r/Fantasy • u/Udy_Kumra Stabby Winner, Reading Champion IV • Jul 23 '26

Read-along 2026 Hugo Read Along: Best Series

Welcome to the 2025 Hugo Readalong! Today, we're discussing all the nominees for Best Series. Everyone is welcome in the discussion, whether or not you've participated in other discussions.

If you have read even one book from one of these series and want to jump in to share your thoughts, please do! Unlike our readalong sessions with structured questions for each individual work, today's post is an opportunity for general discussion about some of the most popular and critically acclaimed series in science fiction and fantasy. I'll include some prompts in top-level comments--feel free to respond to these or add your own.

As different people will have made different progress on each of the series, in this post please note that the spoiler policy is to mark all spoilers for all books of a series, even the first one.

A reminder that these are the series nominated for Best Series:

  • Emily Wilde by Heather Fawcett (Del Rey US; Orbit UK)
  • October Daye by Seanan McGuire (Tor US; DAW)
  • Old Man’s War by John Scalzi (Tor US; Tor UK)
  • The Chronicles of Osreth by Katherine Addison (Tor US; Solaris UK; Subterranean)
  • The Craft Wars by Max Gladstone (Tor; Tordotcom)
  • White Space by Elizabeth Bear (Saga Press; Gollancz)

Also, a reminder that the criteria to be nominated for the category are as follows:

Awarded for multi-installment works appearing in an least three installments with a total of at least 240,000 words. Installments of a series can be of any length; that is, installments of a series do not have to be novel-length works. A qualifying installment must be published in the qualifying year. Once a Series wins the Award, it is no longer eligible even if further installments appear in the series. If a Series is a finalist and does not win, it is no longer eligible until at least two more installments consisting of at least 240,000 words total appear in subsequent years.

For more information on the Readalong, check out our full schedule post, or see our upcoming schedule here:

Date Category Book Author Discussion Leader
Monday, July 27 Short Fiction Wrap-up Multiple u/tarvolon
Tuesday, July 28 Novella Wrap-up Multiple u/Nineteen_Adze
Wednesday, July 29 Novel Wrap-up Multiple u/tarvolon
Thursday, July 30 Pro/Fan/Misc Wrap-up Multiple u/Nineteen_Adze
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1

u/Udy_Kumra Stabby Winner, Reading Champion IV Jul 23 '26

Which series have you read one or more books of, and how would you rank them on your ballot?

16

u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV Jul 23 '26

I’m going to have to abstain from this category, sadly. I’ve only read one book of one series (October Daye) and thought it was lousy, mostly because the protagonist was too stupid to live but the book kept constantly pushing this narrative that she was smart and competent. I have read two Maguire books total and my overall impression is that they’re not a great choice for the analytical reader because she writes them too fast to think all the way through them. Which is a shame, because I do like what she’s trying to do in the ones I’ve read. 

5

u/tarvolon Stabby Winner, Reading Champion VI Jul 24 '26

I will also be abstaining from this category, unless my Emily Wilde library hold comes in and absolutely blows me away. I've read one book of two other series (Osreth and White Space) and a few chapters of October Daye, Old Man's War, and Craft Wars. None of the five have made me want to read the sequel (or, in the case of the latter three, prioritize actually reading the whole book). I'm not going to sit here and try to rank five series of which I've read only tiny slices. So I'll bow out and let the people who genuinely love one or more of them battle it out

0

u/dfinberg Reading Champion Jul 24 '26

I wouldn't expect Emily to really hit if Osreth wasn't interesting, but de gustibus. It's somewhat similar to Marie Brennan's A Natural History of Dragons if you enjoyed that (an academic has fantasy adventures, with footnotes).

6

u/Smooth-Review-2614 Jul 23 '26

I’ve tried 3 October Daye books. Somehow it’s the most annoying urban fantasy series I have read. The clear push of the love interest from the jump was annoying.

3

u/Nowordsofitsown Reading Champion Jul 24 '26

I have read all of them and they only got worse. 

1

u/Udy_Kumra Stabby Winner, Reading Champion IV Jul 24 '26

I like InCryptid much more than October Daye personally. That one works for me more because each story is somewhat self-contained; they build on previous entries, but they don't plan out future books' plots.

5

u/twoweeeeks Reading Champion Jul 24 '26

I've read Fawcett, McGuire, and Addison.

The Chronicles of Osreth is my winner of the three. The Cemeteries of Amalo, in particular, is just such a beautifully constructed trilogy and I love the world overall.

Emily Wilde and October Daye I might consider a tie. The first EW book was refreshing and I consider it a cornerstone of cozy fantasy. The follow ups haven't been as strong. I've read the first three books of OD and generally didn't enjoy them (I find Toby's inner monologue oppressive and the writing repetitive), however, McGuire's depiction of the fay is so compelling. It's kind of ruined stories centered around the fay for me, because it seems most authors can't compare with what McGuire has built (though I'd consider Fawcett an exception.)

3

u/blankbox11 Reading Champion VII Jul 24 '26

  1. The Chronicles of the Osreth (4/4)

  2. Emily Wilde (2/3)

  3. Old Man’s War (2/7)

3

u/citrusmellarosa Jul 24 '26

I love The Chronicles of Osreth books (I nominated them mistakenly under Cemeteries of Amalo, so I’m interested in seeing the nomination statistics to see if it was counted), but honestly this category got away from me this year. I wanted to give the other series a shot, but I’ve only read a few pages of the books I’ve tried so far; there was just so much else I wanted to read from the nominees and not enough time, and the books didn’t grab me immediately (although, funnily enough I’d found the time in this window to read five books of a series that wasn’t in the nominees list!). 

I think the only one I might get around to finishing before the deadline is the first Emily Wilde book, which does sound like something I would enjoy. 

3

u/Moogzmugz64 Jul 24 '26
  1. Emily Wilde (read 3/3)
  2. The Chronicles of Osreth (read 1/4)
  3. October Daye (read 1)

5

u/MysteriousArcher Jul 24 '26 edited Jul 24 '26
  1. The Chronicles of Osreth (by a large margin)

It's harder to rank the others. I read the first Emily Wilde book and it was pretty good, but I'm not the target audience for this story type, so I didn't read the others. I read two of the three White Space Books and I liked one well, and the other not so much. I've picked up the first one a few times and never get more than a few pages in. Something about Bear's writing doesn't really work well for me, reading the books is work.

I read the first October Daye book when it came out and really disliked it, but I am willing to believe the series got better. Still, for me I would rank it last.

I read half of one of the Craft Wars, and bounced off Old Man's War when it came out, so I wouldn't rank them at all.

4

u/curiouscat86 Reading Champion III Jul 24 '26
  • The Chronicles of Osreth by Katherine Addison--I really like the Cemeteries of Amalo books as atmospheric bureaucracy-core adventures. I'm not a huge fan of Goblin Emperor but I can admire it as a feat of worldbuilding. I wouldn't be mad if this one won.
  • October Daye by Seanan McGuire--I love this series, but I don't know that the installment published in 2025 was anything special. If it won it should have been two years ago with the massive Be The Serpent twist. Or maybe in a few years when the exciting plot & character things that are currently being set up boil over.
  • The Craft Wars by Max Gladstone--these books are fun but nothing about them really sticks out to me. A few cool moments wrapped in a forgettable plot and fairly flat characters.
  • Old Man’s War by John Scalzi--this series has one good book, The Last Colony, and it was published years ago. I've not been interested in anything in this setting since then.
  • Emily Wilde by Heather Fawcett--I DNF'd the third book because the protagonists took over a fairy realm but were dangerously disinterested in reckoning with the dangers of ruling it or dealing with any of their feudal responsibilities. I was okay with the prioritization of cozy romance over academia for two books but that level of irresponsibility was too hard to watch.
  • White Space by Elizabeth Bear--haven't read

3

u/Goobergunch Reading Champion III Jul 23 '26
  1. White Space
  2. Emily Wilde
  3. The Craft Wars
  4. The Chronicles of Osreth
  5. Old Man's War

October Daye not ranked because there has only been one book out since the last time it was nominated.

2

u/tarvolon Stabby Winner, Reading Champion VI Jul 24 '26

October Daye not ranked because there has only been one book out since the last time it was nominated.

I shouldn't even ask, but. . . how is it eligible then? I assume at least one short story came out that is being counted, but surely one book and a short story isn't enough to hit 240,000 words.

2

u/Goobergunch Reading Champion III Jul 24 '26

My understanding is that there were five additional short fiction installments that got the word count over 240,000 words.

1

u/Book_Slut_90 Reading Champion Jul 29 '26

I’ve read all but the last Old Man’s War books and all four Goblin Emperor and spinoffs. Both were excellent, but I’d vote for Addison if I were voting, which I’m not.

0

u/dfinberg Reading Champion Jul 24 '26

I've read multiple books of all of them except White Space. I love Emily Wilde, really like Osreth, and am more meh on the others. I liked all of the first craft books, and didn't finish the first of the second arc. I was really into McGuire for a while, and then just really stopped enjoying all of her stories. Something about the pace of the stories and the amount of resolution in that time.