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On my recent travels I got through a fair few ebooks, mostly borrowed from the library:
Starling House, by Alix E Harrow, is set in a dying coal town in Kentucky; Starling House is an old manor house owned by a reclusive family, and avoided by the townsfolk. But Opal (the narrator) is poor and desperate, so ends up taking a job there. And the horrors of the past refuse to go away. This is a gothic fantasy book that worked for me on a number of levels - it's a great page-turner, with plenty to say about poverty and slavery, and has some nice ideas about how stories get told & retold along the way. I'm a bit surprised to not see it on the Hugo shortlist.
The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi, by Shannon Chakraborty is on the Hugo shortlist, and it's great fun (I'd seen it being plugged in paperback in Waterstones, which is why I picked it up in ebook from the library). Amina (who narrates the story to a scribe) is a middle-aged mother and retired pirate captain in mediaeval Oman (but with magic) who is forced out of retirement for one more heist. The setting felt real, and the narrator's struggles with their wavering Islamic faith likewise genuine; and I liked that Amina's age, experience, and family ties were strengths to her character. Perhaps some aspects of the plot were a little far-fetched, but I really enjoyed this. Plus some more "here are different ways to tell the same story".
System Collapse, by Martha Wells got enough nominations to make the Hugo shortlist, but the author declined the nomination (I don't know why, but their Witch King is on the ballot). Being a Murderbot fan, I enjoyed this, although I'm not sure it has much new to offer.
Acolytes of Cthulhu, edited by Robert M. Price, was on the whole a bit of a disappointment. It's a collection of short stories, which I'd borrowed because one of them was by Neil Gaiman (though that turned out to be Shuggoth's Old Peculiar, which I've read before); while a few of them were good and/or had neat twists, on the whole they felt like a collection of pot-boilers or pastiches.
Of the Hugo finalists this year, I've read two of the novels (the other being Some Desperate Glory), one (Bea Wolf) of the comics, and seen one of the long form dramatic presentations (Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves) and two of the short forms (both Dr Who episodes).
Starling House, by Alix E Harrow, is set in a dying coal town in Kentucky; Starling House is an old manor house owned by a reclusive family, and avoided by the townsfolk. But Opal (the narrator) is poor and desperate, so ends up taking a job there. And the horrors of the past refuse to go away. This is a gothic fantasy book that worked for me on a number of levels - it's a great page-turner, with plenty to say about poverty and slavery, and has some nice ideas about how stories get told & retold along the way. I'm a bit surprised to not see it on the Hugo shortlist.
The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi, by Shannon Chakraborty is on the Hugo shortlist, and it's great fun (I'd seen it being plugged in paperback in Waterstones, which is why I picked it up in ebook from the library). Amina (who narrates the story to a scribe) is a middle-aged mother and retired pirate captain in mediaeval Oman (but with magic) who is forced out of retirement for one more heist. The setting felt real, and the narrator's struggles with their wavering Islamic faith likewise genuine; and I liked that Amina's age, experience, and family ties were strengths to her character. Perhaps some aspects of the plot were a little far-fetched, but I really enjoyed this. Plus some more "here are different ways to tell the same story".
System Collapse, by Martha Wells got enough nominations to make the Hugo shortlist, but the author declined the nomination (I don't know why, but their Witch King is on the ballot). Being a Murderbot fan, I enjoyed this, although I'm not sure it has much new to offer.
Acolytes of Cthulhu, edited by Robert M. Price, was on the whole a bit of a disappointment. It's a collection of short stories, which I'd borrowed because one of them was by Neil Gaiman (though that turned out to be Shuggoth's Old Peculiar, which I've read before); while a few of them were good and/or had neat twists, on the whole they felt like a collection of pot-boilers or pastiches.
Of the Hugo finalists this year, I've read two of the novels (the other being Some Desperate Glory), one (Bea Wolf) of the comics, and seen one of the long form dramatic presentations (Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves) and two of the short forms (both Dr Who episodes).
(no subject)
Martha Wells also declined Murderbot Diaries nominations in 2022 and 2023 for Hugo and Nebula, because she says that series has already won lots of recognition (multiple Hugos and at least one novella). But Witch King is something else entirely.
(no subject)
I understand that Martha Wells thinks Murderbot has had enough recognition already.