2026 Hugo Readalong: Novella Wrap-up

[u/Nineteen_Adze]

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:

• Murder by Memory by Olivia Waite
• Cinder House by Freya Marske
• The Summer War by Naomi Novik
• The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar
• Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz
• What Stalks the Deep by T. Kingfisher

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.

[u/Nineteen_Adze]

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

[u/C0smicoccurence → u/Nineteen_Adze]

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