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Hugo novellas, part 1
Aug. 3rd, 2023 08:49 pmIn order of how much I had to say about them:
-When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain (Vo) - Second Singing Hills novella about a cleric who collects stories. Not a Hugo nominee, but I wanted to read it so I could read the actual Hugo nominee (the third novella, which is currently on hold at the library). I liked it quite a lot, though not nearly as much as the first one, I think because it just didn't tap into my particular tropes quite as much (which is of course not Vo's fault).
-Ogres (Tchaikovsky) - Slight novella about a society in which the ogres lord it over the humans. It was pretty easy to figure out the main conceit, but I wasn't sure how it was going to end (and I liked the ending twist). Tchaikovsky continues to be a writer whose writing is very easy to read, which I appreciated.
The interesting thing about this one was I came away feeling like the novella was more deeply pessimistic about human nature than perhaps the author intended: humans can fix fairly dire problems, but humans are also infinitely corruptible, and in fact all the evidence available in the book is that these fixes only take place through profoundly hierarchical and subjugative means. ( Spoilers. )
The end is, I think, supposed to be hopeful, with its statement that sometimes you have to burn it all down. But given the events of the book, and that no one in the book seems to have thought at all about how to do it differently, I'm really not confident that what rises from the ashes is going to be any less hierarchical and subjugative than what was there beforehand... just that probably different entities are going to be at the top and the bottom.
-Even Though I Knew the End (Polk) - a queer noir story, set earlier in the last century, with a noir ex-warlock investigating murders in an alt-Chicago with demons and angels.
So the conceit is awesome, and I really enjoyed the writing here which I thought did live up to that conceit -- there is some lovely word-evocation and worldbuilding detail. My quibble is that I felt like there was something deeply incoherent about the worldbuilding and plotline.
( Spoilers. )
But even though those things bothered me, the writing was still strong enough that I liked it a lot!
-When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain (Vo) - Second Singing Hills novella about a cleric who collects stories. Not a Hugo nominee, but I wanted to read it so I could read the actual Hugo nominee (the third novella, which is currently on hold at the library). I liked it quite a lot, though not nearly as much as the first one, I think because it just didn't tap into my particular tropes quite as much (which is of course not Vo's fault).
-Ogres (Tchaikovsky) - Slight novella about a society in which the ogres lord it over the humans. It was pretty easy to figure out the main conceit, but I wasn't sure how it was going to end (and I liked the ending twist). Tchaikovsky continues to be a writer whose writing is very easy to read, which I appreciated.
The interesting thing about this one was I came away feeling like the novella was more deeply pessimistic about human nature than perhaps the author intended: humans can fix fairly dire problems, but humans are also infinitely corruptible, and in fact all the evidence available in the book is that these fixes only take place through profoundly hierarchical and subjugative means. ( Spoilers. )
The end is, I think, supposed to be hopeful, with its statement that sometimes you have to burn it all down. But given the events of the book, and that no one in the book seems to have thought at all about how to do it differently, I'm really not confident that what rises from the ashes is going to be any less hierarchical and subjugative than what was there beforehand... just that probably different entities are going to be at the top and the bottom.
-Even Though I Knew the End (Polk) - a queer noir story, set earlier in the last century, with a noir ex-warlock investigating murders in an alt-Chicago with demons and angels.
So the conceit is awesome, and I really enjoyed the writing here which I thought did live up to that conceit -- there is some lovely word-evocation and worldbuilding detail. My quibble is that I felt like there was something deeply incoherent about the worldbuilding and plotline.
( Spoilers. )
But even though those things bothered me, the writing was still strong enough that I liked it a lot!
