The World Fantasy Award for Best Novel has
been awarded to authors who have demonstrated outstanding achievement in the
field of fantasy since 1975. The awards are considered among the most
prestigious in the speculative fiction genre. World Fantasy Award winners are
chosen by a panel of judges, which differs every year.
I’ve read
all of the nominees for this year’s award and I’m going to predict which book I
think most deserves the award, and the two others which I think are the
stiffest competition. I’ll
update the post when the actual winner is announced!
I was really impressed by the freshness and variety
represented by this year’s nominees, and I’m happy to see that the fantasy
genre is very much alive and well these days. There are a few interesting things to note about the
nominees for the World Fantasy Award this year.
First of all, the majority of them are from relatively new
authors: Zoo City is Beuke’s second speculative fiction novel, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is
Jemisin’s debut, Redemption in Indigo
is Lord’s first in the genre, and Who
Fears Death is Okorafor’s first adult fantasy novel. I think the presence of many impressive
new voices in fantasy is a good sign for the hopes of many interesting novels
to come.
Another thing I noticed was how many of the nominees were not
based in American/Western European culture, which I had thought tended to
dominate stories in the fantasy genre.
Kay’s Under Heaven is based on
Tang Dynasty China, Zoo City is set
in modern-day(ish) South Africa, Redemption
in Indigo is Caribbean, and Who Fears
Death is set in post-apocalyptic Saharan Africa. I loved the huge differences between each nominee, in culture,
style, and tone. And now to the
nominees!
Between Zoo City
and her dystopian Moxyland, Beukes
has quickly become one of my favorite new writers in speculative fiction. I loved the idea of the ‘animalled’ in Zoo City (people who commit crimes are marked by the shaming
appearance of an animal companion), and the way it was used to explore guilt
and how past actions never disappear.
I loved the main character, Zinzi, a woman with significant personal
flaws, who was just trying to get by.
The writing was vibrant and descriptive, and it was easy to become
immersed in the gritty lower community of Johannesburg. Zoo
City has already won the Arthur C. Clarke award, and I think it is the
strongest candidate for the World Fantasy Award, as well.
Redemption in Indigo is
a charming story told in the style of a folk tale. It incorporates an actual Senegalese folk tale early in the
story, and the narrator is a storyteller relating the tale to an audience. It does have some more serious parts,
but there’s a lot of humor and lightheartedness throughout. I thought it did a fantastic job of reflecting
the style of the folk tales I often read as a child, while weaving a tale at an
adult level of complexity and maturity.
Who Fears Death
was very unlike any fantasy I’ve read lately. It was set in post-apocalyptic Africa, and it was full of
wildly flashy and powerful magic.
While I had some complaints about the pacing, and the prophecy-structure
of the adventure, I enjoyed the enthusiastic style of writing, the original
setting, and the realistic portrayal of relationships among the main
characters. However, I think this
book requires a trigger warning for its depictions of physical and sexual
violence. The story features a
violent conflict between two races, where one (the Nuru) is determined to
completely wipe out the other (the Okeke). They often use rape as a weapon against Okeke women, and the
main character, the sorceress Onyesonwu, is a product of that. The sexual violence is not eroticized;
I believe Okorafor intended the reader to feel intense revulsion towards the
perpetrators and sorrow for the victims.
Other Nominees
Guy Gavriel Kay’s Under Heaven is a sprawling tale set in a fictionalized version of 8th
century China. While I appreciated
the grandeur of the story, I was a little frustrated by some storytelling
decisions and the general passivity of the main characters, who seemed to
mostly serve as observers to the action of the story. Graham Joyce’s The Silent Land had an interesting,
though over-used, central idea, but I didn’t feel like it had anything new to
offer. The characters were fairly
generic, and the plot seemed stretched out, even for so short a book. N.K. Jemisin’s The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms seems more like a ‘traditional’
fantasy story, featuring the return to the capital city of an exiled possible
heir to the leader of all the kingdoms.
Jemisin’s world had a complex and interesting mythology, and I enjoyed
her world’s view of gods/humans, stability/change, and life/death. The sequel to this one is already out (The Broken Kingdoms) and I intend to
read it at some point. Sadly, I read The Hundred Thousands Kingdoms before starting this review blog.
In general, I think this was a pretty good year for
interesting, innovative, and unusual fantasy. What do you think about this year’s World Fantasy Award
nominees?
I too find it interesting that the majority of the books nominated this year take place outside of standard fantasy settings, something that absolutely thrills me. Among the reasons I liked both Zoo City and Who Fears Death (though to different degrees and for different reasons) was the fact that neither were set in traditional fantasy worlds. Who Fears Death in particular felt utterly different, particularly in the magic field itself. Normally, even non-European style fantasies have familiar forms of magic and storytelling - Who Fears Death broke that model and trod on it. Even if I felt Okorafor's novel was flawed in other forms, I was endlessly impressed with its originality. Fantasy should have more diversity of this kind - I'm pleased to see it's getting some credit.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment! Yeah, I loved how different the magic system in "Who Fears Death" felt, compared to the usual types of fantasy systems. I really hope this kind of diversity and originality continues to characterize fantasy being written in the near future!
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