#thehugoawards — Public Fediverse posts on home.social

Andrew Kuchling @[email protected] · 2025-07-31 · 13:09 UTC

Here's my summaries & opinions of the Hugo finalists for Best Novella (short 100-150 page novels)!

THE BUTCHER OF THE FOREST, by Premee Mohamed, is a dark fantasy. There are two forests in the land: the south forest is an ordinary forest where you can go in and out, hunt, cut trees, or whatever. But the north forest is haunted: people, especially children, who stray in are never seen again, probably taken by the other people of the wood.

Veris is the only living person who went into the forest and came out with a lost child. Early one morning she is summoned to the palace of the Tyrant, and told that the Tyrant's two children have wandered into the north forest. Veris will have to go in and retrieve the children; if she fails, her family and entire village will be eradicated.

This is a dread-filled version of the trope about exploring a shadowy and mysterious forest. The danger is constant, with the usual rules of faerie (don't tell anyone your name; don't eat anything), but there's the additional ticking clock of the Tyrant's threat and Veris's harrowing memories of her previous trip. It's a page-turner that I had to finish the same evening I began reading it.

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Andrew Kuchling @[email protected] · 2025-07-29 · 10:45 UTC

Time to post my opinions about the novels that were finalists for the Hugos this year!

In SERVICE MODEL, by Adrian Tchaikovsky, the valet robot Uncharles is responsible for laying out his owner's clothes every morning and helping with his morning ablutions... until one day when Uncharles cuts his owner's throat while shaving him. Uncharles doesn't remember the actual event, or why they did it.

The death brings a detective robot to the house, and after their ineffectual investigation is completed, Uncharles goes out to explore the world. It becomes clear that the system is crumbling: the detective talks for the sake of humans, even if there are no humans present; requests are put into queues that are not being processed; actions are repeated endlessly. I started to wonder, are there any humans left alive at all?

This book was hilarious, in a sardonic and cynical way. The humans built a system of convenience and automation that's smart, but not smart enough to be resilient or to understand its own mistakes. It's a perfect book for the AI-obsessed moment.

Not read by me: ALIEN CLAY, also by Adrian Tchaikovsky.

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