Best Novel 2021
Nov. 15th, 2021 11:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
factitiousI'm voting in the Hugos this year, for the first time. So I've been reading/watching/&c. a bunch of the finalists, and I think it might be fun to write up my thoughts on them.
First off, Best Novel. I'll go over my thoughts on them one by one, in the order they're listed on the ballot. Expect spoilers. Then I'll talk about how I plan to translate that into actual votes. I'll try not to complain too much about the voting system.
Black Sun, by Rebecca Roanhorse:
I read this without having read anything about it in advance, and somehow assumed that it was a standalone novel. The result was that I spent the last quarter of the book getting progressively more curious about how things could possibly wrap up in the dwindling page count remaining. The answer turned out to be that it wraps up without a resolution, because it's a trilogy and book two comes out next year. I can't really blame the book for my misconception here. It wasn't doing anything in particular to fool me; this was just an odd assumption on my part. I would like to see more standalone novels, though.
The book switches between four viewpoint characters, who don't quite all converge together yet but get close. Xiala and Serapio were the most interesting to me, and their naval adventure with terrifying magic powers felt like the core of the story. It's hard to really evaluate them without seeing what all that was leading up to, though.
The pre-Columbian-inspired worldbuilding hit the sweet spot of enough factions to feel plausible but not so many that they were hard to keep track of. A couple characters use xe/xir, and we're not really given full information about what that means in their culture. What I'd like is if that turns out to be particular to the scary knife priests, because I like the idea of using neopronouns as a translation convention for an in-universe third gender with a very specific set of social baggage, but if this is the case, the book doesn't make it clear enough. I want to know what being trans and/or nonbinary means in this setting; it isn't enough to tell me someone's pronouns or that a minor character is a woman who was raised as a boy.
Ultimately, I feel like there's a lot of potential here for the series, but it hasn't added up to anything particularly gripping yet.
The City We Became, by N.K. Jemisin:
I was tempted to review this by writing "Not all art is bad art," and doing a reenactment of how Jemisin talked about Isabel Fall. Very tempted, in fact. It's a temptation that I absolutely should resist. Acknowledging that Fall was treated badly is one thing, taking it as an excuse to perpetuate online harassment cycles is another. My honest opinion of The City We Became is: I haven't read it, because I'd rather not read Jemisin after what she did. It might be a good book! Maybe I'll change my mind and feel up for checking it out sometime later. (OK, I've heard a couple complaints from people who've read it, so I wouldn't be excited to check it out even if it weren't for the Isabel Fall stuff, but it's still possible that if I read it I would like it.)
The harassment of Isabel Fall might be the most memorable science fiction event of 2020 for me. It's going to come up a couple more times in these writeups, and I'll save most of my thoughts on it for when I get to Best Novelette, that being the natural place for it, but be advised that a lot of my Hugo thoughts are influenced by wanting this community to have less transmisogyny. We'll miss out on a lot of great writing if we let people drive authors like Fall away.
Harrow the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir:
Very interesting book. My overall take is that although I disliked a lot of specifics, the novel's so unusual and ambitious that it won me over. Doesn't top the tighter focus of Gideon the Ninth for me, but I'm sure I'll end up rereading and enjoying them both.
The memory editing made for some fun mysteries about what had happened, and Harrow's edited flashbacks were a neat way to learn more about the setting and about her. Everything involving Ortus's poetry was wonderful. Also, nice to see second-person narration used for a good reason.
Most of the things that didn't work for me are the more fanficcy parts. The whole abuser to romance arc of the series, for example, or the way Ianthe is barely an actual character, with the author seeming content to have the fandom just construct their own version of her to do fanart of. And the coffeeshop AU was too indulgent; there was no need for that BARI star line.
Speaking of which, the series is going for a Discworld sort of thing where all sorts of references get dropped in for the reader to have fun spotting. For me this was hit or miss: I liked the ones that flowed naturally with the story, like the Achewood line as John and Augustine kissed, but the ones that didn't make any sense for the characters to say them on an in-universe level grated. Feels wrong to throw in a "none pizza with left beef" or "jail for mother" without providing more justification. It's like writing half a pun.
Network Effect, by Martha Wells:
I read a bunch of Murderbot novellas before reading this, both because I wanted to be sure I had enough context and because I'm also evaluating it for the Best Series category. Turns out this novel does enough recapping that I could have just jumped in here, but I enjoyed reading the novellas, so I'm happy with how I did things.
In fact, I enjoyed the novellas more than Network Effect. I think Murderbot works better in novella size; going for a full novel dragged on a bit. I enjoyed Murderbot and ART's interactions, and Amena brought in a fun dynamic, but the plot didn't keep my interest.
Also, I don't want to sound like I'm too against overpowered protagonists, but for a while now I've been thinking it's sort of cheating to make one of your main character's traits "good at hacking" in a setting where basically every object is machinery that can be hacked to do whatever. It feels like an attempt at sneaking in overpoweredness by making it sound more specific than it actually is in practice.
Piranesi, by Susanna Clarke:
This is very much my sort of book. The setting is a beautiful inhospitable infinite puzzle mansion, and the narrator has a strong writing style that tells you a lot about him as a person. I didn't care as much about finding out what had been going on back on Earth as I think the book wanted me to; I guess I found myself getting too drawn into Piranesi's starting viewpoint, only caring about the House. It's an appealingly haunting setting. Very stark, limited in terms of how many types of things it has, but presented to us by a person to whom it's beautiful and full of important details. A joy to read.
The Relentless Moon, by Mary Robinette Kowal:
As with Murderbot, I started here by reading the first book in the series: The Calculating Stars. I didn't enjoy it enough to go for completionism, though, so after that I skipped straight to this one (with a quick check that it wasn't going to heavily depend on knowing book-two plot). I liked The Relentless Moon more, fortunately. Nothing in it was as grating as the spontaneous reinvention of modern climate-change denialism in book one (although I'm not sure if the eating disorder content might strike someone else that way), and overall the book felt less preachy.
My main complaint is that the saboteur mystery went on longer than it really should have, and, more seriously, I never felt especially invested in wanting to know which particular characters were behind it. I don't think the mystery was strong enough to be such a major part of the book. I also wasn't sufficiently sold on the ending reveal that Nicole becomes president. Seems like a pretty difficult thing to manage offscreen.
My votes:
For Hugo voting, we don't vote for or against particular works, but the special case in the rules for the No Award test sort of approximates that. You can loosely think of the ones you rank above No Award as what you're voting for, and the ones below (or unlisted) as being voted against. It doesn't exactly have that effect, and this is all in a wacky nonmonotonic voting system, so any connections between how you vote and what effect you have are unknowable chaos, but it feels like partitioning the finalists.
Sorry, I said I wasn't going to get into voting system stuff too much. Anyway. I'm inclined to take fairly extreme standards for Best Novel, since it's easily the highest profile Hugo award. People are going to be paying a lot of attention to what wins this one. Black Sun is my cutoff here: it isn't a bad book, there's a lot I liked about it, but it's not enough of a standout for me to describe it as Best Novel of 2020. So I'm putting it directly under No Award.
Above No Award, which to me means the works that I'd be happy to see win, are Piranesi and Harrow the Ninth. They were both memorable, ambitious, and fun to read. Piranesi gets my top pick, for being more focused and consistent in its quality, but Harrow the Ninth having a lot of hits and misses for me isn't a big strike against it; I like it when authors try enough difficult stuff to get a lot of hits and misses.
Below No Award, my ranking is Black Sun, Relentless Moon, and Network Effect. I didn't hate any of these, but I would see them as being out of place on a list of Best Novel winners. Well, I suppose I'd see a lot of past Best Novel winners as out of place on that list too. My idealized version of the list, let's say. These three are fairly close to each other for me, and it's possible their relative ranks will shift over the next few days.
It's tricky handling The City We Became, since I didn't read it. Leaving it off my ballot is effectively the same as ranking it last, which is potentially unfair: like I said, it might be good! But all other options for where to rank it are worse: I don't want to put any of the books that I did read below it. So I'm going to put it in last place, and if this feels like creating a penalty for books that I skip due to the author's negative treatment of trans women, well, that's not the worst incentive to set up.
Votes:
Piranesi > Harrow the Ninth > No Award > Black Sun > Relentless Moon > Network Effect > The City We Became
OK, that was way too long. I'll do much shorter writeups for the other categories, because otherwise I won't come close to getting through them.
First off, Best Novel. I'll go over my thoughts on them one by one, in the order they're listed on the ballot. Expect spoilers. Then I'll talk about how I plan to translate that into actual votes. I'll try not to complain too much about the voting system.
Black Sun, by Rebecca Roanhorse:
I read this without having read anything about it in advance, and somehow assumed that it was a standalone novel. The result was that I spent the last quarter of the book getting progressively more curious about how things could possibly wrap up in the dwindling page count remaining. The answer turned out to be that it wraps up without a resolution, because it's a trilogy and book two comes out next year. I can't really blame the book for my misconception here. It wasn't doing anything in particular to fool me; this was just an odd assumption on my part. I would like to see more standalone novels, though.
The book switches between four viewpoint characters, who don't quite all converge together yet but get close. Xiala and Serapio were the most interesting to me, and their naval adventure with terrifying magic powers felt like the core of the story. It's hard to really evaluate them without seeing what all that was leading up to, though.
The pre-Columbian-inspired worldbuilding hit the sweet spot of enough factions to feel plausible but not so many that they were hard to keep track of. A couple characters use xe/xir, and we're not really given full information about what that means in their culture. What I'd like is if that turns out to be particular to the scary knife priests, because I like the idea of using neopronouns as a translation convention for an in-universe third gender with a very specific set of social baggage, but if this is the case, the book doesn't make it clear enough. I want to know what being trans and/or nonbinary means in this setting; it isn't enough to tell me someone's pronouns or that a minor character is a woman who was raised as a boy.
Ultimately, I feel like there's a lot of potential here for the series, but it hasn't added up to anything particularly gripping yet.
The City We Became, by N.K. Jemisin:
I was tempted to review this by writing "Not all art is bad art," and doing a reenactment of how Jemisin talked about Isabel Fall. Very tempted, in fact. It's a temptation that I absolutely should resist. Acknowledging that Fall was treated badly is one thing, taking it as an excuse to perpetuate online harassment cycles is another. My honest opinion of The City We Became is: I haven't read it, because I'd rather not read Jemisin after what she did. It might be a good book! Maybe I'll change my mind and feel up for checking it out sometime later. (OK, I've heard a couple complaints from people who've read it, so I wouldn't be excited to check it out even if it weren't for the Isabel Fall stuff, but it's still possible that if I read it I would like it.)
The harassment of Isabel Fall might be the most memorable science fiction event of 2020 for me. It's going to come up a couple more times in these writeups, and I'll save most of my thoughts on it for when I get to Best Novelette, that being the natural place for it, but be advised that a lot of my Hugo thoughts are influenced by wanting this community to have less transmisogyny. We'll miss out on a lot of great writing if we let people drive authors like Fall away.
Harrow the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir:
Very interesting book. My overall take is that although I disliked a lot of specifics, the novel's so unusual and ambitious that it won me over. Doesn't top the tighter focus of Gideon the Ninth for me, but I'm sure I'll end up rereading and enjoying them both.
The memory editing made for some fun mysteries about what had happened, and Harrow's edited flashbacks were a neat way to learn more about the setting and about her. Everything involving Ortus's poetry was wonderful. Also, nice to see second-person narration used for a good reason.
Most of the things that didn't work for me are the more fanficcy parts. The whole abuser to romance arc of the series, for example, or the way Ianthe is barely an actual character, with the author seeming content to have the fandom just construct their own version of her to do fanart of. And the coffeeshop AU was too indulgent; there was no need for that BARI star line.
Speaking of which, the series is going for a Discworld sort of thing where all sorts of references get dropped in for the reader to have fun spotting. For me this was hit or miss: I liked the ones that flowed naturally with the story, like the Achewood line as John and Augustine kissed, but the ones that didn't make any sense for the characters to say them on an in-universe level grated. Feels wrong to throw in a "none pizza with left beef" or "jail for mother" without providing more justification. It's like writing half a pun.
Network Effect, by Martha Wells:
I read a bunch of Murderbot novellas before reading this, both because I wanted to be sure I had enough context and because I'm also evaluating it for the Best Series category. Turns out this novel does enough recapping that I could have just jumped in here, but I enjoyed reading the novellas, so I'm happy with how I did things.
In fact, I enjoyed the novellas more than Network Effect. I think Murderbot works better in novella size; going for a full novel dragged on a bit. I enjoyed Murderbot and ART's interactions, and Amena brought in a fun dynamic, but the plot didn't keep my interest.
Also, I don't want to sound like I'm too against overpowered protagonists, but for a while now I've been thinking it's sort of cheating to make one of your main character's traits "good at hacking" in a setting where basically every object is machinery that can be hacked to do whatever. It feels like an attempt at sneaking in overpoweredness by making it sound more specific than it actually is in practice.
Piranesi, by Susanna Clarke:
This is very much my sort of book. The setting is a beautiful inhospitable infinite puzzle mansion, and the narrator has a strong writing style that tells you a lot about him as a person. I didn't care as much about finding out what had been going on back on Earth as I think the book wanted me to; I guess I found myself getting too drawn into Piranesi's starting viewpoint, only caring about the House. It's an appealingly haunting setting. Very stark, limited in terms of how many types of things it has, but presented to us by a person to whom it's beautiful and full of important details. A joy to read.
The Relentless Moon, by Mary Robinette Kowal:
As with Murderbot, I started here by reading the first book in the series: The Calculating Stars. I didn't enjoy it enough to go for completionism, though, so after that I skipped straight to this one (with a quick check that it wasn't going to heavily depend on knowing book-two plot). I liked The Relentless Moon more, fortunately. Nothing in it was as grating as the spontaneous reinvention of modern climate-change denialism in book one (although I'm not sure if the eating disorder content might strike someone else that way), and overall the book felt less preachy.
My main complaint is that the saboteur mystery went on longer than it really should have, and, more seriously, I never felt especially invested in wanting to know which particular characters were behind it. I don't think the mystery was strong enough to be such a major part of the book. I also wasn't sufficiently sold on the ending reveal that Nicole becomes president. Seems like a pretty difficult thing to manage offscreen.
My votes:
For Hugo voting, we don't vote for or against particular works, but the special case in the rules for the No Award test sort of approximates that. You can loosely think of the ones you rank above No Award as what you're voting for, and the ones below (or unlisted) as being voted against. It doesn't exactly have that effect, and this is all in a wacky nonmonotonic voting system, so any connections between how you vote and what effect you have are unknowable chaos, but it feels like partitioning the finalists.
Sorry, I said I wasn't going to get into voting system stuff too much. Anyway. I'm inclined to take fairly extreme standards for Best Novel, since it's easily the highest profile Hugo award. People are going to be paying a lot of attention to what wins this one. Black Sun is my cutoff here: it isn't a bad book, there's a lot I liked about it, but it's not enough of a standout for me to describe it as Best Novel of 2020. So I'm putting it directly under No Award.
Above No Award, which to me means the works that I'd be happy to see win, are Piranesi and Harrow the Ninth. They were both memorable, ambitious, and fun to read. Piranesi gets my top pick, for being more focused and consistent in its quality, but Harrow the Ninth having a lot of hits and misses for me isn't a big strike against it; I like it when authors try enough difficult stuff to get a lot of hits and misses.
Below No Award, my ranking is Black Sun, Relentless Moon, and Network Effect. I didn't hate any of these, but I would see them as being out of place on a list of Best Novel winners. Well, I suppose I'd see a lot of past Best Novel winners as out of place on that list too. My idealized version of the list, let's say. These three are fairly close to each other for me, and it's possible their relative ranks will shift over the next few days.
It's tricky handling The City We Became, since I didn't read it. Leaving it off my ballot is effectively the same as ranking it last, which is potentially unfair: like I said, it might be good! But all other options for where to rank it are worse: I don't want to put any of the books that I did read below it. So I'm going to put it in last place, and if this feels like creating a penalty for books that I skip due to the author's negative treatment of trans women, well, that's not the worst incentive to set up.
Votes:
Piranesi > Harrow the Ninth > No Award > Black Sun > Relentless Moon > Network Effect > The City We Became
OK, that was way too long. I'll do much shorter writeups for the other categories, because otherwise I won't come close to getting through them.
