Going to post a short selection of the winners but I think the nomination lists are an excellent add to the TBR pile. And I love short fiction, so many of them are free or available for a...
Going to post a short selection of the winners but I think the nomination lists are an excellent add to the TBR pile. And I love short fiction, so many of them are free or available for a relatively small cost.
SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL
WINNER: System Collapse, Martha Wells (Tordotcom)
FANTASY NOVEL
WINNER: Witch King, Martha Wells (Tordotcom)
HORROR NOVEL
WINNER: A House with Good Bones, T. Kingfisher (Nightfire; Titan UK)
YOUNG ADULT NOVEL
WINNER: Promises Stronger Than Darkness, Charlie Jane Anders (Tor Teen; Titan UK)
FIRST NOVEL
WINNER: The Saint of Bright Doors, Vajra Chandrasekera (Tordotcom)
NOVELLA
WINNER: Thornhedge, T. Kingfisher (Tor; Titan UK)
NOVELETTE
WINNER: “The Rainbow Bank“, Uchechukwu Nwaka (GigaNotoSaurus 8/23)
SHORT STORY
WINNER: “How to Raise a Kraken in Your Bathtub“, P. Djèlí Clark (Uncanny 1-2/23)
I personally didn't love Witch King that much, but she's popular and it is a reader voted award, so it's very vulnerable to popularity. I love T Kingfisher too but idk if I'd put Nettle and Bone...
I personally didn't love Witch King that much, but she's popular and it is a reader voted award, so it's very vulnerable to popularity. I love T Kingfisher too but idk if I'd put Nettle and Bone at the top of the novella list (I can't speak to horror though I really enjoyed her winner there)
But I think the nominee list is a good one for looking for new reads!
It would be if both of these books were actually award worthy. I don't read enough scifi to tell you what would have been a better choice than Murderbot last year, but I did read Murderbot and it...
It would be if both of these books were actually award worthy.
I don't read enough scifi to tell you what would have been a better choice than Murderbot last year, but I did read Murderbot and it was pretty mediocre - and I say this as a huge fan of her Murderbot novellas. The full-length novels are just not as good.
But fine whatever I can see it.
The real crime here is Witch King, which is on my bottom 5 worst novels I read last year, let alone "published in 2023." This book was terrible. The only reason it could possibly have won anything is name recognition; if it had been a debut novel by someone unknown, this would have gotten 0 attention except 1 or 2 reviews here and there saying "uh, this was bad."
The debut winner, The Saint of Bright Doors is a much better novel than Witch King, and it would have been a perfectly adequate "best novel of the year" winner imo. Although, personally, I thought Victory City by Salman Rushdie was better if you want Indian literary/magical realism fantasy published in 2023 (this is deliberately very specific to point out that I thought SoBD got extremely overshadowed here).
There were a lot of great books published last year including Dungeon Crawler Carl 6, Empire of the Wolf 2, Amina al-Sirafi, Yumi, Tress, Will of the Many, Rook & Rose 3, Dark Profit 3 (this is Orconomics' series), and Emily Wilde.
Going to post a short selection of the winners but I think the nomination lists are an excellent add to the TBR pile. And I love short fiction, so many of them are free or available for a relatively small cost.
SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL
WINNER: System Collapse, Martha Wells (Tordotcom)
FANTASY NOVEL
HORROR NOVEL
YOUNG ADULT NOVEL
FIRST NOVEL
WINNER: The Saint of Bright Doors, Vajra Chandrasekera (Tordotcom)
NOVELLA
WINNER: Thornhedge, T. Kingfisher (Tor; Titan UK)
NOVELETTE
WINNER: “The Rainbow Bank“, Uchechukwu Nwaka (GigaNotoSaurus 8/23)
SHORT STORY
(Idk why some formatting is weird)
Re:formatting four spaces at the beginning of a line is converted to a code/fixed width section in markdown.
But I copied and pasted all of them so I'm not sure why some are weird. ┐( ˘_˘)┌
Martha Wells winning both Science Fiction and Fantasy is impressive.
I personally didn't love Witch King that much, but she's popular and it is a reader voted award, so it's very vulnerable to popularity. I love T Kingfisher too but idk if I'd put Nettle and Bone at the top of the novella list (I can't speak to horror though I really enjoyed her winner there)
But I think the nominee list is a good one for looking for new reads!
It would be if both of these books were actually award worthy.
I don't read enough scifi to tell you what would have been a better choice than Murderbot last year, but I did read Murderbot and it was pretty mediocre - and I say this as a huge fan of her Murderbot novellas. The full-length novels are just not as good.
But fine whatever I can see it.
The real crime here is Witch King, which is on my bottom 5 worst novels I read last year, let alone "published in 2023." This book was terrible. The only reason it could possibly have won anything is name recognition; if it had been a debut novel by someone unknown, this would have gotten 0 attention except 1 or 2 reviews here and there saying "uh, this was bad."
The debut winner, The Saint of Bright Doors is a much better novel than Witch King, and it would have been a perfectly adequate "best novel of the year" winner imo. Although, personally, I thought Victory City by Salman Rushdie was better if you want Indian literary/magical realism fantasy published in 2023 (this is deliberately very specific to point out that I thought SoBD got extremely overshadowed here).
There were a lot of great books published last year including Dungeon Crawler Carl 6, Empire of the Wolf 2, Amina al-Sirafi, Yumi, Tress, Will of the Many, Rook & Rose 3, Dark Profit 3 (this is Orconomics' series), and Emily Wilde.
Witch King was not a good book.
Thank you both for explaining this to me, that sure is disappointing. Yumi and Tress were great!