N.K. Jemisin’s The Stone Sky is the concluding volume of a trilogy of beloved novels… that I’ve never really managed to connect with. I have generally found that these novels’ pessimism and relentless misery have only served to distance me from the narrative rather than suck me in. I like a lot of the worldbuilding choices of the initial book, The Fifth Season, but I the story was full of misery porn which resulted in a detached reading experience for me. The second book, The Obelisk Gate, continued the misery and suffered from middle-book-in-a-trilogy syndrome. This didn’t stop Hugo voters from awarding the Best Novel Hugos for both, and I judge a fair chance of The Stone Sky to bring home the third straight.

The story picks up where we left off. Essun is traveling with her comm, Castrima, in searching for a new place to live, but ultimately seeks to find her daughter Nassun and help save the world by bringing the moon back into proper orbit. Nassun, for her part, has lead a miserable life, is fed up with the world, and wants to destroy it by smashing the moon into the earth. Finally, we get glimpses of the past as Hoa describes Syl Anagist, a civilization that existed thousands of years ago which, we soon learn, created the obelisks and inadvertently shot the moon out of its orbit, thus causing their destruction and leading to the current, miserable situation.

Interestingly, the entire story is narrated by Hoa. He appears to be telling the story to Essun, as her sections of the story are in second person (as they’ve been throughout the series). Hoa’s portions are in first person, and Nassun’s are in third. It’s an interesting choice and I suppose there’s a reason for it, but it ultimately felt a bit distracting at times and my dumbass engineer’s brain kept wondering about irrelevant things: How does Hoa know the inner emotions of closed off people like Essun and Nassun so well? Wait, when is Hoa relating all this to Essun? Why is he relating this to Essun? I can certainly come up with answers to these questions and they’re ultimately nitpicks. The thing is, I find this happens most often when I’m not sucked into a story. I’ve learned to trust that these sorts of nitpicks don’t mean much in and of themselves, but the fact that I’m making them at all means something important and indicates a deeper problem.

While I like a lot of the worldbuilding choices, this isn’t a world I like spending time in, nor do I particularly enjoy hanging out with these characters. I mean, I don’t think we’re even supposed to like them very much. Sure, they’ve endured horrendous hardships and misery, but they’ve also perpetuated that abuse and oppression and some are easily described as mass murderers. That people struggle to deal with abuse or respond in ugly ways that only serve to continue the cycle is certainly relevant (and obviously reflects some of our society’s worst tendencies), but it’s difficult to sustain. This is the point, I guesss, and it does represent rich thematic ground. I just don’t like wallowing in it for three books, especially since all of this was so ably demonstrated in the first book. I didn’t love that one either, but I could see why it was so well regarded. The succeeding volumes feel like a rehashing of the same ideas, over and over again, and they do so using that awkward second person narrative device that tells more than it shows.

The book attempts a hopeful but ambiguous ending, which is something that I would appreciate much more if anything else in the series had indicated a cause for that hope. When your premise is that the end of the world is coming and the world is not worth saving, it’s difficult to care about the actual outcome. I don’t want every story to be fluffy bunnies and rainbows, but these books tend to be so extreme in their portrait of misery that I was immediately detached from the story and never found a way back in.

I feel like I’m being very harsh on the novel here. Perhaps it’s because I never would have read the second or third books in this series, but I did because I wanted to vote in the Hugos (and I don’t think it’s fair to vote when you haven’t read the book). The funny thing is that this is probably the most upbeat of the three books and I probably enjoyed reading it more than the previous installments too. Plus, it actually has an ending and some sense of closure! Some of the characters actually express love in this book, and it’s a love that is genuine. As mentioned above, it’s got a mildly happy ending. However, after all the betrayals, endless rehashings of infanticide and abuse, and inescapable oppression, the hope at the end feels hollow and unearned. Maybe we’re supposed to feel that way and I just don’t like being immersed in despair? Look, these books are very well written and I think I can say that Jemisin achieves exactly what she wanted, which is certainly laudable. It’s just not my bag, and that’s fine.

As far as the Hugo Awards go, this will probably end up on the bottom of my ballot. I’m still reading one novel and I suppose it could fall off a cliff, but I’m doubting that.

Ann Leckie’s Hugo Nominated novel Provenance takes place in the same universe as her Ancillary trilogy, but in a largely independent locale that is only peripherally impacted by the events of those three novels. Ancillary Justice was the first, and to my mind, best of that preceding trilogy, managing a great balance between crunchy hard-SF and social/cultural exploration. In particular, I found the depiction of shared consciousness and hive minds intriguing, and Leckie posited some interesting consequences of such technology. Ancillary Sword and Ancillary Mercy largely jettisoned that idea in favor of the more social and cultural context of a much smaller system (also: tea), a maneuver that was unexpected and bold, but which left me mildly disappointed. At the time, I wondered what it would be like to read a story in the same universe, but with different characters.

Enter Provenance, a story set in the same universe, but not tied to any of the characters from the Ancillary series. Ingray Aughskold is seeking to gain favor with her Mother so that she could be named heir. She’s in competition with her brother Danach, who is considered to have the position locked down. Desperate times call for desperate measures, so the book opens with Ingray’s plan to free a notorious thief named Pahlad Budrakim out of “Compassionate Removal” (a wonderful doublespeak euphemism for “brutal prison that is anything but compassionate”) in the hopes of convincing em (not a typo, we’ll get to it) to reveal the location of valuable vestiges that he had stolen. If she could find those vestiges and return them to her family, it would be a big coup for her (vestiges are apparently a big deal on her home planet, wielding enormous cultural and political influence), and potentially get her back in the competition for heir.

Naturally, her plan starts to disintegrate immediately. She’s spent most of her money getting this thief smuggled out of prison, only to find that e’s not who she thought e was. Then it turns out that Tic Uisine (the captain of the ship she’d chartered for her mission) has some undisclosed beef with some authorities. Even once they manage to get their way back to Ingray’s home planet, the trio keeps encountering newer and increasingly more complicated obstacles. There’s an archaeological dig that has implications for Ingray’s family, a murder mystery pops up, a group of children is kidnapped, alien ambassadors hang around causing fun, titular questions around provenance crop up, and so on. There are actually some mentions of the far flung events of the Ancillary books, but they’re exactly that: far flung and not particularly important to the workings of the plot here.

It’s all, well, pretty good. While lacking a bit in that crunchy SF component, it’s got lots of fun elements, a complex plot (something I usually enjoy more than most), and reasonably well done characters. The thematic exploration of how the past shapes the present is well done and fits neatly in with Leckie’s wheelhouse of exploring identity. Speaking of which, while the Ancillary series played with a sorta lack of gender, here Leckie reverses course, reintroducing gendered pronouns and including a third, gender neutral set of pronouns (e, eir, er – this is what Garal/Palad identify as, which is why I used those pronouns above), and allowing characters to choose how they identify. Like the primary use of feminine pronouns in the Ancillary books, it has an effect here, though it doesn’t feel entirely in line with the story.

All well and good, but aside from some interesting uses of mechs, the openly SFnal elements are a bit lacking. I mean, sure, there’s different planets and spaceships and whatnot, but they’re used to establish and illustrate cultural differences more than to cultivate that sense of wonder that SF can do so well. Not that this sort of thing can’t generate sense of wonder, but nothing in the book really twixed me the way that it probably should. There are references to two alien species in this novel, but neither are fully explored and mostly exist on the periphery. The Presger remain enigmatic, but we do find out some stuff about the Geck (in particular, we get some background on Tic, who has a complicated relationship with the aliens). I like that the aliens seem to be actually alien and not the distressingly common “basically a human but with a slightly different appearance” trope that a lot of SF uses… but it would be nice if we’d actually explore these worlds and beings a little more. But then, the plot here really doesn’t need it, and such a digression would probably only serve to kill the pacing.

So we’re left with a generally enjoyable novel. It’s got lots of fun elements, decent characters, and a nice, twisty plot. While I feel like I should like this a lot more than I do, it’s not like I didn’t enjoy it or anything. It seems to be sticking with me more after I’ve read it than I thought it would whilst reading. Is it truly Hugo worthy? Maybe, but I suspect it’s here more because of the follow on effect from the popular Ancillary books. Personally, it will probably fall somewhere in the middle of the pack in terms of this year’s Hugo nominees, but this is only the third (of six) that I’ve read, so it’s hard to say for sure (I’m midway through two others though, and this seems about right).

Yoon Ha Lee’s Ninefox Gambit was a dense, sometimes gruesome Space Opera. I really enjoyed it, and it was nominated for a Hugo Award last year. Raven Stratagem is the follow up, second in a trilogy, and yes, I enjoyed this one too, despite it succumbing to traditional middle entry in a trilogy syndrome.

I was initially a little hesitant to pick up this sequel. As much as I enjoyed it, I remember the first novel being a bit difficult to follow at parts, and I didn’t entirely remember what had happened (I read it almost two years ago) except in broad strokes. Fortunately, Raven Stratagem presents itself in a much more accessible manner than its predecessor, which allows you to ease back into the universe without too much strain.

We continue to follow the bleshed personalities of Kel Cheris and Shuos Jedao, quasi-successful at retaking the Fortress of Shattered Needles in the first book, as they now set out to defend the Hexarchate from an invading enemy, the Hafn. Cheris is a gifted mathematician and infantry captain for the subservient Kel faction. She’s been possessed by the “ghost” of long-dead military genius, madman, and mass murderer, Jedao, of the Machiavellian Shuos faction. The Hexarchate being an oppressive tyrannical semi-dystopia, the leaders/dictator aren’t sure if they can trust Jedao and his stated intention to simply repel the Hafn. For that matter, neither is the fleet that Jedao has taken over for that purpose. General Kel Khiruev even attempts to assassinate Jedao, but eventually succumbs to Jedao’s, er, charms? That’s not the quite the right word, but it gets the job done, I guess.

So yeah, that brief description kinda captures the density of the worldbuilding, but again, Raven Stratagem is more accessible at laying this out than Ninefox Gambit. This is a best-of-both-worlds situation here. I appreciate dense worldbuilding, and Lee was able to make it more approachable without losing anything. Shuos Jedao, despite frequent reminders of atrocities he’s committed in the past, remains a fascinating character and indeed, things tend to bog down a bit whenever we’re not following him (and I should add her, as Cheris is a woman). I found myself much less interested in the Hexarchate politics side of the story, which comprises a large portion of the second act, though it’s clearly a necessary part of the story.

There are some twists and turns along the way. One of them, which I think is played as a twist, was actually something that I thought I had just misremembered from the first book, but which it turns out, I remembered correctly*. But the final revelation sets up a genuinely interesting premise for the third book to tackle. Unfortunately, that leaves this book in a sorta limbo, as a lot of middle entries in a series feel. This is excellent, but it’s not self-contained, and that always makes Hugo voting a little tricky. Of course, the Hugo context is a bit unfair – as middle entries go, this is a good one, and it moves the story along briskly (which is more than can be said about a lot of middle novels). In any case, Lee’s worldbuilding is solid, but quite dark and sometimes gruesome. Fortunately, he doesn’t wallow in the misery in the way that other books tackling similar themes seem to do.

As Science Fiction, I’m not entirely sure the whole Calendrical Math thing feels grounded enough; it feels more like a metaphorical representation of the way the Hexarchate is controlled than an actual mathematical thing. That not a terrible thing, and it does seem to be played with an internal consistency that I appreciate. Again, Cheris and Jedao are interesting, and their immediate surroundings work, but as mentioned above, once you get beyond that, the story falters a bit.

This is a good book, and Lee’s skill is worth rewarding with a Hugo Award, but I don’t think this is the book to do it. As the second in a series, it feels incomplete (again, not in a way that is bad outside of the Hugo context), which makes it difficult to judge against other books. On the other hand, I expect this will actually do well when it comes time to put in my ballot – I like this work, so I suspect it will come out ahead of several other nominees that I’m unsure about. Fortunately, Lee also has a novelette that’s been nominated, Extracurricular Activities, which is self-contained and excellent. It follows Jedao back when he was a young officer, and bears a sorta Bujold-esque feel to it, which I naturally love (this is high praise, people). I haven’t read any of the other novelette finalists, but I suspect this one will top my ballot. Ultimately, I will most likely pick up the final book in this trilogy, which says a lot, and I greatly look forward to whatever Lee tackles next.

* (Spoilers) I had assumed that Jedao’s ghost had died in the betrayal at the end of Ninefox Gambit, but for most of this book, Cheris is basically just pretending to be Jedao, and since she still has all of his memories implanted in her consciousness, she can pull it off. Lee can get away with this because we mostly see Jedao from the perspective of others, like Khiruev, and Cheris has no reason to let on that she is using Jedao’s reputation for her own purposes (which, to be fair, were also Jedao’s).

The 2018 Hugo Award Finalists were announced yesterday, so it’s time for moaning and whinging about the nominees. Assorted thoughts below:

• The novel ballot looks interesting enough. Only half are part of a series! Arguably. One of the series entries is the first (and reasonably self-contained), but one of the non-series is set in a universe the author had already established. So I guess it evens out.

  John Scalzi’s The Collapsing Empire is that reasonably self-contained first entry in a series, and it’s a lot of fun, my favorite Scalzi since The Human Division. I don’t expect it to win. New York 2140 seems like a pretty standard Kim Stanley Robinson offering, an extension of many of his usual themes. Again, I don’t expect it to win. Provenance, by Ann Leckie is the aforementioned standalone novel set in Leckie’s Imperial Radch universe. It seems like a heist story, but the writeups emphasize that it’s about “power, theft, privilege and birthright” which is pretty well tread ground for the past few years of nominees (and for which Leckie has already been recognized), but then, this seems to be what current voters like. I don’t see it winning, but what do I know. I really enjoyed Raven Stratagem but Yoon Ha Lee’s second Machineries of Empire novel suffers from middle-novel-in-a-trilogy syndrome, so it did not make my nominating ballot (Yoon Ha Lee has been a mainstay of my nominating ballots for years, and as we’ll see, there’s another option for him that I think works better in an awards context). Then again, Jemison’s Obelisk Gate also suffered from middle novel syndrome and managed to win last year, so once again, I know nothing. Six Wakes, by Mur Lafferty represents the only new-to-me author nominated (she won the Campbell a few years back, so not a completely new name), and the novel sounds like a neat closed room mystery… in space! I never managed to catch up with it before the nominating period ended, but it was something I wanted to read. Who knows if it has any chance? The Stone Sky, by N.K. Jemisin is the conclusion to her trilogy, of which the first two entries have already won Hugos. For any other series or author, I’d say that means this one has less of a chance of winning, but despite my hesitations with the previous two books, people seem to really love these novels, so there’s a fair chance it’ll win again this year. Not sure what that augurs for the health of the awards, but I guess nothing is decided yet.

  I’ve only read two of these novels, definitely want to read one more, was curious about another two, and am not particularly looking forward to The Stone Sky (but at this point, I feel like I should probably finish out the trilogy). That’s a reasonable batting average, I guess. Pour one out for The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. though. I suspect that will remain my favorite novel of the year, even after catching up with these other four nominees.

• I’m a little surprised that Lois McMaster Bujold didn’t get a nod in the novella category, but I’m guessing that releasing three Penric novellas in one year managed to split the vote. I was happy to see All Systems Red by Martha Wells get the nod (it was on my ballot and one my favorite reads of last year). A few other recognizable names on the ballot, but nothing that really grabs me. I skipped the category last year, not sure if I’ll manage this year.
• Novelette has another Yoon Ha Lee story, “Extracurricular Activities”, that was what I nominated instead of Raven Strategem. It takes place in the same universe and features a character from his novels, but is entirely standalone (and more accessible than the novels as well).

  My other nominee didn’t make it, and nothing is jumping out at me for the other nominees.

• I haven’t read any of the nominated Short Stories, but in my experience with these awards, this category is almost always the biggest disaster. I almost never enjoy any of the short stories, for whatever reason.
• I remain skeptical of the Best Series category on pragmatic, logistical grounds, but think it funny that Lois McMaster Bujold could win the award again this year (and I judge a fair chance of that).
• The Dramatic Presentation awards look decent enough, considering the venue. Still wish that Colossal and Your Name would have gotten some love, but hey, you can still watch them (go give them a shot – they’re both great). In other news, I’ve actually already seen half the Short Form nominees, which is a rarity.
• The 1943 Retro Hugo finalists were also announced. I actually nominated a couple of things, and they both made it. Rooting for Hal Clement’s short story, “Proof” (a fantastic story, well worth checking out if you can find it – are these included in Hugo Voters Packets? Be on the lookout.) And Asimov’s “Foundation” got a nod too (though it’s only the Novelette, a subset of what most of us read). The only real surprise is that The Screwtape Letters, by C. S. Lewis didn’t get a nod. Or maybe not. Current Hugo voters aren’t into Lewis’ religiousity, I guess.

And that covers it. I’ll most likely be reading and reviewing over the next few months (might take a bit to get going, as I just started a large book that will take a bit to finish)…