Reading (and ranking) Hugo-nominated works, 2022

This year I decided to read all the written works nominated for the Hugos! Most years I get pretty close since I use the list as a starting point whenever I find myself looking for something new to read, but this was the first year I intentionally decided to read everything. Public libraries are great, especially for books I might not feel strongly enough to buy, and even more especially for novellas, which are expensive to own in print relative to page count! Anyway, here is my unofficial Hugo ballot:

Novel
1. A Desolation Called Peace
2. She Who Became the Sun
3. Light from Uncommon Stars
4. Project Hail Mary
5. A Master of Djinn
6. The Galaxy, and the Ground Within

Novella
1. The Past is Red
2. A Psalm for the Wild-Built
3. Elder Race
4. Across the Green Grass Fields
5. Fireheart Tiger
6. A Spindle Splintered

Novellette
1. L’Espirit de L’Escalier
2. Colors of the Immortal Palette
3. That Story Isn’t the Story
4. Bots of the Lost Ark
5. Unseelie Brothers, Ltd.
6. O2 Arena

Short Story
1. Mr. Death
2. Where Oaken Hearts do Gather
3. Proof by Induction
4. Unknown Number
5. The Sin of America
6. Tangles

A few notes: I thought the Best Novel nominees this year were remarkably different, which made for a fun reading experience and a challenging ranking experience. If anyone actually reads this blog they'll know I love Arkady Martine's work, so Desolation getting my first-place vote should not be a surprise; A Memory is a stronger novel, in my opinion, but Desolation is still fantastic. I was also really impressed with She Who Became the Sun (eagerly awaiting the sequel!) and to a lesser extent Light from Uncommon Stars (which I wrote about in another post), both of which are by authors that were new to me.

Best Novella was a bit of a dud for me this year; I thought #2-6 in my ballot were all good reads, but none of them were especially striking, and some seemed to suffer from being too short and being unable to finish their narrative or emotional arcs (Elder Race and Across the Green Grass Fields in particular had this issue). However, the entire category is redeemed by The Past is Red, which is the best thing in any category on the list. It blew me away in both concept and prose, and I would not have read it at all if I hadn't been doing this Hugo read-through, since it deals both with climate change and the post-apocalypse, two topics I usually avoid. Now, though, I'm so glad I didn't pass on it.

The Best Novelette category seemed really strong to me; I really liked all of the top 5 stories in my list, and while "L'Espirit de L'Escalier" stood out to me as the clear first place, the other four were tricky to rank. It was a similar story (ha!) in Best Short Story, where my top four were very close together. I suspect "Proof by Induction" is higher on my list than most people's because of my close relationship with math and academia, but even without that added insight I thought it was an interesting concept. "Where Oaken Hearts do Gather" was really cool to read and made me wish that there were more real versions of the fictional song it's about!

All in all I'm happy I committed to this project (not that it took me too far out of the way of my usual reading habits), and I may continue it next year. Hopefully the nominees will be as varied and high-quality as they were this year--I already know a few things I would hope to see on the ballot.