The Locus Awards are put on by Locus Magazine, a monthly indie publication (since 1968!) focusing on SFF book news and reviews. They're pretty good about including small press stuff in their weekly new releases posts, which is nice.

Winner highlights:

Science fiction novel: The Man Who Saw Seconds, Alexander Boldizar
Fantasy novel: A Sorceress Comes to Call, T. Kingfisher
Horror novel: Bury Your Gays, Chuck Tingle
YA novel: Moonstorm, Yoon Ha Lee
First novel: Someone You Can Build a Nest In, John Wiswell
Novella: What Feasts at Night, T. Kingfisher
Novelette: “By Salt, By Sea, By Light of Stars“, Premee Mohamed
Short story: “Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole“, Isabel J. Kim
Anthology: The Black Girl Survives in This One, Desiree S. Evans & Saraciea J. Fennell, eds.
Collection: Lake of Souls, Ann Leckie

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[–] AFKBRBChocolate@lemmy.ca 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Thanks for this. I read a huge amount of mostly SF, with some fantasy, and there are quite a number here (most of them) that I'm not familiar with, so I'm happy to have things to add to my reading list.

In the SF novel category, the only one I've read is Service Model, which I thought was excellent. A couple of the others are already on my to-read list.

In the fantasy novel category, the only one I've read is the winner, A Sorceress Come to Call (which I finished yesterday), and I really liked it as well.

Some of the others are ones I've looked up, but aren't my thing (for instance, I don't generally enjoy alternate histories, and it bugs me that they're considered SF).

But several of the nominees look interesting. Looks like I've got more reading to do!

[–] misericordiae 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Glad it was useful to you!

I have half a dozen nominees on my to-read pile (I'll get to them some day), but of the entire list, I've only read I'm Afraid You've Got Dragons (ok, but no The Last Unicorn) and The Butcher of the Forest (great overall, imo).

for instance, I don't generally enjoy alternate histories, and it bugs me that they're considered SF

Alternate histories seems like one of those oddball sub-genres that has to go somewhere; I guess I would maybe call them spec fic, if they're not otherwise sci-fi or fantasy? But it seems like they lumped spec fic into the sci-fi category, which seems reasonable.

[–] AFKBRBChocolate@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 days ago

Yeah, I get it, it just feels very different to me. And, of course, as with all things, the line is blurry anyway. For instance, Orson Scott Card wrote an alternate history where the change is that American folk magic actually works, which seems pretty explicitly fantasy. It's similar to the way it's pretty hard to clearly differentiate between SF and fantasy. I get it, it's just annoying.