Hugo noms

[melannen]

So! Hugo noms are coming perilously close, and of course I have not done half the reading I meant to.

Does anybody have any recs for 2016 or 1941 Hugo-eligible novels I should make sure to read before I nominate?

So far I have read:

Ancillary Mercy
Dark Orbit
Sorceror to the Crown
Uprooted
Darkness on his Bones
Castle Hangnail
Slan
The Ill-Made Knight
(and several of the 1941 ones on the novella/novel line)

They were all good enough I should not be sad if they won, but none of them hit me in the head with Yes! This should definitely win a Hugo!

I have Unbound and The Traitor Baru Cormorant waiting for me, I could maybe get through three or four more if I really push, so what should those three or four more be? Things that are likely to push a rec up my priority list: not by a white cis dude, stand-alone complete in one volume, someone on my reading list thinks it deserves a Hugo, and either secondary-word fantasy with magic or science fiction with spaceships (especially SF with spaceships, not enough of that around lately). ETA: being also Campbell eligible would also help.

...Also I have a bunch of folks' Hugo-eligible short fiction recs bookmarked, but I would not object to recs/links for that either. Or Fanwriter - the problem with that is too many possibilities, no obvious way to narrow down...

I'm actually in better shape than I expected to be for most of the other 2016 categories - I know my noms for Graphic Story, Dramatic Presentation, Editor (Short Form), Zines, and Fancast, will never be able to judge Editor (Long Form) and more or less know where I'm looking for Related Work and Artist. 1941 recs for any of those would be welcome, though.

Comments

[melannen]

That sounds really interesting! Thank you! And I would love to see a YA book win (and Uprooted is getting marketed as YA in some places, and has a good chance). I may end up nomming Castle Hangnail, which frankly I think had some of the most interesting stuff to say of the ones I've recced, and it's a long junior-grade novel.

[ambyr]

Castle Hangnail is on my to-read list, but the friend I was going to borrow it from went and loaned it to someone else (the injustice!) so now I have to wait longer.

Although actually I could just check it out of the library, so maybe I'll do that, heh.

[melannen]

It's not, like, life-changing, but I enjoyed it a lot, and the main character's arc is really well done.

[the_rck]

Castle Hangnail was the best book I read last year. I don't read a lot of adult fiction, though, so I can't compare it to anything else being discussed.

[melannen]

It would have been my only five-star book from the year on Goodreads, except I can't get over the fact that her awesome boots of wickedness have laces in the text and buckles in the illustrations. Boots are very important, so that knocked it down a little.

Everything else was great.