I thought Ancillary Sword was close, actually, it definitely did its work on the worldbuilding, but it was inescapably a second book in a trilogy, and that kept it from true greatness when evaluated a stand-alone. (Ancillary Justice, which did win the year it came out, I think is definitely in the top ranks of SFF I've ever read, though. And I suspect the trilogy as a whole will end up there, unless Mercy really drops the ball.)
The Story of Owen, Dragon-Slayer of Trondheim was close! There were a few places where she deliberately punted the worldbuilding in order to make its ridiculous premise stand up, and the pacing wasn't perfect, but in even in those places it was still very thoughtful about what it was doing, and I loved what it was doing. But it's YA so the chance it would win the novel Hugo is tiny.
...and that's two out of a total of five qualifying novels I have read. I am sure there were other good ones published that I have not read. I read more short stories & novellas I would have been willing to nominate, though. (And I read 170 other books in 2014, but I tend to read widely rather than reading a lot of recent stuff, which is probably why my standards are what they are.)
(If I'm nominating this year I'm going to have to start reading for the recent, but so far that's meant 'being on a lot of library waiting lists', alas.)
(And tbh what kept Goblin Emperor out of it for me was just that there wasn't much there there, not any particular issues with what was there. And for 3BP it was partly that I hated the MC and partly the massive plotholes and dropped threads. So I think you may be getting the impression my standards are higher than they are? It's just that there's a lot of published SF out there that's pretty terrible. And a lot where I can tell from the summary and skimming the first couple chapters that I never need to read it.)
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I thought Ancillary Sword was close, actually, it definitely did its work on the worldbuilding, but it was inescapably a second book in a trilogy, and that kept it from true greatness when evaluated a stand-alone. (Ancillary Justice, which did win the year it came out, I think is definitely in the top ranks of SFF I've ever read, though. And I suspect the trilogy as a whole will end up there, unless Mercy really drops the ball.)
The Story of Owen, Dragon-Slayer of Trondheim was close! There were a few places where she deliberately punted the worldbuilding in order to make its ridiculous premise stand up, and the pacing wasn't perfect, but in even in those places it was still very thoughtful about what it was doing, and I loved what it was doing. But it's YA so the chance it would win the novel Hugo is tiny.
...and that's two out of a total of five qualifying novels I have read. I am sure there were other good ones published that I have not read. I read more short stories & novellas I would have been willing to nominate, though. (And I read 170 other books in 2014, but I tend to read widely rather than reading a lot of recent stuff, which is probably why my standards are what they are.)
(If I'm nominating this year I'm going to have to start reading for the recent, but so far that's meant 'being on a lot of library waiting lists', alas.)
(And tbh what kept Goblin Emperor out of it for me was just that there wasn't much there there, not any particular issues with what was there. And for 3BP it was partly that I hated the MC and partly the massive plotholes and dropped threads. So I think you may be getting the impression my standards are higher than they are? It's just that there's a lot of published SF out there that's pretty terrible. And a lot where I can tell from the summary and skimming the first couple chapters that I never need to read it.)