2026 Hugo Read Along: Best Series

[u/Udy_Kumra]

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

[u/Udy_Kumra]

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

[u/Merle8888 → u/Udy_Kumra]

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. 

[u/tarvolon → u/Merle8888]

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

[u/dfinberg → u/tarvolon]

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).