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 →