At least, there’s a saying that there’s a saying that all roads lead to Ankh-Morpork.
Discworld’s take on the cinema industry, with awful forces trying to install film-making into the Discworld. I remembered this one less favourably than some; the satire is thickly laid on and very specific to cinema culture, which I’m not as interested in as some people. But I am pretty sure that I read it before my 2017-2023 project of watching every single Oscar-winning film in order, and now that I have done that, I found myself much more able to relax into enjoying it for what it is, a bit of fun and perhaps a return to the roots of Discworld, where the first two books were more pastiche than plot. Not sure that the wizards really work though. You can get Moving Pictures here.
This is the last in the series of Eighth Doctor Adventures that I didn’t get around to writing up when I first read them in 2014-15. Most of them were in the Sabbath arc which didn’t make a lot of sense to me, but the previous volume, Halflife, and this one both seem a bit more coherent and interesting, as perhaps the impending end of the series of books was concentrating the creativity of the authors (and editors).
The Tomorrow Windows is a picaresque novel which includes an exploding Ken Livingstone, windows which give you visions of potential futures, and lots of Douglas Adams-esque planets with humorously depicted aliens. I felt it worked well; I have complained about previous books in the sequence that the character of new-ish companion Trix is underdeveloped, but here she gets a fair bit of first-person narrative and I felt I knew her much better. None of this series is Great Literature, but this one at least is satisfactory. You can get The Tomorrow Windows here.
That finished the unblogged EDA’s, but I find I still have some Who books on the shelves acquired years ago that I have not yet written up, so I’m going to go through them in more or less continuity order. First up will be Paul McAuley’s Eye of the Tyger.
Current Red Rabbit, by Alex Grecian The Time of Angels, by Jenny Colgan Making Peace in Northern Ireland, by Charles B. Strozier Sleeping Murder, by Agatha Christie
Last books finished Théo Van Rysselberghe, ed. Paul Holberton The Eye of the Tyger, by Paul McAuley Autumn, by Ali Smith Brian W. Aldiss, by Paul Kincaid Twenty-first Century Blues, by Steve Walker (did not finish)
Next books Doctor Who: The Invasion, by Ian Marter Last Exit, by Max Gladstone TUKI: Fight for Fire, by Jeff Smith
(Published in the US as Thirteen at Dinner.) Second paragraph of third chapter:
“Well, mon ami,” he said. “What do you think of that?”
One of Christie’s classic mysteries, published and set in London in 1933. Clearly aimed at the American market, as the first victim’s wife is an American actress who has married English aristocracy.
A very well put together mystery, with the murderer turning out to be able to mastermind an impressive, but just about believable, set of deceptions. Poirot is especially well portrayed, though one feels sorry for Hastings who is patronised by him in every chapter.
It is however marred by casual, unpleasant and explicit anti-semitism.
My electronic edition spells ‘Edgware’ correctly in the main text and title page, but with an extra ‘e’ in page headers and chapter titles.
In anticipation of the 25th anniversary of my bookblogging, which will come in late 2028, I’m reposting my monthly summaries since November 2003 when I started. (I already did this in 2019-2023, but this gives me a chance to consolidate all the posts and links to this WordPress site rather than my old Livejournal.) Everything will be linked under the bookblog nostalgia tag.
The big family event of June 2006 was my great-aunt’s 90th birthday. Here she is with her four children (the four on the left, with her sister-in-law) and her eight nieces and nephews, including my mother. I’m glad to say that she had another 17 years ahead of her.
Two of the pictures from my own camera show the guest of honour and the youngest guest, young F, and me with my siblings.
The other family birthday that month was B’s ninth. The big present was a crocodile-shaped water sprinkler, which all three children hugely enjoyed.
Here is a rare video (well, compilation of several short videos) of the three kids together, B just 9, F about to turn 7 and U at 3½:
Apart from that, I see I went to the Tun on 1 June so must have been in London, was in Thessalonica for a meeting with the SEERC later in the month, attended a Wilton Park conference, and seem to have ended the month with a visit to Paris. At work we published a report on the Preševo Valley of Southern Serbia. My Greek intern K was replaced by Macedonian E. (He now works for the European Commission.) And I wrote what turned out to be the last of my mega-meta-reviews of that year’s Hugo finalists. (It wasn’t possible the following year, for reasons which will become clear, and by 2008 other channels had taken over.) This was also the month that I started really getting into the Big Finish Doctor Who audios.
4,700 pages (YTD 23,300) 3/16 by women (YTD 11/73) none by PoC (YTD 3/73)
The two really good ones here are Zoran Živković’s collection of short stories, which you can get here, and Emma Crewe’s anthropological stody of the House of Lords, which you can get here. I found The Triumph of the West pretty pointless, but you can get it here.
Another of the BBC’s Doctor Who audiobooks, read by Fraser Hines, with the Second Doctor, Jamie and Victoria landing on a strange planet where memories and sensual perceptions are up for barter. It takes Victoria in particular to some surprising places, and the central concept is well developed; also Hines is a very good reader of the three main characters. You can get The Elysian Blade here.
The last time I saw that winter count, a girl and her little brother were holding it above them to try to keep the freezing rain off, and, because I was an enemy to them, the girl was holding her hand tight around a long knife, not because that could have worked against me, but because she was Pikuni, and Pikuni fight even when the fight’s over. That’s why your Great Father still hasn’t been able to stamp us all out like he wants, no matter how many soldiers he sends.
This won the Nebula earlier this year, and no doubt will show up on the Hugo long-list. I think that may make Jones the first Native American writer to win a Nebula. It’s a well assembled novel of a Native American vampire in Montana, as told to a Lutheran pastor in 1912, then unearthed by the pastor’s granddaughter a century later. The descriptions are visceral and convincing. I am still not wild about the horror elements and it is a little too gory for my own delicate tastes. But you can get The Buffalo Hunter Hunter here.
Three stories of the Tenth, Eleventh and Twelfth Doctors separately, laying the way for the Thirteenth Doctor series of comics from Titan. To be honest I didn’t find any of them particularly memorable, though the art is pleasing. You can get The Road to the Thirteenth Doctor here.
In anticipation of the 25th anniversary of my bookblogging, which will come in late 2028, I’m reposting my monthly summaries since November 2003 when I started. (I already did this in 2019-2023, but this gives me a chance to consolidate all the posts and links to this WordPress site rather than my old Livejournal.) Everything will be linked under the bookblog nostalgia tag.
A month when I visited Berlin and London for work, and I have a note that I was in Bath too, but am really not sure why. (Anne’s birthday fell in the middle of my Berlin trip, so we must have celebrated at the weekend.) I also got a really weird phone call from someone who felt it really important to tell me that “je suis” is “Jesus” with “I” in the middle. At work, I took some time off Crisis Group to do a chunky bit of consulting for my future employers Independent Diplomat. I also applied for a job with the European Commission, but it was one of those cases where they were really formalising someone’s existing job and the advertisement was not serious.
As the fine weather came in, U and F dressed up, and B climbed a tree.
The big geopolitical news was Montenegro voting for independence, and its subsequent peaceful separation from Serbia. I still feel rather proud that I helped make the argument for Montenegro as an independent state to EU policymakers long before it became fashionable.
This was also the month that I had my infamous exchange with John Scalzi over his novel Old Man’s War (see here, here, here and here). We are friends now (picture from the 2019 Hugo ceremony).
3,300 pages (YTD 18,600) 1/15 by a woman (YTD 8/57) 1/15 by PoC (YTD 3/57)
Lots of good books here, but the two I enjoyed most were both non-fiction, Moondust, about the Apollo astronoauts, which you can get here, and Echoes from the Dead Zone, a Cypriot anthropologist’s take on his island’s problems, which you can get here. On the other hand, two of these books were so awful that, unusually, I could not finish them, Ivanhoe being slightly the worse of the two. You can get it here, if you want.
The Republic of Congo, often referred to as Congo-Brazzaville to avoid confusion with its much larger neighbor the Democratic Republic of Congo (aka Congo-Kinshasa), is on the western coast of Africa, straddling the equator. Its northern neighbors are Cameroon and the Central African Republic; the Democratic Republic of Congo borders it to the east and south, along with the Cabinda enclave of Angola also to the south; to the west are the Atlantic Ocean and Gabon.
Its history since independence from France in 1960 has been a dismaying sequence of single-party Communist-leaning regimes punctuated by military coups, with two full-blown civil wars in 1993-94 and 1997-99. At the end of the second civil war, President Dennis Sassou, who claimed to have won the 1997 elections, was installed in power with help from the Angolan army, and has stayed there ever since.
In 2016 I actually got to know the then main opposition leader, Guy Brice Parfait Kolélas; he stood in the 2021 presidential election, and came second but got less than 9% of the total vote. It did not matter to him, because tragically he died of COVID on the day of the election, while on a plane flying to France for medical treatment.
These days the Republic of Congo’s economy depends on oil exports. There are untapped mineral resources which will no doubt become more important as the developed world searches for critical raw materials. 70% of the population lives in one of the two big cities in the south, Pointe-Noire and Brazzaville, or along the railway line connecting them; the north and centre are very sparsely inhabited. The official languages are French, Kituba and Lingala, these last two being local languages of the Bantu family.
See here for the methodology of these posts, though NB that I am now also using numbers from StoryGraph. Books are disqualified if less than 50% of them is set in the current boundaries of the Republic of Congo.
Title
Author
GR raters
LT owners
SG reviews
Black Moses
Alain Mabanckou
2,324
246
446
Broken Glass
Alain Mabanckou
2,085
279
339
No Mercy: A Journey Into the Heart of the Congo
Redmond O’Hanlon
1,825
749
92
African Psycho
Alain Mabanckou
1,211
186
325
Memoirs of a Porcupine
Alain Mabanckou
1,243
205
188
Tomorrow I’ll Be Twenty
Alain Mabanckou
710
93
80
Johnny Mad Dog
Emmanuel Dongala
454
112
63
The Death of Comrade President
Alain Mabanckou
618
60
74
There was a fair amount of confusion with the Democratic Republic of Congo this week, but I think I successfully sifted for the books set on the northwestern side of the river.
One writer dominates here, Alain Mabanckou, born in Pointe-Noire in 1966, and now teaching literature at UCLA. Most of his books are explicitly set in the Republic of Congo.
This week’s overall winner, also on Goodreads and StoryGraph, is Black Moses (original title Petit Piment, “Little Pepper”) which is an Oliver Twist-like story of a lad making good in Pointe-Noire in the 1980s and 1990s.
Broken Glass is about the lives and travels of the patrons of a Congolese pub; I am taking a chance that more of it is set in-country than not.
African Psycho is about a man who calls on the spirit of a dead murderer to plan his own crime.
Memoirs of a Porcupine is told by a porcupine which has a mystical spiritual link with a human.
Tomorrow I’ll Be Twenty is a more frankly autobiographical novel drawing on Mabanckou’s own childhood.
The Death of Comrade President (original title Les cigognes sont immortelles, “Storks are Immortal”) is about a boy growing up in Pointe-Noire who has to protect his family when the president of the country, to whom they are related, is assassinated.
Two other writers feature this week. Redmond O’Hanlon’s No Mercy: A Journey to the Heart of the Congo, originally published just as Congo Journey, is this week’s LibraryThing winner (by quite some way). It is about a journey through the jungle to find a mysterious dinosaur-like creature. I checked, and it’s quite clear that it’s set on the Brazzaville side of the river.
Johnny Mad Dog is by Congo’s other well known writer, Emmanuel Dongala, and is about a child soldier in an African civil war of the 1990s. English Wikipedia thinks it is set in Rwanda or Liberia, and the film adaptation is definitely set in Liberia, but French Wikipedia and the other sources I have consulted in French are fairly sure that the original book is set in the Republic of Congo.
Including the StoryGraph numbers didn’t change the top eight, but did move Redmond O’Hanlon down from the top spot to third place.
As noted above, I scratched my head about a couple of the books included on the list; the one I excluded at the last moment was Brazzaville Beach by William Boyd, where although the framing narrative is set near Brazzaville, the core of the novel is set on a chimpanzee reserve in an unnamed country which is probably Angola and definitely speaks Portuguese rather than French. Otherwise it would have easily topped this week’s table.
It’s an all-male list this week. The top women writers from the Republic of Congo who I found on Goodreads and LibraryThing are Mambou Aimée Gnali (best known work set in Congo: L’or des femmes) and Adèle Caby-Livannah (best known work set in Congo: Les contes de la Pleine Lune: Congo), but with rather low numbers in each case. I did not find any books by women writers from the Republic of Congo on StoryGraph.
I have no books on my own shelves relating to the Republic of Congo.
Across the Atlantic next for El Salvador; then back to Europe for Denmark; then over to the far side of Asia for Singapore; then back west for Lebanon.
The results for the WSFS Mark protection Committee election are out!
Given that the Business Meeting yesterday voted to conduct future elections (from 2027, if it is ratified next year) as single multi-member counts, rather than repeated single-seat counts as at present, I was asked to produce my analysis of how that would have worked with this year’s vote.
(Disclosure: I voted for Warren Buff, so my vote started with him and was not transferred in any of the counts, either in real life or in my simulation.)
We know the number of first preferences counted in each round, and we can work out the transfers from Alana Vincent and Andrew January as follows:
Round 1
Round 2
Round 3
Alana Vincent
27
-27
0
0
Andrew January
25
+23
48
-48
0
Warren Buff
12
+3
15
+18
33
Joni Dashoff
11
11
+8
19
Todd Dashoff
3
3
+5
8
Judy Bemis
3
3
3
Arturo Serrano
2
2
+6
8
Gary Blog
1
1
+4
5
Linda Ross-Mansfield
1
1
1
Roseanna Pendlebury
0
0
+7
7
not transferred
+1
1
1
With 85 votes in total and three places to elect, the quota is 85/(3+1)+.001 = 21.251 Both Alana Vincent and Andrew January exceed the quota on the first count, and are elected, Alana Vincent first with a surplus of 5.749 and Andrew January second with a surplus of 3.749.
Where do Alana’s votes go? 1 is not transferred 3 go to Warren Buff 23 go to Andrew January, and are then transferred along with the rest of his votes in the real-life Round 3. For purposes of the thought experiment, I’m going to assume that Andrew’s original votes, and the ones he inherited from Alana, behaved similarly to each other, and split ties in Andrew’s favour. So, let’s assume that the number of voites transferred from Alana to the next candidate after Andrew was as follows:
Warren Buff
12
Joni Dashoff
4
Todd Dashoff
2
Judy Bemis
0
Arturo Serrano
3
Gary Blog
2
Linda Ross-Mansfield
0
Roseanna Pendlebury
3
not transferred
1
The surplus value of these votes is Alana’s surplus (5.749) divided by the number of transferable votes (26) and rounded down: 0.221 So the second count looks like this:
Count 1
Count 2
Alana Vincent
27
-5.749
21.251
Andrew January
25
–
25
Warren Buff
12
+2.652
14.652
Joni Dashoff
11
+0.884
11.884
Todd Dashoff
3
+0.442
3.442
Judy Bemis
3
3
Arturo Serrano
2
+0.663
2.663
Gary Blog
1
+0.442
1.442
Linda Ross-Mansfield
1
1
Roseanna Pendebury
0
+0.663
0.663
not transferred
+0.003
0.003
(The extra .003 in the Non-Transferable row is an accounting artefact to take account of rounding.)
Next we transfer Andrew January’s first preference votes. Again I’m assuming that they split much the same way as the votes he got from Alana Vincent, as follows:
Warren Buff
9
Joni Dashoff
4
Todd Dashoff
3
Judy Bemis
0
Arturo Serrano
3
Gary Blog
2
Linda Ross-Mansfield
0
Roseanna Pendlebury
4
not transferred
0
The surplus value of these votes is Andrew’s surplus (3.749) divided by the number of transferable votes (25) and rounded down: 0.149 So the third count looks like this:
Count 1
Count 2
Count 3
Alana Vincent
27
21.251
21.251
Andrew January
25
25
-3.749
21.251
Warren Buff
12
14.652
+1.341
15.993
Joni Dashoff
11
11.884
+0.596
12.480
Todd Dashoff
3
3.442
+0.447
3.889
Judy Bemis
3
3
3
Arturo Serrano
2
2.663
+0.447
3.110
Gary Blog
1
1.442
+0.298
1.740
Roseanna Pendlebury
0
0.663
+0.596
1.259
Linda Ross-Mansfield
1
1
1
not transferred
0.003
+0.024
0.027
Linda Ross-Mansfield has the fewest votes at this stage. We know from the real-life election that her vote transferred to Warren Buff, so the fourth count looks like this:
Count 1
Count 2
Count 3
Count 4
Alana Vincent
27
21.251
21.251
21.251
Andrew January
25
25
21.251
21.251
Warren Buff
12
14.652
15.993
+1
16.993
Joni Dashoff
11
11.884
12.480
12.480
Todd Dashoff
3
3.442
3.889
3.889
Arturo Serrano
2
2.663
3.110
3.110
Judy Bemis
3
3
3
3
Gary Blog
1
1.442
1.740
1.740
Roseanna Pendlebury
0
0.663
1.259
1.259
Linda Ross-Mansfield
1
1
1
-1
not transferred
0.003
0.027
0.027
Roseanna Pendlebury now has the fewest votes – the 7 that she got from Alana Vincent and Andrew January. We know that in real life, 1 of these was not transferred, 3 went to Warren Buff and 1 each to Joni Dashoff, Todd Dashoff and Artur Serrano. We don’t know which votes came from Alana and which from Andrew, but let’s imagine that the 3 from Alana went to Warren and the other 4 split evenly. So the fifth round looks like this.
Count 1
Count 2
Count 3
Count 4
Count 5
Alana Vincent
27
21.251
21.251
21.251
21.251
Andrew January
25
25
21.251
21.251
21.251
Warren Buff
12
14.652
15.993
16.993
+0.663
17.656
Joni Dashoff
11
11.884
12.480
12.480
+0.149
12.629
Todd Dashoff
3
3.442
3.889
3.889
+0.149
4.038
Arturo Serrano
2
2.663
3.110
3.110
+0.149
3.259
Judy Bemis
3
3
3
3
3
Gary Blog
1
1.442
1.740
1.740
1.740
Roseanna Pendlebury
0
0.663
1.259
1.259
-1.259
Linda Ross-Mansfield
1
1
1
not transferred
0.003
0.027
0.027
+0.149
0.176
Gary Blog now has the fewest votes – his own first preference, and 2 each from Andrew January and Alana Vincent. In real life, his first preference went to Warren Buff and the other 4 evenly between Warren Buff, Joni Dashoff, Todd Dashoff and Arturo Serrano. I’m going to imagine that the 2 votes that started with Alana went to Warren and Joni, and the 2 votes that started with Andrew went to Todd and Arturo. So the sixth round looks like this:
Count 1
Count 2
Count 3
Count 4
Count 5
Count 6
Alana Vincent
27
21.251
21.251
21.251
21.251
21.251
Andrew January
25
25
21.251
21.251
21.251
21.251
Warren Buff
12
14.652
15.993
16.993
17.656
+1.221
18.877
Joni Dashoff
11
11.884
12.480
12.480
12.629
+0.221
12.850
Todd Dashoff
3
3.442
3.889
3.889
4.038
+0.149
4.187
Arturo Serrano
2
2.663
3.110
3.110
3.259
+0.149
3.408
Judy Bemis
3
3
3
3
3
3
Gary Blog
1
1.442
1.740
1.740
1.740
-1.740
Roseanna Pendlebury
0
0.663
1.259
1.259
Linda Ross-Mansfield
1
1
1
not transferred
0.003
0.027
0.027
0.176
0.176
Judy Bemis now has the fewest votes – her 3 first preferences. We know that 2 of these went to Joni Dashoff and 1 to Warren Buff. So the seventh round looks like this:
Count 1
Count 2
Count 3
Count 4
Count 5
Count 6
Count 7
Alana Vincent
27
21.251
21.251
21.251
21.251
21.251
21.251
Andrew January
25
25
21.251
21.251
21.251
21.251
21.251
Warren Buff
12
14.652
15.993
16.993
17.656
18.877
+1
19.877
Joni Dashoff
11
11.884
12.480
12.480
12.629
12.850
+2
14.850
Todd Dashoff
3
3.442
3.889
3.889
4.038
4.187
4.187
Arturo Serrano
2
2.663
3.110
3.110
3.259
3.408
3.408
Judy Bemis
3
3
3
3
3
3
-3
Gary Blog
1
1.442
1.740
1.740
1.740
R Pendlebury
0
0.663
1.259
1.259
L Ross-Mansfield
1
1
1
not transferred
0.003
0.027
0.027
0.176
0.176
0.176
Arturo Serrano now has the fewest votes – his 2 first preferences, 3 votes from Alana and 5 votes from Andrew. We know that one of his first preferences transferred to Warren, but the other went to Alana in the first instance, and we have no good information about the rest. For the sake of illustration let’s split the 2 first preference votes evenly between Warren and Joni, the 3 votes from Alana between all three remaining candidates, and the 5 votes from Andrew 2 to Warren, 2 to Joni and 1 to Todd. So the eighth round looks like this:
C1
C2
C3
C4
C5
C6
C7
C8
Alana Vincent
27
21.251
21.251
21.251
21.251
21.251
21.251
21.251
Andrew January
25
25
21.251
21.251
21.251
21.251
21.251
21.251
Warren Buff
12
14.652
15.993
16.993
17.656
18.877
19.877
+1.519
21.396
Joni Dashoff
11
11.884
12.480
12.480
12.629
12.850
14.850
+1.519
16.369
Todd Dashoff
3
3.442
3.889
3.889
4.038
4.187
4.187
+0.370
4.557
Arturo Serrano
2
2.663
3.110
3.110
3.259
3.408
3.408
-3.408
Judy Bemis
3
3
3
3
3
3
Gary Blog
1
1.442
1.740
1.740
1.740
R Pendlebury
0
0.663
1.259
1.259
L Ross-Mansfield
1
1
1
not transferred
0.003
0.027
0.027
0.176
0.176
0.176
0.176
Warren Buff now exceeds the quota and is elected third, after Alana Vincent and Andrew January.
There are various improvements that could be made to the presentation of the above, but I think this captures the likely flow of voting, without too many heroic assumptions.
If the value of transferred votes were slightly different, Warren would not have been elected on the eighth round and Todd Dashoff’s votes would have been transferred. It would however have required every single one of them to go to Joni Dashoff for her to get the last seat, and from the numbers we have, it seems likely that some would have gone to Warren Buff, and he would have been elected.
The above process was completed in 8 rounds of counting, rather than the 14 that it took in real life. There were 76 transfers of votes here, compared to 84 in real life. The result was actually the same as in real life; but that was because the opposition to the three elected candidates was less than a quarter of the total vote.
Hopefully we can ratify this change for next year.
Voting in this year’s Hugos closes on 8 August! Go do it!
1) My top vote in this category goes to Sophie Burnham, author of the one novel I had not previously read, Sargassa. The second paragraph of its third chapter is:
The long stretch of summer was just beginning, and already burdened by an oppressive heat that stuck heavy on his skin and clothes. His stepmother Naevia had taken to winding herself in cool strips of linen soaked in water and aloe before hiding in the tiled bathhouse with his little sister Selah, who was six at the time and still too little to be very interesting. And though she’d expressly forbidden him from going out into the sun, Naevia wasn’t his mima, and Arran had slipped away to join the other boys from his elementary in the shallows that ran along the lush private shores of Luxana’s Arborem district.
I thought this was excellent. We start off in an alternate timeline where an extension of the Roman Empire survives in North America, and we have young people involved with deadly palace politics and incipient revolution. I was really enjoying that, and then the writer puts an extra twist on the situation just after the three-quarter mark which made me enjoy it even more. The sequel was also in the Hugo packet, and I’ll read it in due course, but the first was enough for me to determine my vote for Burnham. You can get Sargassa here.
2) Antonia Hodgson, represented by her novel The Raven Scholar, which I already wrote up. Second paragraph of third chapter:
Today, Bersun was plainly dressed. An iron band for a crown, stamped with an ∞ – sacred symbol of the Eternal Path. His black tunic was slashed with five scarlet claw marks, a reversal of his bodyguards’ uniform. He wore chain mail beneath his tunic, and a longsword at his belt. Orrun was at peace, the rebellion a long-faded scar. But Bersun was a warrior to the bone. Even now, after more than two decades on the throne, he looked more natural dressed as one.
Hodgson is apparently already well known as a writer of eighteenth-century crime novels; this is her first fantasy, set in a world (or at least a country) where eight totemic elemental animals (including the titular Raven) dominate human culture, and the new king is determined in a series of Hunger Games-style trials. It’s an intricate and well constructed plot, as leading characters turn out to be completely different to who we thought they were, and indeed the game plan of the bad guys turns out to be completely different to what it looked like. I found the brutal violence a bit ick though. You can get The Raven Scholar here.
3) Kamilah Cole, represented by her novel So Let Them Burn, which I read last year. Second paragraph of third chapter:
Dinner had been served. Usually, her parents would wait for the whole family to be home before even setting the table, but not when she was here. When Aveline Renard Castell, the gods-blessed ruler of San Irie, arrived in Deadegg to visit the Vincent family, they brought out the good plates and their best manners. Which was annoying, because she was, well, the absolute worst.
Story of magically gifted teenage girl military leaders, which interestingly is a sequel to an unpublished adventure but works regardless. Lots of high politics and dragons. You can get it here.
4) Jared Pechaček, represented by his novel The West Passage, which I read last year. Second paragraph of third chapter:
Pell had always liked the refectory, with the quiet, half- conscious liking one feels for something one has known since childhood. A clerestory of tiny square windows ran along the eastern wall, letting in morning sunlight and evening breezes. Vast old tapestries covered the stone walls. Their rich colors had dimmed, many were moth- eaten, and some had fallen, but the stories and strange figures they held made her feel as if she were a creature of legend herself. Bats roosted in the south rafters, pigeons flew in and out, and ivy curled in at the windows, but even in its state of decay the refectory held some clear beauty quite separate from the ancient chaos of the rest of the palace.
A nicely worked out secondary world with some odd dynastic quirks. You can get it here.
Generation starship with all kinds of issues between bottled brains and AIs. Some cute stuff but felt it wasn’t fully under control.
6) Molly O’Neill, represented by an extract from her novel Greenteeth. Second paragraph of third chapter:
I was stiff from my sleep and wanted to get up. I coughed loudly and rustled the reeds and branches of my nest more than I usually do. I didn’t want to startle her but Temperance stayed still, her chin resting on her knees. Her face was perfectly blank and pale, devoid of any expression, even when I scuttled past her to dangle my feet in the water. I looked back at her and tried to smile without showing any of my teeth. This was difficult to manage and a few of the first row popped out. I gave up and stopped smiling.
Clunky prose, doesn’t get the intersection between modern characterization and ancient lore, too much “look what a cute idea”!
That’s it for my Hugo votes this year, at least the ones I am making public. Happy voting, all!
