[ATDrake]

So it's Hugo voting season and I've finished up most of the main packet (just two more novels to go and a couple of the novellas) and I'll probably be able to at least skim the graphic novels and non-fiction sections this year. Maybe even do the fan stuff and the Campbell Award, too.

Novels thus far:

First one I read was Mira Grant's Deadline, which is 2nd in her Newsflesh series of bloggers, zombies, and political conspiracy (I read the 1st in last year's packet and quite liked it). It advances the plot nicely in the aftermath of the first book (which could have ended perfectly well standalone) by deepening the apparent conspiracy involved, and there are some rather surprising surprises which on reflection, are somewhat hinted at and not entirely out of line with what could be expected.

We also get a few more glimpses of how the world came to be the way it was and adapted to what drove it there, and while I think that the author is decidedly more optimistic about what the reception and ultimate fate of developing nations' zombie apocalypse survivors would be in the first world, especially the US and the UK, I'm willing to go along with it, since while some of the social and economic stuff does tend to be on the implausible handwave-y side, it's at least consistently implausible with what's been handwaved before.

Her novella Countdown, which shows exactly how the zombification virus came to be and take over the world, is also up for a Hugo, and while it was a nice explanatory tie-in read, it didn't really strike me as a Hugo-quality nice explanatory tie-in read. Still, it was a nifty background-filling bonus.

Overall, an enjoyable light series for me with occasional moments of depth.

Next up, Jo Walton's Among Others which was one of those retro-nostalgic loner outcast social misfit girl receives comfort and discovers friendship via the magic of science fiction/fantasy books coming-of-age stories. Only, she wasn't always a loner and was perfectly well acquainted with the magic as we find out in a slowly unravelling series of diary references to What Really Happened on the way to her journey of self-realization.

Somewhat sentimental and navel-gazing both from a story-character and a fannish-reader point of view with the setup (much like last year's winning novella/novelette The King of Mars or whatever it was called), but I really liked this.

Recommended for lovers of subtle, low-key, magical realism coming-of-age stories with a big dollop of nostalgia. Probably my 1st-place Hugo vote unless one of the two unreads trumps it.

And finally, read George R. R. Martin's 5th book in his sprawling and possibly never-ending A Song of Ice and Fire series, A Dance With Dragons.

I'd heard much about it over the years, but never bothered picking it up after also hearing about the long wait times between installments and the accompanying gnashing and wailing of fans. And I've been reasonably thoroughly spoilered for the main points of the plot and character motivations just from reading TV Tropes pages and the various fannish implosions that ended up on Fandom W*nk.

Anyway, since this was over 1000 pages in tiny squinty PDF (pro-tip for Hugo packet content providers: if you make it difficult to read your offering, I spend less time trying to read it, and it makes less of a favourable impression on me come decision time — if I can't read it, I'm not voting for it), and the other books in the series are known cockroach-killer doorstoppers, I opted to skip even trying to catch up with the series before hitting the 5th book.

As it was, it took me a while to get into, but eventually I did get the hang of who the characters were, what had gone before, and where they seemed to be going now. And the overall story seemed compelling enough that I'm curious as to where it will be going and looked up more detailed spoilers on the previous books which I'll probably go read at some point when I have more spare time. Maybe even watch the TV series, since apparently Martin has input on it and they're trying to be reasonably faithful.

But this will be at the bottom of the voting pile, since although it admittedly does advance the plot and we see the changes wrought in characters by their changing situations, it also doesn't qualify as a complete story in any way, not even in a episodic wrap up the minor-focus-plot-within-the-overarching-and-ongoing-main way because aside from the shuffling of individual circumstances and removal of a few characters from the screen via what I assume is Dead For Real, not one single thing is resolved and in fact even more dangling threads and cliffhangers are introduced.

So while it's a fairly compelling and interesting read, it's clearly just a 1000+ page chunk of a terminally unfinished To Be Continued story which IMHO disqualifies it for a "Best Novel" of a single year award.

The other remaining novels in the packet are both PDF, unless the packet's been updated. So, whichever one is sufficiently compelling to overcome the squintiness (which even the Sony's reflow and zoom/crop capabilities aren't helping with much) will probably be the next read, assuming I don't drop them entirely from consideration due to boredom.