**A Reviewer's Take on the Hugo Awards: Predicting the Winners and Sharing Personal Preferences**

I recently shared my thoughts on the upcoming Hugo Awards, and I was surprised by the reaction from some viewers who thought I was being too optimistic about winning more books in this world. I had to clarify that there wasn't a sequel announced yet, which led me to express my enthusiasm for seeing more novels set within this same universe. My love for this series has only grown stronger with each subsequent book, and I believe it deserves recognition beyond just one award.

My first pick is the fourth and final book in the Wayfarer series by Becky Chambers, titled "The Galaxy, in the Ground, Within". This novel has received a well-deserved five out of five stars from me, and I'm not alone in my admiration for this series. The book brings together various alien species, each with their unique perspectives on the world and prejudices against one another. As these characters come together to resolve their differences, it's akin to a group therapy session – only without the awkward silences. Chambers' writing has a way of making me feel like I'm reading about real people living their lives, even if they're from different planets.

As much as I adore this series, I acknowledge that not everyone shares my enthusiasm. However, for me, "The Galaxy, in the Ground, Within" is a standout achievement in science fiction. Its exploration of complex themes and relationships has resonated deeply with me, leaving me both satisfied and tearful. With its win, this novel would indeed be the perfect crowning achievement for the Wayfarer series – much like The Return of the King's sweep of Academy Awards that year.

In my personal opinion, Becky Chambers' win in this category would be a significant milestone for her career. It would be a testament to the enduring impact of her work and cement her reputation as one of science fiction's most thoughtful and compassionate authors. I, however, wouldn't mind seeing some of the other nominees take home the award instead.

Moving on from Becky Chambers' series, I'd like to discuss my picks for the novel category in general. While I'm excited about the potential winners, I think it's essential to acknowledge that these awards are subjective and often influenced by personal biases. According to online chatter, "The Ten Thousand Doors of January" by Alix E. Harrow is looking like a strong contender for winning. As someone who appreciates historical fiction with fantastical elements, I can see why this book would resonate with many readers.

On the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised if "Life, in a Box" by Becky Chambers won, given its popularity among fans of her work and the general critical acclaim it received. Chambers' writing has a way of evoking strong emotions, and this novel is no exception. While it may not have been my personal favorite, I can certainly understand why some readers would connect with it on a deeper level.

The other nominees in the novel category are looking promising as well. However, I think "She Had to Be Killed" by Robyn Bennis might struggle to win due to its relatively smaller fan base compared to some of the other books in this category. That being said, I wouldn't be disappointed if it took home the award – after all, every novel deserves recognition for its unique strengths and contributions to the science fiction genre.

In conclusion, my predictions for the Hugo Awards are based on my personal experiences with the novels and series that I've reviewed. While I'd love to see some of these books win, I also recognize that awards are subjective and often depend on a wide range of factors. I'm thrilled to be attending Worldcon this year, where I'll be participating in panels and discussing science fiction with fellow fans. If you're going to be at the convention as well, please feel free to say hello!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey guys it's sam and i have finished my project of reading all of the novella and novel hugo nominees for 2022. so here is my ranking of all of them and who i think is going to win so who i hope to win who i think is gonna win now as far as the hugos i'm no expert this is my first year reading all of the nominees usually i've read at least a few of the nominees this is my first year reading all and i can't obviously predict like what the hugo nomination tool is going to do i did look back on former hugo winners just to kind of see uh what i what i thought based on that but the hugos are still like a people's choice a little bit but there's a higher barrier to entry because there is the need to buy a membership to worldcon and those tickets are fairly expensive so you have to be passionate enough but it's still the general public hard to kind of see what they're gonna do but i'm gonna start with novellas and then go into the novels i'll put time stamps if you want to skip to the novel section so i'm going to go in order from least favorite to favorite and like ultimately what i voted for and if you want more in-depth thoughts and like live reactions of me reading these books i've done two reading vlogs reading all the hugo nominees so for novellas uh the last place sixth place is a spindle splintered by alex e harrow i gave this one three out of five stars this is a sleeping beauty-esque retelling following a main character who has a chronic illness that is ultimately going to kill her like a terminal chronic illness uh and she somehow gets sort of teleported into a sleeping beauty-esque story and they're sort of like this parallel worlds thing going on i preferred the first half of it to the second half the second half i feel like it kind of lost the plot a little bit and got a little bit convoluted but it was fine three stars then in fifth place is fire heart tiger by elite de bedard i gave this one 3.5 stars this one was well written but it felt like a smaller part of a larger novel i would have loved to have read a story that was a full-sized novel about this and this was one of the shortest novellas on the nominees list so it even could have been slightly extended this is following a character who is sort of like a diplomat or was sent as a diplomat to a foreign nation then comes back when she's like a late teen and is trying to help her kingdom even though they aren't very well respected sort of compromise an ally with this other nation but one of the representatives sent by the other nation was her former lover who's a bit toxic so this has like a little bit of a toxic sapphic romance in this as well again it felt like a smaller part of a larger plot that would have liked to have read fourth place was across the greengrass fields by seanan mcguire i gave this 3.75 stars this is one of these standalone novellas within the wayward children series which is a series that i really love this was just fine i wasn't particularly moved by like the themes i felt like the themes in here were a little weaker not the weakest of the whole series but slightly weaker i personally do tend to enjoy the installments that have all of the kids in them more a little bit uh and i like the installments where i really like the world this world was just fine uh it was the hoof lands it was like a horse girl kind of world where everything was like a hooved magical creature and that was just fine so 3.75 i had like a found family element that was really cool but like nothing outstanding here then number three shocking me is the past is read by catherine m valente i don't tend to like catherine valente's work so the fact that i liked this a decent amount was surprising this is kind of an eco-apocalypse novel that takes place after most of the world basically ends and the people that are left over live on a floating pile of garbage in the pacific and we're following a character who is very maligned by people like everyone hates her but she manages to be very optimistic and she is sort of telling her story and like how things have gotten the way they are with her i listened to the audiobook the thing with the audiobook was that the narrator has the main character's voice be very childlike from all of it when she's mostly an adult when we're following her but that's an aside ultimately i liked what this was doing with this like climate crisis but hope thing that was going on and like i did like our main character a lot so four out of five stars then i have two five star novellas so i ranked these second and first in second place was the song for the wild built by becky chambers at five stars becky chambers work i just i just love it i i just love it uh this is a very quiet story about a team monk who's essentially a therapist having a bit of a quarter life crisis goes out into the wilderness trying to like sort of find purpose and runs into a robot and robots have not been seen and are basically considered like mythological figures they like disappeared into the wilderness hundreds of years ago i think it's hundreds i don't know a while and then the robot kind of team up it's cute but not in like a sweet way uh more like a wholesome like when i say her stuff is cute and soft and warm it's not in like a twee way in my opinion it's more in like just uh hopeful just cozy that kind of vibe five stars and then my pick for number one is elder race by adrian chipkowski 5 out of 5 stars and the one that i think did everything the best this is a mix of a sci-fi and fantasy in which one pov character thinks they sort of exist in like a fantasy world like everything that is sciency in their head is actually like fantasy things like that then another character who is in like a sci-fi world they are basically an anthropologist that was sent to the first character's home world because previously we had like had humans colonize and populate um other parts of the universe but then some of them sort of like reversed into more of like a medievally time and so everyone thinks that he's a wizard and so our first character sort of comes to him to try to help with a problem uh and the way that it's done with the way they're that both of them are written so we have this like sci-fi fantasy mix uh the way they communicate and the way the communication like there's like a translating error so even when he talks to her it translates into like fantasy speak and there's even some like multiversity type stuff in some of the plot points it's delightful and one that i again because i go to number one i do think personally it should win as like a standout of like this did everything uh the writing is good i like the characters the like the sci-fi fantasy mix like for a science fiction fantasy award i'm like that's the one but which one do i think is going to win the hugos just based on like the pool i don't know i didn't really hear a lot of people talk about like elder race so when i'm thinking about predictions i kind of was like okay what is like the general public kind of saying also what are the people that are a little bit more like hugo minded saying so what are we seeing i do follow like the fantasy subreddit that talks a lot about the hugos and stuff um so i kind of got a little bit of insider knowledge from there because i think a lot of them vote in the hugos i don't see a ton of people talking about elder race people really like it but i'm not seeing people talk about it a ton i think i kind of think the past is red might win i don't know valente pops up on like the hugos nearly every year that she writes a book she doesn't tend to win though her books tend to be really weird and out there which is why i think they tend to get nominated but then don't win because like the general public doesn't love them enough in comparison to other things i think this one is just weird enough very current as far as like climate crisis stuff and like weird enough with some heart i mean her other books probably have heart too i just can never get through them because they're like so not even bizarre because i like bizarre things there's just something about them that doesn't usually vibe with me but i think this one has a pretty decent chance so i'm gonna predict that it's gonna be that but i would love if it was elder race or song for the wild build any of the other ones i'd be kind of like next for novels in my ranking of the novels in sixth place kind of shocked about this because the first book won the hugo in 2020 but a desolation called peace by katie martine i gave three stars i liked the first book enough but not enough that if like this was in the this round like that that would have been a contender it still wouldn't have been ranked like super high um but the second book i almost dnf'd a few times when i keep reading it i'm fine but when i'm not reading it i felt like it was really slow and like a little bit too convoluted between the first and second book the first book is about an ambassador that goes to basically a colonizing empire um because her predecessor had been murdered and they the people of like the station that she's from um kind of keep memories using this like implant kind of thing so that you can sort of have your predecessor's knowledge well her imago is what it's called get sabotaged so she doesn't know what happened with him she doesn't know how to like kind of assimilate into this culture necessarily um there's just a lot of like intrigue and stuff and it's just one pov second book has four povs if not more at times um and it's following like a lot of different stuff and they're sort of like this like alien plot um it was just it was too many characters i think the writing is wonderful like i would look forward to our katie martin's other stuff but it's it's very convoluted i think all of the povs weren't that necessary like i see at the end why she brought some of them in but ultimately i feel like some of the things like plot points could have been done without all the povs uh and yeah i just there were things that i wanted after the first book that we didn't get to explore as much because we had so many povs and i feel like the story lost it a bit for me there so this was only three stars for me number five is light from uncommon stars by rika aoki i went in with such i hoped for this but end of only giving it 3.5 stars it was fine i have a full review for a number of these but i have a full review for this one it was fine but there were so many plot points um so it's sort of like faustian deal um where a character who made it sort of a deal with the devil has to deliver seven like wonderful musicians souls to not go to hell herself um her newest protege is a trans girl that was running away from home she also comes in contact with the family that are actually like aliens from space that run a donut shop um there's also like the pov of a luthier people who make violins that we get so it's a sci-fi fantasy mix but there's so many plot points and so many themes being explored that it just got lost for like such a short book um it also like didn't quite feel real to me like it was so i think it would do really well i've said this already but i think i would do really well with this as a tv show but the over-the-topness of the book part of it felt like very surface level to me um i just didn't connect as much as i wanted to which is a bummer i still liked it i would still read some of their other work but just wasn't that into this one the number four is she who became the sun by shelley parker-chan which i gave four stars to this i liked and is a very solid book but for a sci-fi fantasy award i don't necessarily think this should be nothing shouldn't be nominated but the fantasy elements of this are so so so so minor um and you could actually take those out and it wouldn't change the book at all and when i did a review of this i mentioned that and a few people actually commented and said that the author actually wrote this as just a historical fiction like a gender bent historical fiction because this is following a character who comes to create the ming dynasty um so originally it was just this gender bent historical fiction and they were recommended to like add some fantasy elements to put it into like genre fiction um and so like those elements aren't even that important to the story so is it well written yes is it a good book yes do i think i should win a sci-fi fantasy award no it's still four star so i'm gonna still continue with this duology i realize that some people might be like that's so gay keepy i'm not saying it's not a fantasy book i just think it's very very very minor on the fantasy and when i think of the sci-fi fantasy award and the complexity of having to weave in sci-fi fantasy like world building things like that i want more from like an award winner it's still a good book i'm not saying that like it's not a fantasy book it is they're just like so minor so yeah number three for me is project hail mary by andy weir i gave this one 4.5 stars i listened to it on audio i do think if i would have read another version i wouldn't have liked it quite as much the audiobook is fantastic but this is very like fun sort of mystery we have a guy in space wakes up doesn't know why he's there who he is what the mission was um he's having to piece it together so he's getting flashbacks to his former memory so we're kind of figuring out like what happened to get him there and there's like cool space stuff happening it's so much easier to digest reading the audiobook because this like the science stuff i can just let wash over me in a way that i couldn't if i was physically reading it but i really enjoyed this 4.5 stars then it's just like the novellas and with one of the authors that's the same i had two five star picks and i had a really hard time they're both favorites but which one i wanted to give the number one spot to so number two the grudge i mean i like them both but i put number two as a master of gin by peter jelly clark 5 out of 5 stars i love this a steampunk cairo with a murder mystery a sapphic main character gin and angels and like all these people and like this this plot but this is sort of like a detective story uh so ultimately that's why i didn't put this as number one um because i don't know that's just how i decided i guess um but i loved this if it won i'd be very pleased i think this one the nebula it's not a woman fantastic i love the world building i love the characters i want more in this world i just recently did a review of this and people were like oh no for getting more in this world i'm like what because there isn't a sequel announced as a filming of this video and i'm like no no no we need many many books many novels in this world please so and there's room for it i just i think i think we will please yeah love this put this in my number two slot number one is the galaxy in the ground within by becky chambers five out of five stars this is the fourth and final book in the wayfarer series every single book in the series has been five stars for me i love it this book features all aliens i love it um they are essentially stranded at like a waypoint um because some like tech stuff happens that goes down so nothing's super stressful but interpersonally stressful and it's all these different aliens and they have just like different ways of viewing the world and different opinions about each other and prejudices and stuff and they kind of have to come together and like sort of be friends and talk through and like it's just it's like a group therapy dream uh i it speaks to me i know not everybody's into it i get that but it's one of those books that i'm like i understand like you're wrong it's not that you're wrong it's just i love these so much um so yeah i gave this 5 out of 5 stars i am so in love with some of these characters i continue to be they just feel like real people that are out there in the world living their little alien lives and i love that and i cried a number of times and also me putting this as my number one slot is a little bit of me putting it as a number one slot for this series i do believe the series might have won a hugo in a previous year which is always weird that they like put series up for awards before they're finished um but i do believe it's like a hugo series award winner um but i do feel like this one winning in my opinion would be kind of nice is like crowning achievement you know kind of like how the return of the king won like a bunch of academy awards that year because they were kind of like here you go for the achievement of that whole series about this um yeah i i just loved this so i would love with this one again i don't know if it would and i also wouldn't really want beggy chambers to win this and the novella and other separate things but i'm kind of like okay that would be too much so it would like if she was going to win i would like her to win like one of the other those are my picks so four novels i think the novel category is going to be different from any of my thoughts again i would love if my first two picks won but i think from the the mutterings that i've been hearing online i think she became the summer of a pretty good chance of winning i think that might be like the front runner in a lot of people's heads which again as well to me because i'm like it's so barely fantasy but again it's still fantasy book so it still qualifies but it's like um also i think life from and commentary has a high chance of winning too there's a lot of people that really love that book and resonate with a lot of people that one i wouldn't necessarily i wouldn't be mad if any of them won they're all good books i'll be a little message called piece one i could see why i would like i wouldn't necessarily be surprised but i don't think that that series has like both books in the series winning potential in the way of other series that i've had like multiple books in the series when over the years but like from common stars i'm like okay you have all you have all the elements i see what you're doing i just don't think yeah i personally didn't think it was the best of the bunch um but i think those are the two that are front runners i really think it's gonna be she became the sun but we'll see so that is it for my predictions for the hugos um i will be at the hugos i will be at worldcon i'm a 10 day i'm going to be on a couple of panels as well but i'm attending so if you're going let me know in the comments say hi to me i'll be posting some stuff on like twitter and stuff to let you know where i'll be and stuff i want all the sci-fi fantasy people to hang out but comment below let me know what your predictions are for the hugos what you would like to win um and i do plan on doing this little project every year now because this was so fun so thank you all for watching i'll see you guys soon bye youhey guys it's sam and i have finished my project of reading all of the novella and novel hugo nominees for 2022. so here is my ranking of all of them and who i think is going to win so who i hope to win who i think is gonna win now as far as the hugos i'm no expert this is my first year reading all of the nominees usually i've read at least a few of the nominees this is my first year reading all and i can't obviously predict like what the hugo nomination tool is going to do i did look back on former hugo winners just to kind of see uh what i what i thought based on that but the hugos are still like a people's choice a little bit but there's a higher barrier to entry because there is the need to buy a membership to worldcon and those tickets are fairly expensive so you have to be passionate enough but it's still the general public hard to kind of see what they're gonna do but i'm gonna start with novellas and then go into the novels i'll put time stamps if you want to skip to the novel section so i'm going to go in order from least favorite to favorite and like ultimately what i voted for and if you want more in-depth thoughts and like live reactions of me reading these books i've done two reading vlogs reading all the hugo nominees so for novellas uh the last place sixth place is a spindle splintered by alex e harrow i gave this one three out of five stars this is a sleeping beauty-esque retelling following a main character who has a chronic illness that is ultimately going to kill her like a terminal chronic illness uh and she somehow gets sort of teleported into a sleeping beauty-esque story and they're sort of like this parallel worlds thing going on i preferred the first half of it to the second half the second half i feel like it kind of lost the plot a little bit and got a little bit convoluted but it was fine three stars then in fifth place is fire heart tiger by elite de bedard i gave this one 3.5 stars this one was well written but it felt like a smaller part of a larger novel i would have loved to have read a story that was a full-sized novel about this and this was one of the shortest novellas on the nominees list so it even could have been slightly extended this is following a character who is sort of like a diplomat or was sent as a diplomat to a foreign nation then comes back when she's like a late teen and is trying to help her kingdom even though they aren't very well respected sort of compromise an ally with this other nation but one of the representatives sent by the other nation was her former lover who's a bit toxic so this has like a little bit of a toxic sapphic romance in this as well again it felt like a smaller part of a larger plot that would have liked to have read fourth place was across the greengrass fields by seanan mcguire i gave this 3.75 stars this is one of these standalone novellas within the wayward children series which is a series that i really love this was just fine i wasn't particularly moved by like the themes i felt like the themes in here were a little weaker not the weakest of the whole series but slightly weaker i personally do tend to enjoy the installments that have all of the kids in them more a little bit uh and i like the installments where i really like the world this world was just fine uh it was the hoof lands it was like a horse girl kind of world where everything was like a hooved magical creature and that was just fine so 3.75 i had like a found family element that was really cool but like nothing outstanding here then number three shocking me is the past is read by catherine m valente i don't tend to like catherine valente's work so the fact that i liked this a decent amount was surprising this is kind of an eco-apocalypse novel that takes place after most of the world basically ends and the people that are left over live on a floating pile of garbage in the pacific and we're following a character who is very maligned by people like everyone hates her but she manages to be very optimistic and she is sort of telling her story and like how things have gotten the way they are with her i listened to the audiobook the thing with the audiobook was that the narrator has the main character's voice be very childlike from all of it when she's mostly an adult when we're following her but that's an aside ultimately i liked what this was doing with this like climate crisis but hope thing that was going on and like i did like our main character a lot so four out of five stars then i have two five star novellas so i ranked these second and first in second place was the song for the wild built by becky chambers at five stars becky chambers work i just i just love it i i just love it uh this is a very quiet story about a team monk who's essentially a therapist having a bit of a quarter life crisis goes out into the wilderness trying to like sort of find purpose and runs into a robot and robots have not been seen and are basically considered like mythological figures they like disappeared into the wilderness hundreds of years ago i think it's hundreds i don't know a while and then the robot kind of team up it's cute but not in like a sweet way uh more like a wholesome like when i say her stuff is cute and soft and warm it's not in like a twee way in my opinion it's more in like just uh hopeful just cozy that kind of vibe five stars and then my pick for number one is elder race by adrian chipkowski 5 out of 5 stars and the one that i think did everything the best this is a mix of a sci-fi and fantasy in which one pov character thinks they sort of exist in like a fantasy world like everything that is sciency in their head is actually like fantasy things like that then another character who is in like a sci-fi world they are basically an anthropologist that was sent to the first character's home world because previously we had like had humans colonize and populate um other parts of the universe but then some of them sort of like reversed into more of like a medievally time and so everyone thinks that he's a wizard and so our first character sort of comes to him to try to help with a problem uh and the way that it's done with the way they're that both of them are written so we have this like sci-fi fantasy mix uh the way they communicate and the way the communication like there's like a translating error so even when he talks to her it translates into like fantasy speak and there's even some like multiversity type stuff in some of the plot points it's delightful and one that i again because i go to number one i do think personally it should win as like a standout of like this did everything uh the writing is good i like the characters the like the sci-fi fantasy mix like for a science fiction fantasy award i'm like that's the one but which one do i think is going to win the hugos just based on like the pool i don't know i didn't really hear a lot of people talk about like elder race so when i'm thinking about predictions i kind of was like okay what is like the general public kind of saying also what are the people that are a little bit more like hugo minded saying so what are we seeing i do follow like the fantasy subreddit that talks a lot about the hugos and stuff um so i kind of got a little bit of insider knowledge from there because i think a lot of them vote in the hugos i don't see a ton of people talking about elder race people really like it but i'm not seeing people talk about it a ton i think i kind of think the past is red might win i don't know valente pops up on like the hugos nearly every year that she writes a book she doesn't tend to win though her books tend to be really weird and out there which is why i think they tend to get nominated but then don't win because like the general public doesn't love them enough in comparison to other things i think this one is just weird enough very current as far as like climate crisis stuff and like weird enough with some heart i mean her other books probably have heart too i just can never get through them because they're like so not even bizarre because i like bizarre things there's just something about them that doesn't usually vibe with me but i think this one has a pretty decent chance so i'm gonna predict that it's gonna be that but i would love if it was elder race or song for the wild build any of the other ones i'd be kind of like next for novels in my ranking of the novels in sixth place kind of shocked about this because the first book won the hugo in 2020 but a desolation called peace by katie martine i gave three stars i liked the first book enough but not enough that if like this was in the this round like that that would have been a contender it still wouldn't have been ranked like super high um but the second book i almost dnf'd a few times when i keep reading it i'm fine but when i'm not reading it i felt like it was really slow and like a little bit too convoluted between the first and second book the first book is about an ambassador that goes to basically a colonizing empire um because her predecessor had been murdered and they the people of like the station that she's from um kind of keep memories using this like implant kind of thing so that you can sort of have your predecessor's knowledge well her imago is what it's called get sabotaged so she doesn't know what happened with him she doesn't know how to like kind of assimilate into this culture necessarily um there's just a lot of like intrigue and stuff and it's just one pov second book has four povs if not more at times um and it's following like a lot of different stuff and they're sort of like this like alien plot um it was just it was too many characters i think the writing is wonderful like i would look forward to our katie martin's other stuff but it's it's very convoluted i think all of the povs weren't that necessary like i see at the end why she brought some of them in but ultimately i feel like some of the things like plot points could have been done without all the povs uh and yeah i just there were things that i wanted after the first book that we didn't get to explore as much because we had so many povs and i feel like the story lost it a bit for me there so this was only three stars for me number five is light from uncommon stars by rika aoki i went in with such i hoped for this but end of only giving it 3.5 stars it was fine i have a full review for a number of these but i have a full review for this one it was fine but there were so many plot points um so it's sort of like faustian deal um where a character who made it sort of a deal with the devil has to deliver seven like wonderful musicians souls to not go to hell herself um her newest protege is a trans girl that was running away from home she also comes in contact with the family that are actually like aliens from space that run a donut shop um there's also like the pov of a luthier people who make violins that we get so it's a sci-fi fantasy mix but there's so many plot points and so many themes being explored that it just got lost for like such a short book um it also like didn't quite feel real to me like it was so i think it would do really well i've said this already but i think i would do really well with this as a tv show but the over-the-topness of the book part of it felt like very surface level to me um i just didn't connect as much as i wanted to which is a bummer i still liked it i would still read some of their other work but just wasn't that into this one the number four is she who became the sun by shelley parker-chan which i gave four stars to this i liked and is a very solid book but for a sci-fi fantasy award i don't necessarily think this should be nothing shouldn't be nominated but the fantasy elements of this are so so so so minor um and you could actually take those out and it wouldn't change the book at all and when i did a review of this i mentioned that and a few people actually commented and said that the author actually wrote this as just a historical fiction like a gender bent historical fiction because this is following a character who comes to create the ming dynasty um so originally it was just this gender bent historical fiction and they were recommended to like add some fantasy elements to put it into like genre fiction um and so like those elements aren't even that important to the story so is it well written yes is it a good book yes do i think i should win a sci-fi fantasy award no it's still four star so i'm gonna still continue with this duology i realize that some people might be like that's so gay keepy i'm not saying it's not a fantasy book i just think it's very very very minor on the fantasy and when i think of the sci-fi fantasy award and the complexity of having to weave in sci-fi fantasy like world building things like that i want more from like an award winner it's still a good book i'm not saying that like it's not a fantasy book it is they're just like so minor so yeah number three for me is project hail mary by andy weir i gave this one 4.5 stars i listened to it on audio i do think if i would have read another version i wouldn't have liked it quite as much the audiobook is fantastic but this is very like fun sort of mystery we have a guy in space wakes up doesn't know why he's there who he is what the mission was um he's having to piece it together so he's getting flashbacks to his former memory so we're kind of figuring out like what happened to get him there and there's like cool space stuff happening it's so much easier to digest reading the audiobook because this like the science stuff i can just let wash over me in a way that i couldn't if i was physically reading it but i really enjoyed this 4.5 stars then it's just like the novellas and with one of the authors that's the same i had two five star picks and i had a really hard time they're both favorites but which one i wanted to give the number one spot to so number two the grudge i mean i like them both but i put number two as a master of gin by peter jelly clark 5 out of 5 stars i love this a steampunk cairo with a murder mystery a sapphic main character gin and angels and like all these people and like this this plot but this is sort of like a detective story uh so ultimately that's why i didn't put this as number one um because i don't know that's just how i decided i guess um but i loved this if it won i'd be very pleased i think this one the nebula it's not a woman fantastic i love the world building i love the characters i want more in this world i just recently did a review of this and people were like oh no for getting more in this world i'm like what because there isn't a sequel announced as a filming of this video and i'm like no no no we need many many books many novels in this world please so and there's room for it i just i think i think we will please yeah love this put this in my number two slot number one is the galaxy in the ground within by becky chambers five out of five stars this is the fourth and final book in the wayfarer series every single book in the series has been five stars for me i love it this book features all aliens i love it um they are essentially stranded at like a waypoint um because some like tech stuff happens that goes down so nothing's super stressful but interpersonally stressful and it's all these different aliens and they have just like different ways of viewing the world and different opinions about each other and prejudices and stuff and they kind of have to come together and like sort of be friends and talk through and like it's just it's like a group therapy dream uh i it speaks to me i know not everybody's into it i get that but it's one of those books that i'm like i understand like you're wrong it's not that you're wrong it's just i love these so much um so yeah i gave this 5 out of 5 stars i am so in love with some of these characters i continue to be they just feel like real people that are out there in the world living their little alien lives and i love that and i cried a number of times and also me putting this as my number one slot is a little bit of me putting it as a number one slot for this series i do believe the series might have won a hugo in a previous year which is always weird that they like put series up for awards before they're finished um but i do believe it's like a hugo series award winner um but i do feel like this one winning in my opinion would be kind of nice is like crowning achievement you know kind of like how the return of the king won like a bunch of academy awards that year because they were kind of like here you go for the achievement of that whole series about this um yeah i i just loved this so i would love with this one again i don't know if it would and i also wouldn't really want beggy chambers to win this and the novella and other separate things but i'm kind of like okay that would be too much so it would like if she was going to win i would like her to win like one of the other those are my picks so four novels i think the novel category is going to be different from any of my thoughts again i would love if my first two picks won but i think from the the mutterings that i've been hearing online i think she became the summer of a pretty good chance of winning i think that might be like the front runner in a lot of people's heads which again as well to me because i'm like it's so barely fantasy but again it's still fantasy book so it still qualifies but it's like um also i think life from and commentary has a high chance of winning too there's a lot of people that really love that book and resonate with a lot of people that one i wouldn't necessarily i wouldn't be mad if any of them won they're all good books i'll be a little message called piece one i could see why i would like i wouldn't necessarily be surprised but i don't think that that series has like both books in the series winning potential in the way of other series that i've had like multiple books in the series when over the years but like from common stars i'm like okay you have all you have all the elements i see what you're doing i just don't think yeah i personally didn't think it was the best of the bunch um but i think those are the two that are front runners i really think it's gonna be she became the sun but we'll see so that is it for my predictions for the hugos um i will be at the hugos i will be at worldcon i'm a 10 day i'm going to be on a couple of panels as well but i'm attending so if you're going let me know in the comments say hi to me i'll be posting some stuff on like twitter and stuff to let you know where i'll be and stuff i want all the sci-fi fantasy people to hang out but comment below let me know what your predictions are for the hugos what you would like to win um and i do plan on doing this little project every year now because this was so fun so thank you all for watching i'll see you guys soon bye you\n"