Hugo Review Status Update - Final?

This is almost my final ballot.

I did not finish the "Best Series" category, and I realized a couple of days ago that I wasn't going to read enough to feel comfortable rating most of the works in the category. I don't like this result, but I'll be putting Vorkosigan first and leaving the rest of the ballot blank, and hoping that I can finish reading these series before they all next become eligible (I think it's three years?).

My ballot order changes every time I log in, and I plan to log in once a day until the final day of voting. So what is below is unlikely to be my final absolute complete ballot. As I've noted before, I won't be posting my final ballot - I'm just not going to bother. This is close enough for you to get an idea of how I'm voting.

While reading and voting was, at times, almost stressful, it did have the fortunate effect of knocking me out of a very long and painful depressive episode and getting me to read regularly again. I just hope this lasts. I've still got a LOT of comic books to read to catch up, and let's not even talk about how far behind I am on Fortean Times (I crave my weirdness and haven't read it in so long!).

After the fold, my current rankings with links to my reviews. A dash means I'm leaving it off my ballot. The items I didn't even consider due to being promoted by a slate are not on the ballot at all.

A Hugo Review: Best Series - The Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold

I'm of multiple minds how to handle this category, as there is no chance of me even getting close to finishing all the entries before voting ends. This is the only series I was very familiar with before the finalists were announced, and it's perhaps my all-time favorite series. There's no way I'm NOT going to put it at the top of my ballot.

But, that said, what do I do about the others? I've skimmed, read a bit of each, and I'm just not sure. With only a couple more days of reading time, I'm not certain yet what I'll do.

So I guess my best bet at the moment is to tell my handful of readers why I like Bujold's work so much.

This series is concerned with the events in a family, focusing mainly on two family members: Cordelia and her son, Miles. I started by reading some of the books completely out of order, then went back and read Shards of Honor and Barrayar, then the rest mostly in publication order after that. Shards of Honor and Barrayar are Cordelia's books, funny and poignant and filled with hope. Most of the other books are about Miles and his various adventures as a man fighting physical problems caused before he was born while trying to live up to his family name.

Over the course of the series, the reader becomes friends with a huge cast of fantastic and wonderful people, all of them filled out with problems and strengths, some liking the others and some not. The end result is that the series as a whole fills its own universe and by the end of CryoBurn - when a certain event happens - the whole universe seems to shatter.

And I guess that's what I love about this series. You are carried along in a bunch of crazy adventures that are each satisfying as a piece, but as a whole work even better.

My favorite "trio" within the series is Memory, Komarr and A Civil Campaign. As a person who struggles with depression, reading Memory takes me down a dark path as Miles suffers what he would consider the worst possible events of his life (keeping in mind that he DIED in a previous book). Through the book, he's at his lowest and yet still manages to pull himself up enough to solve a mystery. Then in Komarr we see him adjust to a new life - which I find heartening. Sometimes you want nothing more than to get back what you've lost, but in Komarr the main character goes in a completely different direction and finds joy and love there. The final of the trio is A Civil Campaign, which is an all-out romp and enjoyable because it's hilarious.

By rereading those three books, I can often pull myself out of a deep depression and face the world again with new eyes. And it's the way this series can help me think differently about my own life while reading about the lives of fictional characters that has turned it into my favorite reread.

Conclusion: I don't know how I'm going to treat the rest of the series finalists, but as a series that has probably saved my life, this one is on top of my ballot.

Reviews of 2017 Hugo Finalists