Aldiss Award reading log
Oct. 19th, 2025 10:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
petrea_mitchellI was very excited to learn about the new Aldiss Award for worldbuilding in sf, because good worldbuilding is one of the big things I look for in a book. "Story and world" has long been my shorthand for what usually determines whether I like something. So when I saw the shortlist, I had to go and check out everything on it.
Note that this is an award for just worldbuilding, and makes no warranty, express or implied, about other aspects of the books.
Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon: The interesting conceit in this one is that religious pantheons are operating as corporate entities. So our hero, for instance, as an orisha, is employed by the Orisha Spirit Company. Followers are spoken of as market share. There is boardroom drama.
That was all fine, but I had a couple of big problems with other aspects of the book. One is that the opening action scene promises a heist plot, and then very little of the ensuing story has much to do with the heist.
The other is akin to the problem of making vampire protagonists sympathetic. A lot of authors will get around the problem of vampires having to kill humans to exist by letting them subsist on blood without killing anyone, or letting them kill animals instead. If the author insists on sticking to tradition, then they'll at least have the vampire kill only people who are, in the author's opinion, the dregs of society.
Well, the main characters in this book survive by eating the souls of random innocent people and enjoying the heck out of the process. It just got harder and harder to root for them.
Kavithri: The setting is a sort of steampunk India, which draws on both the legacy of colonization and modern sectarian struggles. (A few glimpses at the deeper history of the world show it to be significantly different from the history of ours.) It feels like a big, complicated place more than any of the other works on this list.
This is also a big, long book. This is mitigated somewhat by the way it periodically switches from one subgenre to another, but it also unremittingly brutal and occasionally gory. It is a very well-written book, and I loved immersing myself in its world, but at the same time I don't think I could handle another installment of it anytime soon.
This one also turns out to have a version of the vampire problem, but makes a point of confronting it head-on.
Saints of Storm and Sorrow: This one takes place a fantasy archipelago which is the imperialist-era Philippines with the serial numbers barely even filed off. In contrast to a lot of fantasy stories where the protagonist needs to dig deep to bring their full power to bear, the heroine spends most of the book desperately trying to not cause a region-level catastrophe.
This one was fine on the whole, though it felt like it was starting to drag by the end. People who pick this up specifically to read a story about a brown bi person may be disappointed by the implications of how her various romances turn out.
When Among Crows: Here is yet another book set in a colonized land, except it's not interested in talking about colonialism because it's a very short book about Polish immigrants and their descendants in modern-day Chicago.
I really appreciated this one both for telling a complete story in a short book, and having an ending where the characters have won more than just a short break from the overall dismalness of their lives.
The Dance of Shadows: This one is set in more or less West Africa, under the sway of a colonial power which is more or less Belgium, where the invaders follow a religion which is more or less Christianity except for one big difference about the Christ figure that drives the entire plot. Our hero wants to learn a form of magic that lets him fight by controlling his shadow (there is at least one other kind of magic, plus this is the rare fantasy novel where everyone knows that stage magic is a thing too).
This is one of those books where the protagonist has an obvious big destiny and everyone who knows about it has gone out of their way to make sure he faces it totally unprepared. Plus when he does get a book of useful knowledge, he is only allowed to read specific parts of it and only when the plot calls for it.
This is a first novel, though, and I'm interested enough in how the overall story progresses that I'm willing to go back for another volume. The author does seem to be thinking about bigger issues than the typical YA story deals with (like, if the colonists are driven off, would the various peoples of the land be able to form an actual nation, or would they just collapse into infighting?), and for that I'm willing to hope that the stuff that annoyed me is just first-novel clunkiness and the storytelling will get better.
Dreadful: A Dark Lord suddenly comes to in his castle with no memory of who he is and what he's been up to.
This was pretty funny at first, but then it took a serious turn and became a book about everyone rallying around to fix one bumbling privileged guy with a narrative serving to insulate him from the consequences of all his actions. Ultimately I wished I was reading a story from the point of view of pretty much anyone else but him.
And the world is pretty much the same generic vaguely medieval fantasy world you see in a dozen anime shows per season and the rising tide of litRPG, not to mention all the D&D tie-ins and the D&D-inspired fantasy that's been with us since the 1980s.
Well, this being the first year, I guess I can forgive one "what were they thinking" nomination.
As for what should win, my vote easily goes to Kavithri. We'll all find out what actually wins on November 2.
Note that this is an award for just worldbuilding, and makes no warranty, express or implied, about other aspects of the books.
Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon: The interesting conceit in this one is that religious pantheons are operating as corporate entities. So our hero, for instance, as an orisha, is employed by the Orisha Spirit Company. Followers are spoken of as market share. There is boardroom drama.
That was all fine, but I had a couple of big problems with other aspects of the book. One is that the opening action scene promises a heist plot, and then very little of the ensuing story has much to do with the heist.
The other is akin to the problem of making vampire protagonists sympathetic. A lot of authors will get around the problem of vampires having to kill humans to exist by letting them subsist on blood without killing anyone, or letting them kill animals instead. If the author insists on sticking to tradition, then they'll at least have the vampire kill only people who are, in the author's opinion, the dregs of society.
Well, the main characters in this book survive by eating the souls of random innocent people and enjoying the heck out of the process. It just got harder and harder to root for them.
Kavithri: The setting is a sort of steampunk India, which draws on both the legacy of colonization and modern sectarian struggles. (A few glimpses at the deeper history of the world show it to be significantly different from the history of ours.) It feels like a big, complicated place more than any of the other works on this list.
This is also a big, long book. This is mitigated somewhat by the way it periodically switches from one subgenre to another, but it also unremittingly brutal and occasionally gory. It is a very well-written book, and I loved immersing myself in its world, but at the same time I don't think I could handle another installment of it anytime soon.
This one also turns out to have a version of the vampire problem, but makes a point of confronting it head-on.
Saints of Storm and Sorrow: This one takes place a fantasy archipelago which is the imperialist-era Philippines with the serial numbers barely even filed off. In contrast to a lot of fantasy stories where the protagonist needs to dig deep to bring their full power to bear, the heroine spends most of the book desperately trying to not cause a region-level catastrophe.
This one was fine on the whole, though it felt like it was starting to drag by the end. People who pick this up specifically to read a story about a brown bi person may be disappointed by the implications of how her various romances turn out.
When Among Crows: Here is yet another book set in a colonized land, except it's not interested in talking about colonialism because it's a very short book about Polish immigrants and their descendants in modern-day Chicago.
I really appreciated this one both for telling a complete story in a short book, and having an ending where the characters have won more than just a short break from the overall dismalness of their lives.
The Dance of Shadows: This one is set in more or less West Africa, under the sway of a colonial power which is more or less Belgium, where the invaders follow a religion which is more or less Christianity except for one big difference about the Christ figure that drives the entire plot. Our hero wants to learn a form of magic that lets him fight by controlling his shadow (there is at least one other kind of magic, plus this is the rare fantasy novel where everyone knows that stage magic is a thing too).
This is one of those books where the protagonist has an obvious big destiny and everyone who knows about it has gone out of their way to make sure he faces it totally unprepared. Plus when he does get a book of useful knowledge, he is only allowed to read specific parts of it and only when the plot calls for it.
This is a first novel, though, and I'm interested enough in how the overall story progresses that I'm willing to go back for another volume. The author does seem to be thinking about bigger issues than the typical YA story deals with (like, if the colonists are driven off, would the various peoples of the land be able to form an actual nation, or would they just collapse into infighting?), and for that I'm willing to hope that the stuff that annoyed me is just first-novel clunkiness and the storytelling will get better.
Dreadful: A Dark Lord suddenly comes to in his castle with no memory of who he is and what he's been up to.
This was pretty funny at first, but then it took a serious turn and became a book about everyone rallying around to fix one bumbling privileged guy with a narrative serving to insulate him from the consequences of all his actions. Ultimately I wished I was reading a story from the point of view of pretty much anyone else but him.
And the world is pretty much the same generic vaguely medieval fantasy world you see in a dozen anime shows per season and the rising tide of litRPG, not to mention all the D&D tie-ins and the D&D-inspired fantasy that's been with us since the 1980s.
Well, this being the first year, I guess I can forgive one "what were they thinking" nomination.
As for what should win, my vote easily goes to Kavithri. We'll all find out what actually wins on November 2.
