2025 Hugos: Goodreads / Librarything stats | Novel | Novella | Novelette | Short Story | Graphic Story or Comic | Related Work | Dramatic Presentation, Long and Short | Fancast | Poem | Lodestar | Astounding
Moonstorm, by Yoon Ha Lee. Second paragraph of third chapter:
Most of her classmates zeroed their rifles only when Instructor Kim reminded them. Hwa Young took the training more seriously because of her ambitions. The rest of them could coast on their family connections. She didn’t have that option.
Withdrawn by the author after it became known that this year’s Worldcon had been using ChatGPT to vet programme participants, a revelation that had certain other consequences too. It’s a shame because I rather enjoyed it, a narrative of a young soldier with decidedly mixed loyalties in an interplanetary conflict. You can get it here.
5) The Feast Makers by H.A. Clarke. Second paragraph of third chapter:
Dead ahead the Delacroix House exploded upwards and outwards in intricate gingerbread frills. Old snow clung to it, and icicles long as my femurs. Colored lights bled through the windows. Irises clawed through grey slush on the lawn below. It was ostensibly closed for business today, but the look of it said otherwise—people teemed on the long porch in long fur coats and cowboy boots, smoking and bickering and embracing one another. It felt like a music festival or an artist’s funeral. Even from this distance I could hear acrid laughter, drunken singing, weeping, and blunt edged threats. Jing pulled into the lot, cut the music, and eased into one of the last available spots in a sea of variously glossy dark or rust-fucked cars.
A sequel to a book I have not read, and I could not understand what was going on. You can get it here.
4) Heavenly Tyrant by Xiran Jay Zhao.
Second paragraph of third chapter:
When I land, the impact shatters me to pieces. I am a wreckage of garbled limbs and protruding bones. My heart and lungs struggle behind fractured, exposed ribs.
I am one of the three people in fandom for whom this series hasn’t really gelled, which is a shame as the author comes across as a committed and engaging personality both online and in person. You can get it here.
3) So Let Them Burn, by Kamilah Cole. 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.
2) Sheine Lende, by Darcie Little Badger. Second paragraph of third chapter:
Then, one chilly winter morning, Grandpa Louis wasn’t present anymore.
Prequel to the author’s Elatsoe, which most people loved, but I had reservations. Sheine Lende however is a different matter, nicely and tenderly done story of a girl and a ghost dog, and the forces of evil (both human and supernatural) in 1970s America. You can get it here.
1) The Maid and the Crocodile, by Jordan Ifueko. Second paragraph of third chapter:
Cold leeched from their windowless plaster walls, even in the blazing Oluwan heat. On each front door hung a single adornment: the head of a crocodile, glossily preserved in resin.
Set in the same world as Raybearer, but I felt that the world-building kinks that bothered me about the previous book had been ironed out here; a great tale of gods and (human) monsters, bad parenting and disability, and political liberation – a story for our times, perhaps. You can get it here.
