David Gemmell Awards Are Back

It dawned on me earlier today that I forgot to mention that the David Gemmell Awards have revamped their website and are now back for another year.  I mentioned them in passing in the previous post, but I forgot make them the subject of a post, something I had intended to do.  Anyway, it may be somewhat misleading to say the Gemmell Awards are back, since they never really went away.  They are merely delayed in order to coincide with this year's World Fantasy Convention, which will be held in Brighton.

The lists of nominees in the various categories are up on the new website, which looks quite impressive and is more visually appealing than the old one.  This is becoming the only award in I care about, at least in the sff field.  But that's a topic for another post.  Check out the nominees, join the site if you  haven't, and make sure you vote.

The Rest of the Summer

Just a quick note to let you know what I've got on my plate leading up to Worldcon. 

Speaking of Worldcon, I'm going to read at least some of the short fiction nominees, as many as time will allow, and give my thoughts.  I don't think I'm going to try to read all the novels.  The publisher of two of them put a security code of the ebooks that went out in the Hugo voters' packet.  I don't appreciate what that implies.  I'm not going to upload the books to a file sharing site.  I'm not a crook, nor do I care to be treated as though I were.  Therefore, I won't be reading (or voting for) Blackout by Mira Grant or 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson.  I do have some comments to make about this year's nominees in general.

The Gemmell Awards are a bit later than usual this year to coincide with the World Fantasy Convention.  My review copy of Winter Be My Shield by Jo Spurrier arrived the other day.  It's on the long ballot for the Morningstar Award.  I'm looking forward to reading it.  I'll post the review on the Gemmell Awards site and a notice here when it goes live.  After the awards are given out, I'll post the review here.

I've got a number of titles from Pyr.  The ones I intend to review in July are The Doctor and the Kid by Mike Resnick, Kindred and Wings by Phillipa Ballentine, and Wrath-Bearing Tree by James Enge.  Then there's The Scroll of Years by Chris Willrich and The Doctor and the Rough Rider by Mike Resnick.  Those I probably won't get to until August.

I've had a copy of the conclusion of Joshua P. Simon's Blood and Tears Trilogy, Trial and Glory on my ereader for far too long.  It's going to be reviewed within the next four to six weeks. 

I don't know what order I'm going to read them.  It will depend on my mood and what I feel like reading.  I'm also going to throw in a bit of shorter works, both here and over at Futures Past and Present.  There are also a couple of other novels I'd like to read by the end of the summer.  And somewhere in there, I'll be reading things for my column at Amazing Stories (TM). 

Congratulations to the David Gemmell Award Winners

I'm traveling and using a borrowed computer, so I'll keep this brief.  Adventures Fantastic sends its congratulations to the all the nominees of the the David Gemmell Awards, and especially the winners. 

And the winners are:

Legend Award for Best Novel:  The Wiseman's Fear by Patrick Rothfuss

Morningstar Award for Best Debut:  Heir of Night by Helen Lowe

Ravenheart Award for Best Cover Art:  Blood of Aenarion by Raymond Swanson

Further details can be found at the Gemmell Awards page.  And again, congratulations to the winners.

Pierced by the Prince of Thorns

Prince of Thorns
Mark Lawrence
Ace,  324 p., hardcover $25.95, Kindle, Nook $12.99

Prince of Thorns is the first novel by Mark Lawrence and the first in a projected trilogy.  If you like your fantasy dark and brutal, but with a sympathetic antihero, it's definitely a book for you. 

This is the story of Prince Honorious Jorg Ancrath.  When he was 10, he saw his brother brutally killed by the men of Duke Renar, along with his mother, who was raped first.  Jorg himself had been thrown into a patch of hook thorns, where he remained unnoticed (it was dark) until some of his father's men found him the next day. Jorg, however, was aware of everything that went on around him.

The hook thorns latched into his flesh and held on.  This book has a similar effect.  It gets inside your head and doesn't let go easily. 

Echo City Reverberates Through the Mind Long After It's Finished

A slightly different version of this review appeared on at David Gemmell Awards.  Since this novel didn't make the final ballot, and my review at the DGA has been up for about two months, I'm going to post a modified version of it here.

Echo City

Tim Lebbon

Spectra, mmpb, ebook, $7.99

Tim Lebbon’s Echo City is a dark, dense novel full of wonders and terrors and many things made up of both.  The novel starts out, not really slow, but at a more restrained pace.  Lebbon has a number of characters in different locations he needs to bring together, and once they start to join up, the pace is relentless and the suspense nerve-wracking.

One of the main characters is the city itself.

Echo City is ancient city.  No one is sure of its age, but the city is thousands of years old.  Over time the city has been built up atop the previous cities, and the lower levels are called echoes, giving the city its name.  Whole buildings still exist in the echoes, along with ghosts and other more unpleasant denizens. 

Echo City is quite large, with walls separating the different districts of the city known as Cantons.  I seem to remember Lebbon mentioning the city was either thirty square miles or thirty miles across.  I don’t recall which and can’t find the reference.  Anyway, the city is large enough that portions of it have been parceled off as parks and others as farmland to feed the population. 

This is important because Echo City sits in the middle of a vast, toxic desert.  No one has ever crossed the desert, although many have died trying, their bones littering the landscape.  That changes when the book opens. 

David Gemmell Awards Shortlist Announced

The shortlist for the David Gemmell Awards was announced over the weekend.  There were some other award announcements in the last few days, so if you missed this one, that's understandable.  This is the one I'm most interested in, since this is the type of fantasy we try to focus on here at Adventures Fantastic.  More information and a list of previous winners can be found on the David Gemmell Award site.  Adventures Fantastic would like to congratulate all authors and artists who were nominated and especially the shortlisted nominees.  Voting on the shortlist opens in a few days and will remain open until sometime in June, so if you want to vote and aren't a member, there's a link on the Award site where you can join.

Legend Award
The Heroes - Joe Abercrombie
The Wise Mans Fear - Patrick Rothfuss
Blood of Aenarion - Willian King
Alloy of Law - Brandon Sanderson
Black Veil - Kristen Britain


Morningstar Award
Prince of Thorns - Mark Lawrence
Among Thieves - Douglas Hulick
The Unremembered - Peter ORulloan
The Heir of Night - Helen Lowe
Songs of the Earth - Elspeth Cooper

Ravenheart Award
Blood of Aenarion - Raymond Swanland
The Heroes - Didier Graffet and Dave Senior
Oracles Fire - Frank Victoria
Among Thieves - Larry Rostant
Journey By Night - Aaron Briggs

Odds and Ends

I thought I'd pass along a few items of interest that have come across my computer screen in the last couple of days.