monkeys and ponies

With six novels to read, I figured I'd be lucky to get the four major fiction categories done before the July 15 voting deadline. But it's June 22, and I'm done! Onwards to graphic novels after this.

( the reviews and ranking )

It took seven weeks for me to get through all the Hugo novels, what with not having read any of them – but I finished the Hugo novella reading in three days, because I'd read three of them already. A WINNER IS ME. (And what a relief it is to know I'll have read everything in the four main fiction categories well before the deadline.)

Anyway, all but one of these reviews already appeared on Goodreads, but the Ted Chiang one only appears here, because the novella was part of his Exhalation collection and not trackable separately. (I'll be making my way through the rest of Exhalation after Hugo season is over, though, that's for sure.)

( the reviews and ranking )

We were running low on cookies, which my spouse would live on if he could, and with the next store trip planned for Wednesday, I decided to make brownies. I wanted something different than a typical brownie recipe, though, so I pulled out a copy of a book I hadn't looked at in a while – the Rosie's Bakery Chocolate-Packed, Jam-Filled, Butter-Rich, No-Holds-Barred Cookie Book – and lo and behold, there were bourbon brownies. What could be better? But the spouse took one look at them and said, you know, if you made a mint frosting instead of the ganache the recipe calls for, we could have mint julep brownies. So I did. And they are gooooood. So I'm sharing. 

( recipe, after the cut )

Title: Fragment of a Fragment
Characters/Pairing(s): Eleventh Doctor, the TARDIS
Rating: All ages
Word count: 436
Spoilers: none
Summary: A quiet moment between a Time Lord and his most faithful companion.

Author's Notes: For nostalgia, who wanted Doctor/TARDIS for her birthday. Happy birthday, Nos!

::xposted to dwfiction and dwfiction, and archived at A Teaspoon And An Open Mind and AO3

( fic, after the cut )

Title: The Cold Curve of the Moon
Characters/Pairing(s): Tenth Doctor/Reinette
Rating: Teen
Word count: 200
Summary: Reinette never tells the Doctor that when she stepped into his mind, she saw more than just his past.

Author's Notes: I rewatched Girl in the Fireplace the other day as part of #LockdownWho, and I just had to write a little bit more about Reinette. Double drabble.

:: archived at A Teaspoon And An Open Mind and AO3
( fic, after the cut )

Title: Round the Back Way
Characters/Pairing(s): Thirteenth Doctor/Dhawan!Master
Rating: Adult
Word count: 2,450
Spoilers: through Spyfall part 2
Summary: “I’ve just had the most infuriating 77 years of my life,” the Master says. “Have you any idea how hard it is to live through the twentieth century? The places I’ve escaped from ...”

Author's Notes: Thanks as always to platypus for the beta. And really and truly, that joke in there that sounds vaguely familiar was written five days before "Orphan 55" aired.

::xposted to dwfiction and dwfiction, and archived at A Teaspoon And An Open Mind and AO3

( fic, after the cut )

Title: Catch Me If You Can
Characters/Pairing(s): River Song/River Song
Rating: Adult
Word count: 1,489
Spoilers: none
Contains: light bondage (gagging)
Summary: "Funny," River said, "all that time-travelling, and this is the first time I've met myself."

Author's Notes: Many thanks to platypus for the incredibly last-minute beta of my one and only fic this year. I got it in just under the wire, YESSSSS.

::xposted to dwfiction and dwfiction, and archived at A Teaspoon And An Open Mind and AO3

( fic, after the cut )

Really short this time, because as with the novelettes, I never bothered taking notes. Fortunately, they're all online, and all good. (Well, STET isn't my favorite, but it's powerful nevertheless and will work better for other people than it did me.)

ANYWAY.

“The Court Magician,” Sarah Pinsker
This is essentially a fairy tale/cautionary tale about getting what you wish for, and let's face it, the most interesting fairy tales are also cautionary tales. Here, a boy discovers that there's a physical and emotional price for learning real magic instead of the stagecraft he's already mastered, and even though that might sound like a clichéd premise, the bitter weight of the magician's plight transcends its premise. Four and a half stars.

“The Rose MacGregor Drinking and Admiration Society,” T. Kingfisher
I basically always love T. Kingfisher/Ursula Vernon's work, and this is no exception. It's a story in which various magical creatures reminisce and lament about the Human Who Got Away, and the sense of humor and tight writing frankly make me jealous I didn't write this first. Five stars.

“The Secret Lives of the Nine Negro Teeth of George Washington,” P. Djèlí Clark
Nine short-short stories tell the tales of the slaves who "donated" Washington's teeth, and the effect they would have had upon them. It's every bit as clever and well-written as Clark's other Hugo nominee, The Black God's Drums, and is therefore one of my three five-star ratings in this category.

“STET,” Sarah Gailey
WARNING: If you read this on a mobile device, as I first did, you won't get the full impact of this story; only now, trying to add a link to it on my computer, do I see how much I missed. And yet, even with the missing content more obvious, this story doesn't quite hang together for me, not in the least because it describes something awful that could literally happen today, not in 2046, as the story indicates. Two and a half stars.

“The Tale of the Three Beautiful Raptor Sisters, and the Prince Who Was Made of Meat,” Brooke Bolander
It's another Bolander story I genuinely enjoyed! I can't describe it any better than the title does, so if you feel like the kind of person who'll enjoy a fairy tale that stars three dinosaurs, please read this. In fact, even if you're questioning whether you're the kind of person who thinks you'll enjoy this, please read this. Five stars.

“A Witch’s Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies,” Alix E. Harrow
A librarian – or more accurately, a witch – helps wayward, troubled teens find the books they most need. It's a perfectly fine story, but it's up against some strong competition, and can't quite hold its own against those. Four stars.

My rankings:

1. "The Rose MacGregor Drinking and Admiration Society"
2. "The Secret Lives of the Nine Negro Teeth of George Washington"
3. "The Tale of the Three Beautiful Raptor Sisters, and the Prince Who Was Made of Meat"
4. "The Court Magician"
5. "A Witch’s Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies"
6. "STET"

Huh, could have sworn I'd posted here about Best Novella already, and I guess not? Well, that and Best Short Story will have to wait until tomorrow or sometime afterwards, 'cause I'm going to bed after I post this.

Besides, this is the strongest category of any of the four primary fiction categories, so hey, you luck out tonight, and maybe you'll have an easier time choosing a top story than I did; I keep switching between my first two choices. Anyway, I've added links to read the stories that are available online, and I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

"The Only Harmless Great Thing," Brooke Bolander
Bolander can be hit or miss for me, but this one was a hit: a bittersweet alternate history story in which humans and elephants can communicate – yet the US still uses elephants in pre-nuclear weapons radium experiments. The modern framing device in the story didn’t work quite as well for me, but the relationship between Topsy the rebellious elephant and her trainer, a young woman rapidly decaying from radiation poisoning, was compelling right up to the end. Four stars.

"If at First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again," Zen Cho
Goddammit, how is everything in this category so good? This starts off as a folk tale in which an imugi, a mythological Korean creature, tries to ascend to become a dragon. And tries. And tries. And keeps failing, for thousands of years, until finally it seeks out a human who can help, and eventually falls in love. I’ve read other work of Zen Cho’s in Uncanny and always liked it, and this is no exception. Five stars.

"The Last Banquet of Temporal Confections," Tina Connolly
This ticked a lot of my favorite boxes: detailed food and flavor discussion! Slow burn storytelling! Memory! Revenge! A solid four stars.

"Nine Last Days on Planet Earth," Daryl Gregory
Okay, well, I was going to give “The Thing About Ghost Stories” my top pick, and then this swooped in with its beautifully characterized prose and a story about spaceborne invasive plants that slowly but surely wreak famine and havoc across Earth. It’s a little too believable, in fact, but LT is so very human and his relationships so real that the nagging threat of planetary extinction almost felt secondary to the story of one small person trying to understand how our entire ecosystem would shift. Five stars, utterly amazing, can’t believe how good this field is.

"The Thing About Ghost Stories," Naomi Kritzer
I read this in Uncanny when it first came out, and it remains one of the best stories I read last year. It’s less SFF than the other entries, but the characterization is so solid, and the speculative fiction aspects so subtle and well-placed, that it easily deserves to be on this list. Five stars.

"When We Were Starless," Simone Heller
I kept thinking I’d landed in the middle of a Fourth Doctor-era story; honestly, since this one covers a civilization that’s lost track of its explorational roots and devolved into tribal nomads at war with an implacable force, it would be a nice companion episode to “The Face of Evil.” Unfortunately, I also found it a bit slow, and the worldbuilding too opaque, at least at the beginning. Three stars.

My rankings (at least right now):
1. Nine Last Days on Planet Earth
2. If at First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again
3. The Thing About Ghost Stories
4. The Last Banquet of Temporal Confections
5. The Only Harmless Great Thing
6. When We Were Starless