2026 Hugo Novels

 

I have voted for the 2026 Hugo awards! I'll post my full ballot soon, but before that, here's what I thought about the six novels nominated this year. You can find these and other reviews on my Goodreads Hugo Finalists bookshelf. An overall takeaway this year is that one thing I love about reading the Hugo nominees is that it encourages me to read things I may not have otherwise picked up. And sometimes I end up loving those things. Thanks, Hugos, for keeping me an open-minded reader!

A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett

I was surprised how much I loved the first one of this series, The Tainted Cup, which I read for last year's Hugo short list. This sequel is on this year's Hugo list, and I continue to enjoy it. 

That new world smell has somewhat worn off, but it's still an intriguing and unique fantasy world that reminds me a lot the Dune universe. Instead of spice from giant sandworms, they enhance humans with extracts from giant kaiju. The main character definitely has some Mentat energy. While there are familiar fantasy elements (royalty, empires, etc.), there's a lot of depth and uniqueness to the world building here. It's definitely not a generic Tolkien-riff.

I continue to love Ana, the main character's boss, and one of the best absent-minded professor types out there. We get some hints about her origins, which I hope to learn more about in the next novel.

At times the murder mystery and royal intrigue plot gets a bit muddled for me (do we need quite so many characters? At least give me a who's who!). I'm not sure the anti-authoritarian theme comes through in the novel for me as clearly as it does in Bennett's afterword, but I suppose it's there.

Overall, I enjoyed this one, and I'll look forward to the next installment.

Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor

Amazing. One of the more interesting novels I've read. A lot of reviews focus on the genre, but that to me is one of the least interesting parts of Death of the Author. My advice is to let this book be what it is without worrying about labels like science fiction, "literary" fiction (whatever that even is), or whatever. That, in fact, seems like a big part of what a book like this can be, and why I find it so refreshing in this era when books are endlessly marketed into sub-sub-sub-genres and "comps" (comparisons to other books). 

I was fascinated by the story of a Nigerian-American author and her route to and struggles with literary success. Is this semi-autobiographical? Maybe. I follow the author on social media, and the main character does seem somewhat similar at least to how she presents herself there. It's not a one-to-one correspondence, of course. And there is also a parallel story of a robot in the future finding her way in a world mostly devoid of humans. 

What do these stories have to do with each other? You'll have to read to find out, but I can say that along the way you get a lot of thoughts about identity and finding one's way in the world, art and the publishing industry, the benefits and perils of success, artificial intelligence, technology, and above all the value and mystery of story telling and why we (whoever "we" are) tell stories. 

The main character has a strain of techno-optimism and appreciation of ultra-wealthy people that didn't always sit well with me, but it did get me thinking; besides, she's not supposed to be an entirely likable protagonist (such would be boring, anyway). I can't promise you will like this book, dear reader, but I can promise that you're unlikely to read anything else like this.

Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky 

I was thrilled to see another work from the insanely prolific Tchaikovsky on this year's Hugo list. This has everything you expect from a Tchaikovsky book--weird biology, weird physics, Big Ideas, social commentary, etc. I also always forget that it takes me a while to get into most of his books, and in Shroud, it took me about half the book to get into it. I was panicking, thinking I found a Tchaikovsky book I didn't like! Rest assured, dear reader, I don't begrudge him for taking a bit to get into things, since all that build up and seeming meandering is necessary for the ending to be ... well, to avoid spoilers, let's say...  to be what it is. 

My main criticism is that, while this is an excellent sci-fi book, it feels like it's retreading some of the same ground as last year's Alien Clay, so it's hard to call it one of Tchaikovsky's best. But even a middle-of-the-road Tchaikovsky is still an excellent book.

So what's it about? A research team for a soulless megacorporation trying to profit from the stars with little regard for their employees discovers a moon called Shroud where everything is in darkness (not even radio waves escape the surface). They discover life, but not as we know it. It's really weird, having evolved in an environment with no light. It's classic Tchaikovskian bio-weirdness. 

Like I said, he does tread some similar ground as Alien Clay, but it's not exactly the same (my head canon is that it could be the same universe, but who knows?). There are also some interesting thoughts about, well, thoughts, and consciousness. I don't want to spoil it, but instead I'll leave with questions you may ask as you finish the novel: Why must thoughts, experience, consciousness, etc. be limited to one biological container? Must your thoughts remain in your head?

The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow  

One of my favorite things about reading the Hugo nominees each year is that I'm sometimes surprised by loving something I may not have picked up otherwise (The Tainted Cup was last year's example). I'm generally more of a science fiction than fantasy fan, and something about the blurb on cover of this one made it sound more in the vein of a type of fairytale fantasy that I usually don't care for. 

I was so glad to be wrong! There's time travel! And a long timeline within a secondary world (this is not porthole fantasy from our world). The world building is interesting in itself, and the ideas about stories and their historical and political uses are fascinating. The time travel ultimately doesn't make much sense, but it rarely does (I think writers can rarely avoid being seduced by the idea of changing the past). 

I loved the first half of the book. The story unravels a bit for me in the middle, but it ties back together in the end (a few strands were loose for me, which may be my fault for not putting it together or just the fact that time travel rarely makes much sense). 

 

The Incandescent by Emily Tesh

This is another one I probably wouldn't have picked up if it weren't a Hugo finalist that I ended up loving nonetheless. A good example of why you have to put yourself in a position to enjoy new things...

The source of my trepidation is that this is marketed as "Dark Academia" and honestly sounds an awful lot like Harry Potter (British boarding school with magic, etc.). While that's all understandable from a marketing point of view, it really doesn't do justice to what this book is.

It's from the point of view of the teachers, for one thing, and probably some of the most honest treatment of teaching I've ever read in a novel, from thankless drudgery to the joys in the classroom and the thought that just maybe, it's making some difference. My favorite scene was probably one early on where a class of high school students are having a Socratic discussion about whether a demon is a person! That warmed my geeky philosophy-loving heart. (I would have liked a reprisal of that scene, but I suppose we get more fodder for answers later).

Since I mentioned demons: there are demons! I really loved the demons, not merely as bad guys, but as a sort of fundamentally unknowable type of life. They may also represent power, capitalism, oppression, or really any sort of hierarchical trouble. One of the big questions of the novel, in fact, is the deals with the demons of power that many people make, and some have to make just to survive.

The main character really felt human and relatable, at least for me as a teacher. I even cared about her weird, awkward love life so much I didn't skim past that to the demons.

I don't think this will be my #1 pick, but it will be much higher in my rankings than I would have thought.

The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson 

I have mixed feelings about The Raven Scholar. I enjoy the humor and the interesting narrative style. The world building is really cool (the animal gods who are Hidden, the throne determined by trials rather than birth, etc.). But the pacing is weird (seemingly interminable nothing for dozens and dozens of pages and then sudden huge plot twists), the characters can feel a bit simultaneously flat and overly dramatic (they sometimes feel like Harry Potter, YA, or soap opera characters), and for all that world building we see very little of the world (I loved the map, but I needed a glossary and dramatis personae). 

And it's all just so much longer than it has to be (do we really need so much detail about all those trials? There's a murder to solve!). There are lots of little ideas that I enjoyed but I had trouble locating any real Big Ideas... except maybe that it would be good to have the gods hidden as in the philosophy of religion concept of "divine hiddenness" or that the world suffers when we're all pawns of larger forces or that gods and emperors are more trouble than they're worth (I'm reminded of Star Trek's Klingons who killed their gods). 

I'm probably sounding more negative than I really am. I did enjoy it! I finished this 600+ page behemoth, after all! People who love plot twists, fantasy intrigue, corvids, and a bit of dry humor will probably enjoy this one.