know people who absolutely adored it and people who absolutely hated it.

[puzzlegal]

Huh. I’m guessing Death of the Author will be the most polarizing. Right now, you have it first and i have it last, as an example. But i guess we’ll find out when they publish the votes.

[Chronos]

@puzzlegal

Huh. I’m guessing Death of the Author will be the most polarizing.

Plus, of course, we haven’t yet gotten rid of the trogolodytes, and there are definitely some who will vote against a book just because it’s written by a Nigerian woman.

[puzzlegal]

@Mama_Zappa

Are all of these in the Hugo packet?

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

The LAcon V Hugo Awards, by NomNom

here’s what’s in the packet:
There are 21 categories, ranging from “novels” to “fancast”. I am mostly focussing on novels, novellas, novelettes, and short stories, but I might read the lodestar entries for “best YA fiction” and the vast amount of content offered in “best series”

For each entry, you get one or more of an except, the whole thing as an e-pub, whole thing as a PDF, an audiobook as an MP3, or you might get a DOCX with instructions to request the item on

Netgallery

NetGalley is a free service that allows you to read an authorized copy of a work. If you don’t have a NetGalley account, you have to register before you can use the service. (You can sign up as a reviewer, and when it asks for a link for your profile, you can link to any social-media website.) For some NetGalley books, you have to explicitly request access; the publisher may take up to three days to approve your request.

If you get the book on Netgallery, you have a couple of months to read it, either in the Netgallery app (on your phone or PC) or you can generally send it to your Kindle. I was not able to send any of them to my Kobo, although in theory that’s sometimes possible.

You can easily port the ePubs to any e-reader. (Kindle will convert it to their format, the others read ePubs natively.) I can read PDFs on my Kobo, I assume you can read them on a Kindle.

The most pages to read must be in the series category, where the packet includes:

Emily Wilde by Heather Fawcett	PDF	Excerpts from all three books.
October Daye by Seanan McGuire	MP3, ePub	EPubs of all nineteen books, and audiobook of Silver and Lead.
Old Man’s War by John Scalzi	ePub	All seven books.
The Chronicles of Osreth by Katherine Addison	MP3, ePub	EPubs of all four books, and audiobooks of the first two.
The Craft Wars by Max Gladstone	ePub	All three books.
White Space by Elizabeth Bear	ePub, DOCX, PDF	EPub ARCs of all three books, PDFs of all three books, and links to a limited number* of audiobooks of all three books. The audiobooks are available only in the US.

You didn’t get all the novels as ePubs this year, but you got most of them. If you are willing to deal with Netgallery, you got everything except Shroud. Even if you didn’t do Netgallery, you only missed Shroud and A Drop of Corruption. (As mentioned above, I had already purchased A Drop of Corruption.

Title/Author	Format(s)	Notes
A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett	PDF	Excerpt, plus a NetGalley* link to read the whole book.
Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor	ePub, DOCX, PDF
Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky	MP3, PDF	Excerpt.
The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow	ePub
The Incandescent by Emily Tesh	MP3, ePub
The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson	ePub, DOCX	DOCX provides a NetGalley* link to read the audiobook.

I got the full version of every entry in the other categories I’m reading, although Naomi Novik’s The Summer War was distributed as an annoying PDF, and not a nice ePub.

[raspberry_hunter]

Oh, yeah, that’s a good point!

I’m also almost always wrong about who I think will win the Hugos, and it also frequently does not line up with who I vote for, lol.

[puzzlegal]

@Chronos

@puzzlegal

Huh. I’m guessing Death of the Author will be the most polarizing.

Plus, of course, we haven’t yet gotten rid of the trogolodytes, and there are definitely some who will vote against a book just because it’s written by a Nigerian woman.

That’s too bad, because the Nigerian stuff is the strongest part of the book. That was really interesting. And having her Nigerian characters turned into cutsey American characters was one of the parts i believed.

[puzzlegal]

Anyway, I’ve now finished the novels. I liked all of them. I’m tentatively rating them:

1. the incandescent
2. shroud
3. a drop of corruption
4. the Raven scholar
5. the everlasting
6. death of the author

But a lot of those are very close, and I’m interested in discussing it.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

Your top three are the three that I’ve read, and I think I’d rank them the same, although they’re all really close: I enjoyed them all a lot, but none of them blew me away.

[puzzlegal]

So, i decided to start the YA novels. First up was They Bloom at Night. I’m not liking it. Not because it’s not good, but because it’s not what I’d like to be reading.

As a YA novel, a major issue is the protagonist’s relationship with her mother, whom she both loves and and resents. But it’s also looking to be a “coming to grips with sex” story. And instead of being a cute, clumsy, intro, a lot of the story has been dancing around the protagonist’s losing her virginity to rape. I think the next chapter is going to say more about what happened, and I’m not really eager to read that.

Also, the genre is horror, which isn’t my favorite.

I’m about half way through, and i want to know what happens. But I’m tempted to look for a plot summary and move on to another book.

[puzzlegal]

I voted. It’s ranked choice, and you can change your votes until voting ends. Here are my preliminary votes with a brief description. The descriptions aren’t meant to be value judgements, just a hook so i can remember which story is which. But some of those contain spoilers, since an ending or twist is often the most memorable thing about a story.

short stories

7 * 10 visions of the future: various future worlds
5 * in my country: creepy distopia with men in blue houses
6* laser eyes aren’t everything: disabled superhero
1 * missing Helen: a women meets her clone
2 * six people to revise you: getting fixed by the people who don’t like you.
3 * wire mother: a teenager struggles with digital humans
4 * no award

novelettes

6 * kaiju agonistes: about a messenger sent to save humanity from nuclear self destruction, that takes over the economy.
3 * never eaten vegetables: story of a mother ship that was hijacked, but not killed.
5 * rapport, etc: when Iris learns that Peri made a friend
2 * the girl that my mother is leaving me for: trans woman escapes corporation with her lover.
1 * the Millay illusion: girl magicians
4 * when he calls your name: Jolene vampire story

novellas

1 * automatic noodle: human-intelligent bots start a restaurant
2 * cinder house: Cinderella as a ghost, who joins a threesome and lives happily ever after
3 * murder by memory: a spaceship detective falls in love with a yarn store proprietor
4 * the river has roots: two sisters sing to the willows near Arcadia
5 * the summer war: the summerling king was shamed by the middle child
6 * what stalks the deep: cave mollusc learns to imitate humans, its twin learns to eat them.

novels

3 * a drop of corruption: murder mystery at the edge of the world
6 * death of the author: robots write stories about humans
2 * shroud: a fire upon the deep meets the Martian, with echos of 2001
5 * the everlasting: everlasting love in the motherland?
1 * the incandescent: a demon that wants a better life
4 * the Raven scholar: the 8 gods are trapped

Really interested if anyone wants to argue for different rankings.

[Andy_L]

@echoreply

• It’s a T. Kingfisher fantasy, so again fractured fairy tale related.

More of a Fractured Horror Tale

[puzzlegal]

And the results are published:

Full Rankings in Each Category
(No Award came seventh in all cases)

Best Novel

1. The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow (Tor US; Tor UK)
2. The Incandescent by Emily Tesh (Tor US; Orbit UK)
3. A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett
   (Del Rey; Hodderscape)
4. The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson (Orbit US;
   Hodderscape)
5. Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor (William
   Morrow; Gollancz)
6. Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Tor UK; Orbit US)

Best Novella

1. The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar
   (Tordotcom; Arcadia UK)
2. Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz (Tordotcom)
3. Cinder House by Freya Marske (Tordotcom; Tor UK)
4. The Summer War by Naomi Novik (Del Rey US; Del
   Rey UK)
5. What Stalks the Deep by T. Kingfisher (Nightfire;
   Titan UK)
6. Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite (Tordotcom)

Best Novelette

1. “Never Eaten Vegetables” by H.H. Pak
   (Clarkesworld, Issue 220)
2. “When He Calls Your Name” by Catherynne M.
   Valente (Uncanny Magazine, Issue 65)
3. “Kaiju Agonistes” by Scott Lynch (Uncanny
   Magazine, Issue 62)
4. “The Girl That My Mother Is Leaving Me For” by
   Cameron Reed (Reactor, April 2, 2025)
5. “Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion,
   Empathy” by Martha Wells (Reactor, July 10, 2025)
6. “The Millay Illusion” by Sarah Pinsker (Uncanny
   Magazine, Issue 67)
   (Discourse knows numbering better than the typist. There is a tie for 4th and a single 5th, but it corrects that.)

Best Short Story

1. “In My Country” by Thomas Ha (Clarkesworld,
   Issue 223)
2. “Wire Mother” by Isabel J. Kim (Clarkesworld,
   Issue 229)
3. “Missing Helen” by Tia Tashiro (Clarkesworld,
   Issue 226)
4. “10 Visions of the Future; or, Self-Care for the End
   of Days” by Samantha Mills (Uncanny Magazine,
   Issue 63)
5. “Six People to Revise You” by J.R. Dawson (Uncanny
   Magazine, Issue 62)
6. “Laser Eyes Ain’t Everything” by Effie Seiberg
   (Diabolical Plots, May 16, 2025)

The full report, including other categories, like games, movies (dramatic presentation, long form), and tv shows (dramatic presentation, short form), is here:

2026hugostatsreport.pdf

[Maserschmidt]

@raspberry_hunter

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?

I’m late to the thread but wanted to mention that I liked these two as well and tried to hunt up the third book yesterday (A Trade of Blood) at Barnes & Noble…annoyingly they only had the first two, so to the library I go.

I agree it’s not exactly new, but it’s enough twisting of the familiar that it’s entertaining. I described them to my wife as a fantasy author ingesting peyote and then writing Holmes and Watson novels.

[puzzlegal]

I just read the third book (a trade of blood) last week. If you liked the other two, I highly recommend it. I took the last copy from my local bookstore’s shelves.

[Maserschmidt]

@puzzlegal

I took the last copy from my local bookstore’s shelves.

Aha, it was you!

[puzzlegal]

They said online they had two copies. When i bought it, i suggested they pull the other out of storage if they still had it.

[Maserschmidt]

It’s funny, I checked for electronic copies via Libby (at least three months across six systems) and Hoopla (not there) and I hadn’t realized they were so popular. I put it on hold at the library the old-fashioned way.

[puzzlegal]

When the wait is estimated to be really long, it almost always gets shorter as you wait. They often buy more copies, and some people either read very quickly or found it elsewhere and return it right away.

But I’m not surprised the electronic wait is longer than the wait for the paper copy.

[raspberry_hunter]

Congrats to The Everlasting for its Best Novel Hugo win!!