Au fost anunțate cărțile nominalizate la premiul Hugo

Premiile Hugo sunt o inspirație bună pentru noi romane SF/fantasy de citit. Din experiența altor ani, aproape tot ce-i nominalizat este și foarte bun.

Nominalizările la Best Novel pentru 2024 sunt:

• The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi de Shannon Chakraborty
• The Saint of Bright Doors de Vajra Chandrasekera
• Some Desperate Glory de Emily Tesh
• Starter Villain de John Scalzi
• Translation State de Ann Leckie
• Witch King de Martha Wells

O să le iau în ordine inversă.

Martha Wells este foarte cunoscută pentru seria Murderbot, pe care v-o recomand cu toată plăcerea. Personajul, un soi de android care se ferește de oameni deși lucrează ca bodyguard, este excelent și plin de umor, iar aventurile sunt foarte bune.

Witch King, însă, este un roman fantasy fără legătură cu seria Murderbot. Un demon este asasinat în mod misterios. După mulți ani, este trezit de un magician care nu știe ce face și împreună vor trebui să dezlege conspirația din spate. Vreau să o citesc din simplul motiv că Martha Wells creează personaje plăcute.

After being murdered, his consciousness dormant and unaware of the passing of time while confined in an elaborate water trap, Kai wakes to find a lesser mage attempting to harness Kai’s magic to his own advantage. That was never going to go well.

But why was Kai imprisoned in the first place? What has changed in the world since his assassination? And why does the Rising World Coalition appear to be growing in influence?

Kai will need to pull his allies close and draw on all his pain magic if he is to answer even the least of these questions.

He’s not going to like the answers.

Ann Leckie a scris seria Imperia Raadch, care începe cu Ancillary Justice, o altă trilogie pe care v-o recomand cu mare plăcere.

Translation State este un roman stand-alone în același univers și se pare că vom afla mai multe despre misterioșii Presger din el.

Qven was created to be a Presger translator. The pride of their Clade, they always had a clear path before them: learn human ways, and eventually, make a match and serve as an intermediary between the dangerous alien Presger and the human worlds. The realization that they might want something else isn’t “optimal behavior”. I’s the type of behavior that results in elimination.

But Qven rebels. And in doing so, their path collides with those of two others. Enae, a reluctant diplomat whose dead grandmaman has left hir an impossible task as an inheritance: hunting down a fugitive who has been missing for over 200 years. And Reet, an adopted mechanic who is increasingly desperate to learn about his genetic roots – or anything that might explain why he operates so differently from those around him.

As a Conclave of the various species approaches – and the long-standing treaty between the humans and the Presger is on the line – the decisions of all three will have ripple effects across the stars.

John Scalzi este cunoscut pentru Old Man’s War și multe alte romane foarte bune, amuzante și scrise într-un mod concis, cu acțiune care se derulează rapid. Este unul dintre cei mai apreciați scriitori SF contemporani.

Starter Villain este un roman tipic Scalzi, adică imaginație nebună. Charlie este un tip cu o viață cam deprimantă, dar apoi unchiul său moare. Se dovedește că unchiul său era un super-villain ca în James Bond sau Austin Powers, avea și adăpost secret într-un vulcan, dușmani în întreaga lume, afaceri murdare etc, iar Charlie le moștenește pe toate și trebuie să se ferească de noi săi inamici în timp ce preia frâiele de la “evil empire”.

Charlie’s life is going nowhere fast. A divorced substitute teacher living with his cat in a house his siblings want to sell, all he wants is to open a pub downtown, if only the bank will approve his loan.

Then his long-lost uncle Jake dies and leaves his supervillain business (complete with island volcano lair) to Charlie.

But becoming a supervillain isn’t all giant laser death rays and lava pits. Jake had enemies, and now they’re coming after Charlie. His uncle might have been a stand-up, old-fashioned kind of villain, but these are the real thing: rich, soulless predators backed by multinational corporations and venture capital.

It’s up to Charlie to win the war his uncle started against a league of supervillains. But with unionized dolphins, hyper-intelligent talking spy cats, and a terrifying henchperson at his side, going bad is starting to look pretty good.

In a dog-eat-dog world…be a cat.

Am cartea aceasta, dar încă nu am citit-o.

Despre celelalte trei cărți nu știu nimic și nici nu erau pe vreo listă de-a mea, așa că vă zic descrierile de pe Amazon:

Some Desperate Glory:

“All her life, Kyr has trained for the day she can avenge the destruction of planet Earth. Raised on Gaea Station alongside the last scraps of humanity, she is one of the best warriors of her generation, the sword of a dead planet.

Then Command assigns her brother to certain death and relegates her to the nursery to bear sons, and she knows she must take humanity’s revenge into her own hands. Alongside her brother’s brilliant but seditious friend and a lonely, captive alien, Kyr must escape from everything she’s ever known. If she succeeds, she will find a universe far more complicated than she was taught and far more wondrous than she could ever have imagined”

Ceea ce nu sună musai foarte atrăgător, dar toate review-urile spun că este o carte scrisă foarte bine, de citit cu sufletul la gură.

The Saint of Bright Doors:

Fetter was raised to kill, honed as a knife to cut down his sainted father. This gave him plenty to talk about in therapy.

He walked among invisible powers: devils and anti-gods that mock the mortal form. He learned a lethal catechism, lost his shadow, and gained a habit for secrecy. After a blood-soaked childhood, Fetter escaped his rural hometown for the big city, and fell into a broader world where divine destinies are a dime a dozen.

Everything in Luriat is more than it seems. Group therapy is recruitment for a revolutionary cadre. Junk email hints at the arrival of a god. Every door is laden with potential, and once closed may never open again. The city is scattered with Bright Doors, looming portals through which a cold wind blows. In this unknowable metropolis, Fetter will discover what kind of man he is, and his discovery will rewrite the world.

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi:

Amina al-Sirafi should be content. After a storied and scandalous career as one of the Indian Ocean’s most notorious pirates, she’s survived backstabbing rogues, vengeful merchant princes, several husbands, and one actual demon to retire peacefully with her family to a life of piety, motherhood, and absolutely nothing that hints of the supernatural.

But when she’s tracked down by the obscenely wealthy mother of a former crewman, she’s offered a job no bandit could refuse: retrieve her comrade’s kidnapped daughter for a kingly sum. The chance to have one last adventure with her crew, do right by an old friend, and win a fortune that will secure her family’s future forever? It seems like such an obvious choice that it must be God’s will.

Yet the deeper Amina dives, the more it becomes alarmingly clear there’s more to this job, and the girl’s disappearance, than she was led to believe. For there’s always risk in wanting to become a legend, to seize one last chance at glory, to savor just a bit more power…and the price might be your very soul.

Fantasy cu pirați! I’m in.

Ca să fiu sincer, probabil le voi citi pe toate, par interesante. Pe voi ce vă atrage din cele de mai sus?

Mai sunt și nominalizări pentru alte categorii —nuvele, serii, jocuri video etc—, le găsiți aici pe toate.