psocoptera

Down Among the Sticks and Bones, Seanan McGuire, novella, sidequel to Every Heart A Doorway (chronologically earlier but should be read after, I think). I liked the premise of Every Heart a lot more than the execution (true of pretty much everything I've ever read by McGuire) and felt no need to return to that world. This one felt like a novelette of material, belabored.

A space, and then my ballot ranking behind a cut.

Space!

So I'm predicting "All Systems Red" wins it and I'll be happy with that.

My own ballot:

1. “And Then There Were (N-One),” by Sarah Pinsker (Uncanny, March/April 2017)
2. The Black Tides of Heaven, by JY Yang (Tor.com Publishing)
3. All Systems Red, by Martha Wells (Tor.com Publishing)
4. Binti: Home, by Nnedi Okorafor (Tor.com Publishing)
5. Down Among the Sticks and Bones, by Seanan McGuire (Tor.com Publishing)
6. River of Teeth, by Sarah Gailey (Tor.com Publishing)

I nominated all three of my first three here, and they were difficult to rank. It feels really wrong to put Murderbot *third* but something has to be and Pinsker's conceit is just so brilliant and Yang's world is so interesting... gah, I don't know, do I want to swap Yang and Wells? Hard! And then Binti was a clear fourth and I would have guessed it would be the hippos next but the hippos were just a mess, sorry hippos. Possibly I should no-award the hippos, actually, but I guess I'm mostly reserving that for "things I would be willing to be unpleasant about on social media if they won" and I wouldn't dream of being rude to Gailey, who just needed a better editor.