Seasons of Glass and Iron, by Amal El-Mohtar; and Every Heart a Doorway, by Seanan McGuire

Posted on 8 October 2026 by fromtheheartofeurope

2017 was my first year running the Hugo Awards, and we had two winners that had already won the Nebula in their categories earlier that year.

The second paragraph of rhe third section of “Seasons of Glass and Iron”, which won in the Best Short Story category, is:

She sits at the forest’s edge and watches the light change.

Hugo statistics:

I myself voted for “That Game We Played During the War”, by Carrie Vaughan, which got the most first preferences on the final ballot but lost out big time on transfers.

Coming back to “Seasons of Glass and Iron”, it took me a couple of reads to really appreciate it, but having taken the time to sit down and concentrate on it, I find it really charming and clever. It’s explicitly a fairy tale combining elements of two different Norwegian folk tales, about young women who are each under a different curse and whose love finds a way of breaking the enchantments. It’s short but powerful, and I think on reflection the voters got it right. You can read the story in full here.

Two other stories were on both ballots, “A Fist of Permutations in Lightning and Wildflowers” by Alyssa Wong and “Our Talons Can Crush Galaxies” by Brooke Bolander. The other Hugo finalists were “The City Born Great” by N.K. Jemisin, “That Game We Played During the War” by Carrie Vaugh and the dismal “An Unimaginable Light” by John C. Wright. The other Nebula finalists were “Sabbath Wine” by Barbara Krasnoff, “Things With Beards” by Sam J. Miller, “This Is Not a Wardrobe Door” by A. Merc Rustad and “Welcome to the Medical Clinic at the Interplanetary Relay Station │ Hours Since the Last Patient Death: 0” by Caroline M. Yoachim.

The second paragraph of the third chapter of Every Heart a Doorway, which won in the Best Novella category, is:

Then the eight-year-old walked into the room.

It was comprehensively ahead at all stages both for nominations and for the final ballot, and got my own vote, even ahead of Lois McMaster Bujold.

I wrote at the time:

I am on record as having bounced pretty thoroughly off Seanan McGuire’s work before (and likewise bounced off the October Daye books on the Best Series ballot), but this one worked very well for me – a brilliant story of a school for children who have had otherworldly excursions, and a detective story.

Nine years on, McGuire’s writing still generally fails to win me over, but once again I was gripped by this particular story, which combines all kinds of 21st century angst with an exploration of ancient and modern legends. I have enjoyed the one or two that I had read from later in the sequence as well.

Three other novellas were on both ballots, The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor Lavalle, The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe by Kij Johnson and A Taste of Honey by Kai Ashante Wilson. The Hugo ballot also included Penric and the Shaman by Lois McMaster Bujold and This Census-Taker by China Mieville (which I bounced off). The Nebula ballot also included Runtime by S.B. Divya and “The Liar” by John P. Murphy.

The winners of the Best Novel award that year were The Obelisk Gate, by N. K. Jemisin, for the Hugo and All the Birds in the Sky, by Charlie Jane Anders, for the Nebula. The winners for Best Novelette were “The Tomato Thief”, by Ursula Vernon, for the Hugo and “The Long Fall Up”, by William Ledbetter for the Nebula.

Both the Hugo for Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form, and SFWA’s Ray Bradbury Award went to Arrival, which is indeed a tremendous film, though I don’t seem to have written it up here, I guess because I was the Hugo administrator.

Next in this sequence is the most recent occasion on which three of the four traditional fiction categories went to the same works in both Hugo and Nebula – “Welcome to your Authentic Indian Experience™,” by Rebecca Roanhorse, All Systems Red, by Martha Wells and The Stone Sky, by N.K. Jemisin. I didn’t love any of these on first reading; let’s see if time has mellowed me (as it did with “Seasons of Glass and Iron”).

Hugos 2023: Best Novella

Posted on 9 September 2023 by fromtheheartofeurope

I do generally like the novella category, which often unleashes some corking good fiction at digestible length. As usual, this year has some great stuff, and I found it difficult to rank them. But rank them I must.

6) A Mirror Mended, by Alix E. Harrow.

Second paragraph of third chapter:

I knock my head ungently against the wall and order myself to get it together. Luckily, or unluckily, I’ve been in enough perilous situations by now that I don’t waste too much time panicking or regretting my life choices or shouting SHITSHITSHIT in all caps. I’ve developed a simple system.

Characters are fairy-tale archetypes exploring the possibility of different destinies. It’s a neat idea, but was a bit fresher last year, and I found the violence a bit squicky. You can get it here.

5) Where the Drowned Girls Go, by Seanan McGuire

Second paragraph of third chapter:

Eleanor herself smiled warmly at Cora as she walked around the bulk of her desk and settled in her leather-backed chair, gesturing for Cora to sit in one of the more modest chairs on the other side of the desk. Cora settled without a word of complaint, her still-damp nightgown sticking to her skin, while her hair sent rivulets of water down her back. The upholstery might get wet, but Eleanor wouldn’t care about that. Caring about things getting wet wasn’t very nonsensical, and Eleanor’s devotion to the Nonsense still waiting for her on the other side of her own door was one of the school’s few true constants.

Next in the sequence of the Wayward Children stories, where it turns out that there is another, much nastier school for the children who have slipped between worlds. I enjoyed but wondered a bit about the longevity of the schools within the premise, and felt it was getting a bit too entangled with its own mythology. You can get it here.

4) Into the Riverlands, by Nghi Vo

Second paragraph of third chapter:

“The Hollow Hand,” Khanh said, his voice remarkably calm, and Lao Bingyi scowled.

A very nicely done story drawing from the wuxia tradition, a travel narrative with lots of sub-narratives. There’s a particularly good discussion of heroic women who are not also beautiful. I could practically smell the landscape. You can get it here.

3) Ogres, by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Second paragraph of third section:

Stunned silence from them. And then… a medley of reactions; quite the range, now you think back on it. Because some still have that core in them, hammered there by church and village life before they did whatever each one did to make them outlaw. Some are shocked that you could even lift a hand against the Masters, let alone shed so much of that vast reservoir of blood that it might kill one. Taboos like that, beat into you from earliest childhood, they don’t get shaken free so easily. Garett, the oldest of them, is pale and shaking his head, and Nell Wilso sucks at her toothless gums. But some of the others, their eyes are lit up. They’re the ones whose crimes were against the property, not of humans but of ogres. They lost that reverence, and maybe they’ve dreamed of doing just what you did every night since. And right then you’re in no position to appreciate it, lost in a welter of guilt and panic, but it’s the first time people look at you like that. Not fond, not exasperated. You’re not the prodigal son or the lovable rogue right then. You’re the hero who slays the monster.

As previously reported, dystopian agricultural future where an elite minority of big people (the ‘ogres’ of the title) holds the majority of humanity in brutal slavery, and our protagonist discovers the awful truth and begins the overthrow of the system. You can get it here.

2) Even Though I Knew the End, by C.L. Polk

Second paragraph of third chapter:

I knocked the right rhythm — not shave and a haircut but close. I stood still as the peephole opened and a light flashed in my eyes. The wall opened, and Sylvia let me onto the landing before a long flight of stairs leading down into the earth.

Really inventive story of lesbian love in magic-infested noir Chicago, and the price of your soul. Vivid plotting and description. You can get it here.

1) What Moves the Dead, by T. Kingfisher

Second paragraph of third chapter:

“Did Denton insult you?” he asked, once we were out of earshot of the parlor. I could tell he was genuinely worried. “He’s a good man, but you know they don’t have sworn soldiers in America. I’ll have a word with him if he did.”

I thought this was tremendous – a rewriting of Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” with a lot more background and indeed plot. I’m not familiar with the original story, but nonetheless this grabbed my attention and gets my vote. You can get it here.

Best Novella Hugo, 2022

Posted on 9 May 2022 by fromtheheartofeurope

As with Best Short Story and Best Novelette, I’m not going to record my own preferences, just the fact that I’ve read this category. I will say that I thought these were all really good, and whoever it was that said that sf is at its best at novella length had a point. (I’ll also add that during eligibility research we found that several were just the merest shade under the 40,000 word limit for novellas!)

Across the Green Grass Fields, by Seanan McGuire. Second paragraph of third chapter:

Her father, a little subdued and worn out after his day at the clinic where he worked, sat across from her. He was a big man, with square shoulders and square hands, and always carried the faintest scent of fur and sweat on his skin. He wasn’t the only large-animal veterinarian in the area, but he was known as the best, and his ability to coax even the furthest-gone foal into eating had saved a lot of horses since he’d opened his practice. Regan’s riding lessons came at a discount because the owners recognized that having the local vet’s only daughter utterly in love with their horses was the opposite of a bad thing.

Elder Race, by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Second paragraph of third chapter:

Nyrgoth Elder was seven feet tall, gaunt, clad in slate robes that glittered with golden sigils, intricate beyond the dreams of tailors. Lyn imagined a legion of tiny imps sewing that rich quilted fabric with precious metal, every tiny convolution fierce with occult meaning. His hands were long-fingered, long-nailed; his face was long, too: high-cheekboned, narrow-eyed, the chin and cheeks rough with dark stubble. His skin was the sallow of old paper. He had horns. In the old pictures, she’d thought they were a crown he wore, but there they were, twin twisted spires that arched from his brows, curving backwards along his high forehead and into his long, swept-back hair. She would have said he was more than half monster if she hadn’t known he was something half god. He was the last scion of the ancient creators who had, the stories said, placed people on the world and taught them how to live.

Fireheart Tiger, by Aliette de Bodard. Second paragraph of third chapter:

It burnt. The tea burnt. Soggy tea leaves caught fire right in the throne room, in full view of everyone else. Not just in her nightmares or in her bedroom.

The Past Is Red, by Catherynne M. Valente. Second and third paragraphs of third chapter:

When I remember hunting my name, I mostly remember the places I slept. It’s a real dog to find good spots. Someplace sheltered from the wind, without too much seawater seep, where no one’ll yell at you for wastreling on their patch or try to stick it in you in the middle of the night just because you’re all alone and it looks like you probably don’t have a knife.

I always have a knife.

A Psalm for the Wild-Built, by Becky Chambers. Second paragraph of third chapter:

Dex realized, slowly, still naked, still dripping, that the robot wanted them to shake its hand.

A Spindle Splintered, by Alix E. Harrow. Second paragraph of third chapter:

Primrose’s castle is about a thousand times better. The stone is smooth and cool beneath my tennis shoes and the torch brackets smell of oil and char. My dress isn’t polyester and plastic; it hangs heavy on my shoulders, literal pounds of burgundy velvet and gold thread. I try to walk like Primrose, a glide so delicate it suggests my feet touch the earth only by happenstance.

NB this last includes some gorgeous interior illustrations by Arthur Rackham.