Sorcerer of the Wildeeps

[psocoptera]

The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps, by Kai Ashante Wilson, is a grippingly terrific fantasy tale, or possibly I mean science fiction-fantasy. Caravan guards! Children of the departed gods! Modern slang and nifty Clarkean magic! Achingly good character work! Vivid action! It reminded me in some ways of Dreamsnake, or possibly, like, Darkover, although I never actually read any of those beyond a short story or two so I could be wrong about that. Michael Chabon, maybe, in the breadth of language, the range of voices, the pleasurableness (is that a word?) of the words themselves. Maybe there are cliches of the fantasy trek here but it just felt so fresh and immersing.

The one thing I'm not sure of is what to call it, a novel or a novella. Tor published it in their novella line and is calling it one in their 2015 fiction roundup; however, the wordcount is 43000 words, which by the Hugo rules is Not A Novella. BUT, there's apparently a rule wherein the Awards Subcommittee can move a work to another category if it's within the lesser of 5K words or 20% of the new category limits. BUT, your vote only moves if you don't have five nominations in that category already. BUT, there's no way to know in advance whether they're going to move it or not; they won't rule until the actual nomination ballots make them have to. Strategically, Sorcerer would probably have a better shot in the novella field than the more-competitive novel field. However, I'm a longstanding proponent of the idea of Bringing Back The Short Novel, so it feels a bit odd to be like "no that's a novella" when one appears, and novel feels like the track it will naturally be on unless the subcom throws a switch, so I'm probably going to nominate it as a novel.

Comments

[oracne.livejournal.com]

The Nebulas are considering it a novel (which I learned when I nominated it as a novella).

[psocoptera.livejournal.com]

Ooh, interesting, thank you! Do you have a sense of whether the Hugos tend to follow the Nebulas in such decisions?

[oracne.livejournal.com]

I am guessing they got the wordcount from somewhere? Both awards use 40K and above for novel (maybe from the days when cheap paperbacks were a lot shorter?).

http://www.sfwa.org/nebula-awards/rules/

http://www.thehugoawards.org/hugo-categories/