Helllllooooo!

Yeah sorry blog been a little quiet recently I was supposed to be typing this from my new home and instead I’ve had a delightful house sale fall through on me; a rather busy project to get up and running and the world’s worst train timetable change that is currently making my working days rather longer than usual.  As someone who needs to be able to relax to read this has been problematic!!  But bright side I’ve picked myself up; unboxed my books (so many boxes of books) and am in process of taking a little more time off so hopefully you’ll see a return to regular review schedule from this weekend!

 

I’ve missed you too dear readers

 

One thing I was able to do was take part in Subjective Chaos Awards where a group of bloggers got together to decide their favourite books in 2017.  Although sadly beaten by lack of time to finish in the series and blurred boundaries categories and we now after immense consideration and discussion over several months have decided on the final round of books

 

Fantasy

This was the strongest category by far and was the hardest choice for the judges to decide which two books would go through. One of the best parts of this was we saw a wide range of what fantasy can be defined as – it’s not just three volume epics with elves any more.  The final two for the next round though are

-          Metronome by Oliver Langmead

-          Under The Pendulum Sun by Jeannette Ng

 

Science Fiction

Again, each Judge had their own favourites in this one and again a range of what we define SF were identified.  The final two are

-          Places in the Darkness by Chris Brookmyre

-          An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon

Series

Credit to the reviewers who could finish all the books in time for the deadline!! This was the marathon.  But its also the hardest so we narrowed the final round to erm…four

-          Between Two Thorns by Emma Newman

-          Binti by Nnedi Okorafor

-          The Broken Earth by N K Jemisin

-          The Memoirs of Lady Trent by Marie Brennan

 

Novellas

 

Another strong selection that we all often disagreed on (very civilly!) but eventually we came down to

-          The Murders of Molly Southbourne by Tade Thompson

-          Passing Strange by Ellen Klages

Blurred Boundaries

A hard round for the judges as we often saw debates as to what the blurring actually there or not? As such we narrowed finalists down to

-          The Ninth Rain by Jen Williams

-          The Prey of Gods by Nicky Draydon

-          Winter Tide by Ruthanna Emrys

 

I loved the discussion as to how we all responded differently to stories and what we look for in a good read.  Its made me question what certain genres are defined as and given me some insight into what I look for in a book.  Reading Juries have my respect as you have so much to read in not much time at all!

Next we use July to debate further and aim to announce the winners while the jury tries to meet up at Nineworlds!