You can read a little bit about SPFBO 11, our judging blog process and our team here. But to summarise we have divided the process of picking our finalist from our batch of thirty books into two phases.

In Phase 1a the team have been working through the first 10% or so of our batch of 30 books, RAG (Red-Amber-Green) rating each book according to how much the opening drew us in to wanting to read on.

The most enticing six books will go forward into Phase 1b where we will give each book a full read, a full Fantasy Hive review and the chance of being our chosen SPFBO 11 Finalist.

The scores for Phase 1a are all in and we are ready to reveal our fourth set of eliminations and our fourth semi-finalist.

We know it’s a disappointing time for those authors whose books are cut, but reading is very much a subjective process and different readers will have different likes. Our judges may have found a semi-finalist that engaged their interest more than the four books whose SPFBO 11 journey ends here. However, there may be other readers out there who like the glimpse we are sharing of the eliminated books and might be tempted to pick them up and read on – and please do!

Week One | Week Two | Week Three

Eliminations

A Reign of Emerald Fire by Matthew J Turner

The writing was pretty good and engaging. The book also had a solid hook by the end of chapter one. There was a setting element in introducing all the people who would come together later that was done with good elements of humor strewn in, even if some bits landed better than the others. It does a good job of introducing the three main characters and teasing a mystery but it just took its own time to setup the broader story. I would have loved to read more if the overarching story was a bit more front-loaded but it felt like the author was saving the interesting bits for later – Vinay

Ariel’s Tear by Justin O. Rose

The book has a very interesting tone and use of language – but it can also be verbose and hard to understand, as it doesn’t always flow naturally. The Creation section at the beginning may explain this as being deliberately formal ‘High Church’ in style, but the sheer length of it (and the addition of quite a few made-up words) left me confused. We then move into a (second?) Prologue, which starts out much more steadily, with a likeable character that I engaged with immediately – only for yet another ‘Creation’-style setup to begin! Combined with the somewhat forced expository dialogue, I was left wishing for a more straightforward start to draw me in; there’s so much going on, I wasn’t sure which parts I was supposed to pay attention to or which constituted the main story. – Cat

Fall to Shadow by Jac-Ann Marie

I liked the idea of a reluctant Dark Prince inheriting the mantle of heir to the throne for the bad guys and struggling with the weight of evil expectation from his dad and his dad’s right hand enforcer. The sniff of betrayal and intrigue in the air to go with the angst of the prince who doesn’t want to be a starter villain generates some interesting potential for conflict and character development, but the pace drops off a bit at times. For example when we are walked through the meeting-beset administrative burdens of being heir to the throne. – Theo

This week’s Honourable mention

Mourn not the Mortals by Jordan Smith

Theocracies in fantasy (Are you calling Theo crazy?? – Vinay) do not tend to be particularly great or interesting. Either they’re a reflection of historical theocracies from our world which we are meant to immediately identify and condemn, or they are so vague as to be entirely pointless and toothless. Not so in this book, where we have the promise of a holy war being waged by a godless theocracy founded on words of a prophet that seem to be more rooted in reasoned philosophy than doctrine. That alone would have captured my interest, the introduction of our other main characters only heightened it. Unfortunately, the rest of the team were less enthused, and found the stilted formality of the prose off-putting. – G.D.Penman

And Our Fourth Semi-finalist

Threads of Memory

by Richard Fierce

I love the premise of the story, I love books that play with memory and I love the idea of artefacts holding the memories of people and events that involved them – be it ships, buildings or in this case the clothes people wore. I’m expecting a romantasy enemies-to-lovers angle, but the characters are nicely sketched rather than tropish and the prose has already earned a few ‘nice line’ highlights on my kindle. Eg “Amara’s fingers traced the tears, feeling the weight of memory settling into the wool like sediment.” and “It was the same expression worn by those who would use her gift–nobles seeking to commune with dead lovers, generals wanting to question fallen enemies, the desperate hoping to pull one last secret from a corpse’s clothing.” So a really good start and I’m keen to read on – just a little worried that the short length of the book may limit its ability to develop this initial promise. – Theo

This book got me from the start with its unique magical system on memories being retained on the clothing they wear and how some people can sense and interpret them, and the dangers that it portends. The sense of urgency hits you from the start and while some of the writing is economical given the size of the book, it is consistently engaging. I like the duelling PoVs which lends its own urgency and stakes to the proceedings but I do have a tinge of concern if this is going to go the enemies-to-lovers route very fast. The limited size of the book ensures that this is going to be a fast read but I am hopeful that the author does full justice to the magic part of the story – Vinay

I struggled a little with this book. There is an inherent silliness to the premise that clashes with how seriously it is treated. The witch-hunters with special seam-rippers hanging from their belts to combat the cloth-based magic in particular. There is also the trouble of us being told how clever characters are while they do stupid things in front of us. There is enough here to make me want to read on, but I’m not as enthused as my comrades in arms. – G. D. Penman

OK, I’m a yarnie (knitter/crocheter) so it might’ve been inevitable that I’d love this book! But in all honesty the prose and characterisation help too. The magic of threads is immediately understandable and the protagonist likeable, while the imagination and creativity really drew me in here. Hoping it can be sustained. – Cat

So congratulations to Threads of Memory and commiserations to A Reign of Emerald Fire, Ariel’s Tear, Fall to Shadow and Mourn not the Mortals.

We’ll be back next Wednesday with a fifth set of eliminations and our fifth semi-finalist announcement – see you all then  – Theo