The novella series was pretty good this year, not perhaps as good as it has been in the best years. The top three stories were easy to decide; they were all very good. The rest weren’t exactly bad, but weren’t on the same level - mostly due to plot points, not the writing. Fantasy was once again more popular with four nominees against two science fiction ones.
Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite (Tordotcom)
The story happens in a generation spaceship, where people are periodically “rebirthed” into new cloned bodies. Their memories and personalities are stored separately and are loaded into a new body when needed. A woman who works as some sort of police inspector has been taking some time off from living. She wakes up in a new body, which, to her surprise, isn’t her own. There has apparently been a murder, and some of the personality recordings have been destroyed, leading to the true death of a person. The recording of the detective was also destroyed, but there was a backup which was automatically uploaded to the closest available body if the original was damaged. So, she must find out who the murderer was and who destroyed the recordings. It soon starts to look like the culprit was the person whose body she is wearing… but why? Ok detective story, which was a bit too long with too much ”sightseeing” of the habitat. There were some strange practices which were not explained: for example, why delay getting a new body if you have dementia until the memory recording has decayed?
Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz (Tordotcom)
There has been a civil war between California and the rest of the US. One of the dividing things has been robot rights, as California recognizes sentient robots as individuals with rights. Some rights - of course, nowhere as many rights as humans. Mostly they have the right to work under human supervision at menial tasks, but that is more than in the rest of the US. A group of robots has worked in a restaurant. The restaurant closes suddenly, as the company that owned has gone under. No one has told the robots what to do. They decide to establish a new restaurant, this time a good one. But robots cannot officially own things, and they can work only for humans. Well, obstacles have been created to be overcome. They start a noodle restaurant with hand-drawn authentic noodles with savory assortments and manage to produce excellent food - even when they are review-bombed for being robots. Light story which mostly fizzled out at the end. They manage to establish a restaurant. And then what? I wasn’t a great fan of this story; I felt a bit detached from the characters, and the events weren’t really engaging,
Cinder House by Freya Marske (Tordotcom; Tor UK)
Fairy tale retellings have been popular for a few years now. Now it was Cinderella's turn. Ella is abused by her stepmother and stepsister. Her time is largely filled with chores. And she isn't even alive; she and her father were killed by the stepmother. She haunts the house and is practically a part of the house. If it is untidy, she must put everything in order. And if the house is harmed, she feels intense pain - which her stepsisters used to control and torment her. She can’t leave the house, and no one but her family can see her. She can move things only inside the house. As she finds a way to leave the house, her life opens up a lot. She can listen to lectures at university; she can go see ballets and observe other watchers. She pays attention to a man who seems to love dancing and immerses himself completely in the shows. She even gets a friend - she writes to the neighboring country where the best authority of the ghosts lives. Their correspondence turns into a long-distance friendship. Then the prince announces a three-night-long ball, where he will choose his new wife. Ella is determined to go at any cost and finds a way with some magically loaded wooden shoes covered with pieces of a broken mirror. Her sisters are also going and are planning to snare the prince. As Ella arrives at the ball as a real young woman, she meets the prince, who happens to be the lonely man from the ballet. They talk, and he has two secrets: one - the ball is just a formality - his new bride has already been selected and is a princess from a neighboring country. And the prince is cursed: if anyone sees him dancing, they will hopelessly fall in love with him. That had caused at least two suicides already. At the ball, he is wearing leg braces which prevent him from dancing “really” and he isn’t causing an epidemy of crazy love. And his bride-to-be is someone Ella knows…
An excellent, moving, exciting, and well-written story with a fresh take on the Cinderella story.
What Stalks the Deep by T. Kingfisher (Nightfire; Titan UK)
The story continues the series, where a retired soldier with “her” (the pronoun situation in “her” language is overtly complex; there is a pronoun for a female who has abandoned her gender and started a military career). This time they travel to the US, where their friend has bought an abandoned coal mine. The friend’s cousin has disappeared after he saw strange red lights inside the mine and followed them deeper. They examine the mine and eventually see strange lights; at the same time, someone seems to visit the camp while they are away. Is something living inside the mine? Is it some malevolent being? What are its aims? How can it move almost undetected? A pretty good, exciting, and even scary story, which derives inspiration from the classic story At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft. There is also a fairly similar being in some books by Brian Sanderson.
The Summer War by Naomi Novik (Del Rey US; Del Rey UK)
Celia is a daughter of a nobleman who practically singlehandedly saved the kingdom from the periodic attacks by summerpeople, elf-like creatures with a tendency to party and celebrate and wage ruthless war against people living in the north - when it occurs to them. They are fighting to avenge a princess of the summer people who was married to a northern king, who killed herself. Celia has a big brother, Argent, whom she loves; he is handsome, kind, smart, and brave. She has another brother who everyone ignores. The big brother has a disagreement with their father (He isn’t interested in marrying any princess, as his tastes went another direction) and leaves the castle forever. Celia is hurt and accidentally (this was the first time she actually had magical power) curses his brother to a loveless life. She soon realizes what she did but can’t take the curse back and can’t even contact her brother. She connects with her other brother, who turns out to be a nice person, even if he has some confidence problems after being ignored by everyone. As Celia grows, she is supposed to marry the prince, but it turns out to be a diversion; she actually is shipped to Summerland to marry their prince and to be the target of summerpeople’s resentment. A very good story written very well, as all Novik’s stories I have read.
The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar (Tordotcom; Arcadia UK)
Two sisters live by a river which is filled with magic “grammar”. (I think it was a bad choice of a word - I was trying to think what the magic had to do with language, especially as “nomine” was another word used in connection with the magic. The sisters sing beautiful songs and people upstream (?) enjoy them. One of those magical people falls in love with one of the sisters, and they decide to get together. However, a local businessman had wanted to marry the sister and throws her into the river, and she drowns. However, because the river is magical, she doesn’t entirely die; instead, she is rescued in the magic lands by her fiancé. She can’t return to human lands as a person, however, but she can return as a harp. And as a harp, she can sing and is able to tell who killed her. A fairly good fairy-tale-style story. The magic was pretty vague and seemed able to do whatever the plot needed it to do. There were many similarities to Naomi Novik’s story: a magic land where carefree but very strange, practically immortal beings live. And romance between humans and those humanoid elf-like beings. The language was good but perhaps bordering on pretentious. Not among my top choices.
My voting order:
1. Cinder House by Freya Marske (Tordotcom; Tor UK): 1
2. What Stalks the Deep by T. Kingfisher (Nightfire; Titan UK): 2
3, The Summer War by Naomi Novik (Del Rey US; Del Rey UK): 3
4. The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar (Tordotcom; Arcadia UK): 4
5. Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite (Tordotcom): 5
6. Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz (Tordotcom): 6
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