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Some Hugo novellas
May. 30th, 2022 10:05 pmA Spindle Splintered (Harrow) - I feel like mostly I've had bad luck with Harrow, but I quite enjoyed reading this remix of Sleeping Beauty. I think it's in large part because the POV character is a 21st-century snarky girl who is very aware of fairy tale meta, so it's playing to Harrow's strengths, and I liked the directions it took. My biggest quibble is that someone needs to sit Harrow down and talk about the writing advice I read when I was a kid from Orson Scott Card (who himself had got it from, iirc, a ruthless editor), which is that if the story/scene/etc. is about X, you never actually mention X by name, which makes it that much more powerful. Whereas Harrow will just beat X into the ground! Have I mentioned that X is an Important Theme yet??
Elder Race (Tchaikovsky) - I keep meaning to read Tchaikovsky and never have, so I'm quite pleased that this showed up on the ballot to force me to :) I really liked it! It's basically... "Semley's Necklace," in its examination of, basically, how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, and how a society that is not technologically advanced will understand the advanced technologies, and how the society that is technologically advanced will understand the less technological society. My favorite bit is the one where we see Nyr's telling of history and Lynesse's understanding of that history side by side.
This is about the first time I've made a Le Guin comparison where I don't immediately start being disappointed in the comparator, not because Tchaikovsky is much like Le Guin, or is as good as Le Guin, but because his writing does have enough strength and consistency, and is interested in different enough themes, that I could enjoy it for what it was rather than keep being annoyed that I wasn't reading Le Guin. Which is rather a compliment!
Across the Green Grass Fields (McGuire) - I will say this for McGuire, she is easy to read. I was trying to multitask cleaning up with reading, and although I can usually read most things this way, I was getting over a cold and I couldn't concentrate on A Master of Djinn. "I know," I said, "I'll just read the latest Wayward Children," and indeed that worked very nicely.
This one reminded me of In an Absent Dream but was much better than that one, because there wasn't an irritating gotcha at the end, and as well as a plot there were relationships that were worth something, and the main character actually grew up and learned things. I like character development! Even though I felt like it was mostly told, not shown (I feel sometimes like pacing is weird in these stories because all the interesting growing-up stuff has to happen off-page).
The beginning made me angry, which in retrospect is probably not McGuire's fault. The bit where Mom A drags her 8-year-old daughter to a meeting with Mom B and B's 8-year-old daughter so that, with all four of them present and without talking to Mom B beforehand, Daughter B can apologize to Daughter A for not being friends with her -- I have a 7-year-old and I was like, WHAT. What parent does that?? You have just completely guaranteed that a) Daughter B will NOT apologize to Daughter A, b) if Mom B is any good, she will be forced to take Daughter B's side, and the whole thing will end in disaster. To be very fair, McGuire captured this dynamic very accurately! It just made me mad.
Elder Race (Tchaikovsky) - I keep meaning to read Tchaikovsky and never have, so I'm quite pleased that this showed up on the ballot to force me to :) I really liked it! It's basically... "Semley's Necklace," in its examination of, basically, how any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, and how a society that is not technologically advanced will understand the advanced technologies, and how the society that is technologically advanced will understand the less technological society. My favorite bit is the one where we see Nyr's telling of history and Lynesse's understanding of that history side by side.
This is about the first time I've made a Le Guin comparison where I don't immediately start being disappointed in the comparator, not because Tchaikovsky is much like Le Guin, or is as good as Le Guin, but because his writing does have enough strength and consistency, and is interested in different enough themes, that I could enjoy it for what it was rather than keep being annoyed that I wasn't reading Le Guin. Which is rather a compliment!
Across the Green Grass Fields (McGuire) - I will say this for McGuire, she is easy to read. I was trying to multitask cleaning up with reading, and although I can usually read most things this way, I was getting over a cold and I couldn't concentrate on A Master of Djinn. "I know," I said, "I'll just read the latest Wayward Children," and indeed that worked very nicely.
This one reminded me of In an Absent Dream but was much better than that one, because there wasn't an irritating gotcha at the end, and as well as a plot there were relationships that were worth something, and the main character actually grew up and learned things. I like character development! Even though I felt like it was mostly told, not shown (I feel sometimes like pacing is weird in these stories because all the interesting growing-up stuff has to happen off-page).
The beginning made me angry, which in retrospect is probably not McGuire's fault. The bit where Mom A drags her 8-year-old daughter to a meeting with Mom B and B's 8-year-old daughter so that, with all four of them present and without talking to Mom B beforehand, Daughter B can apologize to Daughter A for not being friends with her -- I have a 7-year-old and I was like, WHAT. What parent does that?? You have just completely guaranteed that a) Daughter B will NOT apologize to Daughter A, b) if Mom B is any good, she will be forced to take Daughter B's side, and the whole thing will end in disaster. To be very fair, McGuire captured this dynamic very accurately! It just made me mad.
