A Fan's Playground

Whew, coming in just under the wire, here's my voting plans for the Hugo best novel! Obviously She Who Became The Sun is required to win, but in any other year both my #2 and #3 choices would be strong contenders for first place in my mind, and it's just too bad they can't all three get awards! Links to my full reviews in the titles of the books.

1. She Who Became the Sun, by Shelley Parker-Chan

I cannot vote anything but this for first place because it's perfect in every way.

2. A Desolation Called Peace, by Arkady Martine

It may not reach the same degree of delighting-me-on-every-level that A Memory Called Empire did, but it's still a fascinating and compelling book and very well done.

3. Light From Uncommon Stars, by Ryka Aoki

A book that's doing its own thing, haven't really seen anything else like it, and I am HERE for it.

4. A Master of Djinn, by P Djélí Clark

Not as strong as his novella in the same world (The Haunting of Tram Car 015), especially in terms of development of character for the protagonist, so I was disappointed -- but it was still good, and I do love the worldbuilding.

5. The Galaxy and the Ground Within, by Becky Chambers

Usually I love Chambers' approach of writing plotless novels about disparate characters interacting and being generally hopeful, but this one focuses on themes of children and parenthood and reproductive choices, and those are just not themes that inherently speak to me, so instead of finding it cozily enjoyable I was just bored.

6. Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir

Andy Weir doesn't understand how humans work, doesn't understand how the soft sciences work, doesn't understand how communication works, is a little too into leaders being autocratic, and mostly just cares about expositing at length about science things he thinks are cool. I'm glad he has found his niche, and I am charmed by how much he loves science, but I did not like this book.

Holy shit this book y'all.

Okay so the first thing I noticed about it is that the prose is actually like, quality. Plenty of books have serviceable prose, or invisible prose, or prose that's kinda bad but I'm willing to put up with it for the sake of the other things the book is doing, or prose that makes me mad but is to the tastes of other people (cough catherynne valente cough). This prose just feels (to me, I suppose!) like it's GOOD. It's written by someone who really knows how to put words together in an effective fashion.

But then everything else about this book is ALSO good!! Holy shit! I just want to shove awards at this book. NEXT YEAR AT THE HUGOS.

Anyway it's a book about people who are so inescapably the people they are that you can watch them make bad decisions from a mile off and know they're going to make them, and know they're going to feel they made the right decision, even if there is zero chance that that decision will lead to happiness (for them or anyone else). And it's painful to watch, but also....not, because these people are striving their utmost to reach their stated goals in life, and very competent at it. It's a fascinating complicated mix of things going on!

Fascinatingly complicated mix of things is, in fact, the name of the game for this book all round! This is also present in: people's relationships with their gender, with the most important people in their lives, and with their fate. Especially for the two main characters. Love this for them. Or rather, for me, because it's not exactly fun for them :P

Zhu is an orphan survivor of a famine, who takes on her dead brother's identity in order to try to overcome her fate of nothingness and take on instead her brother's fated greatness. Ouyang is the orphan survivor of his entire family being killed for treason, who was made into a eunuch so the family line couldn't continue, and whose only purpose in life is to be a filial son and get revenge. They're on opposite sides of a war for China's rulership!

( okay yeah this is spoilers )