Book Review: The Everlasting, by Alix E Harrow

 In order to have a future worth fighting for, you must have a past worth remembering.

Do you remember back in, oh, 2017 or so, when a certain variety of shellshocked well-intentioned liberal looked at the news, wrung their hands in distress, and bleated ineffectually, This is not who we are? People are resistant to changing their opinions on the basis of something as unreliable as mere factual evidence, but still, some facts get through, and some opinions do change. It’s been very clear for a while now that yes, this is, in fact, very much who we are; it’s who we’ve always been; and it’s who we’ll always be, without some powerful work to leave that rut and break a new path.

The Everlasting is a story about the stories nations tell themselves about who they are; and what it takes to change the story, in the hopes that changing the story will change the nation. It is deeply embedded in modern times. It responds directly to the creeping, running, leaping, bounding, racing encroachment of fascism, but it drapes the conversation in the costumes and set dressing of historical fantasy, because every message is always more palatable when we have knights in armor acting out the lesson.

The tale is told by Owen Mallory, a historian by training in the nation/republic/empire of Dominion, which is not at all Great Britain. Before returning to academia, he served as a soldier in the not-at-all World War II against the Hinterlanders, who are not-at-all the rest of Europe. Although Dominion won the war, the conflict — the latest in a long series of similar such conflicts — has left lingering wounds in the nation and the people. Owen himself is scarred across the throat from a wound that did not arise from honest combat, and speaks with a rasp in his voice. Owen’s father has been left a drunk, a frustrated pacifist forever getting into trouble. His political agitations, a produce of his own participation in the previous not-at-all World War I have for years brought shame and scorn upon himself and, by association, Owen. Now, he is joining activists for change within the Dominion, whose increasingly vehement demands are causing embarrassment to the government.

The novel opens with Owen, in the proud tradition of academics everywhere, struggling to write a book in his chosen specialism, the folkloric traditions of Middle Dominion, and especially the legendary founding figure of Una Everlasting, who is not at all King Arthur. Any resemblance between the name of Sir Thomas Malory, who wrote Le Morte d’Arthur, and our own Owen Mallory, is entirely coincidental. One day Owen receives in the post an inexplicable book: a manuscript entitled The Death of Una Everlasting, an apparently contemporary record of the legend herself, written in the hand of someone who knew her personally, loved her, and watched her die.

Owen throws himself into the work of deciphering the book, and the moment he has finished it, he is summoned to a government office, to meet Minister Vivian Rolfe, whose position is at risk as she absorbs the blame for the civil unrest. The nation must remember what it is, she tells him, and the publication of this new, contemporary account of their founding hero is just what the nation needs. Only Owen Mallory, a lifelong devotee of Una Everlasting, can write the translation that will save the nation from descent into factional violence. Then Vivian stabs Owen’s hand with a letter knife. His blood spills onto the book, and he awakens in the past, under a tree, in the presence of Una herself. The book is in his hand, its pages blank. His task, it turns out, is not to translate an extant manuscript, but to write it himself, in the time and place where Una’s story happened.

The first third of this novel seems straightforward enough: a time-travel tale, a nascent romance, a man struggling to reconcile his view of a myth with the reality of a person. He follows Una on her famous quests: to slay the last dragon in the land, to retrieve from its lair the Grail, which is the sole hope of saving the life of her beloved queen and benefactor, Yvanne. He is with her during the last, final betrayal, in which her comrade, the fabled Ancel the Betrayer, stabs her, so that she dies at Yvanne's feet. 

Una's death seems like a logical stopping place for a story that is. . . simpler than I would have expected from Alix E Harrow. All we need is an epilogue, time enough for Mallory to return to the present, process his adventure, and make some grand decision about whether he will serve as a government propagandist for history, given that he now knows the  reality of the past. Except the book is only a third of the way through, Part 1 is titled The First Death of Una Everlasting (emphasis mine) and things develop in ways that are far from simple. 

I hesitate to write more, because part of the wonder of this book lies in following the timey-wimey twisty turns, the betrayals and revelations, and the long thread of cause-and-effect that makes up the history of a nation. But even in that first third we have a skilled depiction of the parallels between past and present, illustrating the inexorable repetition of historical events. The glorious martial campaigns that Una leads in Queen Yvanne’s name mirror the Dominion’s conquest in modern days against the Hinterlands; and although the historical records and modern newspapers both report heroic victories and cries of welcome from the liberated populaces, the actual mood on the ground is very different from reports. The quest to kill the last dragon is justified with tales of dragons’ dangers to civilians; but evidence of that danger seems scarce when you approach the dragon itself. Still, every story needs a villain; and when there are no more dragons to kill, Ancel the Betrayer steps in to serve that role in the national mythology, just as the Hinterlanders do in the present day.

It is hard to control the flow of history so that the sequence of events arrives at a particular desired present. The whole genre of time travel fiction is one long conversation about the challenge of truly understanding cause and effect. But controlling past events is not the only way to control the present. One of the brilliances of this book is its meditations on the types of stories that a nation uses to serve its interest. There are only two kinds of stories worth telling: the ones that send children to sleep, and the ones that send men to war, says Vivian to Owen, and he thinks, There was no God in Dominion; there was only Vivian Rolfe, telling a story. 

A truly powerful story is not created on the spot, however. It must age. It needs the legitimacy of myth and history behind it. Owen, sent back in the past to tell Una’s story, is given the opportunity not only to affect events, but to affect how they are remembered. I’m not entirely sure his final solution is all that different in method from what Vivian wants him to do; but it is very different in its outcome. Do the ends justify the means? There’s an argument to be made in this book that they do. Or rather, at the end I was unconvinced that this argument was satisfactorily refuted. 

This is not necessarily a criticism of the book. Vivian is an extraordinary character, and I found myself at more than one point musing that her side of the story would make a magnificent tale in its own right, far more sweeping and epic in its scope and deeds than the focused, personal narrative we get from Owen. Owen values the individual; Vivian values the nation. Or her version of the nation. Or, perhaps, her view of what the nation should be. This book is not, I think, discussing whether the ends justify the means, as much as which ends those means are pursuing. And it's a hard question. Vivian's ruthless utilitarianism is not a mere strawman argument here. It's given a chance to make its case; and to the extent that you agree that there is a case to be made for it, you might find yourself, like me, wishing that there were a companion novel telling Vivian's story.

But perhaps cliches about ends and means are not the perspective to take here. Perhaps we should turn our eyes to a different idiom. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Vivian Rolfe does not learn. But Owen Mallory does.

Give this book to your friends, your family, your enemies. Propose it at your book group. It needs to be discussed by people who have read it to the end.

--

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10. Well worth your time and attention.

Highlights:

• Time travel
• National myth-making
• Not-at-all an allegory
• Medieval knights and armor

References:

Harrow, Alix E. The Everlasting [Tor, 2025].

CLARA COHEN lives in Scotland in a creaky old building with pipes for gas lighting still lurking under her floorboards. She is an experimental linguist by profession, and calligrapher and Islamic geometric artist by vocation. During figure skating season she does blather on a bit about figure skating. She is on Mastodon at wandering.shop/@ergative, and on Bluesky at https://bsky.app/profile/ergative-abs.bsky.social

Review: Starling House, by Alix E Harrow

Look, just do what the nice sentient haunted house wants.

Let’s get this out of the way first: I loved this book — I loved it so, so much. I stayed up well after 3am to finish it, and I can’t remember the last time I did that. This book is great: moody, tender, dark, touching, and fierce. There is a sentient house. There are monsters. And, crucially, it ends well. To be honest, that’s really all I feel you need in order to know whether you want to read it. If the moods and features I just listed strike your fancy, then quite reading this review and just go read the book.

If, however, you want to know more about why I loved it so much, well, I won’t object to your continued attention. It’s about Opal, a high school dropout in her mid-twenties who’s spent the last decade looking after her little brother Jasper following the death of their mother. Opal is smart and unscrupulous and fiercely loyal to her family — her dead mother's memory, Jasper’s future — and she's determined that the miserable town of Eden where she was born and where her mother died will not get the best of her. She dropped out of high school to work dead-end jobs, and she's not above shoplifting school supplies or sticking her hand in the cash register in times of need. Her goals are clear: to get Jasper a spot at a boarding school up north, a wealthy place for wealthy people, where his whip-smart intellect will have the opportunity to build him a future outside of Eden. Because he and Opal have no future in Eden.

In truth, no one has a future in Eden. The town is blighted, cursed. Economically it is oppressed by the wealthy Gravely family, who own the industry that poisons the town and employs the people, without ever actually spending more than a day or two within the town limits. But beyond the mundane, it seems to suffer incredible bad luck: people die in freak accidents, like the one that killed Opal and Jasper's mother; buildings catch fire; and floods and catastrophic environmental disasters crop up at much higher rates than seem plausible by chance alone.

This bad luck is somehow tied up with the history of Starling House, a mysterious looming hulk that holds itself apart from the rest of Eden. Arthur Starling, the current Warden of Starling House, knows its secrets, but has no interest in telling them to anyone — least of all the reader — because he also works for a single goal: to be the last Warden of Starling House. Whatever responsibility that position entails, he wants to end it forever, not for his own good, but to spare whoever would hold the role after him from that terrible burden. His goal, although more shadowy, mirrors Opal’s: They are both fixated on building a future that will benefit someone else, even if they must burn themselves out doing it.

Naturally, these two cross paths. Starling House — which, by the way, is sentient, and has strong opinions, and so immediately won my heart because I am a complete sucker for sentient inanimate objects — decides that it rather likes Opal, and would like to have her around. It pulls her in, attracts her magnetically to its gates, arranges for Arthur to meet her there. And because Arthur is not quite as strong, brooding, and solitary a hero as he would like to be, he offers Opal a job as housekeeper. Starling House is a wreck, Arthur has money, and Opal needs money, so she takes the job. And thus, the pieces are in place for Opal to discover the secrets of Starling House, the reasons for Eden’s blighted luck, the skullduggery at the heart of it all, and what she and Arthur can do to make it better.

I’m being deliberately vague about the details here, because part of the brilliance of this book relates to the way the themes and revelations wind around each other like smoke. Stories and legends about the history of Starling House appear in multiple forms: in the official history propagated by the Gravely family, in the unofficial oral histories uncovered by the town librarian, in a picture book that was a formative part of Opal’s childhood, and in the records kept in Starling house itself. Each time we hear the story, we spiral a little closer to the truth underlying it all, and the truth resonates with the modern day events in deft, elegant details. The name of the school where Opal wants to send Jasper is the same as the name of a founding Gravely’s horse; a Gravely who died under mysterious circumstances fell off a bridge into the river in the same way Opal’s mother did the night she died. The interweaving of past with present is beautifully done.

Opal, too, is a wonderful main character. Life is hard in Eden, and Opal has become hard in turn: she keeps a clear bright line in her head between needs and wants; she knows how to smile and charm people when that is the only tool in her toolkit; she is keenly aware to the details of self-presentation that make her seem harmless, or trustworthy, or frivolous, or whatever characteristic will get her what she needs from an interaction. She lies freely and easily to everyone — even to Jasper. He objects to this at one point: ‘[Lying] is for everybody else. Not for family.’ But Opal reflects

The innocence of it makes me want to laugh, or maybe cry. The biggest lies are always for the ones you love the most. I’ll take care of you. It’ll be fine. Everything’s okay.

Her narrative is full of these sharp observations. Because she is so skilled at manipulation herself, she recognizes it when people try to pull it on her:

[Baine] smiles some more. It’s a well-practiced expression, an efficient arrangement of muscles meant to make me smile back. It’s alright, this smile says. You can trust me. The hair prickles on the backs of my hands.

And when her bright line between want and need falters sometimes, and she finds herself wishing for things, the hunger of that want surprises her: Dreams are just like stray cats. If you don’t feed them they get lean and clever and sharp-clawed, and come for the jugular when you least expect it.

Despite its starting point in such a grim place, this book's emotional trajectory is a heartening journey to show how Opal can, in fact, begin to start giving her trust and loyalty to people other than Jasper. It starts with Starling House, which responds so eagerly to her attention that she finds herself looking for tasks to continue her employment, unwilling to desert it after she’s cleaned and repaired the most pressing deficits. Perhaps because Arthur is such an extension of Starling House, Opal also grows closer to him, recognizing in him an outsider who shares a crushing burden, even if — for all her snooping — she can’t quite figure out what it is.

But as the book progresses, we see Opal realizing that there are other people in her life that she can trust. The proprietor of the motel where she lives, the town librarian, the family of Jasper’s best friend — they all turn out to have hidden kindness to them that Opal could not see, single-minded and hardened as she has been forced to be by her single-minded, hard life. She begins to open up, to discover that she doesn’t always need to protect herself, to project an image of self-sufficiency when she is not, truly, self-sufficient. On any other night I’d lie to her, Opal thinks at one point, when the librarian offers her a chance to leave Eden, tell her I’m saving up money, dreaming up some grand future. But maybe telling the truth is like any other bad habit, which gets harder to quite the more you do it.

The mood of this book is bleak, but the journey is about finding trust, and warmth, building a home for yourself, and lessening burdens by sharing them. It is beautiful, and comforting. Please give yourself the gift of reading it.

--

Highlights

Nerd coefficient: 8/10, well worth your time and attention

• Sentient house
• Intertwining myth, story, and oral history
• Grim, loyal people determined not to let history repeat itself

CLARA COHEN lives in Scotland in a creaky old building with pipes for gas lighting still lurking under her floorboards. She is an experimental linguist by profession, and calligrapher and Islamic geometric artist by vocation. She is on mastodon at wandering.shop/@ergative

Reference: Harrow, Alix E. Starling House. [Tor Books, 2023].

Nanoreviews: Into Shadow, a Collection of Amazon Short Stories

A collection of short fiction stories examining hidden and forgotten things, in which seven authors give us stories of characters wandering into places and spaces that others cannot, or will not, and risk the darkness as the price of their hidden knowledge.

The Garden by Tomi Champion-Adeyemi

The only thing I have previously read by Tomi Champion-Adeyemi is Children of Blood and Bone, of which I was not enormously fond - for all its great setting, I often found the characters a little weakly drawn and the plot tending to the obvious. The Garden could have been written by an entirely different author. It’s magical realism in tone, following a woman on a trip to Brazil inspired by the contents of a journal belonging to her mother, and the conversations she has with her guide along the way, digging into his and her own beliefs about the world and the supernatural, and what she’ll find when she reaches the mysterious garden she’s searching for. It’s told in a mixture of prose and poem, and really puts you into Lęina’s strange perspective, showing you a world fracturing into greater strangeness as she follows her journey onwards. Almost all of the story is in the conversations she has with Angelo, her guide, or just with herself, and so it feels incredibly intimate, and was well suited to the audio version I listened to.

It's a lyrical, strange little story, that's doing a lot of interesting things. It doesn't always quite pull them off, and is suffering a little from the short form, but well worth the time and interest regardless.

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10

Persephone by Lev Grossman

Following on from The Garden, Lev Grossman’s contribution to Into Shadow is a little disappointing. Where Champion-Adeyemi was playing with prose and poetry and an interesting character study, Grossman’s Persephone is far more a typical urban fantasy sort of vibe. It’s a perfectly fine example of one, but I feel like it was let down a lot by the form, simply because, for me, much of the appeal of an urban fantasy type narrative comes from exploring a world that lies within or alongside or under our own, and the juxtapositions and contrasts or ideas you get thrown out of the two together. When you have so little space as this, you cut the reader off from a lot of the time spent in that world and discovering it, and so you just don’t give them the opportunity to love it in the way a full-length novel might.

Aside from that – and in some ways that’s a good aside as I was genuinely left wanting to know more about the world – it’s well done. There’s a mystery at the core of the story, and how it develops is very well paced. It also has that spareness and economy that allows a short form story to really do a lot in its little space, and a lot of implication that relies on the reader making jumps of intuition or logic to try to figure things out. I finished it thinking “oh I wonder” and “does that mean…” and “so did she just…”, and those questions lingered with me after, which for me is a sign of a story well told... if it then goes on to give you the answers to those questions, or leave you in a position to ponder them more thoughtfully. Ultimately, I think it would have been much better told in a full length novel, so it ended up being relatively middling for me over all, despite feeling like a decent story start.

Nerd Coefficient: 5/10

The Six Deaths of the Saint by Alix E. Harrow

By contrast, The Six Deaths of the Saint was a phenomenal story, and one that took its size and form and used them to make itself better, not less. It is exactly what it needs to be and no more, and manages to pack a huge emotional punch for its very short size.

It follows a poor girl, young and ill, who sees a vision of a saint and is led to follow her prince, to fight and to kill. And then it becomes something… else. Something wider. A story about stories, and patterns, and change, and the things we don't notice that are right in front of us all along. It's dreamy and drifty and has that slightly indefinable quality of the fairytale or legend - very much deliberately in this case evoking Arthuriana - that speaks to something at the level of the mythic. It's sad, hopeful and bittersweet in equal parts as well as glorious, and really manages to give you that full arc of a satisfying story in just a few pages.

It’s also one where sharing almost anything about the actual details of the story would ruin the sheer delight of it, so I’m going to leave it there, and end with an exhortation that you should read it because it is simply beautiful. 

Nerd Coefficient: 10/10

What the Dead Know by Nghi Vo

Unsurprisingly given the title, this is an intensely creepy story of mediums and murder. We follow a couple of fraudulent mediums wanting to pull yet another scam... and yet the story isn't quite what it seems. In this world... there is magic? Maybe? And yet the mediums are still fake? It's a story that tugs at the edges, throwing you off with details that don't conform to your expectations, even as much of it does. Between this and the great and immediate way Vo has conjured the atmosphere, it really packs a punch in terms of the creepiness.

It's also a story happy to leave much unsaid, in the traditions of the best magic and mystery. We don't really need to understand the world, or why what happens happens. We just need to inhabit it for a little while, and enjoy passing through it, experiencing this little window into a bit of strangeness. This works particularly well because there are threads cast outwards, rooting it in contexts before and after the moment of the story, hints of background and backstories to the characters and places, we just never need them to be fully explained, fully spelled out. It's a story completely content to be as it is and do what it needs to do with a deft, light touch and I enjoyed it enormously.

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10

Undercover by Tamsyn Muir

Somehow, we get even creepier, in a world of moving gangster dens and decomposing ghoul dancers and undercover cops. Muir has made sure all the nastiness of organised crime is definitely kept in her story, and then added an extra layer of zombie nastiness as delightful icing on the cake. Definitely this isn't one to read alone, late at night.

Amy Starr is an undercover police officer, trying to worm her way into the good graces of a mob boss. She gets taken on as a bodyguard and keeper for the boss' big secret - a ghoul who can dance, and think, and respond to conversation. Which makes her dangerous. The ones that can think are the worst. We follow Amy wrestling with her curiosity about the ghoul, her need to know more, while balancing her superior's need to destroy something - someone - so very dangerous.

But even in such an un-right world, something else is off. And it takes the whole story to get us there, in a twist that is genuinely twisty and well managed, but leaves the story ending hanging on possibilities and wondering. It's brilliant, solid work and entirely worth being creeped out by.

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10

The Candles Are Burning by Veronica G. Henry

With a sharp twist, for all that The Candles Are Burning is still about death and mystery as the rest of the collection is, the focus here is far more on the living human experience than the darkness itself, and that makes the experience of reading it, while not exactly a light one, a contrast in tone to the previous two stories. It is far more about a woman grappling with the loss of her husband, the precarity of her life, and the strangeness of the things happening to her, than those strange happenings themselves.

It helps also that our main character, Maggie, is an intensely pragmatic, practical woman, even in the face of shuddering, portentous candles and spectral visions, and it grounds the tone of the story far closer to the real and the living. She's a pleasant person to follow and live in the thoughts of, and it is easy to feel for her instantly, even before the drama of the story truly begins. She's a woman who doesn't want to leave her home for the dubious promises of a better life elsewhere, at least not without proof. She's a woman trying to do right by her daughter, persuade her husband to be sensible. She's a woman trying to live even while haunted by spectres of death, and so she burns bright through the story.

That being said, I think this is one that could have done with being a little longer. The mystery is great, and well played out for the most of it, but the wrap up feels sudden when we get there. Everything is neat and tidy, but could have done with that bit more space to breathe, and get us there a little more naturally and gently. And that would have just given us more time with Maggie.

Nerd Coefficient: 7/10

Out of the Mirror, Darkness by Garth Nix

Alas, a weaker story than many of the others to close.

We follow Harper, the general fixer, scary man and solver of extremely odd problems at a mid-tier film studio in old Hollywood. Two of the stars of their current film have fallen mysteriously ill, and particularly seem to be unable to tolerate bright light. He suspects something paranormal at work, but the mysterious secretary to the big boss, knower of many things, isn't around to answer his questions, and so he must investigate, and perhaps figure out how to keep things together on his own.

The premise is fine, and interesting enough, but the problem comes with both the character dynamics, and the ending. Garth Nix loves a weak man/strong woman pairing (whether romantic or otherwise) and this is no exception... but because we spend most of the story with just the weaker half, it feels incomplete. We just get to watch him flounder somewhat, though more competently than many of Nix's men manage. But then, when the strong woman does turn up? She's the deus (or I suppose dea) ex machina, and so the tension that's been building for the whole of the story just dissipates instantly. There simply wasn't the space to manage both the worry and foreboding in her absence and give any level of drama and mystery when she shows up. It makes this feel very much like something that exists in a larger universe - if she were a familiar character making a cameo, she'd make far more sense - or something shorter than it was intended to be. There are simply too many threads surrounding her.

And then there's her character in general - she knows all the answers, but we never know why, and not in the enjoyable sense of a story well done that leaves you wanting more. We feel short-changed by her, and her swift resolution of events. The ending of the final story of the set is an abrupt cut-off, and it unfortunately undercuts so much of the good work the rest of the stories have put in to build such a lovely, coherent and creepy collection.

Nerd Coefficient: 6/10

Nanoreviews: A Mirror Mended, The Jade Setter of Janloon, The Legacy of Molly Southbourne

A Mirror Mended, by Alix E. Harrow [Tordotcom Publishing]

A Mirror Mended is the follow up / sequel to last year’s Hugo Award finalist novella A Spindle Splintered and picks up the story some five years later where Zinnia Gray is traveling the multiverse of fairy tales and fables, rescuing and facilitating escapes for those varied heroines trapped within a forced narrative that doesn’t quite fit. Rather than chasing her own mortality, Zinnia spends her time avoiding her life in lieu of these adventures until a villain wants that same escape Zinnia has offered so many others.

As much as I liked A Spindle Splintered, this is a much stronger novella that goes deeper. Harrow dives into how women are treated in these stories, slotted into neat roles - even the villains, because what other paths do some women have? With quick dialogue and a sharp eye for storytelling - A Mirror Mended is top notch.
Score: 9/10

The Jade Setter of Janloon, by Fonda Lee [Subterranean Press]

Prequel novella to the Green Bone Saga focuses on a specialty jeweler, a “jade setter”, officially allied with a small and fiercely neutral clan. Pulo is an apprentice jade setter to the master setter Isin. Because their clan is neutral, their business caters to all and is treated as neutral ground. When a ceremonial sword from The Mountain Clan is stolen from the shop, that neutrality will be tested.

What works is that if you’re familiar with the Green Bone Saga, this is a story set on the periphery of characters and clans we know and if you’re not, this is a really good story of fairly regular folk potentially caught in the middle between two much more powerful factions. That’s not what the story is, but it provides color and texture.
Score: 8/10

The Legacy of Molly Southbourne, by Tade Thompson [Tordotcom Publishing]

I never wrote about the Molly Southbourne novellas for Nerds of a Feather, but from the start I was hooked on this series - though I didn’t know it was going to be a series when I first began. The Murders of Molly Southbourne featured Molly, a young woman with a peculiar affliction - everytime she bleeds, another “molly” is born full grown and intent on mindlessly murdering her. What a concept! I loved it. I *liked* the second, but it was a somewhat different thing. Still compelling, but perhaps less. It widened the scope of what we knew of the mollys, it just didn’t reach the same highs.

The Legacy of Molly Southbourne is the third, and this time presumably final book in this sequence - now with a community of molly’s trying to make their lives and, interestingly, a community of Tamaras doing the same, until a presumed dormant Soviet cloning program rears its head and puts them at odds.

I’m not likely to do justice to The Legacy of Molly Southbourne, but it takes so much of what I loved about Murders, broadens it, adds depth, and just hits on every level. There’s a murderous molly, a molly-hunter, and a gathering storm of a final fight on the horizon. It’s friggin great. You absolutely need to read the first two books for Legacy to hit. But if you do, watch out.
Score: 8/10

Joe Sherry - Co-editor of Nerds of a Feather, Hugo Award Winner. Minnesotan. He / Him

The Subjective Chaos Kind of Awards: Results

Over the past almost-year, a top secret group of bloggers and fans has been plotting the most nefarious of plots: to decide, subjectively upon the best genre works of 2020, and then throw rocks at them. By "throw" we mean "lovingly post", and the rocks all have a nice message painted on them, and it's... an award? We suppose?

Yep, it must be time for Subjective Chaos Kind of Awards (SCKA) again!

SCKA last made an appearance on Nerds of a Feather at the longlist stage, when our team of epic jurors (including Adri and Sean) nominated their favourites across the seven categories. Since then, we've read furiously, narrowed each category down to a shortlist of two or three nominees, and then picked our favourite from among them. I'm therefore excited to introduce both our winners and other shortlisted works in this post: all are worthy of your consideration, so go and check them out!

Without further ado, the winners:

Best Short Story

Winner: "You Perfect, Broken Thing" by C.L. Clark (Uncanny Magazine Issue 32)

Our jury said: This is a story about an athlete competing in a Race which forces her to push her sick body to its limits to win a cure. There's a perfect blend of cameraderie between the main character and their training partners, and the desperate, unfair competition they are pushed into to survive; these are characters still fighting in the face of constant, overwhelming struggle and that's a powerful, challenging, necessary thing. 

Also Shortlisted: "Yellow and the Perception of Reality" by Maureen McHugh (Tor.com)

Adri says: These two stories rose to the top of a strong, wide-ranging ballot, but there was only ever one choice for me, and that was Clark's Ignyte winning story.

Best Novella

Winner: The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo (Tor.com Publishing)

Our jury said: The Empress of Salt and Fortune is an epic tale in miniature: a mosaic of moments and manipulations that resolve into a bigger picture of rebellion

Also Shortlisted: Ring Shout by P. Djeli Clark (Tor.com Publishing)

Adri says: Our SCKA shortlists don't often overlap directly with the Hugo awards, but this pair happen to be the two I am agonising about most on that ballot too. Empress of Salt and Fortune is a well deserved winner, but this really could have gone either way.

Best Debut Novel

Winner: Legendborn by Tracy Deonn (Simon & Schuster)

Our jury said: With a young woman discovering magic at an elite school, Legendborn could have felt like we’d read it all before. Instead, the panel were impressed with how Deonn combined familiar tropes and well-known legends into something different, avoiding the obvious to deliver a tender exploration of grief and Black girl magic in a richly crafted world touching on slavery, privilege and secret societies.

Also Shortlisted: Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas (Swoon Reads); Raybearer by Jordan Ifueko (Hot Key Books)

Adri says: We ended up with three excellent books shortlisted from a very YA-heavy new category: I love all of these books, but Legendborn's smart, sideways take on a classic genre story set it apart.

Best Blurred Boundaries Novel

Winner: Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Jo Fletcher Books)

Our jury said: This stylish thriller blends Gothic tropes with 50s noir and body horror. Expect modern themes of prejudice and complicity in an unapologetically creepy tale of controlling families and psychedelic fungus.

Also Shortlisted: Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu (Pantheon Books); The Bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart (Orbit)

Adri says: Blurred boundaries is always a very diverse category, as "blurred" encompasses anything we think crosses lines of genre and/or style. Interior Chinatown was a great literary dark horse, and The Bone Shard Daughter brings really interesting SF elements into a fantasy setting, but it's ultimately fitting that ultra-talented genre-hopper Silvia Moreno-Garcia took this one in the end.

Best Fantasy Novel

Winners(!!) The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow (Orbit); The Midnight Bargain by C.L. Polk (Erewhon)

Our jury said: Alix E. Harrow has crafted something truly special with The Once and Future Witches. Her prose is by turns powerful and deft of touch, and blends together fantasy, fairytale and history into a thoroughly modern classic.

The Midnight Bargain is not only a wonderful story about witches in a richly imagined Regency-style setting, but it’s a clever exploration of reproductive rights and bodily autonomy. It is a thoroughly modern and political book while masquerading as a gorgeous escapist fantasy, and that makes it a fantastic read.

Adri says: Two winners! Yep, we had a tie in our final round of voting, and while we could have gone to some sort of dramatic internal tiebreaker, instead we decided in true chaotic fashion to give out a second rock. This pair both utterly deserve it.

Best Science Fiction Novel

Winner: The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson (Hodder & Staughton)

Our jury said: A beautiful intelligent story exploring the parallel worlds concept but also combining it with issues of racism and classism, with a core of hope running throughout.

Also Shortlisted: Goldilocks by Laura Lam

Adri says: One of my favourite things about SCKA is getting to focus on books that feel like they've been overlooked in the more mainstream awards, and both finalists here certainly fit that bill. The Space Between Worlds really pushed the envelope for me, an excellent dimension-hopping tale in a category full of space and cyberpunk and all sorts of sub-genres.

Best Series

Winner: The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang (HarperVoyager)

Our jury said: R.F. Kuang's trilogy starts off as an academic fantasy, transforms into a military historical fantasy, and ends as a grimdark narrative. This Asian-inspired series delves into the layers and the consequences of power and warfare.

Also Shortlisted: Dominion of the Fallen by Aliette de Bodard

Adri says: Another powerful pairing - and another underrated gem, in de Bodard's Dominion of the fallen series - but in the end, it felt inevitable that The Poppy War was going to take this home. Brilliant, brilliant stuff.

Microreview [Book] The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow

A story that uses lyrical prose and a propulsive plot to create the good kind of sorcery.

Decency to women should be a no-brainer. Malevolence to women for the sole fact that they’re women should be seen as categorical malarkey. But many in power have contorted something as simple as decency and trapped it away like Rapunzel in her tower. Empathy has become a rarity, a forgotten magic that when displayed should evoke a feeling of commonplace but instead seems like miraculous sorcery. The Once and Future Witches understands the necessity to claim that sorcery. Through lyrical writing, fairytales, and a motley crew of characters, it creates magic through prose while also championing the simple but essential magic of kindness.

In The Once and Future Witches, it is 1893 and witching is outlawed--their magic barred and buried by men. A woman has more than just magic inaccessible to them: they also lack the right to vote. Enter the Eastwood sisters: three magical, fractured siblings with completely different personalities who reunite upon mystical happenstance, and eventually join the suffragist movement. Things become complicated when they try to implement magic into the suffragist agenda, amidst anti-magic protestations. But a dissenting woman’s scorn for witchery pales in comparison to most men. Men who will go to dire and dirty lengths to maintain dominance.

This is a novel that uses the best, unique qualities of literature. Every instance is wrapped in prose that is lyrical without miring into perpetual, showy poetry. You ogle at its beauty, enraptured in its atmosphere, but it pushes you ahead to the next story beat rather than being mired in it until it becomes too much. There are quick asides into fairytales that augment the grander story. And as fluid as the dialogue is, it’s the interiority of the protagonists that elevate them into complex characters. The three Eastwood sisters (James, Agnes, and Beatrice) would fall into archetypes – whether it be a bookish type or a renegade - from a lessor author, but Alix E. Harrow sets up those characteristics and then expands upon it, until their core is something unique and complex and the archetypes are just part of their lining.

There are secondary characters who don’t have room to expand as much as they could, and sometimes feel like pieces to advance the plot rather than people. But for every time these people seem like a plot device, the novel takes a couple nice dives into exploring them through the themes of racism within the suffragist movement, stubbornness against societal change, and other cutting ideas. Despite some characterization inadequacies, I never felt like the themes lacked room to breathe. The Once and Future Witches does the rare feat of being a character-centric tale, while never losing focus of the plot. The themes of sexism, racism, found family, and familial disputes are paired with story beats and twists that propel the plot forward.

Inequality lurks in the darkness. It festers in the black mold that vile rhetoric wraps around our mind. It’s almost like it moves with our shadow, following us around whether we like it or not. The Once and Future Witches offers an important message about the rewards of tenacity in the face of adversity. And offers some hope that many humans are well-rounded and capable—apt enough to get us out of the hellhole that existed both in 1893 and today. Hopefully one day, we can relax in the shade in which no one fears the dark shadows, and just enjoy the breeze.

The Math

Baseline Score: 8/10

Bonuses: +1 For the best lyrical prose I’ve read all year.

Negatives:  -1 For some missed opportunities with secondary characters.

Nerd Coefficient: 8/10

POSTED BY: Sean Dowie - Screenwriter, stand-up comedian, lover of all books that make him nod his head and say, "Neat!

Harrow, Alix E. The Once and Future Witches  [Orbit, 2020].

New Books Spotlight

Welcome to another edition of the New Books Spotlight, where each month or so we curate a selection of 6 new and forthcoming books we find notable, interesting, and intriguing. It gives us the opportunity to shine a brief spotlight on some stuff we're itching to get our hands on.

What are you looking forward to? Anything you want to argue with us about? 

 
Harrow, Alix E. The Once and Future Witches [Orbit]
Publisher's Description

In the late 1800s, three sisters use witchcraft to change the course of history in Alix E. Harrow’s powerful novel of magic and the suffragette movement.

In 1893, there’s no such thing as witches. There used to be, in the wild, dark days before the burnings began, but now witching is nothing but tidy charms and nursery rhymes. If the modern woman wants any measure of power, she must find it at the ballot box.

But when the Eastwood sisters — James Juniper, Agnes Amaranth, and Beatrice Belladonna — join the suffragists of New Salem, they begin to pursue the forgotten words and ways that might turn the women’s movement into the witch’s movement. Stalked by shadows and sickness, hunted by forces who will not suffer a witch to vote — and perhaps not even to live — the sisters will need to delve into the oldest magics, draw new alliances, and heal the bond between them if they want to survive.

There’s no such thing as witches. But there will be.

An homage to the indomitable power and persistence of women, The Once and Future Witches reimagines stories of revolution, sapphic love, motherhood, and women’s suffrage–the lost ways are calling.

Why We Want It: When she wrote her breakout Hugo Award winning story "A Witch's Guide to Escape" Harrow dealt with both witches and portal fantasies. Her debut novel was all portal fantasy. This, her second, returns to witches. That's more anecdotal than anything, but interests me all the same. The real reason we're excited for The Once and Future Witches is because her previous novel, The Ten Thousand Doors of January was fucking excellent and we'll read anything she writes. 

 

Kuang, R.F. The Burning God [Harper Voyager]
Publisher's Description

The exciting end to The Poppy War trilogy, R. F. Kuang’s acclaimed, award-winning epic fantasy that combines the history of twentieth-century China with a gripping world of gods and monsters, to devastating, enthralling effect.

After saving her nation of Nikan from foreign invaders and battling the evil Empress Su Daji in a brutal civil war, Fang Runin was betrayed by allies and left for dead.

Despite her losses, Rin hasn’t given up on those for whom she has sacrificed so much—the people of the southern provinces and especially Tikany, the village that is her home. Returning to her roots, Rin meets difficult challenges—and unexpected opportunities. While her new allies in the Southern Coalition leadership are sly and untrustworthy, Rin quickly realizes that the real power in Nikan lies with the millions of common people who thirst for vengeance and revere her as a goddess of salvation.

Backed by the masses and her Southern Army, Rin will use every weapon to defeat the Dragon Republic, the colonizing Hesperians, and all who threaten the sh
amanic arts and their practitioners. As her power and influence grows, though, will she be strong enough to resist the Phoenix’s intoxicating voice urging her to burn the world and everything in it?

Why We Want It: Let's face, we're gluttons for punishment and want our hearts stomped repeatedly. Lucky for us, we have R.F. Kuang to do exactly that because the first two Poppy War novels have been brutal and perfect bits of epic fantasy filled with betrayal and incredible personal sacrifice. There's no way this ends well for any of the characters and we wouldn't have it any other way.

Lethem, Jonathan. The Arrest [Harper Collins]
Publisher's Description

From the award-winning author of The Feral Detective and Motherless Brooklyn comes an utterly original post-collapse yarn about two siblings, the man that came between them, and a nuclear-powered super car.

The Arrest isn’t post-apocalypse. It isn’t a dystopia. It isn’t a utopia. It’s just what happens when much of what we take for granted—cars, guns, computers, and airplanes, for starters—quits working. . . .

Before the Arrest, Sandy Duplessis had a reasonably good life as a screenwriter in L.A. An old college friend and writing partner, the charismatic and malicious Peter Todbaum, had become one of the most powerful men in Hollywood. That didn’t hurt.

Now, post-Arrest, nothing is what it was. Sandy, who calls himself Journeyman, has landed in rural Maine. There he assists the butcher and delivers the food grown by his sister, Maddy, at her organic farm. But then Todbaum shows up in an extraordinary vehicle: a retrofitted tunnel-digger powered by a nuclear reactor. Todbaum has spent the Arrest smashing his way across a fragmented and phantasmagorical United States, trailing enmities all the way. Plopping back into the siblings’ life with his usual odious panache, his motives are entirely unclear. Can it be that Todbaum wants to produce one more extravaganza? Whatever he’s up to, it may fall to Journeyman to stop him.

Written with unrepentant joy and shot through with just the right amount of contemporary dread, The Arrest is speculative fiction at its absolute finest.

Why We Want It: The description from the publisher is a touch pretentious because, really, fuck you about this not being post apocalyptic or dystopic when technology stops working. That's exactly the tradition Lethem is working with and he damn well knows it, regardless of how the the publisher wants to market the novel. I haven't read Lethem in thirteen years since the incredibly disappointing You Don't Love Me Yet - but his earliest work was inventive and exciting even as he slid farther away from genre while still touching its edges. Regardless of what the publisher wants to call The Arrest, it's the sort of thing I like to read.

Muir, Tamsyn. Princess Floralinda and the Forty Flight Tower [Subterranean]
Publisher's Description

When the witch built the forty-flight tower, she made very sure to do the whole thing properly. Each flight contains a dreadful monster, ranging from a diamond-scaled dragon to a pack of slavering goblins. Should a prince battle his way to the top, he will be rewarded with a golden sword—and the lovely Princess Floralinda.

But no prince has managed to conquer the first flight yet, let alone get to the fortieth.

In fact, the supply of fresh princes seems to have quite dried up.

And winter is closing in on Floralinda…

Why We Want It: Taking a pause between Harrow the Ninth and the forthcoming Alecto the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir has a shorter and completely unrelated work. I'm not familiar with her short fiction before Muir exploded on the scene with Gideon the Ninth - but I'm excited to see what else Muir can do.

Polk. C.L. The Midnight Bargain [Erewhon]
Publisher's Description

From the beloved World Fantasy Award-winning author of Witchmark comes The Midnight Bargain, a sweeping, romantic new fantasy set in a world reminiscent of Regency England, where women’s magic is taken from them when they marry. A sorceress must balance her desire to become the first great female magician against her duty to her family.

Beatrice Clayborn is a sorceress who practices magic in secret, terrified of the day she will be locked into a marital collar that will cut off her powers to protect her unborn children. She dreams of becoming a full-fledged Magus and pursuing magic as her calling as men do, but her family has staked everything to equip her for Bargaining Season, when young men and women of means descend upon the city to negotiate the best marriages. The Clayborns are in severe debt, and only she can save them, by securing an advantageous match before their creditors come calling.

In a stroke of luck, Beatrice finds a grimoire that contains the key to becoming a Magus, but before she can purchase it, a rival sorceress swindles the book right out of her hands. Beatrice summons a spirit to help her get it back, but her new ally exacts a price: Beatrice’s first kiss . . . with her adversary’s brother, the handsome, compassionate, and fabulously wealthy Ianthe Lavan.

The more Beatrice is entangled with the Lavan siblings, the harder her decision becomes: If she casts the spell to become a Magus, she will devastate her family and lose the only man to ever see her for who she is; but if she marries—even for love—she will sacrifice her magic, her identity, and her dreams. But how can she choose just one, knowing she will forever
regret the path not taken?

Why We Want It: I'm not as familiar with C.L. Polk's fiction as I'd like to be, but Witchmark was superb, I have Stormsong on deck at home and I remember a long time ago she wrote several episodes of Shadow Unit. Shadow Unit, mind you, is one of my favorite things - which doesn't have a lot to do with the fiction she's written since Witchmark, but it built up an immense amount of goodwill on my part. The Midnight Bargain is also one of the first books published by Erewhon Books, the imprint founded by Liz Gorinsky (Hugo Award winning editor) - it's a pairing I don't want to miss.

Sanderson, Brandon. Rhythm of War [Tor]
Publisher's Description

The Stormlight Archive saga continues in Rhythm of War, the eagerly awaited sequel to Brandon Sanderson's #1 New York Times bestselling Oathbringer, from an epic fantasy writer at the top of his game.

After forming a coalition of human resistance against the enemy invasion, Dalinar Kholin and his Knights Radiant have spent a year fighting a protracted, brutal war. Neither side has gained an advantage, and the threat of a betrayal by Dalinar’s crafty ally Taravangian looms over every strategic move.

Now, as new technological discoveries by Navani Kholin’s scholars begin to change the face of the war, the enemy prepares a bold and dangerous operation. The arms race that follows will challenge the very core of the Radiant ideals, and potentially reveal the secrets of the ancient tower that was once the heart of their strength.

At the same time that Kaladin Stormblessed must come to grips with his changing role within the Knights Radiant, his Windrunners face their own problem: As more and more deadly enemy Fused awaken to wage war, no more honorspren are willing to bond with humans to increase the number of Radiants. Adolin and Shallan must lead
the coalition’s envoy to the honorspren stronghold of Lasting Integrity and either convince the spren to join the cause against the evil god Odium, or personally face the storm of failure.

Why We Want It: The Stormlight Archive is Brandon Sanderson's Magnum Opus, a ten volume series likely spanning decades of work even if we don't consider the other tangentially related  Cosmere based novels that will bring the total upwards of thirty. This is doorstopper fantasy and Sanderson is the truest successor to Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time that we are likely to come across, for everything that entails.

 

POSTED BY: Joe Sherry - Co-editor of Nerds of a Feather, 4x Hugo Award Finalist for Best Fanzine. Minnesotan. He / Him.

Reading the Hugos: Short Story

Welcome back to Reading the Hugos, 2020 Edition! Today we are taking a look at the six finalists in the Short Story category.

None of the finalists were on my nominating ballot, but I read fewer stories last year than I would have liked. I've read some of the authors on this year's ballot before, but Nibedita Sen and Shiv Ramdas are completely new to me and I'm not sure if I've read S.L. Huang before, but that is certainly going to change after reading "As the Last I May Know".

Let's take a look at the finalists.


“And Now His Lordship Is Laughing”, by Shiv Ramdas (Strange Horizons, 9 September 2019)
“As the Last I May Know”, by S.L. Huang (Tor.com, 23 October 2019)
“Blood Is Another Word for Hunger”, by Rivers Solomon (Tor.com, 24 July 2019)
“A Catalog of Storms”, by Fran Wilde (Uncanny Magazine, January/February 2019)
“Do Not Look Back, My Lion”, by Alix E. Harrow (Beneath Ceaseless Skies, January 2019)
“Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island”, by Nibedita Sen (Nightmare Magazine, May 2019)


A Catalog of Storms: When the weather is almost sentient and angry, the only defense is people who are willing and able to sacrifice their own lives by turning into a more soothing weather. "A Catalog of Storms" reads better than that description, but that's the best way I can wrap my brain around this story. There's a lot here to appreciate, but there's something about Fran Wilde's fiction that just doesn't grab me, just doesn't work for me. That remains the case with "A Catalog of Storms". I can see the emotional heart of the story, but it remains empty for me as a reader.

Fran Wilde is also a finalist for the Lodestar Award with her novel Riverland. Riverland was the winner of the Andre Norton Award and "A Catalog of Storms" was also a finalist for the Nebula Award.


And Now His Lordship: There are stories you appreciate for the craft rather than the execution and this is one of those stories. The ending of "And Now His Lordship Is Laughing" is excellent, it's exactly what the story needed and what the story was leading up to. Shiv Ramdas is telling a story of colonization, magic in the real world, and the cost of those colonized and used for resources. Set back in World War II, the story resonates today. I admire so much about the story, except for my desire to actually read it.

"And Now His Lordship Is Laughing" was also a finalist for the Nebula Award.


Ten Excerpts: Perhaps the story would not have worked so well if it was longer or fleshed out in a more conventional narrative form, but I really wanted more of this story. Sen rolls out the story in little disparate bits of academic commentary, moving through the titular bibliography and giving the story of the Ratnabar women more context and more heartbreak, though that heartbreak is suggestive from the beginning. "Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island" is exceptional.

Nibedita Sen is on the Astounding Award ballot for Best New Writer this year. "Ten Excerpts" was also a finalist for the Nebula Award


Blood is Another Word for Hunger: It should be no surprise that a Rivers Solomon story is as good as it is powerful, and "Blood is Another Word for Hunger" is exactly that.  It's a story of an enslaved woman taking her freedom by taking the lives of her captors, but it each of those killings which drives the story forward by birthing spirit lives. This isn't a post-slavery tale so much as it deals with the trauma of slavery and it is a trauma that doesn't end with freedom - regardless of how that freedom is attained. This is an unrelenting story, an excellent one.

Rivers Solomon is also a Best Novella finalist for The Deep.


Do Not Look Back, My Lion: This is Harrow's first story since winning the Hugo Award last year for "A Witch's Guide to Escape" and it's another banger. Tightly written, "Do Not Look Back, My Lion" is a heartbreaking story of love and loss, of duty and promises to family. The story is perpetually on the edge of a war, but is centered on a desire to not have one of the children marked to be a soldier. This is a beautiful story, raw with grief.

Alix E. Harrow's debut novel is both a Hugo and Nebula Award finalist for Best Novel. "Do Not Look Back, My Lion" was also a finalist for the Nebula Award.


As the Last I May Know: S.L. Huang looks at the problem of nuclear weapons and the deeper problem of how easy it is for a single person (with or without checks and balances) to figuratively push a button and destroy millions if not billions people. Those weapons still exist, but the cost of using them is exorbitant - the access code is embedded the body of a young girl and the personal cost of using those weapons is that President must murder that girl. "As the Last I May Know" is perfectly told, painfully told - and it is a stunning perfect story.


My Vote:
1. "As the Last I May Know"
2. "Do Not Look Back, My Lion"
3. "Blood is Another Word for Hunger"
4. "Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island"
5. "And Now His Lordship is Laughing"
6. "A Catalog of Storms"


POSTED BY: Joe Sherry - Co-editor of Nerds of a Feather, 4x Hugo Award Finalist for Best Fanzine. Minnesotan. He / Him.

Reading the Hugos: Novel

Today we are going to take a look at the six finalists for Best Novel. This is an absolutely stacked ballot. Recent Best Novel ballots have been as good as we could hope for, but the 2020 Hugo Awards takes it to another level. From Top to Bottom (and there is no bottom to this category), this is as good of a list of finalists and I've seen.

Which really goes to say that the six finalists for Best Novel appeal to my personal taste. Four out of the five novels I nominated are on the ballot here. The only novel missing from my nominations is Sarah Pinsker's excellent A Song for a New Day (also nominated for a Nebula Award) and I will not be surprised to learn that it was either seventh or eighth in the nominating tally when the statistics are released in August.

Tamsyn Muir and Arkady Martine are new to Hugo, but the other four finalists are very well known to Hugo voters. Kameron Hurley is a three time Hugo Award finalist for her nonfiction, winning twice in 2014 for "We Have Always Fought" (Related Work) and as a Fan Writer. She was on the ballot again in 2017 for The Geek Feminist Revolution (Related Work). Alix E. Harrow's short story "A Witch's Guide to Escape" won the Hugo Award last year for Best Short Story. Charlie Jane Anders is a previous winner for Best Novelette ("Six Month, Three Days") and won for Fancast last year.

Seanan McGuire is the Hugo outlier in this conversation, having been a 20 time finalist (14 times as Seanan McGuire, 6 times as Mira Grant). McGuire's novella Every Heart a Doorway won the Hugo in 2017, and she is also a two time Fancast winner.  The clear delineation for Seanan McGuire is that until this year, it was only under her Mira Grant pseudonym that she has been on the Best Novel ballot. Her longer series fiction have been recognized under Best Series, but no Seanan McGuire novel has been up for Beset Novel.

Suffice it to say that this an impossible ballot and that's a beautiful thing. I would be happy with any of these novels to win the Hugo for Best Novel. Every one of these novels are excellent and truly among the best of the year and may well be remembered and read for decades to come.

It's a sad thing to have to rack and stack these Hugo Award finalists. Any one of them could win, should win. It's a damn shame for any of them to be low on my ballot, but I can't rank them all at #1. That's not how this works, unfortunately.

Let's take a look at the finalists:

The City in the Middle of the Night, by Charlie Jane Anders (Tor)
Gideon the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir (Tor.com Publishing)
The Light Brigade, by Kameron Hurley (Saga)
Middlegame, by Seanan McGuire (Tor.com Publishing)
A Memory Called Empire, by Arkady Martine (Tor)
The Ten Thousand Doors of January, by Alix E. Harrow (Redhook)

The City in the Middle of the Night: If somebody told me that 2019 would bring us a novel that has the strongest resemblance and feeling to Ursula K. Le Guin’s Hainish novels, I’d have been more than skeptical – but The City in the Middle of the Night is so very much that novel. Several times, I had to check the cover to remind myself that this wasn’t Le Guin. It’s not, but The City in the Middle of the Night is a worthy successor to Le Guin’s work while still very much being a Charlie Jane Anders novel and its own thing. There is a tidally locked planet, fascinating characters, absolutely original and creative alien creatures, and a conversation about morality. The City in the Middle of the Night is a novel of big ideas and just as important, it’s a book you don’t want to put down. Anders is doing the work here. This is an absolutely compelling novel that I cannot recommend highly enough.(Paul's review)

The Ten Thousand Doors of January: Oh, what a lovely, lovely novel Alix Harrow has written. The Ten Thousand Doors of January is a story about stories, or perhaps about the power of stories. It is also a portal fantasy - which automatically hits a lot of my buttons (it's more than one button). The Ten Thousand Doors is a love story, a story of pain and escape and of longing. It is a story of hope and of magic, of friendship and evil secret societies. The Ten Thousand Doors of January is the story of everything and the deepest feelings of the heart. It is absolutely beautiful. (Paul's review)

Middlegame: Middlegame is perhaps the most ambitious novels from Seanan McGuire and is a showcase for her skill at telling a good and complex story. Twins, math, alchemy, murder, time-bending, family, secret organizations, impossible powers, and just about everything McGuire can throw into this wonderous novel. Seanan McGuire has blended together as much as she possibly could stuff into one novel and she makes the whole thing work. It’s impressive. McGuire goes big with Middlegame. Doubt Seanan McGuire at your peril. (my review)

A Memory Called Empire: Sometimes you finish reading a novel and one of the emotions you feel is anger that you waited so long to read it, even if "so long" equals "approximately twelve months", which is ridiculous, but A Memory Called Empire was so good that not only did I not want to put the book down, not want the book to end, but I was legitimately upset that I could have read this more than a year ago. Martine's novel is a wonderful melange of a minority outsider in a dominant culture, spectacular worldbuilding, almost diplomacy, colonization, empire, looming threats, politics, and quick witted smart people. A Memory Called Empire is a god damned delight. (Adri's Review)

Gideon the Ninth: The tag line I’ve seen all year long is “Lesbian Necromancers in Space” and while that is technically correct and was absolutely a selling point for the novel (as was the spot on cover art from Tommy Arnold) that’s not really what Gideon the Ninth is. This is a love story. This is a hate story. This is a locked room mystery (locked citadel on an abandoned planet mystery?). There is beautiful swordfighting, necromancy, magic, absolutely foul mouthed characters, and it’s all a friggin delight. In her review, Adri wrote about the claustrophobic atmosphere and that’s an apt description – which is why the “in space” part doesn’t really apply. The “Lesbian Necromancers” – yeah, it’s very much that and it’s pretty spectacular. One of the most impressive aspects to Gideon the Ninth is that it lives up to the massive hype. Gideon the Ninth is a brutal, sharp, nasty, wonderful novel. Tamsyn Muir will gut you. (Adri's review)

The Light Brigade: The Light Brigade is a bold novel in the tradition of Starship Troopers, The Forever War, and Old Man’s War. I don’t use this as an opportunity to list the titles of three significant military science fiction novels I’ve read. I view this more as a recognition of where The Light Brigade should be considered in the larger science fiction conversation about canon (as if there is a singular canon) and of which novels get to be held up as classics of the genre which revitalize and engage with the genre’s past. That’s a bold statement to make about a novel that was published less within the last twelve months, but there it is all the same. The Light Brigade does all of that while telling a strong story about a soldier in the middle of an absolutely messed up war (is there another kind?) that is messed up even further when her combat drops sometimes place her in the wrong battle at the wrong time – the wrong “when”. Hurley ties together all of the complicated timelines and fits it together perfectly. The Light Brigade is a gem of a novel.  (Paul's review)


My Vote
1. The Light Brigade
2. Gideon the Ninth
3. A Memory Called Empire
4. Middlegame
5. The Ten Thousand Doors of January
6. The City in the Middle of the Night

POSTED BY:  Joe Sherry - Co-editor of Nerds of a Feather, 4x Hugo Award Finalist for Best Fanzine. Minnesotan. He / Him.