Starter Villain and Hugo Novels

[psocoptera]

Starter Villain, John Scalzi, 2023 novel. Fast and lightweight read, one of Scalzi's go-to plots - an average Joe dropped into an escalating SFnal situation - with one truly excellent laugh-out-loud moment that made me glad to have read the whole thing. If you like Scalzi this is one, if you don't like Scalzi you won't like this either. (If you've never read Scalzi I'd go for either Old Man's War if you want classic or I guess Kaiju if you want recent.)

Anyways, now I get to rank Novels!

I nominated four of the six, so, uh, I guess I have synchronized my tastes to the tastes of the general nominating population? Anyways, I'd be happy to see any of my top three win, and I also loved Translation State and am only biased in favor of wanting to see awards go to new people. So, my ballot:

The Saint of Bright Doors by Vajra Chandrasekera
Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh
The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty
Translation State by Ann Leckie
Witch King by Martha Wells
Starter Villain by John Scalzi

I'm pretty torn about 2 vs 3 here and in fact have previously claimed I was going to go the other way, but, I don't know, Glory was *so* nicely constructed.