I recently finished reading the Nebula Awards nominees for Best Novel and Best Novella. I hadn’t originally planned to read the novellas, but for both lists I’d already read two, so it felt manageable to me to finish them both in time for the announcement on June 7. Here are my personal rankings:

Best Novel

A Sorceress Comes to Call, T. Kingfisher: A Regency-ish novel of manners featuring magic and an older, snarky heroine? Sign me up. One of the things I particualrly liked is that this is a story about magic told from the POV of non-magical people who are just trying to figure out what’s going on.

Someone You Can Build a Nest In, John Wiswell: This was so charming and weird. There were some gory moments but since they’re presented through the monster’s POV they worked well and weren’t too gross, more matter-of-fact. It was hard for me to choose between this and Sorceress for my top pick, but I listened to both of them on audio and I think the cadence of the narration in this one might put some people off. Once I reframed it as part of the performance, it worked and stopped bugging me.

Asunder, Kerstin Hall: This was really compelling from the jump, and the world building was wonderful. The characters are interesting and I liked how the group came together.

The Book of Love, Kelly Link: The structure and the writing makes it feel very dreamlike, which I enjoyed. But I also started to get a bit impatient with it by halfway through. I appreciated all the room we had for snippets of different perspectives and to learn more about the characters’ inner lives, but I do think this would have been improved with a pretty big edit.

Rakesfall, Vajra Chandrasekera: The writing is great and there were sections that were really compelling. But I could not follow the thread of narrative from one part to the next, and I’m not sure if it’s due to the complexity of the narrative or due to gaps in my own cultural knowledge.

Sleeping Worlds Have No Memory, Yaroslav Barsukov: I didn’t finish this. I had trouble keeping the side characters straight and by a quarter of the way through I didn’tdon’t really see why I should care about whatever the author is building towards. 

Best Novella

Lost Ark Dreaming, Suyi Davies Okungbowa: There’s a lot of world building packed into this, and it’s compelling from the start. I also liked the chapter interludes – a mix of poetry, journalism, and reports – which I thought added a lot of depth.

The Butcher of the Forest, Premee Mohamed: This is a dark fairytale that I thought was really well-done. The descriptions of the creatures were great and the ending worked well.

The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain, Sofia Samatar: This one does a good job of only explaining what’s necessary, and not explaining a key, but fairly obvious, element. I appreciated that.

The Dragonfly Gambit, A.D. Sui: There’s just enough world building here, and I loved the angry, unreliable narrator.

The Tusks of Extinction, Ray Nayler: I got a bit confused in the opening of this and had to stop and read the synopsis to figure out what was happening. I also think there were maybe a few too many perspectives here, but it does work.

Countess, Suzan Palumbo: I did enjoy the story, but it’s trying to do too much for a novella. I think it needed to end earlier, in part because I didn’t feel there was enough character development to underpin the final section or two.