This is the final part of the Scholomance triology, all of which have been nominated for the Lodestar Award. To my mind, it's the best of the trilogy; both in that there was less of the self-sabotage that irked me in previous books, and that it creates a sense of inevitable crawling horror about the way the world is ordered. The way wizarding society has set itself up is awful, but you also see how it has ended up that way, and that holds a mirror up to our society and the way we persuade ourselves it's OK to treat outsiders the way we do, and persuade ourselves the things we do to make ourselves comfortable are fine really.

I did spot some of the major plot points coming, but I think that may have been part of the point of this book - the chickens coming home to roost, previous books' events now being explained, and the reader can see El's denial slowly peeling away. Despite all of which, and the fact that there isn't a happy ever after, there is also hope at the end, that people trying to do the right thing can make a difference.

Also, points for canon bisexual character where it isn't a Big Deal :)

This is the last entry on the Hugo Award shortlist for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form. I'm not sure it's really practicable to compare a 9-episode series with a single feature film, but there we are.

I like the concept behind Severance, but found the tonal shifts a bit jarring; and the series ends on a cliffhanger rather than a satisfactory resolution, all of which left me rather underwhelmed.

The premise is that technology has been developed that lets an employer "sever" the work and not-work memories of employees - at work the "innie" has no knowledge of what happens outside the office, and the "outie" likewise has no memory of what they do at work. Which, of course, leads to rumours about the sort of top-secret things that "severed" employees might be doing that must be kept secret. ( Spoilers )

My voting order for these:

1. We Built This City, Marie Vibbert. The value of important but menial work; join a union!
   
2. If You Find Yourself Speaking to God, Address God with the Informal You, John Chu. A cute story, addressing some serious issues (race & racialised policing; coming out; the media).
   
3. A Dream of Electric Mothers, Wole Talabi. What would well-meaning advice be like if it came from all your ancestors?
   
4. The Difference Between Love and Time, Catherynne M. Valente. A lovely story, some witty moments, but I wasn't quite convinced.
   
5. Murder By Pixel: Crime and Responsibility in the Digital Darkness, S.L. Huang. A fair enough take on the ethics of "AI" systems, but I don't think the fictional parts added much to this.

I won't rank The Space-Time Painter, by Hai Ya, because it's not available in any language I understand.

I really enjoyed A Spindle Splintered (I ranked it first for the Novella Hugo last year), and hadn't realised this was a sequel to it until I started reading. So that was a nice surprise :)

Again, this is a feminist multi-verse based re-examination of a fairy tale, that also asks about who is and isn't the protagonist in the stories they find themselves in. It's also a reminder that being the friend of a hero sucks!

I don't know how many books like this Harrow can write whilst still keeping them fresh and interesting, but I thought this one works really well.

This is a detective story with occult elements, at least noir-adjacent. A magical detective discovers that a murder case is more sinister than it first appears, and that powerful occult players are at work. Plus it's 1940s Chicago, so they have to keep aspects of their private life hidden.

This is a pacy story with some well-drawn characters, and a nicely twisty plot. The ending works nicely unless you stop and think about it too much. ( major spoilers )

I enjoyed this story, which is in turn about stories and how the stories you hear about a person are only ever partial, and how appearances (in person or in stories) can deceive. I read another Novella in this world a couple of years ago (but had forgotten that Chih and Almost Brilliant were featured there too); the fantastical elements this time have very little impact on the plot itself.

Another film from the Hugo shortlist, this is a coming-of-age drama about a girl who turns into a giant fuzzy red panda when she experiences strong emotion, something that starts happening about the time she turns 13.

It has quite a cringy start, which I didn't like, but it does have some genuinely funny moments, and while I felt that it mostly ticked off the usual coming-of-age themes, it wasn't too heavy-handed with them (except perhaps the "overbearing mother behaves thus because she couldn't never keep up with her mother's expectations" trope). You have to not think too hard about the plot, though, or it starts making less sense. ( spoilers )

This is the first Scalzi I've read. On this showing, I'm not inclined to read another (which is a surprise, because I know he's very popular). It feels like it ought to be a great premise for a book - a secret organisation, an alternate reality close to ours, giant monsters. But there's an awful lot of nothing much of note happening, the characters are all broadly the same wise-cracking smartarse, the plot developments such as they were were telegraphed a mile off (even I saw them nearly all coming), and I managed to come away with no real idea of what anything looked like. And this wasn't a Lovecraftian horrors that defy sanity and coherent description sort of thing, either: our narrator doesn't think it's interesting to note much other than that they're very big and very loud (and similarly doesn't bother describing anything else).

It's still quite fun - the villain is odiously hateable, there are a lot of one-liners since basically all the characters are that sort of person, and it's a great premise. There's just not enough material here to go with that premise.

Tesla Crane and her new spouse Shal Steward are on honeymoon, travelling incognito on an interstellar cruise liner to Mars. Then there is a murder outside their cabin and it looks like someone is trying to frame Shal for it. Tesla has her lawyer Fantine on speed-dial, but as the ship travels away from Earth the lightspeed lag gets longer and longer, and the ship's chief of security is adamant that Shal must be the guilty party...

This is a murder mystery set on a cruise liner in space; the interstellar liner is vast, and convincingly described, right down to how they manage to have sections with terran, lunar, and martian gravity. There are lots of nice details, some of which turn out to be relevant to the plot. I enjoyed each chapter starting with a cocktail recipe (some alcoholic, some not; most real, some fictional), some of which are quite funny (e.g. "Extra-Dry Martini. 2oz. gin. Stir over ice. Say the word 'vermouth'. Strain into martini glass"). There are parts of the described society that feel quite contemporary (e.g. courtesy masks are still widely available; most people are Mx. by default, and it is customary to include pronouns when introducing people), and the escalation of surveillance and counter-surveillance tech was pretty believable.

Tesla, the main protagonist, has PTSD and chronic pain from an earlier industrial accident (which we learn about as the plot advances), which is largely handled sensitively; although the hard-hearted critic might note that there are rarely any serious consequences from taking the safeties off her DBS pain relief system. She has a service dog, Gimlet, to help her with these conditions, and the incredibly cute Westie steals many of the scenes they appear in. Tesla is obviously also extremely wealthy, and not above using that wealth and status to get her own way. At times this goes beyond "interestingly flawed protagonist" into "really annoying protagonist", and definitely left me at times more "interested in the answer to the mystery" than "cares about wellbeing of protagonist".

The mystery is resolved in a way that didn't feel too much like cheating to me, although I'd have to read the book again to see if I felt one could have put the clues together along the way; I certainly didn't spot many of the twists coming. Overall, a fun and engaging read.

I've one of the shortlisted novels left to read; I'm hoping the voter packet is going to be out soon, as otherwise tracking down all the shorter fiction categories is going to be tiresome...

This is a reimagining of H. G. Wells' The Island of Doctor Moreau, set in 19th-century Mexico. Chapters alternate between Carlota (the eponymous daughter) and Montgomery (the majordomo) as point-of-view characters; and we see Carlota coming to terms with both the intrusions of the outside world into her secluded but happy upbringing and learning that much of what she thought she knew about her father's work was wrong.

I'm afraid I didn't really get on with this book - it felt like it took a long time to get going, and I found it a melancholy read that left me pretty depressed. I spotted one of the twists coming (I suspect one is meant to), but didn't feel invested in the fates of either of the points of view characters, both of whom grated on me somewhat. I've not read Wells' book, though, so perhaps this is book is more a conversation that I'm missing half of.