Hugo nominee

The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow

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Started: 9/9/20
Finished: 9/18/20

I was really looking forward to this one – it was nominated for a Hugo this year, I loved the short story she was nominated for last year, and I liked the short story she was nominated for this year.  The book didn’t start well for me.  It was interesting, and the premise is interesting, but the writing felt…amateurish.  It got better (I think), but the book within a book thing took too long to pay off.  I did eventually get hooked, but I found myself thinking about giving up on it a couple of times.  If I had read it between the ages of 10 and 18, maybe, I probably would have loved it.

A Catalog of Storms by Fran Wilde

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Started: 7/22/20
Gave Up: 7/22/20

I tried to read this one, and it had an interesting premise, but the writing style got to me.  I stopped reading Fran Wilde’s second book – maybe I finished it, and I don’t care to the third? – and this short story had a similar style.

And Now His Lordship Is Laughing by Shiv Ramdas

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Started: 7/22/20
Finished: 7/22/20

SO GOOD.  It’s fantasy, it’s horror (even though I heard on a horror panel that the author doesn’t think of it as horror, so maybe I should just say it has an element that depending on what you’re afraid of, you could absoLUTEly think it’s scary), it’s historical fiction, and it’s emotional (I cried).  SO.  GOOD.

The Blur in the Corner of Your Eye by Sarah Pinsker

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Started: 7/19/20
Finished: 7/19/20

Sarah Pinsker can do no wrong.  This story was a roller coaster, speeding downhill, all fun and great, and then BAM we ran into a wall and fell into pieces and then what?  And no.  No!  Oh god no!  It’s fantastic and you should read it.  Except not you, Mom.  Or Margaret.

The Blur in the Corner of Your Eye

The Archronology of Love by Caroline M. Yoachim

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Started: 7/19/20
Finished: 7/19/20

I don’t think I fully understood this story.  I mean, I get the overall plot and everything, I understand what happened and what the characters learned, but the details of the big tech thing and how (or why) things get erased…I spent too much time (for a novelette I finished in less than an hour) puzzling over it.  Don’t dazzle me – just tell the story.

Omphalos by Ted Chiang

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Started: 7/19/20
Finished: 7/19/20

I liked the style of this story more than the content, I think.  It’s about an archaeologist who reads about an astronomical discovery that upends her views on everything.  The setting is an alternate reality where the science really does uphold the beliefs of the young-earth creationists, so that’s the accepted view of the world and physics and everything.  The story is told from her perspective as she relates her days and thoughts to God, via prayers that feel like letters or diary entries.

Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom by Ted Chiang

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Started: 7/19/20
Finished: 7/19/20

Fascinating near-future story with tech that allows you to communicate with yourself in a parallel universe, which is really cool, but it’s about free will and how people use that tech to make decisions, to justify their actions.  The tech is just the next thing (but it’s a very cool next thing to consider).

The Deep by Rivers Solomon, Daveed Diggs, William Hutson, and Jonathan Snipes

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Started: 7/18/20
Finished: 7/19/20

This novella was inspired by the song The Deep (by clipping.), which I haven’t listened to yet.  The premise is that the pregnant and going-into-labor slaves who were thrown overboard midocean (true) gave birth to mer-people (probably not true) who built a whole civilization and society around a historian who remembers everything so that the rest of them don’t have to.  The story is mostly about the current historian who is having difficulties with this burden, but it also goes back into the memories.  It’s very good.

This Is How You Lose The Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

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Started: 7/12/20
Finished: 7/15/20

I had heard nothing but wonderful things about this one, but the one time I tried a Max Gladstone book, I couldn’t get into it.  That turned out to apply to this novella, too, even though he had a co-author.  The premise is really cool, but I seriously considered just putting it down and walking away.  The writing was not working for me.  I got involved eventually, and I think I liked it…?   Interesting, but not really my speed.

In An Absent Dream by Seanan McGuire

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Started: 7/5/20
Finished: 7/8/20

Fourth in the Wayward Children series, this one takes one of our characters back in time to when she found her door.  It’s so good, and the ending is so sad.  It felt sadder than the others, but I’m not sure why – they’re all sad stories because they can’t find their way back to where they feel they belong.  I should re-read the first one, at least.

City of Lies by Sam Hawke

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Started: 7/5/20
Gave up: 7/5/20

First in a new series that could be really good, but again, I had formatting issues I can’t get past.  It’s a PDF with a watermark across every page that says something like “DO NOT REPRODUCE OR WE WILL COME AFTER YOU”.  The watermark is okay, but a PDF on a Kindle is annoying because I have to keep resizing the pages.  I tried to convert it to a readable Kindle format (Amazon tells you how), and that process put the words from the watermark into the text of the book.  But not in one sentence on each page, no.  No, it broke up the watermark sentence and inserted the individual words into the text, making the actual book unreadable because it made no sense.  I would like to read this book, but I’ll get it from the library or something.  I’m not going to get it done in time for Hugo voting.