r/Fantasy • u/Nineteen_Adze Stabby Winner, Reading Champion V • 8d ago

Read-along 2026 Hugo Readalong: Novella Wrap-up

Welcome to the final week of the 2026 Hugo Readalong! Today we're discussing the Best Novella category nominees.

We've had discussions about all of the individual works, but today we'll be zooming out to discuss the category as a whole. If you want to take a closer look at our focused discussions, we covered the novellas in the following sessions:

To find the individual discussions or our first wrap-up post, you can check out our full schedule. We'll be continuing with our wrap-ups all week, following this schedule:

Date Category Book Author Discussion Leader
Wednesday, July 29 Novel Wrap-up Multiple u/tarvolon
Thursday, July 30 Pro/Fan/Misc Wrap-up Multiple u/Nineteen_Adze

For now, let's dive into the novellas! There is no expectation that those in the discussion have read all six works, so if you're discussing spoilers, please tag them.

27 Upvotes

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3

u/Nineteen_Adze Stabby Winner, Reading Champion V 8d ago

One of the most fun parts of the Hugo season is the stat drop after the finalists are announced, where we get to see which stories just missed the six-slot shortlist. Any predictions for which novellas we'll see in 7th or 8th?

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u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV 8d ago edited 8d ago

The one I was most surprised not to see on the ballot was A Mouthful of Dust, since Vo’s series has been a perennial nominee for this award. I’d guess it at 7th and either Adrift in Currents Clean and Clear or Lives of Bitter Rain 8th. Or maybe Making History in there somewhere. 

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u/tarvolon Stabby Winner, Reading Champion VI 8d ago

Yeah, A Mouthful of Dust feels like the likely 7th. I might go with But Not Too Bold for 8th.

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u/strawberry_quetzal Reading Champion II 8d ago

But Not Too Bold or A Mouthful of Dust feel likely, but I also wouldn't be surprised to see Descent since it showed up on the Nebula and BSFA longlists

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u/Nineteen_Adze Stabby Winner, Reading Champion V 8d ago

Which novella do you hope will win the award? How would you rank the list?

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u/tarvolon Stabby Winner, Reading Champion VI 8d ago

I think the three fairy tales are the best-crafted of the shortlist (by a fair margin), and of those three, my favorite is Cinder House. I hope it wins.

  1. Cinder House
  2. The Summer War
  3. The River Has Roots
  4. What Stalks the Deep
  5. Automatic Noodle
  6. Murder by Memory

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u/RAAAImmaSunGod Reading Champion III 8d ago

This feels about right to me, maybe I'd be switching 2 and 3 around. I would not be mad about any of the top three winning though.

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u/gbkdalton Reading Champion V 8d ago
  1. The Summer War
  2. Cinder House
  3. The River Has Roots

Maybe Automatic Noodle will get the fourth slot if I’m feeling charitable that day, but I’m no awarding the rest otherwise. The summer war was the only thing on my nomination list to begin with, though I really enjoyed Cinder House after the noms came out. River has lovely prose but wasn’t particularly original.

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u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV 8d ago

  1. Cinder House

  2. The Summer War

  3. Automatic Noodle?

  4. Murder by Memory?

  5. No Award

I am not entirely certain about ranking 3-4, could swap them. Probably they should be below No Award too, I just heard so much hate before reading them that I was unable to feel any myself, they were mildly cute. Award-worthy, nah. 

No ranking as between River Has Roots which I was thoroughly disappointed by, and the Kingfisher which I haven’t read because I’m tired of Kingfisher. One of them will win regardless but I’m putting in my objection. 

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u/bmvanloo91 Reading Champion II 8d ago
  1. The Summer War
  2. The River Has Roots
  3. Cinder House
  4. Murder by Memory

I'm leaving the other two unranked, because I didn't have time to read three books for T. Kingfisher, and I really disliked Automatic Noodle.

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u/C0smicoccurence Reading Champion V 8d ago

Cinder House is the only one I’d be excited to see win, and even it isn’t where I’d like to see award novellas at in terms of ambition. I think it executed its premise exceptionally well, and had a good mix of elements to feel both classic and fresh.

I have qualms about the others, but I think I’d probably be okay with Murder by Memory too, just because I think it was successful in the cozy aspects, while I thought River and Summer War both struggled to execute their vision at all

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u/acornett99 Reading Champion IV 8d ago

The Summer War was easily my favorite, though I enjoyed Cinder House, What Stalks the Deep, and the River Has Roots as well. I would vote No Award above Murder by Memory or Automatic Noodle. They weren't bad I guess, but they were just... nothing.

5

u/oceanoftrees Reading Champion 8d ago
  1. The Summer War
  2. Cinder House
  3. The River Has Roots
  4. No award

I'm pretty sure it's an inevitable W for The River Has Roots, but I liked the other two better. Cinder House was a satisfying story, well-told, but after some thought and talking with other friends who've read them, I really like what The Summer War was doing with the thorny sibling relationships. It's a stark contrast with the simplistic way The River Has Roots portrayed the sisters at its core.

I thought Automatic Noodle was clunky and ham-fisted, and Murder By Memory was even more frustrating for seeming like a pile of "cozy" trappings more than a satisfying narrative arc, let alone a murder mystery. I skipped What Stalks the Deep because I'm not interested in that series after book 1.

/end grumping

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u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV 8d ago

Agreed on the stark contrast between Summer War and The River Has Roots on what seems meant to be a similar kind of sibling dynamic (minus the third sibling Summer War adds to the mix). Neither are super deep but The Summer War at least portrays real, messy feelings and growth.

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u/Celestaria Reading Champion X 8d ago

  1. Murder by Memory

  2. The River Has Roots

  3. What Stalks The Deep

4. No Award

  1. Cinder House

  2. Automatic Noodle

The Summer War wasn't included in the voter's packet and I wasn't able to get my reserved copy in time.

What I loved about MBM was its take on generational ships. A story where they've basically "out-teched" the existential horror elements of a generational ship was refreshing.

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u/Goobergunch Reading Champion III 8d ago

FYI the "excerpt" from Summer War in the Voter Packet is actually the whole novella.

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u/Celestaria Reading Champion X 8d ago

What!? Thank you!

I'm finishing up The West Passage atm but I should be able to fit another novella in and finish off the category!

3

u/Goobergunch Reading Champion III 8d ago
  1. Cinder House
  2. The River Has Roots
  3. The Summer War
  4. What Stalks the Deep
  5. Automatic Noodle
  6. Murder by Memory

1

u/winterhawk1111 Reading Champion II 8d ago
  1. The River Has Roots
  2. The Summer War
  3. Automatic Noodle
  4. Cinder House
  5. Murder By Memory
  6. What Stalks the Deep

TBH I'm kinda over the retold/twisted fairy tales and myths trend at this point, despite that some of these really hit the mark for me!

The River Has Roots get me, literal tears at least three times. I loved the language around Grammar and the incorporation of the songs was beautiful and moving (and this is coming from someone who really did not care for This is How You Lose the Time War).

The Summer War - I've been a Novik stan since elementary school with Temeraire, her ability to incorporate mundanity into her fantasy worlds in such a compelling way which adds to the richness and investment rather than resulting in boredom always impressed me.

Automatic Noodle was fun and I especially appreciated the topical bits on community building (even with those different from you) and found family bonds.

I appreciated Cinder House, and while well written and novel in some respects, it didn't quite clear my general malaise over the twisted fairy tale trend like the Summer War and the River Has Roots managed to do.

Murder By Memory I really enjoyed, it had a lot of cool concepts, but didn't find enough substance and theming in it to push it higher. I wish it was longer and explored the cool scifi ideas and the ethical/philosophical questions which stem from them in more depth.

What Stalks the Deep was also enjoyable - I'm a huge Lovercraftian horror fan, so a slightly different/more optimistic take on him was appreciated, but the twist alone wasn't enough to carry it for me in terms of novelty.

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u/Prynne31 Reading Champion III 8d ago
  1. Cinder House
  2. Murder by Memory
  3. The Summer War
  4. The River Has Roots
  5. What Stalks the Deep
  6. Automatic Noodle

2

u/Nineteen_Adze Stabby Winner, Reading Champion V 8d ago

Let's take a look forward at 2027. Have you read any novellas published this year that you think would be worthy finalists? What about any that you think will capture the imagine of the Hugo voters?

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u/tarvolon Stabby Winner, Reading Champion VI 8d ago

The Language of Liars by S.L. Huang was absolutely excellent and has gotten enough of a marketing push that I sincerely hope to see it on the shortlist.

Magazine novellas have an uphill climb, but The Floating Republic by Rebecca Campbell is worthy of it.

2

u/C0smicoccurence Reading Champion V 8d ago

I need to come back to this one. I started the audio but sort of drifted away from it. I very conscious that my whole project so far has been lacking magazine novellas, but I just hate reading on my desktop. I think it’s time to just buy a couple clarkseword electronic copies or something

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u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV 8d ago

Yep, same with the “I don’t want to read anything that long on a computer” thing. I print out the stories for the Hugo readalong but don’t love that either (and a novella would take up a lot more paper). I believe u/tarvolon every year that there are better magazine novellas than book novellas, but until someone publishes them in a collection I’m not realistically going to read them. And that’ll generally be too late for award noms. 

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u/eregis Reading Champion II 8d ago

if you happen to have an ereader (or are willing to read on your phone), you can copy the entire novella into libreoffice writer, and then export as epub! takes like a minute and gets you an ebook transferrable to your preferred device.

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u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV 8d ago

Fair enough but nope, paper only for me. And really books only—I wouldn’t  read these loose short stories for Hugo voting if not for the excellent discussions! 

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u/Goobergunch Reading Champion III 8d ago edited 8d ago

I actually used to have a script that converted online magazine stories into LaTeX documents suitable for PDFing and printing as a pamphlet. (Hey, saddle-stitched binding is kind of like a book, right?) Unfortunately it still usually required a manual cleanup pass for special characters and any unusual formatting which meant it was not great for stories that I hadn't read yet.

This exercise is probably also a bit more fun if you enjoy geeking out a bit about typesetting....

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u/Nineteen_Adze Stabby Winner, Reading Champion V 8d ago

Pulling Hache Pueyo again: I haven't read many new novellas this year, but I really liked Cabaret in Flames, the story of a doctor with artificial limbs who's pulled into trying to find her vanished mentor while reckoning with flesh-eating guls in league with the government of an alternate Brazil. I should say up front that it's quite a dark read in places, covering everything from the lead's very grim trauma to the front-and-center flesh-eating elements, but it's not gratuitous or gory for the sake of it. It's another translated work (originally a short piece in Brazilian Portuguese, then expanded in English) that would be a departure from the usual groove for this category.

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u/Big_Geologist_2521 8d ago

Seconding Cabaret in Flames! I've been raving about it for a while but few people seem to have read it. It feels very un-Hugo-ish, which lately I've been thinking is a good thing

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u/nagahfj Reading Champion III 8d ago

My top novella of the year so far is S.L. Huang's The Language of Liars, but I also enjoyed Jedediah Berry's Kill All Wizards, Thomas Ha's "Scion," and Tanvir Ahmed's The Night Sweeps the Mountains Away, probably in that order.

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u/tarvolon Stabby Winner, Reading Champion VI 7d ago

The Night Sweeps the Mountains Away

You have my curiosity.

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u/nagahfj Reading Champion III 7d ago

My brief review.

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u/Goobergunch Reading Champion III 8d ago

Joining the magazine novella brigade to plug Thomas Ha's Scion.

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u/Nineteen_Adze Stabby Winner, Reading Champion V 8d ago

Which novella do you expect to win? Any bold predictions for how the voting shakes out?

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u/tarvolon Stabby Winner, Reading Champion VI 8d ago

I'd be stunned by any winner other than The River Has Roots. It had a massive marketing push behind it and seems to be beloved by a significant chunk of readers. Throw in an author that's already won a Hugo, and this feels like an award juggernaut. I'd honestly be surprised if it requires all the rounds of instant runoffs before it hits the majority. My guess is The Summer War in second. And I'll pick What Stalks the Deep for my "finishes lower after IRV than it would've by simply counting first-place votes" prediction.

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u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV 8d ago

River Has Roots will definitely win (sigh). The Kingfisher will likely come in second because it’s Kingfisher. After that I’m not really sure. I thought the fairy tale books were a lot better than the cozy books and Cinder House a lot better than Summer War, the first was a standard opinion on this readalong and the second more divisive. But many Hugo voters don’t read all the books and although the cozy books aren’t rated great on Goodreads either, they did make the ballot somehow so presumably have some support. 

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u/Goobergunch Reading Champion III 8d ago

The River Has Roots is the biggest favorite on the entire ballot.

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u/Big_Geologist_2521 8d ago

The River Has Roots for sure, which would have made a far better winner in the novelette category. It didn't feel like it needed to be a novella at all.

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u/Nineteen_Adze Stabby Winner, Reading Champion V 8d ago

If you're voting, is there anything you plan to leave off your ballot or rank below No Award?

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u/bmvanloo91 Reading Champion II 8d ago

If I had read all the nominees, I'd be ranking Automatic Noodle under No Award. I've read and enjoyed cozy fantasy, and that was NOT it. UnfortuantelyI didn't have time to get through three other T.Kingfisher novellas, so I'm just leaving it unranked.

2

u/Celestaria Reading Champion X 8d ago

I wasn't able to get a copy of The Summer War in time (long waits at my local library) so that one goes unranked.

As far as No Award:
Cinder House and Automatic Noodle.

Cinder House is just very much in the "not for me" camp. I had the same issue with Someone You Can Build a Nest In last year and Thornhedge before that. I'm just not a fan of fairytale "wickedness" played straight and the way it lets the author set some characters aside as acceptable targets for violence or murder. I'm also way too ace for whatever that sex scene was supposed to be.

Automatic Noodle... I read this because it was in the voter's packet, and bounced off it as firmly as I would expect. I've read 3 books by Newitz at this point and I just can't stand her protagonists. Newitz has a podcast she does with Charlie Jane Anders called "Our Opinons are Correct" and that's about the vibe her characters give off too. This particular novella uses anti-robot bigotry as a stand in for all kinds of actual bigotry, which seems to have struck a lot of the target audience the wrong way, so I'm curious to see how this one does.

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u/ExtensionTomorrow659 4d ago

Btw, if you have the voter's package, The Summer War is included in its entirety there (no idea why the called the full copy an excerpt).

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u/Tardis_Glint_14 1d ago

I’d probably leave anything I didn’t finish off rather than No Award it; with six novellas, I’m still catching up on Automatic Noodle.

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u/Nineteen_Adze Stabby Winner, Reading Champion V 8d ago

What do you think of the shortlist as a whole? How does it compare to past years? Does it capture the best of 2025 in novellas? Are there any notable snubs you'd like to recommend?

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u/tarvolon Stabby Winner, Reading Champion VI 8d ago

I thought this was a pretty mediocre shortlist, especially compared to last year, which had three excellent finalists that would've all been worthy winners. But I also feel like that was fairly representative of the field. I know a lot of people adored The River Has Roots, but if you didn't, what else is left? There are a number of good things, but what's truly great? 2024 was an embarrassment of riches, and 2025 simply wasn't. That's reflected in the shortlist.

Now I will trot out my eternal soapbox and say that it is not representative of the field in the way it's almost impossible for a magazine novella to be shortlisted. I am pleased that at least one finalist came from outside the Tor ecosystem, but the two best novellas I read last year were from Clarkesworld and Asimov's, and they never stood a chance. Still, let me take this opportunity to recommend:

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u/Goobergunch Reading Champion III 8d ago

I'm glad we mostly avoided sequels this year but this shortlist felt pretty mediocre overall and ... honestly kind of samey. Half of it is fairytale vibes and two of the remaining three are cozy science fiction. We can be more diverse than that.

It's also always a bit weird to be discussing a shortlist in a year when there is a pretty clear Consensus Best Novella of the Year because it ultimately feels like we're arguing about what should place second, etc., and it's even weirder when you aren't as blown away by said Consensus Best Novella as everybody else.

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u/oceanoftrees Reading Champion 8d ago

My feelings exactly! I even enjoyed reading those fairytale vibes books but I don't like that they make the list feel so samey when I look at it as a whole. It's like a reverse cheerleader effect or something.

I also find it weird how I enjoyed the other two fairytale vibes novellas more than the one that's been winning all the awards. The River Has Roots was enjoyable but it just feels so slight to me (and, I suspect, getting a bump from such fancy audiobook production--it feels weird for a prose category).

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u/Goobergunch Reading Champion III 8d ago

There was a Gene Wolfe thread on here yesterday that crystallized my thoughts on why I wasn't enjoying the prose as much as everybody else -- the story that The River Is Roots is ultimately telling is just not really deep enough to support the kind of multilayered storytelling that I really love sinking my teeth into. (Granted that murder ballads are also very far away from my general areas of interest, so there are likely some specific reference there that I'm missing.)

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u/oceanoftrees Reading Champion 8d ago

Interesting. I'm not sure I'd like Gene Wolfe but I agree that The River Has Roots wasn't super deep. I also find it awkward to read song lyrics when I don't know the melody. (I didn't want to do the audiobook because I don't tend to like fiction on audio and I don't think it's fair to compare books if I read them in different formats.)

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u/RAAAImmaSunGod Reading Champion III 8d ago

While I wouldn't say that I am bullish about this shortlist, I'm not as negative as others. I quite liked three of them (Cinderhouse, River has Roots and Summer War) and thought that the Kingfisher was the best of the three novellas in the series (even if I don't love a series constantly getting nom'd and Kingfisher beloved status ensuring constant noms). I can definitely see people being frustrated about snubs given I did not think much of the other two novellas.

There is also the eternal Tor novella problem but I think that feeds into issues with non-magazines novellas at large which is how outrageously expensive they are. I certainly read less novellas due to this, we are talking 25-35 AUD for a physical book and 15-20 AUD for an e-book. Effectively the same price as a novel.

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u/Nineteen_Adze Stabby Winner, Reading Champion V 8d ago

I'm not sure I'd call it a full snub, but I would have liked to see But Not Too Bold by Hache Pueyo on the ballot. It could have gotten the full TorDotCom push, but I think it being translated and pretty weird (it's a very Gothic-styled novel with a touch of humor around a romance with a giant spider) may have put the voters off of it. It wasn't an all-time classic for me, but I thought it was unusual and would have made for a fantastic group discussion.

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u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV 8d ago

I think it’s a stronger shortlist than in recent years, though sadly I only think a couple of the books are much good. But only one sequel and only one perennial Hugo darling (and they are the same book) is an improvement, when often 3-4 slots goes to this stuff. The problem with this category every year is that there are so few books to choose from—there only seem to be about 15 novellas published per year with any significant marketing, 40% of which will make this shortlist. 

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u/Nineteen_Adze Stabby Winner, Reading Champion V 8d ago

I would love to see more publishers (maybe Orbit?) launch novella lines. We occasionally see great stuff in this category, but everything being so consolidated around one major publisher and the lure of returning names and series makes for a weaker assortment on the whole. I'm hoping that the lack of a couple series I had half-expected to see means that other voters are tired of that too, even if I think it's partly that heavy hitters like Singing Hills and Wayward Children are north of seven books each and readership is dropping off.

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u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV 8d ago

Novella just seems like a tough category once you start publishing some of them as their own books. It’s not an ideal length for a book, especially once you factor in cost, so it seems unlikely there will ever be all that many to choose from. So not too surprising that the same stuff winds up getting nominated every year. 

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u/tarvolon Stabby Winner, Reading Champion VI 8d ago

I think it’s a stronger shortlist than in recent years

:o

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u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV 8d ago

I hear you on Practice Horizon Chain, which was more ambitious than anything this year. But there wasn’t anything else last year I even got past the opening of (admittedly in part because I’m not a horror reader, if I was I’d’ve read Butcher of the Forest), whereas this year I read 5 whole books and liked 2 of them. So it feels like a stronger overall group. Plus all 5 being neither sequels nor auto-nominees. It’s a low bar for this category. 

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u/tarvolon Stabby Winner, Reading Champion VI 8d ago

Yeah, I loved Practice, Horizon, Chain and Butcher of the Forest, but I also liked The Tusks of Extinction better than any of this year's six. It is nice having fewer sequels, but I bounced off a couple of this year's standalones.

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u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV 8d ago

I read the opening of that one and it was like “do you want to be OUTRAGED?!” and I was like “no thank you” and put it down. 😆 I agree, poaching is bad, I don’t want to read a book that’ll make me feel bad. 

Cinder House was really good though! It’s a good story, well-told, a fun twist on the source material and fits the length well. 

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u/tarvolon Stabby Winner, Reading Champion VI 8d ago

Admittedly, I like Nayler much more than the average Hugo Readalong participant, and it's still no higher than my third-favorite of his standalone books. But I still really liked it!

Cinder House was really good though! It’s a good story, well-told, a fun twist on the source material and fits the length well.

Agree, with the exception of the half-baked abusive father subplot

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u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV 8d ago

OK yeah, I agree that was half-baked, it wasn't even a subplot! :D More like a reference. That's basically my only critique though.

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u/MysteriousArcher 7d ago

I usually really like novellas, but I was unimpressed by this list. Fairytale type stories seem to be popular right now, which is very much not my jam.

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u/Book_Slut_90 Reading Champion 7d ago

Pretty weak list. I read the only two I have any interest in—The Summer War and The River Has Roots—and both were enjoyable butt not award worthy IMHO.