Hugo Awards finalists 2022

Here are the finalists of the Hugo Awards for different categories, with some read, somne watched, and some to-read:

Best Novel

• A Desolation Called Peace, by Arkady Martine (Tor)
• The Galaxy, and the Ground Within, by Becky Chambers (Harper Voyager / Hodder & Stoughton)
• Light From Uncommon Stars, by Ryka Aoki (Tor / St Martin’s Press)
• A Master of Djinn, by P. Djèlí Clark (Tordotcom / Orbit UK)
• Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir (Ballantine / Del Rey)
• She Who Became the Sun, by Shelley Parker-Chan (Tor / Mantle)

Best Novella

• Across the Green Grass Fields, by Seanan McGuire (Tordotcom)
• Elder Race, by Adrian Tchaikovsky (Tordotcom)
• Fireheart Tiger, by Aliette de Bodard (Tordotcom)
• The Past Is Red, by Catherynne M. Valente (Tordotcom)
• A Psalm for the Wild-Built, by Becky Chambers (Tordotcom)
• A Spindle Splintered, by Alix E. Harrow (Tordotcom)

Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form

• Dune, screenplay by Jon Spaihts, Denis Villeneuve, and Eric Roth
• Encanto, screenplay by Charise Castro Smith and Jared Bush
• The Green Knight, written and directed by David Lowery
• Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, screenplay by Dave Callaham, et al.
• Space Sweepers, screenplay by Jo Sung-Hee, Yookang Seo-ae, and Yoon Seung-min
• WandaVision, screenplay by Peter Cameron et al.

Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form

• The Wheel of Time: The Flame of Tar Valon, written by Justine Juel Gillmer, directed by Salli Richardson-Whitfield,
• For All Mankind: The Grey, written by Matt Wolpert and Ben Nedivi; directed by Sergio Mimica-Gezzan
• Arcane: The Monster You Created, written by Christian Linke and Alex Yee; story by Christian Linke, Alex Yee, Conor Sheehy, and Ash Brannon; directed by Pascal Charrue and Arnaud Delord
• The Expanse: Nemesis Games, written by Daniel Abraham, Ty Franck, and Naren Shankar; directed by Breck Eisner
• Loki: The Nexus Event, written by Eric Martin, directed by Kate Herron, created for television by Michael Waldron
• Star Trek: Lower Decks: wej Duj, written by Kathryn Lyn, directed by Bob Suarez

WoT first three impressions

As I was pessimistic about the adaptation of the behemoth (14 volumes) Wheel of Time adaptation as an Amazon TV series, I was not particularly disappointed after watching the first three episodes! Regarding the following comments, I do realise that having started reading these books in 1990 and having completed reading the 15 volumes puts me in a tiny minority and that anyone unfamiliar with Jordan’s universe would take the story as it comes rather than checking for discrepancies from the gospel.

Good stuff:

• Egwene and Nynaeve are delivering strong personalities to their respective character, kudos!, in a sense improving upon their book counterparts!
• Moraine Sedai is reasonably well rendered, although she could have appeared as more ambiguous though (and why did they add this injury in the Bel Tine scene to the original story?)
• this includes her telling of the story of Manethren
• the way Trollocs and Fades are rendered is great
• the scenery is mostly fabulous, esp. the entrance to Shadar Logoth
• meeting the Tuatha’an was great, except for the fake scare at the beginning, and the arguing about their non-violent commitment is pretty convincing
  
• the idea making the first Darkfriend we meet  more humane and ambivalent than in the book is hopefully going to be seen again

Bad lines:

• the choice of having the Dragon being one of the five friends, incl. Egwene and Nynaeve, clashes with the structure of Jordan’s world, as well as Moraine’s early infodump
• Matt, Perrin, and Rand appear incredibly naïve, but maybe this was already the case in the book
• Matt is decidedly downright unpleasant from the start (i.e., even before Shadar Logoth)
• the notion to have Perrin already married and the ensuing trauma are terrible novelties, the more because he doesn’t look so traumatized by the ending
• the special treatment of Nynaeve by one trolloc is missing from the book and unclear as to its contribution to the plot (and why would Moraine leave without her?)
• costumes are terrible, almost uniformly!, and too modern, looking like they were bought from second hand stores (and more globally there is a feeling of cheapness in the set designs, from Shadar Logoth to Tar Valon)
• Moraine’s and Lan’s fight in the Two Rivers is rather unconvincing and messy (why did she need to turn this nice inn building into missiles?!)
• why would Rand and Tam miss the village Bel Tine celebration to return to their farm?
• The Guardian got highly negative about the show and even about the books (which the first reviewer had never read) maybe seeing too much in the (admittedly terribly heavy) writing style of Robert Jordan and maybe trying too had to draw a comparison with Game of Thrones (just like so many critics). So did the New York Times
• making the only Darkfriend so far coming out of the open and a sword expert
• Lan not commenting on Rand’s father’s heron sword, while zooming on said heron several times
• the sooo slooow walk of Egwene and Perrin in the third episode once they get on track(s), thanks to the wolves
• the Whitecloacks being depicted as just too evil from the start, with no ambivalence whatsoever (this was also true in the book, which [spoiler alert!] makes Galad joining them later—sorry for the spoiler—difficult to fathom)
• similarly, the first Red Sister we meet (Liandrin) is similarly too one-sided to give a balanced picture of the different Ajahs in the White Tower

L’enfant de poussière [book review]

I read this book in French, as this was the language in which it was written and also because I was given a free copy for writing a review! This is a rather unusual book, the first volume of a series called the cycle of Syffe (where Syffe is both the main character and the name of a tribe), well-written by a young author, although the style is at time a wee bit heavy. As for instance in “Les mains sur les hanches, mes yeux balayèrent l’horizon qui semblait s’étaler de la pointe de mes bottes jusqu’au bout du monde.”

The story in itself borrows to some usual memes of the genre, from following a group of young people (very young in this case), forced into dramatic circumstances by the upheaval of their world, here the death of a king leading to a breakup of his kingdom, and meeting unexpected tutors who will turn them into heroes of sort, if they survive the training. The closest books I can think of are (my favourite) Elizabeth Moon’s Deed of Paksenarrion (without the über-religious aspects [so far!]) and Glen Cook’s Black Company, which both follow mercenary companies in a fragmented world at war. A little bit of Mark Lawrence’s Prince of Thorn as well, since in the later a young kid is driving a band of bandits. And not to forget Joe Abercrombie for the rather similar gritty style. (Gritty enough to make me decide after a few chapters that this was definitely not a young adult novel, as I had doubts about it first.)

The book, first of the cycle, thus follows the misadventures of a very young orphan, and I repeat “very young”, because this is an issue with the story, when 8 to 10 years old are shown in situations and with attitudes that do not sound likely. Even for orphans, even in a medieval world with short lifespans and plenty of economic reasons to turn kids into cheap labour. From spy, to stable boy, to child-soldier. Without turning to spoilers, there are also a bucketful of fortune reversals in the book, meaning that the surroundings and circumstances keep changing, sometimes really fast, sometimes quite slowly, as with the years when Syffe acquires fighting skills from an old mercenary from a tribe of free and deadly fighters. The pace is still good enough for the book to be a page-turner that I read in less than a week! And the few battle scenes are realistic in the Abercrombie referential, that is, with everyone scared and unclear why they are there. There is also some magic involved, which is always a risk in the plot, but apart from a lengthy passage on a malevolent Dream with much too real consequences (nothing to do with Tel’aran’rhiod in the Wheel of Time!), the author handles it quite well, maintaining an ambivalence in Syffe about his super-natural experiences, supported by one of his mentors’ freethinker ethics. As for the completeness of the background, i.e., the universe imagined by the author, it often feels too provincial, too local, with the incoming wars between the local lords sounding very much parochial, although the scope gets gradually wider, along with the maturation of Syffe and the darkening of the overall atmosphere. After finishing the book, I read that seven volumes in total are planned in the cycle!

a memory of light

It is now over: I have finished reading the last volume of the Wheel of Time, A Memory of Light. When considering that I started reading the first volume in Ithaca in the summer of 1990, while visiting George Casella, there is something momentous (and bittersweet) in reading the last page and acknowledging it is now over. For good. As many other WoT fans, I grew attached toJ some of the characters, despite the repetitions, the often immature psychology, and attitudes that varied from one volume to the next… It is thus a wee sad to see them vanish with the last page (or, worse, die within the last volume for three of them). Even though 14 volumes plus a prequel is more than enough. Of course, this feeling is nothing compared with what the second author, Brandon Sanderson, must feel! As he mentions on his blog, he had read the very final scene in 2007, soon after Robert Jordan’s death, when he was asked to complete the series…

I will not get into details about this last volume as I do not want to post spoilers. And because Leigh Butler did a much better job! (Warning: many many spoilers!) Let me mention however that the book stands to the previous volumes written by Sanderson, at the very least, and certainly above some of the weakest volumes written by Jordan. The battle that occupies a large part of the book has enough shifts and surprises to make it bearable, even though there are too many “happy endings” in my taste. Including the very final scene. Maybe not so surprisingly the two major characters in this volume are Perrin and Matt (thanks to the nice trick about the great captains). They have certainly grown in stature and depth from the first volume, even though they are not free from the occasional relapse. The roles of Rand, Nynaeve and Moiraine are somewhat anticlimactic as they seem to be doing nothing! (Of course, they only seem!) The forces facing each other sound very disproportionate and it is hard to understand why the dark side does not make use of those superior forces from the beginning. (The same question applies to the whole series, somehow!) I must also acknowledge being a bit disappointed by the (homely) final chapter. (Nothing terrible like the very final chapter of Harry Potter of course!) I can understand Jordan’s motivations in writing it and it somehow makes sense. Still, not the ending I would have liked to read for this superlative epic! Nonetheless, I think Sanderson did a magnificent job in merging the notes of Robert Jordan into a coherent and enjoyable ending. That it took three rather than one volume is more a testimony to the complexity of the universe Jordan created than a nuisance (now that the series is over!). May he always find water and shade!

A Memory of Light, Chapter One

After releasing the prologue to A Memory of Light, By Grace and Banners Fallen, for sale, Tor made a gesture to Jordan’s fans desperate for the latest volume of Robert Jordan’s and Brandon Sanderson‘s the Wheel of Time byputting the first (short) chapter on line a few days ago… (The following is obviously of no interest whatsoever to those who have no read the preceding volumes!)

“Feral dogs hunted through the rubble for meat. They looked up as the wind passed, their eyes hungry.”

The very beginning feels like a prologue, with the traditional image of a wind going across the land and reporting on the desperate prospects facing its inhabitants. Then it turns into the—as well—traditional feature of the main characters taking quick decisions on truly major issues and as suddenly discussing trivial matters. And arguing against one another, as they have been doing for the previous 10,188 pages of the series!

“Pregnant. Pregnant with his children. Light! He had only just learned of it. Why hadn’t she been the one to tell him?”

Maybe the most surprising item in the chapter is the fact that Rand only learns now about Elayne being pregnant. I do not remember anything about this from the previous books, but this late in the pregnancy, this sound inexplicable! Esp. given the Bond existing between them… And the way he reacts to Elayne having not told him is equally subdued. This whole chapter reflects what Leigh Butler called “the Jesusing of Rand”, going from half-mad to philosophical and collected in the previous volume, Towers of Midnight…. Making us feel like facing a new character! Anyway, the whole chapter fits into the style of those previous books, things happening at a reasonable pace but still hindered by unnecessary details and inane conversations. May the Last Battle come as quickly as possible!