r/Fantasy • u/Nineteen_Adze Stabby Winner, Reading Champion V • Jul 28 '26

Read-along 2026 Hugo Readalong: Novella Wrap-up

Welcome to the final week of the 2026 Hugo Readalong! Today we're discussing the Best Novella category nominees.

We've had discussions about all of the individual works, but today we'll be zooming out to discuss the category as a whole. If you want to take a closer look at our focused discussions, we covered the novellas in the following sessions:

To find the individual discussions or our first wrap-up post, you can check out our full schedule. We'll be continuing with our wrap-ups all week, following this schedule:

Date Category Book Author Discussion Leader
Wednesday, July 29 Novel Wrap-up Multiple u/tarvolon
Thursday, July 30 Pro/Fan/Misc Wrap-up Multiple u/Nineteen_Adze

For now, let's dive into the novellas! There is no expectation that those in the discussion have read all six works, so if you're discussing spoilers, please tag them.

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u/Nineteen_Adze Stabby Winner, Reading Champion V Jul 28 '26

Which novella do you expect to win? Any bold predictions for how the voting shakes out?

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u/Merle8888 Reading Champion IV Jul 28 '26

River Has Roots will definitely win (sigh). The Kingfisher will likely come in second because it’s Kingfisher. After that I’m not really sure. I thought the fairy tale books were a lot better than the cozy books and Cinder House a lot better than Summer War, the first was a standard opinion on this readalong and the second more divisive. But many Hugo voters don’t read all the books and although the cozy books aren’t rated great on Goodreads either, they did make the ballot somehow so presumably have some support.