Hugos and Puppies

[cos]

I'd like to read some of the Hugo Award nominees in the next few months, but avoid spending time on less-good nominees who are only there due to the sadness of the nutty puppies^*. ckd gave me a link to a puppy-free slate, but that's not exactly what I want. Some books & stories good enough to have had a great shot at the Hugo ballot without any puppies, were probably included on the puppy slates. I'd like to read some of those, but don't have time to read everything, so I want to avoid the ones that would near-certainly not have been on on a puppyless ballot.

People who are familiar with a bunch of the entries on the 2015 Hugo ballot, which ones do you recommend spending my time on?

* For a long version of the puppies thing, you can read George R.R. Martin's series of posts on his LiveJournal starting with this one and continuing from there. For a short version... anyone got a link to a good short summary for readers who don't know anything about this and are curious?

Edit: This looks like a good readable summary that doesn't require that you already know a lot about it: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/04/13/1376743/-Freeping-the-Hugo-Awards You do need to know what "freeping" refers to: Overwhelming a poll/vote/election by getting a large number of people from outside its usual community (people who would otherwise not have been involved) to all vote in the same way.

Edit2: Another good piece, with more historical context:
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/121554/2015-hugo-awards-and-history-science-fiction-culture-wars

Comments

[feuervogel]

You can skip everything by John C Wright, because he's a terrible writer. (secritcrush is reading the Puppy nominees.)

Ancillary Sword I'm told is awesome. I haven't read it yet, but I thought Ancillary Justice (last year's winner) was really good, so I assume part 2 is, too. (I hear it may suffer from middle book syndrome.)

Everyone I know LOVES the Goblin Emperor.

The Day the World Turned Upside Down is probably good. Olde Heuvelt is a good writer.

Annie Bellet withdrew her nomination, as did Marko Kloos.

In Graphic Story, I liked all the non-Puppy ones there. (That would be everything except the one about zombies.)

Down in Semiprozine, BCS, Lightspeed, and SH have consistently good fiction.

[cos]

Thanks! This was very helpful.

A few other people (including netmouse and ckd) recommended The Goblin Emperor and Ancillary Sword, so I've already ordered both (and Ancillary Justice).

[cerebralpaladin.livejournal.com]

This matches my impressions, although I merely liked Goblin Emperor (did not love it) and I thought Ancillary Sword was a big let-down (although still good) from Ancillary Justice (which was amazing).

I really like Jim Butcher's Dresden Files in general, but thought that Skin Game in particular was not one of his stronger books--again, I'd put it at the okay to pretty good level.

Ms. Marvel is fantastic--I don't think I've read any of the other Graphic Story entries.

Surprisingly, I've watched all of the Dramatic Presentation Long-Form nominees. They're all worth watching, imo, although I thought Winter Soldier was weaker than the first Captain America, Interstellar was disappointing but good, and Lego Movie was fantastic but not very much scifi/fantasy. Edge of Tomorrow is the most underrated of the group, and is actually quite good.