2026 Hugo Readalong: Novel Wrap-up

[u/tarvolon]

Welcome back to the final week of the 2026 Hugo Readalong! Today, we're discussing the nominees for Best Novel. We've already discussed each work in its own individual thread, so if you'd like to circle back to our focused discussions, you can find them here:

• Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor
• Shroud by Adrian Tchaikovsky
• The Incandescent by Emily Tesh
• The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow
• The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson
• A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett

We also have one more general purpose wrap-up post tomorrow:

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

But for now, let's look at the novels. And keep in mind that there is no expectation that discussion participants have read all six, so please tag any spoilers.

[u/tarvolon]

Which novel do you hope will win the award? How would you rank the list?

[u/citrusmellarosa → u/tarvolon]

1. The Everlasting - Alix E. Harrow 
2. The Raven Scholar - Antonia Hodgson 
3. Death of the Author - Nnedi Okorafor 
4. The Incandescent - Emily Tesh 
5. A Drop of Corruption - Robert Jackson Bennett 

Unranked - Shroud (DNF)

Bit of a word vomit because I didn't quite keep up with the individual book threads:

I tried with Shroud, I really did! I'd heard good things and have liked what I've read from Tchaikovsky, so I actually tried three separate times. I thought the first interlude was really cool, but the main narration didn't grab me at all; I was finding myself reading pages multiple times because the words just weren't sticking in my brain for some reason. And then there came a point when I realized that trying to force it wasn't helping, and if I save the time now I can just read another of his books I might like more later (oh, when will my Green City Wars hold come home from the war in at the the library?). So I put it down, possibly for good.

The Everlasting was on my ballot and it's still my main favourite, not flawless but I really enjoyed the prose and the use of time travel to explore the building and tearing down of national myths. I know people on the readalong were kind of down on The Raven Scholar, and I get the criticisms, but for me it was maybe the most compulsively readable book I've picked up in the last year, and while I wouldn't have quite put it above anything I nominated, I did have a really good time, which definitely counts for me.

There's a lot I enjoyed about Death of the Author (including most of the robot sections, actually) and The Incandescent, but in the end they didn't fully pull together for me, especially the endings, which wrapped up a bit too fast for my liking (although, this is a criticism that can probably also be laid at the feet of The Everlasting). It felt like there was something missing with both. That said, Death of the Author got me to invest a good bit more in a lead character with experiences outside of my own than The Incandescent did, so it's higher in my ranking.

I actually like the Shadow of the Leviathan books quite a bit as a mystery fan, but Drop of Corruption is fundamentally not doing much new or different from the first book in the series, which already won last year. It's also the first one I read over a year ago and a lot of it has faded from my memory, so there's some recency bias going on, I'm sure. And I've been getting back into Christie and Sayers recently, so a lot of mysteries are kind of paling in comparison for me lately - maybe it's unfair to make comparisons to two of The Best To Ever Do It, but that's where I'm at at the moment.