In case you missed the great news: Aliette de Bodard has received four Locus Award nominations, a Hugo Award, and an Ignyte Award nomination! Let’s start with the Locus nominations…
Aliette’s has two novellas among the finalists in the Novella Category. OF DRAGONS, FEASTS AND MURDERS, published by JABberwocky, is a stand-alone story set in the same work as the Dominion of the Fallen series. Here’s the synopsis…
Lunar New Year should be a time for familial reunions, ancestor worship, and consumption of an unhealthy amount of candied fruit.
But when dragon prince Thuan brings home his brooding and ruthless husband Asmodeus for the New Year, they find not interminable family gatherings, but a corpse outside their quarters. Asmodeus is thrilled by the murder investigation; Thuan, who gets dragged into the political plotting he’d sworn off when he left, is less enthusiastic.
It’ll take all of Asmodeus’s skill with knives, and all of Thuan’s diplomacy, to navigate this one — as well as the troubled waters of their own relationship…
The Dominion of the Fallen series is published by Gollancz in the UK, and Roc Books and JABberwocky in North America. (While a stand-alone, this novella is set after the events of the third novel in that series, THE HOUSE OF SUNDERING FLAMES.)
The second finalist novella is SEVEN OF INFINITIES, one of the author’s many acclaimed Xuya stories, published by Subterranean Press (North America) and JABberwocky…
Vân is a scholar from a poor background, eking out a living in the orbitals of the Scattered Pearls Belt as a tutor to a rich family, while hiding the illegal artificial mem-implant she manufactured as a student.
Sunless Woods is a mindship — and not just any mindship, but a notorious thief and a master of disguise. She’s come to the Belt to retire, but is drawn to Vân’s resolute integrity.
When a mysterious corpse is found in the quarters of Vân’s student, Vân and Sunless Woods find themselves following a trail of greed and murder that will lead them from teahouses and ascetic havens to the wreck of a mindship — and to the devastating secrets they’ve kept from each other.
Aliette’s third Locus finalist nomination is for the short story IN THE LANDS OF THE SPILL, which was published in the AVATARS INC Sci-Fi Anthology, edited by Ann Vandermeer.
Meanwhile, the novelette THE INACCESSIBILITY OF HEAVEN has been nominated for three awards! Published in the July-August 2020 issue of Uncanny Magazine, it is up for the Hugo, Locus, and Ignyte Best Novelette Awards!
Night. A night like any other in Starhollow: the headlights of cars, small and lost between the skyscrapers; the smell of hydromel and wine wafting from those few bars still open; and above me, the distant light of the stars, a constant reminder of the inaccessibility of Heaven.
I climbed the stairs to my flat, exhausted, my arms covered in claw-marks. At the shelter I worked at, drunken Fallen had started attacking some of the newcomers—and had turned on me when I’d tried to intervene…
The Locus Awards winners will be announced June 26, 2021, during the virtual Locus Awards Weekend.
Voting for the Hugo Awards are open now to members, and will close on November 19th. The award winners will be announced during DisCon III, which will be held in Washington, D.C., between December 15th-19th.
Voting for the Ignyte Awards is open now to anyone who wants to vote, and will close on May 21st. The award winners will be announced on September 18th.
Many congratulations, Aliette!