The novel category was pretty good this year. All the nominated books were good and mostly quite original. The nominees included a fairly even mix of fantasy and science fiction, though some were a bit on the borderline—The Tainted Cup and even The Ministry of Time (whose time travel element borders on fantasy) come to mind.
They all worked well as standalone books; none were middle parts of a series. At least one, The Tainted Cup, opens a new series. A couple of others (Alien Clay and A Sorceress Comes to Call, for example) could have follow-ups that would be extremely interesting to read.
After finishing all the books, it was immediately obvious which one should go in first place. Alien Clay was creative and imaginative, with a uniquely designed ecosystem and it was one of the better nominees in several years. The last place was also easy to decide, even though that book was still better than some past winners. In fact, better than many of them.
Second to fourth place was harder to determine, as those books were all about equally good, but this was my final order.
1. Alien Clay by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Orbit US, Tor UK)
2. A Sorceress Comes to Call by T. Kingfisher (Tor)
3. The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett (Del Rey, Hodderscape UK)
4. Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Tordotcom)
5. Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell (DAW)
6. The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley (Avid Reader Press, Sceptre)
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