My notes and ranking of the 2015 Hugo Novella category.
- No Award
Ranked #1 because nothing even broke three stars (“I like it”) vs three four 3+ star entries last year. If I only rank you “meh” then you don’t get an award.
- One Bright Star to Guide Them, John C. Wright
2 stars / He’s a better writer than a lot of the Puppies noms but his stuff isn’t very interesting. What was up with Sally/Sarah? Did he get confused? He also seems to have issues with originality, this was a Narnia rip-off, the other story was a biblical fable. - Pale Realms of Shade, John C. Wright
2.5 stars / A noir ghost story that turns into a biblical morality tale. The ghost story was okay but the further it went from that the more boring it got. - The Plural of Helen of Troy, John C. Wright
2.5 stars / Would be 3.5 if he had stopped before the “Second Intermission”. Instead he kept going and gave us the tremendously confusing and not very interesting back story of how JK hired the PI. - Big Boys Don’t Cry, Tom Kratman
2 stars / I outgrew MilSF quite a while back (though I still intend to make an exception for Honor Harrington and Hammer’s Slammers) so I was unenthusiastic from page one and it didn’t give me any reason to change my mind. - Flow, Arlan Andrews, Sr.
1 star / Too long, too boring. Not exactly misogynist but women are only notable when they have breasts (apparently the chicks back home are pretty flat) and only useful as entertainment. Like many of the Whiny Puppy submissions it seems to be part of a larger work. I get the impression that they don’t know how write anything short so they just chop a random piece out of whatever bloated boring book they have laying around, and apparently they have a lot of those laying around.