Fantasy Book Critic: The 2012 Goodreads Choice Awards Final Round November 19-27 (with comments by Liviu Suciu)

On Monday November 19th the top ten in each category were announced and the final round in each of the 20 categories has become available for us to vote. As the voting ends on November 27, get your vote in quickly!

I noted in my earlier post my choices and the predictions for the final round. Now I will present again the books in the three main fields of interest, fantasy, sf and historical fiction and discuss my earlier predictions, what actually got in the top 10 and how I see the final vote shaping.

Once the results are published with the final statistics, a final round-up in December. For the predictions below I used the Goodreads metric: # reviews times average rating.

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Fantasy

How did I do?

I correctly predicted 7/10 including my choice The Blinding Knife; the wrong predictions erred towards epic, namely Red Country and Forge of Darkness, while I should have included the Fforde novel but realized it too late.

The surprises for me, Some Kind of Fairy Tale (ok but not great imho) and Alif the Unseen which I opened but then it went on my huge "to read" pile.

My Vote: The Blinding Knife again

Prediction: The favorite by far is Stephen King (always popular - which is a bit of a mystery for me as I find his work very boring at best) who leads by a lot in the Goodreads metric so it's the overwhelmingly likely winner.

A slim outside chance: Brent Weeks or Robin Hobb

For The Blinding Knife I expect a very good 2nd or 3rd place.

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SF:

How did I do?

I correctly predicted 6/10 including that my choice The Hydrogen Sonata will not make it. The Goodreads sf tastes do not really match mine as of the 10 finalists, the only one I finished is Caliban's War which I liked but thought a step below the superb Leviathan Wakes.

Of the rest, the Pratchett/Baxter is juvenile, tie-ins are rightly known as the "mine pits of genre", Orson Scott Card's fiction never appealed, steampunk is banal today, Angelmaker lost my attention fast, while Wool is written well and I may read it when in the mood for post-apocalyptic, but I feel I exhausted its sub-genre so it may take a good while for that...

My Vote: Caliban's War

Prediction: Based on the Goodreads metric, Wool and Redshirts battle and I see Wool winning on quality versus a sub-mediocre spoof.

A reasonable outside chance: The Long Earth

For my less than enthusiastic choice Caliban's War I expect a 6-7th place finish.

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Historical Fiction:

How did I do?

I correctly predicted 6/10 including that my choice The Secret Keeper will make it. Here I did no research and the genre is only partly familiar, so I missed the two huge favorites based on the Goodreads metric, The Light Between Oceans (ok but nothing special imho) and The Snow Child (better prose but a bit limited).

My Vote: Obviously my #1 book of the year, The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton.

Prediction: The Snow Child battling The Light Between Oceans with The Snow Child winning on numbers outweighing higher rating.

An outside chance: Bring up the Bodies

For The Secret Keeper I expect a respectable 5-6th place.