psocoptera

I have now read all 9 volumes of The Wicked and the Divine, and will try to give some non-spoilery advice about whether other Hugo voters should do likewise! I really liked it - I found it gripping, well-paced, some good story beats. It's also a fast read - I would say it's closer to adding one more novel's worth of reading than 9. In terms of content, it's nicely queer and significantly female, like, it does very well on the "do women get to occupy a bunch of different roles in this cast" front. I would describe it as heavily influenced by Sandman, so if you liked Sandman, you'll probably like this. If you liked FreakAngels you should definitely read this. If you read Die vol 1 and hated it, this is the same author, although this is less horror (but not zero horror). People in a hurry can safely skip the fake magazine articles at the start of volume 5 and the text story in volume 8.

More (spoilery) thoughts behind a cut, and also my ballot.

So, like I said, I really liked this: I thought it had a bunch of big reveals and oh-shit moments that landed really well. The willingness to kill off characters, but also to bring them back in ways that didn't feel like cheating; the various ways that people are and aren't who we think. Reading the whole thing all at once was definitely a good way to read it - I don't think it would have had nearly the impact going issue by issue, trying to remember what the fuck was going on - but also has the weird effect that it's very hard for me to disentangle my thoughts about Volume 9, the actual work on the ballot, from my thoughts about the series as a whole. A lot of my favorite moments were not in volume 9! But I think it ended strong, and this is *not* a case where we've been recognizing previous parts of the story as it went along, so I think it's okay if I'm partially voting for the series as a whole.

Which I am in fact doing!

1 - The Wicked + The Divine, Volume 9: Okay
2 - LaGuardia
3 - Mooncakes
4 - Paper Girls, Volume 6
5 - Die, Volume 1: Fantasy Heartbreaker
6 - Monstress, Volume 4: The Chosen

In general, I feel like this is a really strong ballot, the strongest of my personal voting history - the luxury of being able to rank Monstress last, of being able to honestly say that I think any of the rest would deserve to beat it, that's really something. I expect that both WicDiv and LaGuardia will do pretty well in the voting (Hugo voters like things like Sandman, and they like Okorafor) but I'm going to bet that WicDiv can pick up more lower-ballot votes from Mooncakes, Paper Girls, and Die, and will ultimately win.