The Fantasy-Hive’s SPFBO 7 Finalist nomination – revealed
The Decision
Once they had read all six of the semi-finalists, all five judges ranked the books from 1st (most favourite) to 6th (least favourite)
We added up the ranks to get a total rank, and divided by the number of judges to get an average rank.
The six books were then placed in order ready for posting.
When it came to the two books we have reviewed today this is how the numbers worked out.
| Illborn | Shadows of Ivory | |
| Theo | 2nd | 1st |
| Belle | 2nd | 1st |
| Peter | 2nd | 4th |
| Scarlett | 1st | 2nd |
| Calvin | 2nd | 1st |
| Total Ranking | 9 | 9 |
| Average ranking | 1.8 | 1.8 |
It’s a tie!
This serves to emphasise how close run the decision was and how, in quite different ways, these are two very meritorious books well deserving of any reader’s attention.
However, we couldn’t leave you all on tenterhooks, still less ask the authors to write us an extra chapter as a tiebreaker, so we looked for the fairest way to break the deadlock.
On a countback of which book got the most number of 1st preferences, and also would have got the most judge votes in a one-on-one vote, we declare the Fantasy’ Hive’s SBFO 7 Finalist is
SHADOWS OF IVORY,
by T.L. Greylock and Bryce O’Connor.
Commiserations to Daniel T Jackson and all of our other semi-finalists. We hope that the process has least raised the profile of some excellent examples of self-published fantasy.
A mark for Mark
At the Fantasy-Hive we generally avoid putting numbers on things, but the SPFBO competition requires a score out of 10 for all finalists. So the four judges who are carrying on into the next stage of the competition have each given our Finalist nominee a mark out of ten, which we have averaged and rounded to the nearest half mark for Mark to include on the fledging finalist table.
| Marks for Shadows of Ivory out of 10 | |
| Theo | 8 |
| Belle | 8 |
| Scarlett | 8 |
| Calvin | 8.5 |
| average score | 8.125
which rounds to 8/10 |
These numbers, although influenced by our past experience of SPFBO competitions, will also serve as something of a personal benchmark for each judge as they read the other finalists, with enough headroom to allow for other books that might impress us even more than Shadows of Ivory.
What happens next.
For now, we are going to go a bit quiet, waiting until ALL of our judging team have read ALL of the finalists, before we start posting our Hive reviews and deciding what score to give each of the other finalists. So let’s say we will see you probably around February time!
But thanks again to our judges and to Mark for the time they voluntarily give up to this great competition, to our readers for their interest and support, but above all to the authors without whose books and courage to submit themselves to this process, the annual SPFBO would never even get started.
