Tag Archives: David Gemmell Awards

Gemmell Award Winners

The David Gemmell Awards were announced over the weekend.  (Yes, I’m behind and getting further behind every day.)  Congratulations to all the winners and nominees.

The winners are:

The Legend Award for Best Fantasy Novel

The Morningstar Award for Best Fantasy Newcomer

The Ravenheart Award for Best Fantasy Cover Art

  • Jason Chan for the cover of The Liar’s Key by Mark Lawrence (Harper Voyager)

The winners were announced September 24, 2016 at Fantasycon. Winners received trophies based on David Gemmell’s novels and characters.  Go here for a complete list of nominees.

The only one of the nominees I’ve read is The Vagrant, and I’m not quite finished with it.  I will say that it’s deserving of the award.  Hopefully I can finish it and get a review up soon.

Gemmell Awards Shortlist

The shortlist for the Gemmell Awards was announced earlier today:

The Legend Award for Best Fantasy Novel

The Morningstar Award for Best Fantasy Newcomer

The Ravenheart Award for Best Fantasy Cover Art

  • Kerem Beyit for the cover of The Dread Wyrm by Miles Cameron (Gollancz)
  • Jason Chan for the cover of The Liar’s Key by Mark Lawrence (Harper Voyager)
  • Larry Elmore & Carol Russo Design for the cover of Son of the Black Sword by Larry Correia (Baen)
  • Raymond Swanland for the cover of Archaon: Lord of Chaos by Rob Sanders (Black Library)
  • Paul Young for the cover of Ruin by John Gwynne (Pan Macmillan)

The winners will be announced September 24, 2016 at Fantasycon, held at the Grand Hotel and the Royal in Scarborough UK.  Voting closes at midnight GMT on Friday, August 19.

As usual, most of the Legend nominees, the exception being Son of the Black Sword, are in series I’ve either not read or am not current on.  I’ve only heard of two of the Morningstar Nominees, The Traitor Baru Cormorant, which I know from reviews will not be my flagon of ale, and The Vagrant, which looks interesting.  I’ll try to read at least one or two of the nominees, but the way the summer is going, I may be sitting out this year’s awards simply because I won’t have time to read enough nominees to cast an informed ballot.

Preliminary David Gemmell Ballot is Live

_41941602_gemmellrex_203300The preliminary ballot for the David Gemmell Awards is now live.  You can vote here.  There are three categories:  the Legend Award for Best Novel, the Morningstar Award for Best First Novel, and the Ravenheart Award for best cover illustration.

We here at  rank the Gemmell Awards as one of the most important, if not the most important, in the field.  It’s open to all fans, there’s no gatekeeping fee you have to pay, so go vote!

Dragoncon Announces the Dragon Awards

I don’t normally do two posts so close together, but I wanted to make those of you who haven’t heard aware of a new award.  Dragoncon is one of the largest sff conventions in the world.  They’ve just announced a new set of awards, called the Dragon Awards.  Unlike the Gemmell, which focuses on written fantasy (and is IMNSHO the best in the field), the Dragon Awards will award science fiction, games, comics & graphic novels, horror, alternate history, YA, and other categories.  It’s open to anyone.  You don’t have to shell out $50 just to vote.

For further information, go here.

Congratulations to the Gemmell Award Winners

words of radianceThe 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.

The Traitor’s Blade Cuts Deep

traitor's bladeTraitor’s Blade
Sebastien de Castell
Hachette
Paperback $14.99
Ebook $9.99

Traitor’s Blade is the first volume of Sebastien de Castell’s new grimdark fantasy series. His first novel, it’s a smashing debut. I can understand why it was shortlisted for the David Gemmell Morningstar Award for best first fantasy novel. It’s the one I’m pulling for.

Here’s the setup. Falcio Val Mond grew up dreaming of the legendary Greatcoats and being a hero. If you look up “idealist” in the dictionary, his picture would be there. But the Greatcoats were disbanded decades ago.

Then a combination tragedy and a new king lead to Falcio becoming the first of the new Greatcoats. This king wants to reign in the excesses of the Dukes. If you look up the word “evil” in the dictionary, their pictures will be there. (When I called this novel a grimdark fantasy, I wasn’t kidding.) The Dukes rebel. The King’s last command is for the Greatcoats to stand down and not resist the rebellion. They just need to find the king’s Charoites. He calls them a type of jewel, but that’s all he’ll say. Finding them will not be easy when Falcio has no idea where to start looking or even what they are.

The novel opens five years after the king’s death. Falcio and two of his companions from the now disgraced Greatcoats are bodyguards for a major caravan master when he is murdered and they are framed for the murder. For some reason, the city guard don’t believe a naked woman killed the man in such a brutal manner. Continue reading

Reminder: Voting Deadline for Gemmell Awards is Friday

legendawardsnaga-196x300Just 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.

Has it Really Been That Long Since I Posted?

I guess it has.  Time flies, whether you’re having fun or not.  The Fourth was laid back.  My wife took a few days off from work to visit her parents, and my son went with her.  Since I had classes starting while she was gone, I stayed here and had the house to myself, just me and the dogs.

Things have been hectic at work.  Classes started on Tuesday, and I still had seven teaching assistant slots to fill before labs started on Wednesday.  That number went up before it went down, but all the positions are filled and all the labs are covered.  I’ve got a good group of students in the course I’m teaching.  Summer students tend to be of higher quality than the general student population, and that seems to be particularly true about this bunch.  My class is every day from 8:00 to 9:50 in the morning, and they’ve done a great job of showing up on time and awake.  I wonder if the quiz I started class with on Wednesday had anything to do with it….

Age of IronAnyway, I’ve been a bit distracted, but I’m working on some things.  I’m reading Age of Iron by Angus Watson, which is up for a Gemmell Morningstar Award.  I’ve not gotten far, so I’m reserving any comments for the review.  I’m also reading for my next BAF post at Black Gate.  This is the Lin Carter edited anthology The Young Magicians.  Now that I’ve made it through the James Branch Cabell story, I should make better progress on it.

So unless something happens, I’m probably not going to have much to post about until next week.

The Rest of the Summer

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.

Twelve Kings in SharakhaiCurrent 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.

Aeronaut's WindlassI 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 is a Whole Lot of Fun

half a kingHalf 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