skygiants

The third Nebula Nominated Novella About Grief on the ballet was Ai Jiang's Linghun, which I am glad to have on the ballot as a bold stand against total Tor Dot Com domination even though I also did not like it as much.

The premise of Linghun is extremely cool and interesting: it's set in an incredibly hot real estate market where all houses are inherently haunt-able, and more or less guaranteed to develop the ghost of a dead loved one once a family moves in. The three POV characters are, respectively, the resentful daughter of a family who has just moved into one of these houses to cultivate the ghost of her dead brother; the resentful son of one of the many families that camp out on the lawns of said houses hoping for opportunities to enter a bidding war into newly-available properties; and the old woman who lives in the only un-haunted house in town.

I love this concept so much and there is a lot that's really interesting here, but I didn't particularly jive with the prose and some of the Tragedy Plot Elements that hit later threw me out of the story completely. ( spoilers below )

That said I know many people liked this better, and it's quite short so if the concept intrigues you it may be worth giving a try regardless!