I'm really sad that Priory of the Orange Tree isn't on the list, that book was so well done. I suspect it's the perceived YA-fantasy bias operating against it.
Very glad to see both Gideon and A Memory Called Empire on there, both well deserved imho.
LOL, wild, I so disagree with that. I found priory to be an extremely disappointing and mediocre book where everyone was lying, had no character, no consistency beside that of being boring and insufferable, the payoff was stupid bad and felt like a soap of bubble popping, and the dragons were irrelevant. I didn't buy a single relationship and can't believe I lost an entire month of my life to this book.
As for a memory called empire, I found it entertaining at times but woefully lacking overall. It comes across as a massive carbon copy of Ann Leckie's work, with the same type of empire, the same type of cold people, except they're obsessed with poetry instead of tea. It felt hollow, despite being kind of written ok. It had none of the funk and sass of Gideon, which to me should definitely have been the winner.
It has a lot of character, a super intriguing world, does super bold stuff with the main character, a great cast of side characters... And a genuinely well pulled off enemies-to-friends arc which is hard to do well.
I also absolutely hated This Is How You Lose the Time War. It's a pile of pretentious hogwash imo. Lots of absolutely senseless and heavy handed metaphors to build up a nonsensical sense of world around pointlessly dense and flowery letters that absolutely doesn't sell the relationship. Gave up halfway through.
To Be Taught, If Fortunate, was... emotionally impacting to me, but my least favourite story by chambers if solely because of the totally unrealistic ending. I would never believe a bunch of scientists would make this choice. It totally broke it for me. Still 10x the story Time War is haha.
The Haunting of Tram Car 015 I just put on my kindle and will start soon.
Good Omens winning over Us is just... SMH. Why is even Skywalker on there. Come on.
I'll be looking up all the novelettes and short stories later as I haven't read any of them, but this is a deeply disappointing selection of winners for me. Another reason I don't usually pay attention to prizes.