The winners of the 2013 David Gemmell Awards have been announced at a ceremony at the World Fantasy Convention in Brighton, England.  They are

2013 RAVENHEART AWARD FOR BEST FANTASY COVER ART
Didier Graffet and Dave Senior for the cover of Red Country by Joe Abercrombie (Gollancz)

2013 MORNINGSTAR AWARD FOR BEST FANTASY DEBUT
John Gwynne for Malice (Pan MacMillan)

2013 LEGEND AWARD FOR BEST FANTASY NOVEL
Brent Weeks for The Blinding Knife (Orbit)

Adventures Fantastic would like to congratulate all the nominees and especially the winners.  A complete list of the nominees can be found at the David Gemmell Awards site.  There’s a separate menu for each award.

I decided not to include this announcement in the previous post, since the British Fantasy and World Fantasy Awards are more general genre awards, while the Gemmell Awards are focused on heroic fantasy.  I certainly cover other types of fantasy here, but heroic fantasy and sword and sorcery are the main focus of this site.

I think the Gemmell Awards are an important award, and one that is necessary to the field.  I’m more interested in the winners of this award than I am of any other award with the possible exception of the Shamus Awards, which I look at on my detective and noir blog, Gumshoes, Gats, and Gams.  I’ve seen some snide comments about the Gemmell Awards online from some of the more literary minded members of the field.  I’ll have more to say about awards in general in another post, including that attitude.  After I’ve finished sharpening my knives.

For now, let me again offer my congratulations to the winners and nominees and say Thank You to the DGLA Steering Group for making these awards possible.