Weird Kitties: Best Novella Open Thread
Oh, let’s go ahead and wrap up the big prose fiction categories with Best Novella, the “just shorter than a novel” category, defined as being between 17,500 and 40,000 words. Which is a length I really like, having written two books (both nonfiction, admittedly) that land in it; it’s at a beautiful cusp where you can still get away with a book that’s all suggestion and no conclusion, but where you can have the suggestion be labrynthine in its complexity.
Unfortunately, much as I love the category, I’ve not read anything in it this year. Here’s the Hugo Wikia’s list, which I do note has Paul Cornell’s latest, Witches of Lychford. How was that? How were other things?
Still need reviews for Sunday, by the way. snowspinner at gmail. Perhaps a review of Witches of Lychford? The Martian? Seveneves?
October 24, 2015 @ 5:11 am
Is there a theme for Sunday’s reviews?
October 24, 2015 @ 5:50 am
I liked The Witches of Lychford though I found the style hard to get into. I’ve had “show, don’t tell” drilled into my head so badly that I resist authors who do a lot of telling. Once I got past that, it was a breeze.
Other biases that influence my opinion: Hedge witches. I love them; the story has one.
October 24, 2015 @ 5:50 am
I liked The Witches of Lychford though I found the style hard to get into. I’ve had “show, don’t tell” drilled into my head so badly that I resist authors who do a lot of telling. Once I got past that, it was a breeze.
Other biases that influence my opinion: Hedge witches. I love them; the story has one.
October 24, 2015 @ 5:51 am
Your captcha system is broken, by the way.
October 24, 2015 @ 6:55 am
Actually the captcha works perfectly. It’s just that we are all robots and just don’t know it 🙁
October 24, 2015 @ 9:54 am
The only ones I’ve heard of from the list are Witches and Binti by Okorafor. I haven’t read either, but Binti’s been getting good marks.
November 18, 2015 @ 1:25 am
The two best novellas I’ve read this year are:
1) Kai Ashante Wilson’s mindblowing novella, The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps. This is some next-level prose, reminded me at times of Samuel R. Delany at his best, yet also something entirely and beautifully new. Can’t recommend this one highly enough.
2) Nnedi Okorafor’s exquisite Binti. Classic Nnedi. Powerful and insightful and fierce and humane. Featuring a compelling protagonist from a fascinating culture.