ajacs

Navigational Entanglements, Aliette de Bodard, 2024 novella. Can I call this xianxia in space? Four space cultivators from rival space cultivation clans are sent on a space mission to deal with a space monster, but then, oh no, space cultivation politics. Fun and I enjoyed it, although I probably wouldn't have Hugo-nominated it myself. The romance felt a little rushed and the writing got a little repetitive (does the one cultivation style need to be "slow and ponderous" *every* time it's mentioned?). I would read a sequel, though!

Also I guess I can rank Hugo novellas now? ( Read more... )

Someone You Can Build a Nest In, John Wiswell, 2024 fantasy novel. This was cute and fun and then I got kind of tired of it, which might say more about my short attention span than it says about the book. I don't know, insofar as it wanted to center the main characters' relationship (I hesitate to say romance, since it seemed like it was maybe more of an ace/aro queerplatonic partnership kind of thing) that relationship didn't particularly hit any of my squees or zings. And while there was some evidence early on of not the tightest editing (like, mention of a damaged eye, which I couldn't find any sort of antecedent for where it *took* damage), as the book kept going I ended up feeling pretty nitpicky about it, which I think tends to be a sign I don't feel sufficiently entertained.

(But, like, armor with "something denser than gold" under a gold coating? Like what, tungsten? Platinum? If you had platinum armor why would you put gold over that? Or a *spruce* tree with "succulent crimson and tangerine hues of the tree's leaves", one of which falls fluttering? Has neither Wiswell nor his editor ever seen a spruce? And I was thrown by the use of "allosexual" in a fantasy setting, like, okay, this one is a style choice and I respect that sometimes if you want to include vocab of whatever sort in whatever setting, sometimes the easiest thing is to just use modern words, especially if you are not doing the sort of fantasy where you're making up *other* words so your shaych or your marnis or whatever would really stand out. However, I think I personally find short Germanic-ish words like "gay" or "queer" to have a better ring of plausibility, a more organic feel, than technical-sounding, deliberately coined words like "homosexual" or in this case "allosexual". (Or, like, "lesbian"... are you saying this second world has a Lesbos somewhere?) I personally probably would have tried to rephrase "allosexual virgins" as something like "fantasizing virgins" or "attraction-flushed virgins". I can only assume that Wiswell didn't because he specifically wanted to get "allosexual" in there, but it felt like a break in the voice to me.)

Anyways. Not terrible, but I don't particularly think it ought to win a Hugo, although I'm also feeling a general lack of enthusiasm re the Hugos given open questions like "how much of their credibility did Nicholas Whyte take with him when he bailed". :/