Decisions, Decisions: Hugo Best Novel 2008
I’m still working through the 2008 Hugo voters packet but I’ve read enough to make a decision on which novel to vote for best novel of 2008. My criteria for picking the best is: which book did I enjoy the most. (no heavy thinking here). Here are the nominees and my thoughts about each:
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
This is only the second Neil Gaiman book that I’ve read. The other was American Gods, which I didn’t really like. So I wasn’t really looking forward to this one. Luckily The Graveyard Book exceeded my low expectations. I’m guessing that this book was aimed towards the young adult market. It’s a fun story of a little boy raised by ghosts in a graveyard.
Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
This book has a totally different tone that any of the others. It’s barely science fiction since pretty much all the technology used in the book already exists. If you’re a conservative who thinks the way the Bush administration handled the War On Terror ™ was the right way, then you’d probably hate this book. Another book aimed at the YA market, it’s about a high school computer geek who is yanked from the streets as a terrorist suspect after a major terrorist attack on the US. It’s interesting, scary and, I’d like to think, a bit implausible. Still though, it’s a good read as a warning against the state taking away freedom in order to combat terrorism.
Saturn’s Children by Charles Stross
Definitely the most hardcore science fiction book of this group and certainly not aimed at the YA market. (The main character is an obsolete sex-bot). The story is set in a very interesting time a couple of hundred years in the future. Humans have died off and what’s left is a civilization of robots that still have Azimov’s 3 laws built in. I’m mixed on this book. While the universe that Charles Stross created is vast and is a great setting for a story, the story itself was hard for me to follow. The ending was unsatisfying. Still, it’s worth reading just for the universe that Stross creates but perhaps someone else should have written the story.
Zoe’s Tale by John Scalzi
Another novel with a YA audience in mind. (Just to clarify, I have no problem with YA novels). Scalzi is one of my favorite authors and he doesn’t let me down here. This is the same story as in the Lost Colony except told from the point of view of a teenage girl – the daughter of the protagonists in The Last Colony. I’m also a little mixed on this novel. While I love Scalzi’s writing style and it’s interesting to read this story from a different point of view, it is still the same story that I read in The Last Colony.
Anathem by Neal Stephenson
I loved Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon and hated The Baroque Trilogy. I managed to slog through Quicksilver but gave up on the trilogy half way through The Confusion. Because the last two books I read by Stephenson were so very not-fun, I was not willing to buy Anathem. Of course it happened to be the only one of the five nominees that wasn’t included in the Hugo voters packet. As a compromise, I downloaded the Kindle sample from Amazon. The sample was the same dense writing style that made me hate The Baroque Trilogy. Maybe the book turns out to be the greatest science fiction book known to man, but I won’t know. Stephenson has used up all the patience I have for his writing. (I’m sure he’s heartbroken).
My vote comes down to choice between Zoe’s Tale, Little Brother and The Graveyard Book. And damn it, I still can’t make a decision.
