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Past form suggests if I wait until I've read all of them, I'll have forgotten what I thought about at least some of the first-read novels from the Hugo shortlist, so, in order of reading:
Network Effect, Martha Wells. Another Murderbot story! I really enjoy Murderbot - a page-turny adventure with a whole load of digs at capitalism and reflection on what it means to be human. There's not much new to the formula in this book ( spoilers ). If you've not read Murderbot, start with All Systems Red and read the series in order.
Harrow the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir. I really enjoyed Gideon the Ninth, to which this is the sequel and was really looking forward to reading it as a result. I'm afraid to say that while I found myself compelled to keep reading to find out where the book was going, I didn't really enjoy it, which is mostly because I didn't understand it, even having got to the end. ( spoilers for both this book and the previous ) But much of that is really unclear almost throughout, and I had to refer to the plot summary on WP to put some of it together afterwards. It's structurally very clever, but I'm afraid I'm too stupid to "get" it; maybe once I've read the forthcoming final part of the trilogy I will come back and go "wow, that was actually very neat", but at the moment my inclination is more to say "Read Gideon the Ninth, and leave it at that unless you are smarter than me or like being confused".
The City We Became, N. K. Jemisin. I imagine you get more out of this if you know New York well, but I still really enjoyed it. I like the ideas, the social commentary (which never quite crosses over into feeling preachy), the sense of place in the different boroughs, and the way the various characters and their abilities evolve. Another one I had difficulty putting down! I imagine people from one particular of the five boroughs may feel hard-done-by, mind you...
Network Effect, Martha Wells. Another Murderbot story! I really enjoy Murderbot - a page-turny adventure with a whole load of digs at capitalism and reflection on what it means to be human. There's not much new to the formula in this book ( spoilers ). If you've not read Murderbot, start with All Systems Red and read the series in order.
Harrow the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir. I really enjoyed Gideon the Ninth, to which this is the sequel and was really looking forward to reading it as a result. I'm afraid to say that while I found myself compelled to keep reading to find out where the book was going, I didn't really enjoy it, which is mostly because I didn't understand it, even having got to the end. ( spoilers for both this book and the previous ) But much of that is really unclear almost throughout, and I had to refer to the plot summary on WP to put some of it together afterwards. It's structurally very clever, but I'm afraid I'm too stupid to "get" it; maybe once I've read the forthcoming final part of the trilogy I will come back and go "wow, that was actually very neat", but at the moment my inclination is more to say "Read Gideon the Ninth, and leave it at that unless you are smarter than me or like being confused".
The City We Became, N. K. Jemisin. I imagine you get more out of this if you know New York well, but I still really enjoyed it. I like the ideas, the social commentary (which never quite crosses over into feeling preachy), the sense of place in the different boroughs, and the way the various characters and their abilities evolve. Another one I had difficulty putting down! I imagine people from one particular of the five boroughs may feel hard-done-by, mind you...