I’ve now read all six nominees for the 2020 Hugo Award for Best Novel, and so I’m in a position to say if the right book won. In my opinion, it didn’t, but I’m not at all surprised and I think the book that won was a worthy one. I’m not writing this to share what other people thought about the 2020 Hugo Award for Best Novel, though, but to share my thoughts about the following books:
- Charlie Jane Anders – The City in the Middle of the Night
- Kameron Hurley – The Light Brigade
- Alix E. Harrow – The Ten Thousand Doors of January
- Arkady Martine – A Memory Called Empire
- Seanan McGuire – Middlegame
- Tamsyn Muir – Gideon the Ninth
Below, I include my review of each book, with the lowest rating first and my personal pick for the award last. At the very end, I also provide some general thoughts and reflections. Please note that these reviews were written independently of each other and not solely for this post.
6. Seanan McGuire – Middlegame
In Middlegame, Sheanan McGuire tells the story of two twins, separated at birth and raised as far away from each other as possible (which is, apparently, California and Massachusetts). As readers, we know that their births are part of an alchemist’s plan for world domination, but they don’t know that, they just know that they are unusual kids, one who is eerily good with numbers, and one who is equally talented with words. While the narrative isn’t strictly linear, we follow Roger and Dodger as they grow up, physically separated, but mentally linked. Why is it so important to keep them apart? And what will happen when they finally meet?
I found Middlegame to be a mixed bag. The novel is mostly well written and I like the portrayal and interaction between the main characters, which is important as most of the book focuses on their relationship. I don’t like the rest of the cast that much, though. The antagonists are caricatures and feel like villains from a children’s book.
I also find it hard to care much about how the plot develops. Without spoiling the story too much, there’s some parallel timelines and rewriting of history involved, which significantly lowers the stakes and makes it hard to feel that the outcome of scenes matter much, especially towards the end of the novel. It also feels like the structure of the novel is overly complicated, as if the actual content doesn’t merit the convoluted structure. It’s not as if the timelines are there to create something clever (compare with Kameron Hurley’s The Light Brigade that I reviewed last week, in which it is used for something clever).
The way McGuire opens the story didn’t appeal to me either, as it seems like we’re given a little bit too much information about the backstory before we get to know the main characters. The parts of the story told from the antagonists’ point of view are considerably less interesting than the rest, and I couldn’t care less about the alchemy bits. Since the novel is front-loaded with this, I wasn’t very impressed.
After writing the above, I realise that it sounds like I thought Middlegame was terrible, but that would be an exaggeration. While I won’t recommend it and probably won’t read more books in this series (I think a sequel is planned), I will probably read other books by McGuire if they seem interesting. Without realising it, I have actually read three books by her before, because she has also written other books under the pen name Mira Grant. Four of those have been nominated for a Hugo, and I’ve read all three in her Newsflesh zombie series starting with Feed (2010). Interestingly, that’s another example of a well-written series in a genre I don’t really fancy.
5. Alix E. Harrow – The Ten Thousand Doors of January
When she’s seven, January Scaller discovers a secret door to another world, but when she returns the next day for another visit, the door has been destroyed by a fire; all she has left as proof of her visit is a strange coin. January’s guardian, Mr. Locke, tries to convince her that it was all just imagination, and redoubles his efforts to turn January into a proper lady, with strict rules and no room left for the imagination. Mr. Locke is wealthy and provides January with all the material riches available to an early 20th century aristocrat, but however much January wants him to, he can’t fill the place of her mostly absent father, Julian, who’s busy working for Mr. Locke, travelling the world for rare artefacts and treasures.
The Ten Thousand Doors of January is well-written and would have been excellent if it weren’t for the fact that it feels like I’ve read the novel before. It’s too close to other coming-of-age stories where the main character gradually figures out she has magical powers and needs to use them to survive and make the world a better place. Some parts make me think of All the Birds in the Sky (Charlie Jane Anders), for example, but there are dozens of books that tell similar stories.
That doesn’t make this book bad in any way, in fact I rather like it. It has enough personality to raise it above the average and make it stand out. I also like the non-linear narrative (nothing outrageously inventive, just more complex than your typical fairy story) and the strength of some of the characters involved. If it’s one thing I think Harrow does well, it’s to make me care for characters, which is absolutely crucial in this kind of book.
Still, I don’t feel much attraction to this genre in general, and I probably wouldn’t have read it if it weren’t nominated for a Hugo in 2020. The fantasy elements feel worn-out and don’t tickle my imagination. I don’t regret finishing the book, but I don’t recommend it to people who have read a ton before, but it would probably be great for younger readers. Not too young, though, because the story is rather bleak at times.
4. Charlie Jane Anders – The City in the Middle of the Night
Tidally locked planets, i.e. planets that don’t rotate with regards to their star, have been the interest of science fiction authors for a long time, and I must admit that I’ve considered such a setting myself more than once. What would it be like to live in the twilight zone between permanent, scorching day, and permanent, freezing night? What stories could take place there and how would they be unique because of the setting?
Charlie Jane Anders gives one answer in her novel The City in the Middle of the Night. We follow two protagonists from two different cities: one where the scarcity of resources and the harshness of the environment are managed with authoritarian control and discipline; and one which is a liberal free-for-all (metaphorical) jungle. Sophie has grown up with tight government control of resources, and through her crush Bianca, she becomes involved in a student movement fighting for more freedom. Mouth, the other main protagonist, has grown up among nomads on the road between the cities. After her people were wiped out, she tries to make a living as a trader and smuggler.
The City in the Middle of the Night is a mix between political thriller and science fiction adventure. Things start out black and white, because of course more freedom is good, so a revolution in Sophie’s city is the only way forward. But with limited resources and the ever-present environmental threats, freedom to do what you want, and amass wealth and power is also directly harmful to those not so fortunate. In this regard, the book reminds me of Ursula K. LeGuin’s The Dispossessed, which has a similar structure, but is otherwise completely different.
The science fiction adventure is mediocre at best. As I said in the introduction, the tidally locked world is interesting, but what Anders does with it is not very original, and the elements that are original feel like they belong in the genre of fantasy. This isn’t bad in itself, I’m just pointing out that the setting is not one of the strong points of this book.
Still, the book does have some remedial features. Just like in her novel All the Birds in the Sky (2016), the characters are relatable, believable and behave like real people. They have strengths and flaws, and the story forms around them rather than the other way around, which is refreshing in this genre. While I never really felt drawn in by Mouth and her story, I did by Sophie’s. Very good!
I’m not sure if this is just my subjective experience, but the book feels like it’s meant to have two equally balanced protagonists, but that Mouth’s end of the scales can’t match what’s happening on Sophie’s end, giving rise to a lopsided narrative. This becomes painfully obvious at the end, because what I think is meant to be a satisfying conclusion to the story feels like a book where someone forgot to write the last chapter. I listened to this as an audio book and had to double check that there wasn’t anything wrong with the file!
Some spoilers here: While the story does conclude nicely when it comes to Sophie and Mouth, this is not what I perceived to be the main drama in the book, which is that between Sophie and Bianca. That is the focus of much of the novel, but completely ignored in the end, and like I said, feels like it was covered in a last chapter that wasn’t included in the novel. I have two theories: either the author and I have very different views on what the focus of the story is, or she has planned a sequel.
Anyway, The City in the Middle of the Night is another example of a book that sounds more interesting than it is. It has many flaws, but I can’t dismiss it completely either, as I really did like the characters and think Anders did a great job with them. I still won’t recommend it, though, as there are so many books out there which will be more worth your time.
3. Arkady Martine – A Memory Called Empire
This novel opens with something awesome (the best title I’ve seen in a while), something intriguing (the dedication, which reads “This book is dedicated to anyone who has ever fallen in love with a culture that was devouring their own.”) and something confusing (the opening chapter throws a dozen weird names and politics at you, which makes it feel like the beginning of the Phantom Menace, which is of course a bad thing).
Once the novel gets going, it tells the story of the new ambassador from a tiny space station to a huge empire. She doesn’t know what happened to her predecessor, except that he kept their little space station from being absorbed into the empire for twenty years, and now she needs to figure out what happened to him and continue his mission. To aid her, she carries a fifteen-year-old copy of the old ambassador’s mind inside her own, leading to one of the novel’s main themes of personality, memory and identity. She’s studied the empire since she was a child, but now she has to dive straight into the deep end of the cultural immersion pool and learn to swim before the sharks swallow her whole.
All this sounds really cool, and the focus on language and culture should suit me really well. And it does, but not as much as I had hoped. It’s a bit hard to describe why I don’t think this novel is as awesome as it sounds, but I’ll have a go anyway. It’s well written, with believable characters and interesting interactions between them. These bits are actually very good and make the book worth reading all by themselves, but the problem is that this is caught up in what for me is a rather mediocre plot. At no point am I surprised, stricken by the ingenuity of twists and turns in the story, which feels like a let down considering that political intrigue makes up most of the book. I care about the characters a lot, but the plot fails to pull me in.
To summarise, this book feels like the books I’ve read by Ann Leckie (four, I think), meaning that it’s well written, has decent plot, setting and characters, but yet I probably won’t remember anything a few years from now. I certainly don’t regret reading A Memory Called Empire, but I’m afraid that few things in it are exceptional enough to actually be remembered.
PS. After writing the above, I noticed that Ann Leckie is quoted on the cover. Coincidence!?
2. Kameron Hurley – The Light Brigade
The Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley is a military science-fiction novel, telling the story of private Dietz, who joins the corporate army after an atrocity wipes out Sao Paulo, killing her family. We follow her training and deployment to the front, fighting a war of survival against a despicable enemy. The book continues the long tradition of war in science fiction, including novels like Starship Troopers (Heinlein), The Forever War (Haldeman), Forever Peace (also Haldeman) and The Old Man’s War (Scalzi), but it’s also reminiscent of real-world novels about war, such as With the Old Breed (Sledge) or All Quiet on the Western Front (Remarque).
However, The Light Brigade was written in 2019, and while it’s similar to the listed novels in many ways (especially Forever Peace and The Old Man’s War), it also adds something new. When dropping to different combat missions, the soldiers are beamed to the correct location (the title is not only a reference to The Charge of the Light Brigade), sometimes across vast distances, but during Dietz first drop, something weird happens. She’s briefed for one mission, but when she arrives with her squad, her updated mission brief shows a completely different mission. Everybody else seems to know what’s going on, and she decides to follow the oft-repeated mantra to follow the mission brief she has direct digital access to in her head-up display.
She thinks there’s probably been a logistics error, and she’s been teleported to the wrong battlefield, but when this happens again and people start calling her Mad Dietz, she starts doubting her own sanity. It seems to her that she experiences combat drops that don’t belong to her own timeline, and they reveal a very different war from the one she thought she signed up to. If she’s just mad, that’s one thing, but what if she can figure out what’s happening to her and use her mixed-up experience of time and space to put an end to the war?
The play with subjective experience and timelines adds an interesting twist to a familiar and somewhat (in my opinion) worn-out genre. The disjointed narrative further highlights the futility of war and how it can be self-perpetuating, making the novel a spiritual sequel to Haldeman’s novel The Forever War, which is a science fiction rendering of the author’s own experience of the Vietnam War, and where the whole point is that war is futile.
On the whole, The Light Brigade is quite good. The narrative is well-paced and the main character is relatable and interesting, which is important considering how much in focus she is. There are other people in the novel, but this is still mostly about a single person and her experience of the war. While this subgenre is not my favourite, I still found the novel worthwhile and would recommend it if you’re okay with the themes dealt with here!
1. Tamsyn Muir – Gideon the Ninth
What do you get if you combine necromancy, humour, puzzle challenges, dismemberment, trendy lingo, a ton of intermingled genre tropes, sword fighting, death cults and some romance? Gideon the Ninth!
I tend to like books that aren’t like other books I’ve read, and in this regard, Gideon the Ninth gets full marks. The juxtaposition of so many things that really don’t belong together shouldn’t work, but it does. The story is centred on the orphan Gideon, indentured to and raised by the death cultist of the Ninth House, which is ruled by her nemesis, Harrow, in all aspects Gideons mirror image. The two have grown up hating each other, but because they are the only young people in the Ninth House, Harrow is force to bring Gideon as her rapier-wielding cavalier when she’s summoned by the emperor to participate in a challenge to be elevated to imperial immortal necromancer. In their struggle against the other houses, which have all sent their own necromancer-cavalier duos, they need to overcome their internal rivalry or end up being torn to pieces, either by the other contestants or by the challenges that lie on the path to victory.
Like I said above, Gideon the Ninth is a strange mix of ingredients that oughtn’t go well together, but still result in one of the most interesting and refreshing reads in a while. The book contains innumerable fantasy and science fiction tropes, all mixed together into one glorious cocktail. We have realistic sword fighting and spectacular necromancy combined with an interstellar empire, space ships and modern, trendy teenager lingo. Without the lighthearted narration (Gideon), this novel would be very dark indeed, and without all the death and brutality, it would work well as a soap opera. The fact that all this is in one book is remarkable!
While I could try to find flaws, especially in the plot development towards the end of the novel, I think the strengths of this novel hugely outshines any minor blemishes. I greatly enjoyed Gideon the Ninth and look forward to reading more by Tamsyn Muir. It’s hard to say if you will like the book or not, but if the above description hasn’t scared you away, you’ll probably enjoy it too!
Thoughts and reflections
I’ve read most of the nominees for the Hugo Award for Best Novel since 2000 (and every single winner before that), and I think 2020 was a weak year on average, definitely the worst since at least 2015. I only think half of the books merit a nomination at all, which is unusually low. Among those, I have to pick Gideon the Ninth as the most worthy winner, because it’s the only one that feels genuinely creative. It was certainly the book I enjoyed the most, even if it has its flaws.
I also think that The Light Brigade would have been a worthy winner, considering that she managed to impress me, even though I don’t particularly like military science fiction. It’s a well-crafted novel written by an author who clearly knows what she’s doing.
Still, it was A Memory Called Empire that actually won the Hugo, which I think makes sense. I understand that most people don’t like Gideon the Ninth as much as I did, and that some people simply aren’t interested in books like The Light Brigade, and that leaves us with only one option. Don’t get me wrong, I liked A Memory Called Empire, I just don’t think it lived up to the expectations. That the sequel was much worse doesn’t affect my thoughts on the 2020 Hugo Award, but it’s still disappointing.
Then we have the three books I don’t really think should have been nominated. I can understand that some people liked The City in the Middle of the Night, but the other two? Not so much. I normally don’t read many books the year they are published, but surely there must have been other works of fantasy and science fiction published in 2019 that were more interesting?
The documentation is easy to access, so if you’re interested, you can see data from the nomination and final voting process here. I have not read any of the books that were suggested but not nominated, but if you have, it would be interesting to hear how they compare to the actual nominees!
In the same document, we can also see the final ranking, not just the winner:
- A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine
- Middlegame by Seanan McGuire
- Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
- The Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley
- The City in the Middle of the Night by Charlie Jane Anders
- The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow
This ranking is not that different from mine, with the big exception of Middlegame. I really don’t know what people see in it, or how they can overlook the glaring weaknesses in the novel. I don’t mind the rest of the ranking too much, although I obviously don’t agree with it completely either.
If you’ve read this far, you probably have your own opinion, even if you haven’t read all the nominees. What do you think? Did the right book win? Was Middlegame much better than I think? Leave a comment below!
Leave a Reply