The Emperor's Soul, by Brandon Sanderson

The Emperor's Soul is the last of the Hugo Nominees for me to read this year.  Brandon Sanderson is getting a lot of eyeballs these days for completing the Wheel of Time series, but hasn't landed one of the really big awards yet.  He might do it here.  This item was a good, engaging story.  It took a little time to grow on me--very little, which is a good thing since it's a novella.  But once it did, I couldn't put it down.  It's a story of magic, and the magic is Forgery--making a perfect replica of an existing item by causing the history of the replica to change to match the original.  Or for the object to believe it did, rather.  The philosophy is complex, and Sanderson makes use of the complexity--the powers that be don't understand it either.  It's also a nice interplay between Shai and Gaotona, the ultimate con artist and the Last Honest Man.  Quite a lot in a little package, and well worth taking a couple of hours to read.  I give it a strong three stars, and figure he might follow it up since he likes to write in series.

The Drowning Girl, by Caitlin R. Kiernan

The Drowning Girl is by far the most literary work I have read this year.  It's too bad this sort of thing doesn't make more of an impression on me.  I find it hard to be truly fair to dark fiction, but it's out there as a major element of speculative fiction so I do keep trying. 

This is a story of madness.  Not over the top pathology like Hannibal Lecter, but a more ordinary sort of madness that millions have lived with.  India Morgan Phelps, or Imp, sort of controls the madness with drugs and therapy, but her ghost story is waiting to be told.  Writing is her attempt to sort out madness from reality, and if there is any good news here it is that she succeeds.  And as I said, it is literary--very stylistically complete, everything about it intentional, fully developed backstory.  And even though I do not care for this genre much, I found it grew on me at the very end.  So I would say that if you liked The Red Tree you will definitely like this one, though you have probably already bought it. Three stars from me, for the ending.  I value endings, more than some do.

Mono No Aware, by Ken Liu

Ken Liu is one of the very best emerging authors in science fiction.  I have reviewed a couple of other fine works of his (search for them yourself--see the tech note below).  This year he is nominated for a Hugo for the short story Mono No Aware, just out in Lightspeed.  A lot of really good SF is cultural exposition that is current but set in a plausible future.  This story is a great example, and a very good quick read.  The protagonist is Japanese, and is in fact the last Japanese person alive, so far as they know.  The story is told in a very simple and moving way.  It may in fact be slightly over the top as a cultural exemplar, but I really didn't mind.  Take 20 minutes and read it.  Strong 3 stars from me, and probably my favorite for the Hugo this year.

I am writing this on an iPad, and pretty much had a fail on the Blogspot site using the Safari browser.  Could not create a post at all.  That was cured by installing Chrome (who'd a thunk it?).  Still pretty hard to select text in it, but I'm getting used to it.  Am parsimonious with links, though.

Redshirts, by John Scalzi

I was in the middle of another novel when I stopped to read Redshirts.  I normally don't like to do that, but library availability will not wait and I'm a committed free fiction reader, as well as library supporter.  So I took a brief break (4 hours total) to take it in.

The book is quite a lot of fun.  I have not read a lot of Scalzi's work, so mostly what I know of him is as a parodist.  His other recent award nominated work, The Shadow War...is a very funny April Fool's joke.  This one is a takeoff on televised SF, specifically on Star Trek and the red shirt security officer phenomenon. 

Having your characters mirrored in real life, or a "real" life mirroring literary characters, is a common trope in fiction.  I remember it in SF from Lazarus Long in The Number of the Beast, a not particularly good Heinlein novel.  This one is much more fun. Scalzi's writing style reminds me ofdialog on Firefly, though he did not write for that series as far as I can tell.  Read Redshirts for a good time.  I'd say it was a contender for the Hugo, though it wouldn't beat out 2312.  Four stars from me.

Captain Vorpatril's Alliance, by Lois McMaster Bujold

Lois McMaster Bujold is continuing the Vorkosigan saga, even though all the Vorkosigans are pretty much retired.  The successor protagonist is Miles' cousin, Ivan Xav Vorpatril.  I looked forward to reading this one, if only to see where she is taking this venerable and overall quite good series. 

And the answer is--pretty much to the same place.  Not nowhere--Captain Vorpatril's Alliance is a decent enough book, Bujold is a great writer with a good sense of how to hold interest.  But not anywhere else, either.  Bujold has built a large space in the Wormhole Nexus, and has explored some of the other cultures there (Beta Colony, Cetaganda, Jackson's Whole) but except for Ethan of Athos the series is pretty much fixated on Barrayar, a feudal culture suitable for galactic fantasy but not so much for science fiction.  Ivan is not much of a character--the other characters (mostly Jackson's Whole denizens) carry the story.  He's just a bit generic as a handsome slacker hero (now growing up a bit) to carry the series.  Miles has large shoes to fill on Barrayar.  If Bujold doesn't move the series focus offworld for the next novel (assuming there is one), the series is pretty much done as far as I am concerned.  Three stars from me, and slightly disappointed.

McGuire, Seanan - In Sea-Salt Tears

I am a pretty obsessive-compulsive reader, perhaps in other things as well but particularly reading. I read things in sets, taking what comes.  Sometimes these sets don't hang together so well, or lead me directions I don't want to go, and I agonize over changing them.  That's the obsessive part. 

And so it went with In Sea-Salt Tears.  I normally like to read stories in a series in the order they were written, and will make a point to try and catch up a series if a later novel is nominated for one of the awards I follow.  I did this for the Vorkosigan Saga, and also for Game of Thrones. 

So I found that In Sea-Salt Tears was nominated for a Hugo, and went looking for a legal free version.  The story is self-published by McGuire, in this case meaning that she is giving it away.  A good practice for award nominees, I think. I don't usually catch up a series in order to read a short story--I didn't do this for Lawrence Schoen's Buffalito series, the latest of which was nominated for a Nebula this year and thus I read it.  But McGuire clearly states that her entry will make more sense if you have read the novels that come before it--the October Daye series, five of them.  My local library has them, but they look pretty much like YA novels aimed at 14 year old girls.  And the series started out a bit spotty, according to reviewers.  So in the end, I decided to just read her nominated story, and see if I feel like catching the series up.

I liked the story.  It stands alone reasonably well as a tale and is deserving of the nomination, though I don't think it will win.  Her tone is very different from when she is writing as Mira Grant, which shows her range.  As a romance and a scene-setter it does just fine, though like her zombie novels it is in a crowded space.  But I don't think I'll go read the rest of the series just for this story.  If one of the October Daye novels gets nominated for a Big Three award later, I'll read them all.  3 stars from me.

Mantis Wives, by Kij Johnson

One more for tonight.  Mantis Wives is a delightful little story of a type I enjoy--reminds me of one Ken Liu got nominated for, The Bookmaking Habits of Select Species.  These little catalogs are lots of fun, and in this case the list is the art works a mantis can make out of her husband.  Kind of nasty, but cute anyway, take 10 and read it.