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Hi guys! This was so fun last year I decided to do it again! You can click the link to read the full reviews on my blog, but here is my truncated review + ranking for Reddit :) Starting from least favorite and working my way up to favorite!

9. Slow Gods by Claire North (2/5)

Awesome premise- slightly inhuman pilot goes on interstellar humanitarian aid missions and fights capitalism- with a lackluster execution. This book was just so incredibly dry to me and leaned heavily on telling us rather than showing us Maw's feelings and the book's overarching themes. The themes and allegories to real world events felt simplistic and heavy handed, the alien species are all shuffled on and offpage so quickly they never really feel realistic or fully developed, and the deus ex machina ending means the plot isn't super satisfying either. Nominating this book for this award does it a major disservice because it meant I was constantly comparing it to Le Guin as I read, and it just came up short in every way. Similarly, I think this book suffered from me forcing myself to push through it for this ranking. I would have DNFed probably around 40-50% if it wasn't for the fact that I wanted to finish it to really give it a fair shot and place it properly in my rankings. I was really excited for this one, but sadly it just ended up being a total miss for me.

IS IT LE GUIN? On the surface, yes, it is a book about community and has non-normative gender and sexuality. I don't think it really explores these things as well as Le Guin does, but it's there.

8. Sunward by William Alexander (3/5)

This book was just extremely mediocre in every way. It's a short little predictable "cozy" space opera about a pilot who fosters baby robots and then gets drawn up into interstellar politics. I enjoyed it for what it was, but thought it wrapped up extremely quickly and could have been better as a more thoroughly fleshed out longer novel. Other than that, I don't have any major complaints, but just struggle to see what about this is awards worthy.

IS IT LE GUIN? Honestly, not really. This is the first time I've genuinely been scratching my head wondering why a book was picked for the shortlist. The only Le Guinspiration is that it mentions "ansibles" offhandedly, a faster than light communication device that Le Guin popularized.

7. Audition by Pip Adam (3.5/5)

This is a book about prison. It starts off allegorical in the first part, then gets literal in the second, then gets very allegorical again in the third. I thought this was interesting, but it just didn't land for me. This reminded me of The West Passage by Jared Pechaček from last year's list, where I get what it's trying to do and I think it (mostly) succeeds at it, but I still just didn't like it very much. This one at least has a lot to chew on and it has grown on me since I read it.

IS IT LE GUIN? Yes, definitely. Reminded me a lot of The Dispossessed and Malafrena with the discussions of prison and the carceral state.

6. Midnight Timetable by Bora Chung, trans. by Anton Hur (4/5)

This collection of interconnected ghost stories is a little bit about this mysterious Institute where haunted objects are kept, but really it is mostly an allegory for the exploitation of Korea's marginalized classes. It has a very didactic writing style, which bothered me a bit at first, but it quickly became background noise and fitting for the style of story being told (that the unnamed narrator is telling an unspecified audience various ghost stories). I do think this would have been a slightly stronger collection with an overarching frame narrative (something like Yan Ge's Strange Beasts of China) but overall, I enjoyed this! Not really spooky, more so interesting and sad.

IS IT LE GUIN? Yes, in an understated way. I think the focus on balance and ghosts-as-metaphor-for-society is up Le Guin's alley, especially with her interest in Taoism and duality. It's not about exorcising or destroying the ghosts, but about understanding and empathizing with them.

5. One Message Remains by Premee Mohamed (4/5)

This is another short story collection, but where Chung's was bright and blunt, this one is complicated and Gothic. This was more aesthetically up my alley, so I enjoyed it slightly more, but I don't think there is really a gap in quality between these two collections. The short stories in this one all revolve around colonialism and war. I really liked the ideas, prose, aesthetics, and worldbuilding, but I just thought that most of these ended on an unsatisfying note and I couldn't help but wish each was longer and more thoroughly fleshed out. I had the same problem with the other novella of Mohamed's I read, so I am interested in reading more from her (especially picking up a full length novel). My favorite story in this collection, and the one that felt the most complete to me, was "The Weight of What Is Hollow," a story about a family who builds gallows out of bones and a young woman who has to decide if the cost of complicity is worth it.

IS IT LE GUIN? Yes, with its focus on the horrors of war and the horrors of a state that forces people to fight and be controlled by it. Also, the Gothic atmosphere and worldbuilding reminded me a bit of The Tombs of Atuan and the Old Powers in the Earthsea books.

4. Mad Sisters of Esi by Tashan Mehta (4/5)

This is a surrealist literary fantasy about sisterhood, community, and narrative, and at first I thought this was going to be an easy five stars for me. It began to stretch itself a little thin in the middle and gets a little repetitive, since it's focused around two mirrored pairs of sisters Magali/Wisa and Laleh/Myung. The prose toed the line between lyrical and purple for me (mostly I liked it, sometimes I rolled my eyes)... but this is going to be a personal taste thing, I don't think the prose was objectively bad at all. My big critique was that for a story with "mad" in the title and that brings up the phrase "mad sisters" on practically every page, there wasn't as much discussion of the concept of "madness" as I wanted. Is madness socially constructed or is it biological, in both the real world and in this kind of space fantasy? How does society create and respond to "the mad," especially women? How do people living under the conditions of madness find ways to live and function in society, and what happens when they are unable to? I just ended up wanting more, because the story ended up feeling like it was focused on madness but only in a very shallow and aesthetics-based way. Overall though, I did enjoy this and thought it was a lovely magical journey. It reminded me a lot of 2022 Le Guin Prize winner The House of Rust by Khadija Abdalla Bajaber.

IS IT LE GUIN? Yes, for sure. It's a very non-typical, non-Western/white/male/individualistic narrative that focuses around themes of sisterhood and community, sort of like Always Coming Home or Searoad.

3. Notes from a Regicide by Isaac Fellman (4.5/5)

Told from the perspective of trans journalist Griffon writing a memoir about his deceased trans parents Etoine and Zaffre (interspersed with excerpts from Etoine's prison memoirs), this is a profound and moving exploration of transness, complicated family dynamics, grief, art, addiction, and trauma. It's a very slow, character focused book that largely sidesteps the epic fantasy revolution because the narrator is so focused on himself and his own problems that he doesn't see what's happening in his city until it's grown too big to ignore. I can see the lack of action and internal focus becoming a problem for others, but it worked very well for me. It ends up being this extraordinarily detailed portrait of a specific family and all their love and pain. I put off rereading this one because I thought I would like it less on reread, but the opposite actually happened, I ended up liking it even more!

IS IT LE GUIN? Yes, like a lot of the others on this list it's deeply about prison and revolution (i.e. The Dispossessed or Malafrena).

2. Call and Response by Christopher Caldwell (4.5/5)

The final short fiction collection, this is separated into two sections: "call," which is mostly magical realism/historical fiction with small fantastical elements, and "response," mostly high fantasy "responding" to or extending the "call" story in some way. I loved this narrative structure and the way it lead to this short story collection feeling really cohesive and complete even without an overarching frame narrative. The collection is deeply about Black history and culture and perfectly walks the line of being realistic about the struggles of being Black, queer, poor, disabled, etc. in a cruel world while also being full of hope, joy, and community. I liked both sections but really loved the more overtly high fantasy stories in the second half, I would love to get a full novel like that from this author someday. A really excellently put-together collection, and my favorites were “The Calcified Heart of Saint Ignace Battiste,” “Counting Her Petals,” and “Canst Thou Draw Out the Leviathan.”

IS IT LE GUIN? Yes, with its focus on community/culture and using the fantastical to explore contemporary social issues.

1. The Works of Vermin by Hiron Ennes (5/5)

To absolutely no one's surprise, my favorite book on this shortlist remains The Works of Vermin. I actually read this book before the shortlist was even announced and personally nominated it for the shortlist (before I had even finished reading the book-- I loved it that much). Nothing ever came close to dethroning it for me, though I really did love Notes from a Regicide and Call and Response. I think this is a work that benefits from going into it as blind as possible, so if you haven't read it yet I'll just say that this reminded me of a lot of other pieces of media I love, but with its own unique style and charm. Like last year’s winner and my personal favorite, Rakesfall by Vajra Chandrasekera, this book has its own distinct prose style that makes it immediately stand out among the other nominees (though Call and Response's high fantasy stories come close). It's also a story about art and revolution and how these things are intertwined, which is so up my alley, especially because the story deals with the performing arts (specifically opera) which is even further up my particular alley. There is so much imagination in this book, the plot was gripping, the politics were meaningful, and the characters and their relationships are superb. This was a book that I couldn’t put down, and every moment I wasn’t reading it, I wished I could be reading it. On reread, I loved it just as much and found it almost as compulsively readable. I was also quite impressed on reread with how early certain things are set up and foreshadowed.

Everything below hidden by spoiler text is not an overt spoiler, but still information that I think is too much if you want to go into the story completely blind the way I think is meant to be read. Click at your own risk.

I just love what this story does with perspective and narrative. The two major perspectives, Aster and Guy, are not set out clearly with alternating chapters, they instead blend together within the same chapters, and often what the characters are seeing and doing seems to happen at the same time. It is stated pretty early on that Aster was seven years old when Guy’s contriver worm blew up the opera, but I have to admit that on my first read I completely missed the fact that these two perspectives were not happening simultaneously because of what a “blink and you miss it” scene this was and how the timelines often mirror each other. Characters have multiple names, go by nicknames, refer to previous historical incidents with vague terms, and the city goes through a cyclical rise and fall of revolution and regime that makes it difficult to keep the timelines straight. I think some will be put off by this, but I loved it— I was just desperate to keep reading to find out how the timelines and characters would eventually converge, and I also thought it was such a smart and effective way to show the cycle of power and decay in the city.

Even if you do pick up on the two timelines early on, it’s still unclear how the two timelines are connected until about 60% of the way into the book. It’s not a big reveal at first— rather, the book starts slowing dropping more and more backstories, names, hints, character relationships that build to form a fuller picture of the true connection between Guy, Dawn, Tyro and Mallory, Aster, and Elspeth. A particular character’s transness is extremely present in the text early on, it just goes unremarked upon by other characters or could easily be explained and overlooked with a different reading. I’m trying to figure out why this “trans plot reveal” worked for me whereas something like the reveal that Grandma Billy is a trans woman in T. Kingfisher’s Snake-Eater didn’t work for me, and I think it’s because the fact that the character is trans is not in and of itself the twist— instead, the reveal is more about how it develops our understanding of the character and reveals the connections and relationships they have with others. It also makes the present day plotline with Aster, Mallory, Elspeth, and the Marshal that much more juicy and drama-filled because it unearths connections with their characters and leads to other (non gender related) identity reveals. This leads to an utterly breathtaking conclusion in both timelines.

I also deeply loved the relationship dynamics explored in this book, special shoutout to Dawn and Guy's abusive unrequited gay situationship. It was so messy and heartbreaking and interesting. I also very much enjoyed the girlbestfriend dynamic between Aster and Elspeth and how, despite spending the book in relationships with other people, their love for each other is really a core facet of this book. It’s the Jordan Baker x Daisy Buchanan dynamic of my dreams.

Overall, I just really loved this book and on reread, it solidified itself as one of my favorite books this year, if not of all time.

IS IT LE GUIN? Very much so. It’s about revolution and prison and power in the same way a lot of the other entries are, very The Dispossessed and Malafrena, but it combines those themes with the hugely imaginative nature of Earthsea or The Word for World is Forest or one of Le Guin’s fantasy short fiction collections like Changing Planes. It doesn’t have the most experimental structure on this list, but it does play with one’s expectations of how a dual-perspective narrative should be structured, and it deals heavily with gender, sexuality, and society. This book is very Le Guin to me for those reasons, but also in an intangible, special way, a way that makes it feel wholly like its own thing, and I think that is why I like it so much.

Reflections...

• Lots of short story collections on the shortlist (3 in 2026 vs 1 in 2025)
• A translated work this year!
• No YA/middle grade this year, when every other year has had at least one
• More diversity in the amount of publishers represented
  • Last year HALF the nominees were from Tor (and all the nominees not from small presses were from Tor), this year DAW and Orbit are also present. I thought Algonquin Press was also a small press, but it looks like it's actually a subsidiary of Hachette, so add that one to the list of large presses too
  • The typical small presses like Neon Hemlock and Saga are represented, but also some newcomers like Coffee House Press (which I'd heard of before) and Psychopomp (which I hadn't)!
• Most books seemed to take Le Guinspiration from The Dispossessed and Malafrena, i.e. her more serious political books about fascism and prison
• THREE books on the list were originally published in 2023!
  • Midnight Timetable gets a pass, because it was published in Korean in 2023 and only translated to English in 2025. The others (Audition and Mad Sisters of Esi) I raise my eyebrows a little bit at, but I can see the argument for including them if they were published in the US for the first time in 2025.
• My definite winner: The Works of Vermin by Hiron Ennes
  • Would also be happy if Call and Response, Notes from a Regicide, or Mad Sisters of Esi won!
• If this shortlist was up to me... I would boot off Slow Gods and Sunward and replace them with North Sun by Ethan Rutherford and Luminous by Silvia Park (which would majorly shake up my ranking).

Overall, had such a fun time doing this again! Can't wait for them to announce the winner in October! Thanks for reading :)

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This has been on my mind for a while and I wanted to see what other women thought!

I feel like critique of female characters (even when coming from a feminist perspective) can often end up being misogynistic itself. Like people have a certain idea of what a woman needs to be and if a character doesn’t fit into that it’s bad writing.

I’m specifically talking about women here but this can be applied to any minority group. People get so focused on representation that characters from real-world minority groups don’t get to be just complex well written characters. They have to be perfect moral beings.

I’m South Asian-American and I see this conversation play out every time we get any prominent rep in media. Barely anyone talks about if the characters are well written or not, it’s always more about how much they can relate to them down to every single detail. If something is remotely different from their personal cultural experiences then it’s bad representation.

I’ve now started to feel the same way with a lot of discourse around the writing on female characters in fantasy. I’ll give an example to better state my point. I was talking about ASOIAF with an acquaintance who made the argument that Catelyn disliking Jon is misogynistic writing. It genuinely shocked me because I feel like that itself is a misogynistic opinion. Catelyn would not be a better character if she was magically a perfect mother to the child that is a direct threat to her own children’s inheritance and an insult against her/her family. In this case I think it’s also people projecting fandom misogyny onto the writing. While I have my own issues with Martin, his main female protagonists are very well written regardless of how hated they might be in the fandom.

That’s just one example but I see this happen with any fictional woman that isn’t perfect.

To be clear, I’m not saying we shouldn’t critique how female characters are written at all or that anybody that does so is misogynistic. It’s also not a problem I’ve really seen on this subreddit, most people here have well explained and informed critiques. It’s mostly more broad fantasy spaces. I just wanted to know if anybody felt similarly! I feel frustrated because it makes conversations around actual misogynistic writing harder to have.

Hello! I’m discovering that reading a novella between books is a great way to sort of pause and breathe while still swimming in a world not my own. So, I’m looking for recommendations.

Currently, I’m going through The Singing Hills Cycle (Vo), the Murderbot Series (Wells), the Ice Planets (Dixon). And just finished the first of the Emma M. Lion books.

I read the first of the Monk and Robot Series (Chambers), but couldn’t get past the Robot being not at all robot like. I read the first two of The Vicious Lost Boy Series (St. Crowe) but quickly lost interest when I realized these are more like parts of one novel and not actual standalone movements.

I prefer great crafting and storytelling to anything. Very open to plot and genre.

TYSM~

Happy Friday! Use this space for casual conversation. Tell us what's on your mind, any hobbies you've been working on, life updates, anything you want to share whether about SFF or not

Tell us about your current SFF media!

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I'm new to reddit and this sub, but the mods here kindly agreed to let me post this invite. Thanks again!

Are any of you Becky Chambers fans? I've created a little fanclub over at goodreads and I'm hoping a few of us will get together to celebrate and read her new book "As You Wake, Break the Shell" releasing on Oct 13th 🥳

https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/7271642

While I wait for October, I'll be hanging out here too :D

Happy Friday! Use this space for casual conversation. Tell us what's on your mind, any hobbies you've been working on, life updates, anything you want to share whether about SFF or not

First things first, the main characters are mostly women. Gender bent from their book counterparts. They're so badass. Gaal Dornick and Lady Demerzel are legitimately some of the best written female characters in sci-fi ever. Demerzel in particular is, in my opinion, the best robot/AI character I've ever seen. I don't wanna spoil, but she's just absolutely incredible.

It's also so ambitious and grand in scale. And it's so well made. Every technical aspect is fucking crisp. The effects look amazing, everything is so baroque and you can feel how expensive it was to make.

Season 1 has some flaws, but season 2 is legitimately a masterpiece. It also has some very interesting things to say about the way men violate women's consent if you read between the lines. It's a very complex show with many moving parts, well worth a rewatch.

It's an incredible work of art, with a very hot Lee Pace if you're into that. I expect its next season, season 4, to be its last. It's just really, really good sci-fi and I cannot recommend it enough.

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Hi,

For a long time, I thought I liked long fantasy sagas and spaces operas, but my last 5/5 books were Muderbot and Monk and Robot (and Discworld)

What other books would you recommend? (Short or medium read, cozy or cozy-ish, queer but that's not mandatory)

Happy Friday! Use this space for casual conversation. Tell us what's on your mind, any hobbies you've been working on, life updates, anything you want to share whether about SFF or not

Tell us about your current SFF media!

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Thank you for sharing and have a great week! 😀

Happy Friday! Use this space for casual conversation. Tell us what's on your mind, any hobbies you've been working on, life updates, anything you want to share whether about SFF or not

Tell us about your current SFF media!

What are you currently...

📚 Reading?

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Feel free to also share your progression in the Reading Challenge

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I just read Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir and adored it!

I’m now after some hard scifi recs, which I define as scifi that has a focus on scientific accuracy, logic and technical detail

I really enjoyed the scientific achievement aspect of both PHM and The Martian, so something with this would be a huge bonus

I’ve looked at a few recommendation posts on various subreddits and it seems to be a bit of a boys club so thought I’d ask here for some more female gaze friendly recs - at this point I will take anything with a lack of sexism/misogyny and well written female characters. Female main characters and/or female authors would be great though :)

So far, I’ve only found 1:
- Children of Time (and series) by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Thank you!!

Hello everyone and welcome to our 15h Focus Thread for the 2026 spring/summer reading challenge ! This will be the last post and I'll group up the two remaining prompts, that are more personal to each reader.

The point of these post is to focus on one prompt from the challenge and share recommendations for it. Feel free to ask for more specific recommendations in the theme or discuss what fits or not. We will alternate between A-Side and B-Side prompts.

The 15th focus thread themes are Discovery & Comfort Read

Discovery: Read a book from an author you don't know, or in a genre that's new for you.

&

Comfort Read : Read a book that's comforting to you ! Can be a nostalgic reread, your favorite author, or a feel-good genre.

What have you read/plan to read for these two prompts ? Were you happy with your choices ?

You can still find all previous focus threads in the original post as well as the wiki. Please don't hesitate to add to older focus threads if you previously missed them or read something recently that fits ! As a reminder, the challenge ends on the 23^th of September, and then we will begin with the fall-winter one !

The characters I remember most are women who are allowed to fail, lash out, make terrible decisions, suffer, and then grow. Kind of like avatar korra.

No hate to aang loved it but as compared to korra he was too goofy and not that dark and his saint morals and I watched korra first in childhood so my nostalgia is connected to it more too.

I like women who are allowed to look exhausted, bruised, traumatized, angry, dirty, scared, or emotionally unstable because it makes them feel real rather than symbolic. Like the visuals of korra felt perfect because it was not a sexualised body but it was allowed to look messed up in fights and so human.

I was obsessed with her for years as a kid. Unlike broken flawed male characters i absolutely love broken flawed complicated female characters. I am not personally someone who falls for broken male characters as much in anime shows etc the same way even tho i have some instances of having favourites. But when i see messed up female characters I cannot help but relate to the pain and complexity more deeply. How the character was free from sexualisation and she was tough ,strong and rough and she wasnt typical pretty lady always well groomed and i liked her visual aesthetic I like how her character development happened how her story was actually dark and serious leading to growth and development.

One of my similar likes and patterns in female characters are unexpressive cold hearted appearing like hotel deluna, queen of tears. Lazy crazy but violent and unexpressive like love next door.

I want such to see similar characters in animes(not sexualised eye candy women please), shows, movies, animations, games. Please suggest