Wednesday, July 23, 2014

My 2014 Hugo Votes: Best Novella

This will be the last category I'm voting. As previously discussed, I'm not going to make it through the Best Novel category. The Retro-Hugos are neat, but I don't have time to track down anything other than the Short Story category (which was only missing one story). I started on the Campbell Best New Writer Award, but four of the five nominees submitted novels (one of them, two novels), and I'm not going to get to read all of them. I appreciate the opportunity to read the work, and I hope to have the time next year to vote in this category, but not this year.

So, on to the novellas. I rated one of them with four stars, one of them with three stars, and three of them with two stars. I ranked them in a different order, however.

  1. Equoid: "This is well-written, but it's not horror for people who don't like horror. (It's probably actually more creepy fantasy than horror, but I really don't like horror.)" 3 stars.
  2. Six-Gun Snow White: 2 stars. Some nice language, but the attempt to re-tell (sort of) the Snow White story in the Wild West did not work for me. Neither the plot nor the character held my interest.
  3. No Award.
  4. Wakulla Springs: "It was a well-written and enjoyable story....but...why, why, why do people keep nominating works that aren't SF/fantasy for SF/fantasy awards?" 4 stars.
  5. The Chaplain's Legacy: 2 stars. Too many cliches: aliens who marvel at the notion of religion and ordinary guy who becomes a hero by sticking to his principles, to name two.
  6. The Butcher of Khardov: 2 stars. I suppose it's possible to write a fantastic work based on a miniatures game, but this really felt like it was set in the universe of a miniatures game.

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