2026 Nebula Finalists Review, Favorites, and Prediction

Hinzugefügt: 2026-06-06

[00:00:00]Hello everyone, welcome to my book channel. The 296 Nebula Award will announce its winner this Saturday. So, in today's video, I will review all seven finalists and give you my thoughts on these books, what my personal favorites are, and then maybe we'll make a quick prediction on which one might be the winner of the 2026 Nebula. So, I read three of these finalists last year and four of them over the last month.

[00:00:22]Um, and I wanted to talk about the newer reads first because they're fresher in my memory. So, the first Nebula finalist I picked up this year was The Incandescent by Emily Tesh. This novel is double nominated for both the Nebula and the Hugo this year, and it follows a teacher in an English boarding school.

[00:00:39]So, the protagonist, Dr. Walden, is the director of magic at the fictional Cetwood school, where they teach students magic along with other realworld subjects. So, the students here both learn magic and classes that they need for the A levels, which are, I think, kind of the British um university entrance exam. So, this isn't really a magical school or a fantastical school.

[00:01:02]It's just a private boarding school that happens to teach magic as one of the subjects. And I feel like it also wasn't very well established by the narrative as to why they teach magic to these students, why this school teaches students to invoke demons. Um, it seems like all the demons do is possess photocopers and demand digestive biscuits and occasionally causing death in the school, especially given that there are magical wardings that are meant to keep the demons away. And um, a lot of the story is kind of trying to prevent demonic incursions, which is basically the demons escaping their magical plane and causing trouble in the real world. It just seems extra self-contradictory that a school would teach students to invoke demons while keeping demons away seems to be a very important thing in this world. So, I just found the world building to be a little bit lacking and also self-contradictory. So, for me, right from the get-go, I felt rather underwhelmed by the world building and kind of unconvinced. And um as the story goes on, I started feeling like it's not really a fantasy. It's more of a magical realism story about a school teacher and her experience teaching and administrating in this English boarding school. So, the story opens with her filling in a risk assessment form for an invocation class that she's about to teach. So, to be completely honest with you, I was bored from page one. And that was not the only administrative chore that is in this book. There are a lot of meetings and agendas and lesson observations and lesson planning and helping her students apply to university. And the story seems to just be focusing on the professional and personal life of this fictional teacher.

[00:02:44]A lot of the narrative is also devoted to the problems that she had with her ex and her current dating life and she got into this love triangle with her colleagues. And occasionally there are scenes of battling demons, but I did not feel like those were the most exciting to read either. Uh, at one point she was fighting this demon called Old Faithful.

[00:03:02]And most of their battle was just this kind of passive aggressive bickering about her past encounter with Old Faithful when she was young where another student died. And I felt like overall the purpose of this story was just to get this fictional character through her midlife crisis. Um, I mean the cover is a representation of this Phoenix tattoo that she has and Phoenix being a symbol of rebirth. So this is kind of the story of her like wrestling with her identity or existential issues and finding a certain kind of rebirth at the end. So overall I was rather underwhelmed and quite honestly just bored by this story. I feel like it was more of the personal account of a fictional character than a epic or magical fantasy story. I just did not feel like I found what I was looking for in a magical school type of story. So then I picked up Sour Cherry by Natalia Theodoru. This story begins with Agnes who goes to work as a wet nurse in Lord Malcolm's manor. And Lord Malcolm has a son who is a quite strange little boy.

[00:04:04]Uh his nails grow too fast and he kind of smells of the soil and he has these weird interactions with animals and it's rumored that he can maybe communicate with them and control them into doing things that hurt other people. And it seems like death and decay just keeps following this little boy. And because of that, the villagers come with their pitchforks and the family has to move.

[00:04:25]So this plot point is kind of repeated several times throughout this story. The little lord grows up into a lord of his own right and death and decay keeps following him and the local villagers become angry. So the family has to move again. And similarly to my impression of the incandescent, I did not feel like this story was a fantasy either. This story is written in a very kind of intentionally cryptic and experimental type of style. I feel like even for literary fictions, this one is on the more um experimental and cryptic side of things. So, I'll give you an example.

[00:04:57]This is a paragraph on page 40. The woman's face twisted. But that's just it, isn't it? She said she showed Agnes her empty palm. Then she touched Agnes' breast, traced something there that only Agnes could remember. The memory of a mouth. The echo of a bruise, the smell of milk soured too soon. Nothing.

[00:05:17]Nothing that fits a mouth a tongue. You simply carry it with you wherever you go. In the river or on the road, it stays. So, I feel like the writing style is trying to go for like a poetic type of cadence, but it also ended up being very cryptic and indirect. And honestly, the writing style of this one reminded me of The Wax Child by Okarin. It's from this year's International Booker Prize.

[00:05:41]So, if you've read um The Wax Child and you like the writing style here where things are a little bit more cryptic and it has a lot of these poetic lyrical kind of commentary added into it, then you will probably enjoy this book. But, um if you don't like deciphering this type of writing style, then I wouldn't say that this book is for you. So, this very vague and indirect storytelling was kind of the first reason that I didn't really enjoy this book. And throughout the first half of it, I was just very frustrated with having to kind of decipher everything. Um, and it's also a story that's told in third person and first person like simultaneously. So, the storyteller, the narrator is a presence in this story. And while you're following the story in third person where it talks about Agnes and the little lord and later on other characters, there will be commentary from the first person perspective like interspersed into this story. So after I kind of trudged through the first half of the story and got to the second half, I realized that this is just a retelling of Blue Beard. So Blue Beard is like a French folktale or children's story, um, whatever you want to call it, where this like terrifying man that has a Blue Beard takes a new wife and he told her that there's this one room in the house that she's not allowed to go into. And of course, later she went into this room and realized that Blue Beard had killed all of his previous wives. And honestly, this isn't even a spoiler because in the synopsis of the book, it says, "Until wife after wife, death after death, plague after plague, every woman he touches becomes a ghost." So, the synopsis kind of tells you that this is going to happen in the story. And indeed, when this little lord grows into adult, um, his wife is just kept dying.

[00:07:23]And the story actually explicitly mentions Blue Beard and it's not even hiding the fact that it is a retelling with kind of a prequel added to the story which also brings in another major issue that I have with this book which is the way that this little lord is portrayed. I think the author is trying to write him as kind of demonic like he was born that way. His nails grow too long and at one point his shadow had wings and horns. So, I kind of feel like this story is trying to say that this kind of death and violence is caused by someone that's born this way. It's almost like saying that he has no control over his actions because he's born as something evil. Whereas, I feel like stories like Blue Beard is trying to tell us that this is human action.

[00:08:08]You know, like abuse and violence that someone does to their partner is a choice that this human being has made and this person has to be held accountable for their actions. whereas I feel like portraying this character as being born as something possibly supernaturally evil, it's almost like excusing his actions. So ultimately, I wasn't really sure what the author was trying to say. Maybe he is criticizing like making excuses for this kind of violent abusive behavior. I mean, in the back of the book, it does say like uh it confronts age-old systems of gender and power, long-held excuses made for bad men. So maybe in this case depiction is critique. I'm really not sure because the story is just so vague and confusing and overall it was a rather disappointing reading experience. So I kind of had two rather underwhelming reading experiences back toback. Both incandescent and sour cherry did not really feel like fantasy and didn't really meet my expectation for fantasy stories. But by comparison actually the incandescent is more of a fantasy. I would say this one is definitely a literary fiction and a cryptic one at that. So, after two kind of disappointing fantasies, I wanted a change of pace. So, I picked up a sci-fi When We Were Real by Daryl Gregory. This is a story where the whole world is a simulation and a bus full of people are traveling through North America to see a list of impossibilities, which are these kind of physics defying phenomenons that are glitches in the simulation. Like for example, the frozen tornado is a literal tornado that's frozen in place and the antipode is like a sheet of water that's actually a dis of the Indian Ocean that's on the opposite side of the earth that's somehow uh visible in North America. And the story takes you through these like physics defying locations while also giving you the backstory of each character on the tour bus while also taking you through the fictional history of the announcement where everything is assimulation and the global freakout that followed. So this one I made it to page 110 and DNFed it for two main reasons. One is I feel like everyone in this cast of characters is kind of insufferable. I feel like that might be the intent of the author where all of these characters are deeply flawed. For example, there's an influencer who calls herself lady like literally three M's. That's how she spells her name and she is pregnant and she is kind of content obsessed and very entitled. And there's another character called the realist who I I think is someone that doesn't believe everything is a simulation and he wants to start a podcast to like expose the big lie. So, these two characters are kind of really similar in the way that they are very entitled and obnoxious and in the way that they both behave in kind of a childish type of manner. I feel like having one person like that in a cast of characters is already a lot and having two is just it's a little bit too much.

[00:11:09]Another issue that I had with this book is the premise. I feel like the book didn't really clearly define what is real and what isn't. I think in a fiction with this very big idea that everything is a simulation, but we can also see like human beings on a bus. I feel like it's really important to actually like delineate what's real in this world and what's simulated. And what does that even mean? Like for example, this influencer is obsessed with the idea of becoming famous to avoid deletion. But what does deletion mean? Like is she going to be killed?

[00:11:43]and she was constantly obsessed that a teenage boy's digital goo got her pregnant, which um felt like just like a really silly idea. I mean, she is physically pregnant, therefore the semen is real, isn't it? But then later on, the story says that um this pregnancy is a digital pregnancy in her digital uterus, which for me just made it worse.

[00:12:06]I mean, if she is a woman, if she is a real human woman, how can her uterus be digital? It's just it just feels really poorly thought through and self-contradicting. And I don't know if this is a result of me giving up too early. Maybe later in the book more will be defined regarding to like what is real and what isn't. But I feel like the insufferable characters and the very confusing explanation of what the simulation entails just annoyed me a little bit too much. Um, to be completely honest with you, if I was having a better reading month, I may have continued reading, but I just couldn't force myself to finish a third book that I was not enjoying. So, I gave up on this one. And then I picked up Wearing the Lion by John Whiswell. So, this is the author that also wrote Someone You Can Build a Nest In. So, this is one of my favorite books of 2025. And I think it also won the Nebula and um, Locust first novel. So, this is a quite well-received book and um I really like this author's writing style.

[00:13:09]So, I had very high expectations for this book and finally I was not disappointed. So, this story is a retelling of Greek mythology, specifically the mythology of Heracles.

[00:13:20]So, Heracles is the son of Zeus with a human queen. And Hera became very angry about her husband Zeus's infidelity and the birth of Heracles. So, Hera made sure that Uretheus would be born before Heracles. So Uritheus became the king of all he surveys instead of Heracles.

[00:13:38]Later on she caused this bout of madness which according to the original mythology Heracles killed his wife and children but in this book he accidentally killed his children but not his wife. And um from there on Heracles fled to the oracle of Delelfi who told him to serve King Uretheus and the king assigned him the 12 labors. So, this book actually took quite a bit of creative liberty in um retelling the mythology. Um so, instead of slaying all of these monsters that are assigned to him in the 12 labors, he kind of befriended them and um it turned into this very um humorous and heartwarming found family kind of story that I really enjoyed. So, that being said, I don't know if someone who's more of a um classics purist would feel about like this amount of creative liberty being taken with mythology, but it is this author's style to kind of see the best in every character and write monsters with a human heart and with a lot of kind of potential for goodness. Um, I feel like that is certainly the case in Someone You Can Build a Nest in. And similarly, in this one, I feel like the humor and the entertainment was the goal of the story. I don't think the author was setting out to um make a exact retelling of Greek mythology. I feel like he's using Greek mythology as a lens to create a very entertaining story where monsters can be rehabilitated and people can reconcile their differences with communication and kindness. And especially since I'm not someone who is really interested in reading Greek mythology or retellings, um this author still managed to make this story incredibly entertaining for me. I feel like that should tell you a lot about the capability of this author to make a funny and engaging story. Um, I think the humor is definitely a big factor of it. For example, after Heracles tamed the Namian lion by just being kind to the creature, he gave him the nickname Perseus, spelled P ur R Su. So, it is a cheeky pun, but it really worked for me.

[00:15:35]And also, I feel like characterization is where this author really shines. Like this story did a great job of showing you the internal um mental state of completely like mythological characters like Hera or Heracles. Like you think of these characters as like a faceless legend, but in this story they really do read like humans. Like I couldn't help but being taken in by Harris this like I think righteous anger of having her husband just being repeatedly unfaithful. And um although the things that she did like as a reader looking on from the outside, you can see that a lot of her decisions are quite cruel, but the author also managed to show you like very human sides of her like her regrets about causing the death of Heracles's innocent children and also her fear of Heracles's power and um the prospect of him just besieging Olympus and bringing ruin to her world. So I really feel like it's a great feat to turn these mythological figures from a abstract concept into a flesh and blood character that are that just come to life and jump out of the page. So among my four newer reads of the Nebula finalists, this one was definitely my favorite. So now let's revisit the other three books that are finalist for the 2026 Nebula. I read these books last year and you have probably already heard a lot about these titles, so I will try to be brief. Uh the first one is the Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Steven Graham Jones. So this is a historical horror. It is told as the diary of a fictional pastor called Arthur Barn. The story begins with his great great great great granddaughter finding his diary and reading about his experience taking confession from a Native American called Goodstab. And simultaneous to these confessions were a series of gruesome murders in Mile City, Montana that were being discovered.

[00:17:24]beginning with a man being found completely skinned and extanguinated and his face was painted half black and half yellow in the typical fashion that Native Americans used to paint the faces of buffaloos to honor them. This story makes reference to a very real massacre that happened during that time where a couple hundred Native Americans were slaughtered. And um during that time period, the early settlers did a lot of very cruel things to buffaloos. Like for example, they would skin um adult buffaloos and drape their hide around cattle to lure baby buffaloos and slaughtering the babies as well. So during that time, Native Americans would only hunt buffaloos for food, but the white colonizers or settlers would just uh kill buffaloos to kind of wipe out the food supply of Native Americans in addition to murdering Native Americans.

[00:18:13]So this story is set against a very cruel and bloody and violent historical background. So let me tell you my favorite things about this book first.

[00:18:21]Um for me, the first thing that really stood out is definitely the characterization. So the author writes in alternating voices like half of the chapters would be in the voice of Arthur Bkarn who is the pastor and the other chapters would be in the voice of Goodstaff recounting his experience. And I think the author delineated these two different characters really well through using different writing styles and different speech patterns. Um, in the writings of Arthur Barn, you can see this kind of self-righteousness. Like he would begin by describing Good Stab as a gentleman. And he would kind of hide his prejudice against him by describing him as like curious, almost childlike. And then as the story went on, you start to see his prejudice like leaking through, like he started using terms like savage or barbaric. And um in the voice of Goodstaff where it has this kind of casual um almost rambling quality to it, it really feels like a person just like sitting by the fire smoking a pipe and telling you a story and telling you his story without really editing out a lot of the details like for example like detailed descriptions of nature and animals in addition to you know the gruesome murders. And after Good tells his story, in the following chapter, Arthur Barn would also kind of write these like skeptical commentary about what he just heard. So, you really feel like you're reading two distinct characters narrating the story. And I also found the storytelling to be really immersive in the way that Arthur Boharn used a lot of very um antiquated and dated expressions that really feel like they came from the turn of the century, a century ago. And when Goodstaff was telling his story, um all the terms for the animals would be in Native American terms. Uh like for example, um dirty faces I think are rats. And I think buffalo was referred to as either real meat or black horn. So these like authentic terms also really added to the immersive quality of the story. Um, however, because of this, this is also not a quick read because during Arthur Barn's narration, I found myself constantly being stopped by very unfamiliar words that I had to look up.

[00:20:28]So, although it added to the immersive quality, it also kind of slowed down the reading. And also, this like rambling conversational storytelling style of Goodstaff also slowed the story down a little bit. So, I would say that this is an enjoyable read, but it's not a quick read. But I definitely recommend giving yourself a good amount of time if you choose to pick up this story. Just spend a few weeks really immersed in this world and take your time and just get a little bit lost in this um historical and atmospheric horror story. Next, let's talk about Catabasis by RF Kuang.

[00:21:00]This was quite the polarizing viral sensation last year. A lot of people enjoyed this book. Many others think it's too highbrow and they felt like you needed a graduate degree to enjoy this book. So, this is a story of Alice Law and Peter Murdoch going down to hell to save the soul of their academic adviser, Jacob Grimes. To do that, they had to pass through all the different courts of hell and defeat multiple obstacles to get to the deepest level, which is King Yama's domain. I can see why a lot of readers thought this was too highbrow because um a lot of the obstacles that Peter and Alice faced had to do with issues of interpretation of mythology and legend and classical writings about hell. And also there are a lot of math and logical puzzles that they had to solve to pass through to the next location. I personally enjoyed looking up like all of these tidbits of information, the classical writings, the math and logic concepts. But I also understand why you would feel like that kind of really slows down the reading process in the same way that the obscure words and the Native American terminology would kind of slow down your reading of the Buffalo Hunter Hunter as well. But also, I feel like you don't have to understand absolutely every reference in this book to be able to follow the story. So, for me, I feel like this story should be read more as a satire than a fantasy. I think the way that the author designed hell and um the way that um the story was told regarding Peter and Alice's experience in academia and their reflection on their relationship and their relationship with Professor Grimes, it's really highlighting a lot of deep issues of academia. Um, like for example, I think at one point in the story, the author explicitly writes that hell is a campus.

[00:22:40]So for me, I feel like a lot of the points in this story is to critique academia, the pointless pursuit, the ruthless competition between people that have already sacrificed a lot to reach a certain level in academia, but then the way forward is still um just as confusing and uncertain as a path through hell. And once you get to a very advanced level of academia, things could become so abstract and theoretical that it feels removed from the real world.

[00:23:09]And um it does feel like being plunged into hell and um being trapped in this kind of confusion and um despair. But I do wonder if this message was not as clear to a lot of other readers and maybe they felt like they were just reading a research paper about hell rather than a fantasy. And I feel like the first half of the book is definitely more researchheavy. And um later on in the story, it goes more into Peter Alice's personal history, their experience with Professor Grimes and what the actual truth of their relationship was and the circumstances surrounding his death. So I can definitely see why a lot of people may want to give up on this book during the first half where it was very like reference and researchheavy. So, this is probably more of a clever book than a easily enjoyable, entertaining kind of book, like for example, Wearing the Lion. So, I personally enjoyed this book and I don't think anyone needs to be intimidated by the more obscure references. I think you can definitely follow the narrative, follow the characters, and enjoy the satire. And lastly, Death of the Author by Nadio, which I gave away after reading it last November. So this is the story of a science fiction author Zelu who is disabled and Nigerian and she lives in the United States. She was fired from her university teaching job and her novel that she had been working on for 10 years was rejected by yet another publisher. So then she started writing a story just for herself titled Rusted Robots which is a post-apocalyptic robot versus AI story. And this story ended up becoming very successful. it got picked up by a major film studio, but um after the film was adapted, she realized that the story had been whitewashed. So, when I first read and reviewed the story, I remember really liking the central idea of the death of the author. Meaning that once a reader read a story and make their own interpretation and make the story their own, the author's intention kind of doesn't really matter to them anymore and it's as if the author had died. Um, and then I did a little bit of research and turns out this is not really an original idea of the author.

[00:25:14]It came from French philosopher Robert Bart and this was not credited in the book. So that kind of added to like my feeling of disappointment about this book because the central idea um came from someone else and it was not credited. And in addition, I feel like this idea was kind of lost in this story because the author crammed so many issues into one story that I feel like all of them were fighting for focus and the story was told from so many different perspectives that I ended up feeling like it was just a lot of different ideas and different voices kind of thrown into the kitchen sink where the central idea, the death of the author, was a little bit lost. So, the story wasn't just about the interpretation of Zoo's writing and how the Nigerian identity and Nigerian culture was lost when it was adapted by a white American studio. Uh it was also about um her being part of a really large Nigerian family and uh what's going on with all of her sisters and their experience of diaspora, their internal sibling rivalry and bickering about where to bury her father and also her issue of disability and how she chose to wear this exoskeleton to help her move around. and it led to this like internet pile on that's kind of like the plot of Yellowface where um a lot of people were criticizing her for just wanting a little bit of help for her condition. So all of these issues are valid issues. I just feel like they are splitting focus from the central idea of the story and also the story is told from so many different perspectives. I feel like the story made me feel like every person in Zelu's life just like wanted 15 minutes of fame because she was famous. And it ended up making all of the characters feel less likable. And I didn't really love the um story and story either. The rusted robots that was embedded into this novel. It felt kind of incomplete. And I have this issue with a lot of like story instory writings where I feel like you just get these individual like disjointed chapters from a story that doesn't really exist and you never quite get enough information to piece everything together. And I had the same issue with the blind assassin by Margaret Atwood as well. I feel like in that story the science fiction that was contained within the novel also just felt incomplete and confusing. So, I just don't love that choice when it comes to novel writing. So, overall, I didn't really enjoy this story. It felt a little bit messy and chaotic. And it turns out the central idea was not entirely original either. But, um, I'm definitely in the minority because this book just won the locust for best science fiction. So, a lot of other readers and book awards definitely enjoyed this book more than I did. So maybe it's worth your time to consider a dissenting voice regarding a really popular book or maybe just disregard my opinions as entirely, you know, subjective and read the book and decide for yourself. So that was my review of the 2026 Nebula finalists. Among these seven books, I enjoyed three of them and they are the Buffalo Hunter Hunter, Catabasist, and Wearing the Lion. Um, if I have to choose a favorite, honestly, it's probably Wearing the Lion by John Whispell. I just feel like this author has kind of become a new um comfort reading author for me. I just feel like I'm guaranteed to have a blast with his writing. It's always like just sparkling with humor and he's really good at writing very very lovable characters and the book is just entertaining from beginning to finish. And these two I would recommend with some reservations.

[00:28:50]Uh this one does get a little bit obscure and slightly slow during the first half. And this one is also not the quickest read. it could be a little bit sluggish at times due to the writing style. But that being said, I feel like these two might be stronger candidates for winning the Nebula. So, The Buffalo Hunter Hunter just won, I think, best horror novel in The Locust. And, um, John Wiswall was the winner of the 2025 Nebula. And, um, I don't think Nebula is an award that just keeps going to the same author. So, it would probably consider one of these two instead.

[00:29:26]Although, I'm not really sure. Um, I haven't had the best track record in predicting book award winners. Uh, last year my top three women's prize favorites did not make the short list at all. And um, my least favorite Booker read ended up winning the whole thing.

[00:29:42]And this year, my least favorite book on the short list also won the International Booker Prize. So now I do feel a little bit wary predicting book award winners going forward. But um I feel like book awards are still a great opportunity for us to discover books and maybe authors that we've never heard of.

[00:29:57]So I will continue to follow book awards and um choose readings from award nominees and finalists. So I hope you've enjoyed today's video and I would love to hear from you in the comments below what you thought of my reviews and have you read any of these Nebula finalists and what do you think of them? Thank you so much for watching. See you next time.

[00:30:19]Gandalf.

[00:30:21]Hello.

[00:30:23]Are you the mightiest wizard in the realm? Oh, yes you are.