Obligatory bit of throat-clearing: I opposed the creation of the YA award because I am keenly aware of the extra burden every new category places on the Hugo administrators. But I have to admit that pound for pound, the YA and now Lodestar finalists are on par with the Best Novel finalists for the Hugos, and the extra degree of quality added to the ( Read more... )

I'm a late convert to the Lodestar Award. I opposed instituting it, because I felt (and feel) that there are already too many Hugo categories (even if this is formally not a Hugo). It also seems to me that the diligent voter is carrying an ever heavier burden of reading obligations, though I guess this applies more to Best Series than here. However ( Read more... )

Two of the WSFS Young Adult Award finalists now, both of them fantasies, both rather good.

Summer in Orcus, by T. Kingfisher (Ursula Vernon)

Second paragraph of third chapter: “There you are,” said Baba Yaga. She was sitting in a rocking chair in front of the fire. There were a few coals in the fireplace, giving off a little red light.
This is a ( Read more... )

These are evenly divided between SF and fantasy (Nagata, Roanhorse, and Prasad clearly SF, and Wilde, Yoachim and Vernon clearly fantasy). Again, I did not find it too difficult to rank them; there was only one that I really bounced off. (See JJ's list for access to all of the 2018 short fiction finalists, and much more, online.)

6) “Clearly ( Read more... )

More for my own records than anything else, these were my votes in the short fiction categories. I did not keep good notes of the two shorter categories but can say a bit more about Best Novelette.

Best Short Story1. "That Game We Played During the War", by Carrie Vaughan - came third (narrowly missed second) in the actual vote, would have missed ( Read more... )

The Hugo nominations took a lot of what would otherwise have been reading and blogging time so far this year, so I am only now beginning to catch up. Here are four Hugo-eligible books which I read as the votes were coming in, which did not however make the final ballot. It's some time since I read each of them, so my notes are fairly cursory.

( Read more... )