The winners of the 2015 David Gemmell Awards for Fantasy were announced last weekend. The winners are:
RAVENHEART AWARD (Best cover art) Sam Green for Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson (Gollancz)
MORNINGSTAR AWARD (Best debut) The Emperor’s Blades by Brian Stavely (Pan Macmillan/Tor UK)
LEGEND AWARD (Best novel) Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson (Gollancz)
Adventures Fantastic would like to offer heartiest congratulations the winners.
Just a reminder to those of you who are interested but haven’t yet voted, that the deadline to cast your ballots for the David Gemmell Awards is midnight, Friday, July 17.
There are three awards, the Legend (best novel), the Morningstar (best first novel), and the Ravenheart (best cover illustration). That’s the trophy for the Legend Award there on the right. It’s a life size model of the axe Snaga. How cool is that?
Anyway, you’ve only got a couple of days left if you haven’t voted and want to.
The July 4th holiday, AKA Independence Day, is fast approaching, which means for me that the summer is half over. I’ve done a bit of traveling but that’s about to stop for the most part.
I’ll be teaching a class the second summer term, which starts on Tuesday. It’s at 8:00 a.m. That’s early, but that’s okay. I’m tanned, I’m rested, I’m ready. What that means is I’ll have a lot less free time on my hands.
Current projects are to finish Bradley Beaulieu’s new novel, Twelve Kings in Sharakhai. I’ll do that in a bit and try to get the review up tomorrow night. (Spoiler: It’s awesome.)
I’ve not done a BAF post in a while, but I’ll start on the next book this weekend. I’m going to try to read the short fiction that’s up for the Hugo that I’d not already read when the ballot was announced. Ditto for the Gemmell Awards. I won’t be able to finish everything on the Gemmell ballot before the deadline, but I’ll at least get a couple of books out of the way.
I was accepted into the Ace Roc Stars program earlier this year. What that basically means is that i get advanced copies of most of the upcoming books by either Ace or Roc. The first batch of titles didn’t have much that interested me, but the second batch is a gold mine. The first volume in Jim Butcher’s new series, the second Lizzie Borden novel by Cheri Priest, a couple of new fantasy novels and the first volumes in some space opera series.
In addition I”ll be trying to read as much fantasy, science fiction, and crime as possible. I want to read as many of the Shamus Award nominees as I can. Anyway, that’s what’s going on with reviewing and blogging. Writing I’ll discuss in another post once i have some things in better shape.
Half a King
Joe Abercrombie
Del Rey
Trade Paper, $15, 346 p.
Half a King is on the shortlist for this year’s Gemmell Awards. It has been a few years since I read Abercrombie. (I’m still holding out for a British edition of Red Country.) I’d forgotten just how good a writer he is. It’s easy to see why this book is on the shortlist.
Half a King isn’t as dark as some of Abercrombie’s other books. Still, it’s not all sunshine at light. The book was written by the man whose Twitter handle is LordGrimDark, after all. Continue reading
The awards I’m talking about, of course, are the David Gemmell Awards. As I’m sure you know, there are three. The Legend Award for the best novel of the year. The Morningstar Award for best fantasy debut novel. And the Ravenheart Award for best fantasy book cover.
I’ll post the short lists below after a few comments. I’m going to read as many of these as I can, especially among the Morningstar candidates (with one exception, which I’m not going to touch).
The Legend Award is another matter. The reason is that most of the Legend nominees are parts of series, and they’re not the first installment. The exception is Joe Abercrombie’s Half a King, which I started reading last night. I intend to read some of the others, but I may not make it by the deadline as I haven’t read the books that precede them.
And regarding the other award that’s generating some attention, I’ll try to read as many of the nominees for that one as possible. I’ll read all of the short fiction nominees (that I haven’t already read) and will blog about some of them. The same is true for Best Related Work. Again, with one exception, I’ll try to get to as many of the novel nominees as I can, although as soon as my attention starts to drift, I’ll move on.
Here are the Gemmell nominees. Voting closes on July 17. Continue reading
The winners of the 2014 David Gemmell Awards have been announced.
The top prize, the Legend Award for best fantasy novel, went to Mark Lawrence for Emperor of Thorns. The Morningstar Award for best debut novel was for Promise of Blood by Brian McClellan (reviewed here). And the Ravenheart Award for best cover art went to Jason Chan for Emperor of Thorns.
Adventures Fantastic would like to congratulate all the nominees and especially the winners. More detail can be found at the David Gemmell Awards page.
The Grim Company
Luke Scull
Roc, mmp, $7.99
ebook Kindle $5.99 Nook $7.99
I had hoped to have this one finished and reviewed before the voting on the Gemmell Awards closed since it’s on the short list for the Morningstar, which is the award for best first novel.
Alas, my parents’ had their 50th wedding anniversary celebration last weekend, and so I wasn’t able to finish it on time.
The title might imply that the novel is similar to Glen Cook’s Black Company. Put that idea out of your mind. This isn’t the Black Company or anything like it. But it’s still a darn good book. Continue reading
I was indulging one of my vices (reading other people’s blogs, Sarah Hoyt’s in this case) and noticed in the comments a quote from a different blog. That particular quote had some disparaging thing to say about the Gemmell Awards. I’m not going to bother linking to the quoted blog because I’m not directly responding to the argument there, which concerned the number of white male authors nominated for awards, specifically the Hugos. I will quote the relevant passage, because it’s representative of a pretty common attitude. It also kicked off a train of thought that should be addressed. Namely, the how relevant the Hugos are compared to the Gemmells.
The Gemmell Awards are named after David Gemmell and focus on heroic fantasy. The Hugo Awards are named in honor of Hugo Gernsback, who published the first magazine devoted entirely to science fiction, Amazing Stories. The Gemmell Awards specialize in heroic fantasy, while the Hugos encompass the entire sff field.
Huog Gernsback
Here’s the quote:
“Why not just let the works speak for themselves?”
The issue is that when we let the works speak for themselves, we wind up with the Gemmell Awards: 70,000 votes (several orders of magnitudes greater than the Hugos), and every single nominee for Best Novel is a White Dude. Every best debut novel is a dude, most of them white.
Of course these comments are totally bogus. I’ll explain why in a second. But it got me to thinking, always a dangerous thing.
In case you haven’t been paying attention, in addition to the shortlist for the Gemmell Awards, the shortlist for the Hugo Awards, was announced recently. And the internet has been having a major hissy fit ever since.
I’m referring, of course, to the David Gemmell Awards.
David Gemmell
What, you were expecting a different award? Everyone around here knows that the only awards worth paying attention to are the Gemmell, the Shamus, and in a good year, the World Fantasy Awards.
The shortlists are as follows (I’ll comment at the end): Continue reading
The Path of Anger
Antoine Rouaud
Tom Clegg, trans.
paperback L14.99 UK
$11.38 US (pre-order, pub. date Aug 14, 2014)
The Path of Anger is an impressive debut. Antoine Rouaud has created an enthralling novel in which the things you think you know aren’t necessarily so.
The Empire has fallen. In its place the Republic has risen. This doesn’t sit well with everyone. For instance, the Fangolin monks don’t like it since people are choosing not to follow their teachings anymore. One of those beliefs is that the destiny of mankind has been recorded in a book, a book that has been lost for centuries. The very concept of free will is frowned upon.
Dun-Cadal Daermon was a general in the Imperial army, some would say the greatest of his generation, who devoted his life to defending the Empire and his Fangolin faith.. Now he spends his time in taverns getting drunk in the southern city of Masalia where he mourns the fall of the Empire and the death of his apprentice, waiting to die. He was rumored to have stolen the Emperor’s sword when the Empire fell. From time to time he sends treasure hunters to the eastern parts of the kingdom, telling him that’s where he’s hidden it.
The book opens with an attractive young historian from the capital finding him. She’s also interested in the sword. But her interest goes far beyond treasure hunting. At first Dun-Cadal tries to brush her off.
There’s a major holiday coming up, though, and this year all the representatives are meeting in Masalia. Dun-Cadal realizes he knows many of them. They were once the generals and nobles who fought alongside him trying to preserve the Empire. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Mostly.
No sooner do the representatives begin arriving than they start dying. Someone dressed as the late Emperor’s personal assassin is targeting them. The post of assassin was one Dun-Cadal held before being promoted to general.
Now Dun-Cadal finds himself being drawn back into battle. He may get his death wish sooner than he thought. Continue reading