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ATDrake · 08-01-2016, 01:18 AM

So, it being Hugo voting season, I finally opened up the Voter Packet sometime last week to try out the stuff I hadn't already read earlier in preparation for the nomination rounds, and went to the library a few days ago to pick up the "missing" novels.

As far as Best Novel goes, Uprooted by Naomi Novik gets the 3rd place slot. It was a very charming coming-of-age fantasy which it took me quite a while to realize was actually set in an historical folkloric version of our world. I didn't even notice who one of the famous fairy tale figures was until it was made explicitly clear, though it was pretty obvious in retrospect, and having them not be a villain in the piece probably helped obscure it for me. While it didn't seem wildly original or even particularly inventive with the fairly standard fairy tale fantasy elements it was playing with, it handled them in a pleasantly entertaining manner. Recommended if you want an engagingly told heroine's journey adventure tale in a slightly unusual setting drawn from Eastern European traditions.

Neal Stephenson's Seveneves gets the 4th slot. This had some very interesting ideas going into the setup, which actually turned out to just be the setup for some even more interesting ideas partway through. And the level of detail about trying to make the initial ideas work was also interesting, and generally not too much of a slog to follow.

But IMHO, the execution just wasn't quite there for the back portion which the twist was supposed to set up, and I think it just kind of ran into the limits of the author's imagination. It's rare that I think that an already 700+ page book could have used another 300+ pages in the same volume to properly follow-up on something or other with the same lavishness and attention to detail as the first 400 or so pages got, but in this case, I do.

No real spoilers for particular plot-important details, just some opinions on certain things about the general direction of how the setting ended up, which is alluded to vaguely:

Spoiler:

I really think that the outcome of the idea which set up the altered world in the back portion was insufficiently explored, and got rather short-changed compared to the apparent thematic wrapping-up the author might have been intending as the main plot thread regarding the various ways in which humanity could survive. I'd have liked to have seen more of that world in greater depth, since it really did give the impression of a great deal more lurking under the surface of the ensuing societies, which I found more interesting than the other stuff later.

Though I think the plausibility of it all suffered from what TVTropes likes to call Planet of Hats and Sci-Fi Writers Writers Have No Sense of Scale, since IMHO the author is probably greatly underestimating how much speciation and philosophical schism would likely be going on in the timeframe given, as well as their descendants' probable level of knowledge about and attachment to their ancestors' speech and original cultural references, and the number of ensuing factions, even with rigid and ruthless suppression as a method of social control for some of them.

While I'm willing to buy that the availability of video-recordings would probably keep a spoken language standard even longer than a written one, and maybe an aggressive die-out of native speakers of the other languages would lead to just one remaining and no other ones springing up in the future even from Latin-style fragmentation, I don't think the effect would last nearly that long over such an extended time. Even within the past half-century or so, IIRC there's been change recorded in living memory from the BBC switching over from RP accents to something more middle-class (not to mention all the regional stuff) and even the Queen's own speech having been recorded as changed from her ultra-posh accent in the radio days to a more blended-class pronunciation in recent years.

It all just read a little too homogeneous for all the societies involved, after their initial splits from each other, and not enough development of new culture as a result from having the old one literally die out and having to improvise from there. (And I'd have liked to see more of the subsociety hinted at being slightly less homogeneous than the others, though they were still pretty Planet of Hats from what we saw of them.)

Mild recommend. Very interesting potential, somewhat let down by the depth of its exploration, apparently in favour of concentrating upon foregrounding a less interesting plot thread, and really too long to pick up on the basis of it unless you're already into this style of novel anyway.

Jim Butcher's The Aeronaut's Windlass, which I finally finished this morning, I'm just going to have to leave off the voting. There's nothing obviously wrong with it and it seemed like a perfectly cromulent swashbuckling steampunk adventure fantasy, but whatever it was about Butcher's prose or storytelling style or whatever, I just couldn't get into it. It took so long to read because I kept finding excuses to make snacks and surf the internet between pages, and when I finally did try to set aside a chunk of time to devote my attention to it, I ended up taking a nap. That just seems like not the sort of thing I can honestly place a vote for in what's essentially a Reader's Choice award, when I literally start to fall asleep in the middle of reading it (and wasn't even exhausted from staying up all night to finish the one before it like I had been for Uprooted), even if it were only to rank it behind the others.

That said, it was a pretty decently-written and plotty action adventure tale that held together well enough and had some moderately interesting worldbuilding going into it and considerably less obtrusive infodump than Seveneves (which I actually did stay up to finish to see how it turned out, even though my eyes were glazing over), so for Gentle Readers who get along better with the prose or storytelling or whatever it was, they'd probably enjoy this quite a bit.

As for Best Graphic Story, I only bothered to read the stuff supplied in the packet, but Invisible Republic by Corinna Bechko & Gabriel Hardman was pretty good and got 1st place. It had a very interesting and slightly unusually structured story which alternated using occurrences at a future point to try and unravel what happened in the past which set up the future and now I'm quite curious as to where the story will go in further installments.

In 2nd place, Sandman: Overture by Neil Gaiman with art by J. H. Williams was lovely to look at, and fleshed out pieces of Sandman backstory as well as providing some new stuff, but the packet sample was incomplete and the overall story not as compelling as Invisible Republic, even with the added nostalgia value. I kind of gave a pity 3rd place vote to The Divine by Boaz Lavie with art by Asaf & Tomer Hanuka. It was an okay but not that interesting sort of standard tragic stuff happens in exploited countries sort of story, and the art just didn't appeal to me. But publisher First Second did supply the entire thing to the Hugo Voter Packet and it did contain a reasonable amount of fantasy element and exploration of the themes it set out to do, so it might as well place a little above the candidates who actually didn't show up instead of being left off entirely.

Apparently I still have a few hours left in which to fiddle with the voting ballot, so maybe I'll have a re-skim of the shorter fiction categories and adjust my choices for the middle places, which were a little less obvious to figure out than the stuff which obviously ranked above the rest.

08-01-2016, 01:18 AM	#24354
ATDrake Wizzard Posts: 11,517 Karma: 33048258 Join Date: Mar 2010 Location: Roundworld Device: Kindle 2 International, Sony PRS-T1, BlackBerry PlayBook, Acer Iconia	So, it being Hugo voting season, I finally opened up the Voter Packet sometime last week to try out the stuff I hadn't already read earlier in preparation for the nomination rounds, and went to the library a few days ago to pick up the "missing" novels. As far as Best Novel goes, Uprooted by Naomi Novik gets the 3rd place slot. It was a very charming coming-of-age fantasy which it took me quite a while to realize was actually set in an historical folkloric version of our world. I didn't even notice who one of the famous fairy tale figures was until it was made explicitly clear, though it was pretty obvious in retrospect, and having them not be a villain in the piece probably helped obscure it for me. While it didn't seem wildly original or even particularly inventive with the fairly standard fairy tale fantasy elements it was playing with, it handled them in a pleasantly entertaining manner. Recommended if you want an engagingly told heroine's journey adventure tale in a slightly unusual setting drawn from Eastern European traditions. Neal Stephenson's Seveneves gets the 4th slot. This had some very interesting ideas going into the setup, which actually turned out to just be the setup for some even more interesting ideas partway through. And the level of detail about trying to make the initial ideas work was also interesting, and generally not too much of a slog to follow. But IMHO, the execution just wasn't quite there for the back portion which the twist was supposed to set up, and I think it just kind of ran into the limits of the author's imagination. It's rare that I think that an already 700+ page book could have used another 300+ pages in the same volume to properly follow-up on something or other with the same lavishness and attention to detail as the first 400 or so pages got, but in this case, I do. No real spoilers for particular plot-important details, just some opinions on certain things about the general direction of how the setting ended up, which is alluded to vaguely: Spoiler: I really think that the outcome of the idea which set up the altered world in the back portion was insufficiently explored, and got rather short-changed compared to the apparent thematic wrapping-up the author might have been intending as the main plot thread regarding the various ways in which humanity could survive. I'd have liked to have seen more of that world in greater depth, since it really did give the impression of a great deal more lurking under the surface of the ensuing societies, which I found more interesting than the other stuff later. Though I think the plausibility of it all suffered from what TVTropes likes to call Planet of Hats and Sci-Fi Writers Writers Have No Sense of Scale, since IMHO the author is probably greatly underestimating how much speciation and philosophical schism would likely be going on in the timeframe given, as well as their descendants' probable level of knowledge about and attachment to their ancestors' speech and original cultural references, and the number of ensuing factions, even with rigid and ruthless suppression as a method of social control for some of them. While I'm willing to buy that the availability of video-recordings would probably keep a spoken language standard even longer than a written one, and maybe an aggressive die-out of native speakers of the other languages would lead to just one remaining and no other ones springing up in the future even from Latin-style fragmentation, I don't think the effect would last nearly that long over such an extended time. Even within the past half-century or so, IIRC there's been change recorded in living memory from the BBC switching over from RP accents to something more middle-class (not to mention all the regional stuff) and even the Queen's own speech having been recorded as changed from her ultra-posh accent in the radio days to a more blended-class pronunciation in recent years. It all just read a little too homogeneous for all the societies involved, after their initial splits from each other, and not enough development of new culture as a result from having the old one literally die out and having to improvise from there. (And I'd have liked to see more of the subsociety hinted at being slightly less homogeneous than the others, though they were still pretty Planet of Hats from what we saw of them.) Mild recommend. Very interesting potential, somewhat let down by the depth of its exploration, apparently in favour of concentrating upon foregrounding a less interesting plot thread, and really too long to pick up on the basis of it unless you're already into this style of novel anyway. Jim Butcher's The Aeronaut's Windlass, which I finally finished this morning, I'm just going to have to leave off the voting. There's nothing obviously wrong with it and it seemed like a perfectly cromulent swashbuckling steampunk adventure fantasy, but whatever it was about Butcher's prose or storytelling style or whatever, I just couldn't get into it. It took so long to read because I kept finding excuses to make snacks and surf the internet between pages, and when I finally did try to set aside a chunk of time to devote my attention to it, I ended up taking a nap. That just seems like not the sort of thing I can honestly place a vote for in what's essentially a Reader's Choice award, when I literally start to fall asleep in the middle of reading it (and wasn't even exhausted from staying up all night to finish the one before it like I had been for Uprooted), even if it were only to rank it behind the others. That said, it was a pretty decently-written and plotty action adventure tale that held together well enough and had some moderately interesting worldbuilding going into it and considerably less obtrusive infodump than Seveneves (which I actually did stay up to finish to see how it turned out, even though my eyes were glazing over), so for Gentle Readers who get along better with the prose or storytelling or whatever it was, they'd probably enjoy this quite a bit. As for Best Graphic Story, I only bothered to read the stuff supplied in the packet, but Invisible Republic by Corinna Bechko & Gabriel Hardman was pretty good and got 1st place. It had a very interesting and slightly unusually structured story which alternated using occurrences at a future point to try and unravel what happened in the past which set up the future and now I'm quite curious as to where the story will go in further installments. In 2nd place, Sandman: Overture by Neil Gaiman with art by J. H. Williams was lovely to look at, and fleshed out pieces of Sandman backstory as well as providing some new stuff, but the packet sample was incomplete and the overall story not as compelling as Invisible Republic, even with the added nostalgia value. I kind of gave a pity 3rd place vote to The Divine by Boaz Lavie with art by Asaf & Tomer Hanuka. It was an okay but not that interesting sort of standard tragic stuff happens in exploited countries sort of story, and the art just didn't appeal to me. But publisher First Second did supply the entire thing to the Hugo Voter Packet and it did contain a reasonable amount of fantasy element and exploration of the themes it set out to do, so it might as well place a little above the candidates who actually didn't show up instead of being left off entirely. Apparently I still have a few hours left in which to fiddle with the voting ballot, so maybe I'll have a re-skim of the shorter fiction categories and adjust my choices for the middle places, which were a little less obvious to figure out than the stuff which obviously ranked above the rest. Last edited by ATDrake; 08-01-2016 at 01:27 AM. Reason: Misspelt author name.