2026 Hugos - Best Graphic Novel Nominees

The 84th World Science Fiction Convention

August 27-31, 2026 in Anaheim, California

A lot of life has happened since my last post.  I got a second roommate who came with a dog.  I’ve been trying to clear out the spare bedroom, which I’ve been using as an office and for storage.  I’ve also learned how to help take care of a dog which is brand new to me.  I dog sat for a friend many years ago, but now I’m actually living with one.  Fortunately, he’s completely taken with me.😀🐶

As for reading, it read quite a bit but did not take time for reviews.  These six graphic novels were all quite wonderful and each could have had their own blog entry.  Instead, I’ve written brief descriptions and reactions below, ordering them according to how I voted for them for the Hugo Award.  If the book is available on Bookshop.org, there is a link for it on the title.

The Invisible Parade by Leigh Bardugo and John Picacio.  5 stars - Incredibly beautiful and colorful art accompanies this relatively short novel about a young girl grieving the death of her grandfather.  When he was still alive, he was reading her a story, but now she’ll never know how it ends.  Then she meets some beings very much like a kid-friendly version of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, who help her process her grief.  This all takes place around the time of Dia de los Muertos.  

The Space Cat by Nnedi Okorafor, art by Tana Ford.  5 stars – An easy, happy science fiction story about Nnedi and her daughter’s cat who is a secret space traveler.  This book was so sweet and easy, I fell in love with it.  The target audience is 8 – 12 years, but I enjoyed every second of it.  I loved the art and the happy story about Nnedi and Anyaugo bringing the cat home, the time it took for the cat to warm up to them, and the space adventures the cat has when everyone is asleep.

A Wizard of Earthsea: A Graphic Novel by Ursula K. Le Guin, adapted and art by Fred Fordham.  5 stars – Gorgeous artwork accompanies this classic story of Ged searching for his shadow.  It’s been a while since I read the trilogy, so this novel jogged the memories.  I loved that Ged and most of the other characters are finally portrayed as copper colored as opposed to the whitewashed covers of the editions I read.  And the relationship between Ged and Vetch was much more intimate and beautiful than I remember.  The artwork surprisingly evokes deeper emotions than words alone.

A Girl and Her Fed by KB Spangler, art by Ale Presser.  4 stars – The author provided Act 3 of their webcomic series containing everything published in 2025.  This link in the title takes you to the webcomic.  It was a bit jarring coming in the middle of things, but I eventually caught on.  There’s a prophesy that the current hunky president will die in office.  A previous prophecy had been subverted so there’s hope that this prophecy can be subverted as well.  A ghostly Benjamin Franklin is behind the assassination attempt, and a ghostly Abe Lincoln gives advice to the president’s children.  Intense, but smart and sprinkled with good humor.  And there's a talking koala!

Absolute Wonder Woman Vol. 1: The Last Amazon by Kelly Thompson, art by Hayden Sherman and Mattia de Iulis, coloring by Jordie Bellaire, lettering by Becca Carey.  4 stars – I was not looking forward to this one, not having really been a classic comic book kid.  But I was taken by surprise at how much I enjoyed this.  It’s another genesis story of Wonder Woman.  It’s smart, with an excellent combination of fun and intense.  I think my favorite part was when she first appeared to regular humans to save them from giant Lovecraftian sea monsters attacking the West Coast. 

The Power Fantasy Volume 1: The Superpowers by Kieron Gillen, art by Caspar Wijngaard, lettering by Clayton Cowles.  3 stars – My least favorite of the nominees, I found this first volume to be very confusing.  I didn’t understand the nature of the main characters who have superpowers equivalent to the nuclear arsenal of the US until I read the blurb at the end.  The storytelling bounced between scenes and characters too much to keep a coherent narrative in my head.  One character starts a cult, one or more want to stop the cult, one’s an artist.  As an introductory volume collecting five issues, I was too lost to fully appreciate this work by the well-known writer of The Wicked + The Divine.

Guards! Guards!

Terry Pratchett
Completed 7/17/2026, Reviewed 7/17/2026
4 stars

I believe I have acquired all the Discworld books via Deals of the Day, but haven’t read any since The Color of Magic in 2016 and The Light Fantastic in 2021.  This was a book club read.  I felt meh about it in the beginning as characters and mood were being set but really got into the jokes and then the plot as the steam built up.  Like the two I read, this book (Book 8) is not great literature but is quite fun.  And yes, the books seem to get better as the series progresses.  Hopefully, I won’t wait another five years before I read another one.  

Carrot is the hulking son of dwarves.  After living in the world of the dwarves, his father advises him to live in the world of humans, because, well, Carrot is a human foundling they adopted.  Unsure, but trusting of his father, he agrees and gets a job with the City Watch.  Carrot is honored to serve, but the people currently employed by the Watch hate their job.  Their captain, Vimes, is a drunk, and the rest are pretty shiftless and unmotivated.  That is until a Secret Society begins conjuring dragons to wreak havoc on the city in order to install a king who will answer to the Society’s Grand Master.  Vimes and his team try to figure out what is going on as giant dragons were supposed to be extinct.  Soon the team begins to act more like the cops they are and, with the inspiration of the naïve Carrot, try to save the city from this fire-breathing menace.

None of the characters are really deep, but they have better characterization than your standard comic novel.  Carrot makes a good dumb and kindhearted cop.  Vimes begins acting more like a captain, even catching the eye of Lady Ramkin who maintains a shelter for wayward swamp dragons.  Wonse, the Grand Master, is fun as the slimy bad guy, and Vetinari is great as the morally questionable Patrician of the city.  They all throw around jokes, puns, and comic observations; even Wonse gets some good jabs in.  Lastley, there’s the Librarian, an ape who controls all the books in the great library at the university.  He is perhaps the most likeable as he is regularly annoyed by the humans.  I really liked Carrot, Lady Ramkin, and the Librarian right from their introductions.  The others took some time.  In the end, Vimes develops depth and a sense of responsibility and action that he didn’t think he had, which made me very sympathetic to him.  

The nice thing about the Discworld is that you don’t have to read the books in order.  The world building covers enough that you have no trouble getting situated in the story.  The prose is nice; mostly it’s just plain fun.  There are some very sobering passages in it.  This book was first published in 1989, coming off the Reagan/Thatcher period.  But these passages feel like they’re inspired by the events of today.  The best quite in the book is:

“The Supreme Grand Master smiled in the depths of his robe.  It was amazing, this mystic business.  You tell them a lie, and then when you don’t need it anymore you tell them another lie and tell them they’re progressing along the road to wisdom.  Then instead of laughing they follow you even more, hoping that at the heart of all the lies they find the truth.  And bit by bit they accept the unacceptable.  Amazing.”

I give this book four stars out of five.  When I finished it, I felt good.  It has great British humor and left me quite satisfied.  The plot is not necessarily imaginative.  It’s the delivery that makes this book a great read.  

Half a Million Hits!

 

Wow!  Yesterday, I had my 500,000th hit on my blog.  Again, I don’t know if it’s lots of bots hitting my blog or lots of real people.  Either way, it makes it easier for everyone to find.  Thanks to my readers, regular and intermittent.  You keep me writing reviews, even after twelve years.  

 I’m quasi-retired now, having been laid off for about a year and not having much luck getting past the AI application screening processes.  I can’t even get jobs that exactly match my previous job description.  It’s a game I’m tired of playing anyway.  That leads me to the decision to investigate monetizing my blog, i.e., adding ads.  Hopefully, they are not too obnoxious.  My intent is not to upset my regular human readers, but to capitalize on the possible bots hitting my blog, hoping they’ll click on ads and generate some side income for me.  Every little bit helps, right?  So bear with me as I redesign the blog a little and add the ads feature.  You don’t have to click on them, but by doing so, you’ll help me out a little bit.  

Keep reading folks!!  I hope you find inspiration to check out some of the authors and titles I’ve reviewed as you search for something to sink your teeth into.  Thanks again to everyone who visits.  I’m still in the midst of reading Hugo nominees and book club selections.  After August 8th, I’ll be back to the eclectic taste genre fiction we love so much. 

 

The West Passage

Jared Pechaček
Completed 7/12/2026, Reviewed 7/12/2026
3 stars

This was a very strange book.  I would put it under the subgenre of weird fantasy.  The author throws a multitude of strange characters at the reader, some very large, some small, some with rabbit ears, square heads, four arms, three legs, tentacles, many eyes, one eye, scales, feathers.  Needless to say, the world building is simply unbelievable, which leads me to my general feeling about the book.  It was overwhelming for me.  I couldn’t keep up with all the characters and their characteristics.  I had trouble visualizing the layout of the land.  And I never got the significance of the title location.  A lot of work and imagination went into this story and I can acknowledge that it was well written.  It was simply just too much for me.  This book has been nominated for the 2026 Mythopoeic Award, but I read it because the author is nominated for the Astounding Award for Best New Writer, presented at the Hugo Awards ceremony.  Since I’ve already read three of the authors nominated, I decided I would finish out this category and vote on it this year.  

Winter comes suddenly out of order to the Grey Tower.  Mother Yarrow dies prematurely, leaving young Pell to assume the mantle.  Pell, the new Yarrow, is not trained in all the ways of the Grey Lady.  But she decides to go to the Black Tower to ask the Black Lady why this is happening.  Were the women in grey being punished for something?  At the same time, the Guardian of the West Passage, who is from the Grey Tower, dies prematurely as well, leaving her apprentice Kew unacknowledged as the new Hawthorn.  He decides to go to the Black Tower to be formally acknowledged so he can defend the West Passage from the Beast.  Kew is assigned a squire, Frin, and together, they journey to beg help from the Black Tower to defend the country from the Beast.    

This book is very complex and describing the plot and the characters is not straight forward.  There’s so much more to this book than what’s in my summary.  I have to say I enjoyed the travels of Kew and Frin because of their relationship.  At first, Kew doesn’t want help, but comes to appreciate Frin and the two become friends, a first for Kew.  There’s an implication that there may be more between them which is quite endearing, whether I was reading into it or not.  I have a soft spot for boyfriends on a journey to save the world.  Pell, on the other hand, who becomes Mother Yarrow, is less endearing.  I found her reticence a little tedious, although I do understand her plight as she was thrust into this position without enough training.  There are many, many other characters who come in and out of their lives, but few stay through the whole book.  

The prose is sumptuous as is the world building, but again, I was overwhelmed.  And the order of the storytelling made following the journeys of Kew and Frin and Yarrow tough to follow.  Rather than the chapters alternating between them, the chapters would follow Kew and Frin for a while, then switch to Yarrow.  It made it a little difficult to keep track of each.  There’s also interludes which explain the history and mythology of the five Ladies and their Towers.  Every now and then, there’s an interlude which tells a brief story about the common people in the midst of the chaos of the approaching destruction by the Beast.  I appreciated those even though I didn’t always see their relevance to advancing the plot.  

This book is not an easy read.  It took me ten days get through it because I was never completely taken with any of the plot lines.  When I read it, I enjoyed it, but the effort involved kept me from picking up the book more often than I did.  Gender is pretty fluid throughout the book.  When Kew becomes the new Hawthorn, he becomes a woman, which doesn’t affect their relationship with Frin.  Props to that, but considering that the people were mixed with animals and shapes and forms, gender wasn’t that significant.  I give this book three stars out of five.  I think the average person will either love this book or get lost in the complexity.  I’m in the latter, but I acknowledge the brilliance and effort that went into it.  Hence my rating.  I am definitely interested in seeing what else Pechaček will come up with next.  

2026 Hugos - Best Novelette Nominees

The 84th World Science Fiction Convention

August 27-31, 2026 in Anaheim, California

Novelettes fall between short stories and novellas in size.  These ranged from 30 to 50 pages.  You get a little more world building than the short stories which have to get to the point more quickly.  Unlike the Short Stories, this category wasn’t as tight.  There was one standout, ironically from an author I haven’t enjoyed yet. The novelettes listed below have a brief plot summary with my reaction and are ordered by how I rank them.

“When He Calls Your Name” by Catherynne M. Valente – 5 stars – A woman verbally spars with a vampire named Jolene 😊 who wants to take her husband.  Jolene has been feeding on him for a while and the wife hasn’t known what to do, until now.  Valente credits Dolly Parton.  Yes, there are lines from the song in the story, but it works sooooo well.  And there are two twists.  I have to share a great line:  Jolene tells the wife, “I am sorry [for feeding on her husband].  It wasn’t personal.  It’s only nature.  Wolves hunt.”  The wife replies, “And people shoot wolves from fucking helicopters, lady.”

“Kaiju Agonistes” by Scott Lynch – 4 stars – Nixon still loses in this alternate history story.  Earth must battle a strange monster from the sea.  Planted by the galaxy-faring seed planters, the kaiju’s mission is to wreak destruction until the planet’s indigenous sentient beings refrain from using weapons of mass destruction.  The humans can’t figure that out, so the kaiju speaks directly to them, and gets a PR rep.  This book pokes fun at late-stage capitalism, fascist regimes, the Cold War, and Nixon, who could really represent any oppressive, dictatorial leader.  

“The Millay Illusion” by Sarah Pinsker – 4 stars - A girl in a magic troupe pretends to be a boy because audiences and critics don’t think women should be magicians.  Lottie falls for a new member of the troupe, Susanna, whose obsession with breaking into magic’s big time being herself rubs off a bit on her.  Susanna plays a ditsy female doing amazing magic, but gets no respect from the owner, Uncle Albert.  She goes off on her own, leaving Lottie who always remains on the lookout for her.  This is a good thinker story.  It keeps fresh what women had to do to break into a man’s world.  

“Never Eaten Vegetables” by H.H. Pak - 4 stars – A colony ship carries ten thousand people to settle and begin trade on a distant moon.  Under the eye of the ship’s AI, 95% of them die, leaving 500 to settle, people, and produce goods on the moon.  Because of this horrible accident, the AI, named NEV, as in Never Eaten Vegetables, is set to be shut down.  One settler, Luwa, tries to uncover what really happened that caused the AI to allow them to die.  This is a graphic, intense, and heartbreaking story.  I had to shake this one off before moving on to the next one.

“The Girl That My Mother Is Leaving Me For” by Cameron Reed – 3 stars – A trans woman was supposed to bear the clone of a huge corporate CEO but has three miscarriages.  Coleen, the CEO, finds Mira, another orphan, and tries again.  The trans woman is now in limbo.  She takes care of Mira and they eventually fall in love, possibly destroying the CEO succession of the corporation.  I thought this story was okay.  I didn’t find the story terribly engaging.  

“Rapport: Friendship, Solidarity, Communion, Empathy” by Martha Wells - 3 stars – This is a really good story if you’ve read enough of the Murderbot series.  In the story order, it is #2.5.  Even though I read the first seven books, I had trouble placing the characters.  And there’s no plot.  It’s really just a vignette to bridge a small gap to introduce Peri just as she tells the crew of the ship that she and Murderbot are having a relationship.  Not really remembering enough of the story and understanding the point of the book, I was lost until the very end.  I kept waiting for something to happen, but it didn’t.  I would have given it two stars, but the writing is seriously terrific.

2026 Hugos - Best Short Story Nominees

The 84th World Science Fiction Convention

August 27-31, 2026 in Anaheim, California

It’s that time of year again, as you’ve seen in my previous posts of novels and novellas.  This post is dedicated to the six nominees for Short Story.  It’s a tight race, and even though there is a difference between the ratings (4 stars versus 5), I liked them all very much.  They are all pretty dark and they comment on problems in our culture.   The stories listed below have a brief plot summary with my reaction and are ordered by how I rank them.  

“Laser Eyes Ain’t Everything” by Effie Seiberg – 5 stars – This was awesome!  The Main Character is a wheelchair-bound superabled woman named RazorBeam.  She’s a paraplegic with laser vision.  She joins the Super-Abled 501 Union and finds it’s not ADA compliant.  She tries to get them to add a ramp and change intersections to make them safer.  The Union members don’t listen to her ideas or needs, nor have they been able to stop the rampaging Doctor Croc.  RazorBeam confronts Doc Croc herself when the 501 doesn’t show up during an attack.  Their conversation is a revealing look into the state of superabled affairs.  This book was smart and effective in conveying a message about how the system fails the disabled community.  Hits all the right buttons.

“Wire Mother” by Isabel J. Kim – 5 stars – Cassie hates that 2/3 of the human population is digital, including her mother.  In fact, most humans have virtual partners and use professional companions/hired humans with a digital overlay for tactile needs.  Not being able to convince her father of her issues with her mother, she finds friendship with another human about her age at the community center, a computer whiz with a penchant for cruelty.  

“Six People to Revise You” by J.R. Dawson – 4 stars – A queer woman has been in therapy forever, dealing with interpersonal issues as well as gender identity.  There’s a new procedure called Revision which will change her, though it doesn’t exactly say how.  To do it, she needs statements from six people about what they would change in her.  The process of obtaining them is intense, but not as much as bringing it up with her wife.  A powerful story of self-awareness and self-care.

“In My Country” by Thomas Ha – 4 stars – An intense tale of living in a controlled society.  Main character’s son becomes a subversive writer, threatening the stability that the MC has lived with all these years.  His daughter and son see through the BS of the regime in power and try to make their father see the truth in the stories’ ambiguities.  Powerful novel.  A difficult read because of the frustration you develop listening to the father lie to himself about what’s happening around him and to his family. 

“Missing Helen” by Tia Tashiro – 4 stars – Well written story about a woman whose husband leaves her for her clone.  So she attempts to meet her to explain that she sold her cloning rights away because she needed the money when she ran away from home as a teen.  She doesn’t know what to expect, but hopes to ease the pain of the divorce.  The kicker in this book is that it’s told in second person and the wife is the “you” in the story.  The ending had WOW factor.  

“10 Visions of the Future; or, Self-Care for the End of Days” by Samantha Mills – 4 stars – A woman has an Amazon-bought crystal ball in which she sees many different futures, all of them apocalyptic.  In each one, she and her husband find little moments of joy amidst the end times.  It really made me smile, with little jokes and with her final conclusion.  

The Iron Garden Sutra

A.D. Sui
Completed 6/23/2026, Reviewed 6/24/2026
3 stars

Don’t believe the online blurb about this book.  This is not cozy in any way.  It’s a Sci Fi-Horror novel that uses many tropes that are popular right now.  It’s similar to the Alien franchise as people are killed one by one by something in a spaceship.  There’s a lot of body horror here.  There is a monk, but unlike Becky Chamber’s placid monk, this one is miserably self-loathing.  However, after I got about 50% of the way through, I started to really enjoy it.  I like reading horror.  And I liked the enemies-to-lovers romance-in-a-horrible-situation-movie that very slowly evolved.  This book was for online book club, so it was a quick break from the Hugo nominees.  

A generations ship has returned to a human docking station after a thousand years in space.  Everyone aboard is dead.  The Starlit monastery sends Vessel Iris to the ship to perform the soul releasing ritual for the thousands of dead.  He has an AI implant which helps him remember things, like breathing calmly and recalling the hundreds of years of sutras he studied at the monastery.  When he arrives at the ship, he finds a research team already there and it is full of moss, vines, trees, and other plant life.  He tries to avoid the team but inevitably, they interact---a lot.  Some are friendly, but some hate him for having the implant or simply because he’s a monk for the dead.  Vessel Iris senses beats on the ship, like a pulse or heartbeat, that no one else mentions.  So he keeps it a secret, the first of many.  As people die one by one, he keeps his theories to himself because the others aren’t receptive to him.  But his secrets may hold the key to the mysteries of the ship and the reasons for the deaths.

Vessel Iris is a miserable person.  He had a horrible childhood, being orphaned and taken to the monastery.  He believes he is a failure in everything he does.  However, between his senses, the AI (called VIFAI), and the discoveries made by the team, he is the only one who figures out what’s going on the ship.  You expect him to be a hero, but he’s not.  He’s a horribly insecure person.  That made reading through the first half tough.  It’s hard to develop empathy for him because of these personality traits.  Fortunately, the pace picks up and annoyance of Iris must compete with the accumulating body count.  

The character of the VIFAI was strange.  I felt like he was on the verge of having a robust personality, but it mostly seemed one-dimensional.  It’s sort of like a slave/guardian angel but he treats it as an equal.  I didn’t develop any empathy for VIFAI either.

Of the other characters, Riyu Alo was the nicest.  She’s the exobiologist.  Ishtan Ora was cute as the bumbling older archeologist, specializing in ancient, returned generation ships.  Tev and Jesi, the engineer’s interns didn’t seem multi-dimensional until near the end.  There are two guards we don’t know much about, but Iris feels guilty about not knowing their names.  Finally, there’s engineer Yan Fukui who is brash and downright mean to Iris (I just got that his last name might be a self-referential joke).  Because of this animosity, we get a better sense of who he is.  We also get background information about him, providing much needed insight into this belligerent character.  Probably the best developed character, but not the easiest to empathize with for quite a while.  But to me he was the most authentic and realistic human in the group.  He also played practical engineer devil’s advocate to Iris’ theories about the ship.  

I thought the prose was fine, but the world building was not detailed regarding the science.  There was a lot of hand-waving about the mycelium network and generations ship engineering.  During book club discussion, there was a lot of “What was that about?” i.e., vague science.  Despite all this, I was very engaged in the last hundred pages or so.  I liked the climax, but I somehow missed the “Book 1” on the top of every page, ending up shocked that it left some pretty huge loose ends.  It’s not a cliffhanger, but there’s a lot to be resolved.  And it seems to me that the resolutions will come in the form of going back to the ship with the remaining characters, the tired trope used by Alien and Aliens and countless other horror flicks.  When it came to rating this, I wavered between a 3 and a 4 because, by the end, I really liked it, but I also recognized that it had the above flaws.  So I settled on three stars out of five.  But I liked it enough that I will probably read the sequel.