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 sixth and last set of eliminations and our sixth and final 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 | Week Four | Week Five

Eliminations

Dark Moon Rising by H.C.Harrington

This didn’t start well for me, as the initial overload of Fantasy Stuff was rather off-putting. I’d rather see a story unfold than have everything be told to me by the narrator, and while the worldbuilding is interesting, there’s a lot of it right out of the gate.

Some beautiful imagery contrasts with rather forced dialogue (and various unwieldly alternatives to ‘said’ that don’t always flow). Similar names had me confused too, as there’s a lot of characters to keep track of! However, once the story got going I became more intrigued, especially when the action ramps up. I’m not sure I trust protagonist Jaru, who seems like a very young and naive leader. With some editorial work, this could be a fine high fantasy novel. – Cat

Dragons of Frost and Fang by Rowan Silver

The Amazon listing suggests a reading age of 10-18 and the opening feels more at the lower end of that range. The protagonists are two juvenile dragons in a hostile kind of Arctic circle environment with their mother. That cold desolate setting with winters of long nights and limited resources does make for an engaging “dragons against the environment” challenge.

Events tip our leading pair into a journey and a bid to connect with their heritage. The team felt the writing was sweet with moments of cuteness which could make it a good YA tale. However, some aspects of the plot did feel a bit familiar or tropish, where other books had left us more hungry to read on.   – Theo

Flames of Gold by Liz Delton

This is a perfectly entertaining book. While the characters are interesting enough and the premise of the deposed prince partnering up with the pauper mage (with some simmering romantasy promised between them) is certainly a decent hook, neither story nor prose did anything different enough from what I’ve read before in the genre to make me want to read on. – G.D.Penman

This week’s Honourable mention

Dead Malls by Darby Harn

This was definitely right up my alley in terms of the possibly time travel/ multiversal element. The lead character’s introduction set him up as very relatable and there is a palpable sense of a mall kind of gone to seed. The dissonance through the unexplained events and the other mysterious lead introduced also worked very well  and kept things very intriguing. The writing style with respect to the other lead is deliberately a bit janky and jarring which then eases out as things move. This is a book that was hitting a lot of the right notes for me to continue to read and was pretty close overall as well to the other semifinalists as well. Ultimately, it just felt more SF/ time travel than fantasy which was a reason why it was nudged out – Vinay

And Our Sixth Semi-finalist

Vampire Mall Cop

by Molly Blake

This had an interesting opening with an enigmatic isolated protagonist and a stranger coming to the door. It has a lively writing style and a sharply sardonic voice from the protagonist.  The dialogue between the protagonist and his somewhat foolish visitor rattles along well and I am curious about the apparent anti-hero nature of our ‘hero.’ My worries are around how the opening discussion seemed to be going on longer than necessary, with both characters having made some illogical choices around what they did and said. So I am hoping we move out of the mountain hut and get to the mall fairly quickly so we can see what the crux of the story is about and how this curious pairing might jostle along together to address it. – Theo

There are books you just want to keep reading because they have a good sense of silly fun and Vampire Mall Cop fits perfectly into that classification. It has an “on your toes” quippy writing style with a good sense of humor built in. It also tries to hide some of the darkness through its writing style and sense of momentum (I mean if you are a vampire, there are bound to be skeletons in your closet, sometimes even literal ones). I am also a sucker for a cool sounding title and this is just that. While the main mission of the book hasn’t been broached yet, the opening itself was fun and catchy enough that I would want to read more of this. I am a bit worried that so far we have not been able to tie the story to the title, but I am willing to read further to get to the hows and whys of the opening exchange – Vinay

The characters and the premise have enough going on that I’m willing to overlook a lot of this book’s flaws, and I’m hopeful that as we progress further into the actual plot and out of the setup, the faith that I’m putting in the author will be rewarded. If not, an easy elimination in the next round. – G. D. Penman

I admit it – the title got me! It sets up expectations immediately and I was so glad to find that they weren’t disappointed. Self-aware without being stupid or self-indulgent, I absolutely loved the start of this and am looking forward to seeing where it goes. Don’t let me down, Mall Cop! – Cat

So congratulations to Vampire Mall Cop and commiserations to Dark Moon Rising, Dragons of Frost and Fang, Flames of Gold and Dead Malls.

That completes our semifinalist selection!

We’ll be going quiet again for a few weeks as the team set about reading through our six semi-finalists. But we’ll be back around mid-May to begin sharing our full collaborative reviews of the semi-finalists as we build towards deciding on and revealing which of them will be the Fantasy-Hive’s finalist for SPFBO 11 – see you all then  – Theo

The Fantasy Hive SPFBO 11 Semifinalists