Fantasy Book Critic: The 2012 Goodreads Choice Awards Semifinal Round November 12-17 (with comments by Liviu Suciu)

On Monday November 12th the five "people's choices" were added to the original 15 and the full 20 novel field in each of the 20 categories has become available for us to vote. As the voting ends on November 17, get your vote in quickly!

I noted in my earlier post the choices I made to add to the original 15 and now I will present the three main fields of interest, fantasy, sf and historical fiction and try to predict which 10 will make the final round.

Fantasy: my vote The Blinding Knife by Brent Weeks (currently my #2 fantasy of the year and #5 overall as my top fantasy of the year, KJ Parker's Sharps did not make the people's choice 5).

Predictions for the final round: The Blinding Knife, Traitor Queen, The First Confessor, The Killing Moon, King of Thorns, Red Country, City of Dragons, The Wind Through the Keyhole, Forge of Darkness and Cast in Peril.

Comments - here my reasons are the popularity of authors in 8 of the cases with NK Jemisin and Michelle Sagara as the vote of people who do not like the usual epic, traditional, exuberant or gritty.

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SF: my vote obviously my write-in choice, The Hydrogen Sonata (FBC rv next week promise!) by IM Banks (#1 sf of the year and #4 overall)

Predictions for the final round: Wool, Redshirts, A Rising Thunder, Kill Decision, Caliban's War, The Long Earth, Captain Vorpatril's Alliance, Blue Remembered Earth, Darth Plagueis, Alien Proliferation

Comments: I would be very happy to be wrong and The Hydrogen Sonata to go to the final 10, but I doubt it as the book is very recent and IM Banks is much more popular in the UK than here; of course Goodreads is international so who knows...

For the rest, just my guesses.

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Historical Fiction: my vote again obviously The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton which is still my top book of the year.

Predictions for the final round: The Secret Keeper, Bring up the Bodies, Winter of the World, Death of Kings, The Prisoner of Heaven, The Sins of the Father, The Shoemaker's Wife, The Kingmaker's Daughter, The Dressmaker, The Gods of Gotham

Comments: here just guesses based on what I saw commented on the Internet.

Next week, the reckoning - see how many I got right, predictions for winners this time based on numbers and popularity and of course my final votes!

12:41 AM |

Posted by Liviu |

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2 comments:

Darkest Lord said...: Liviu, why didn't you include Emperor's Soul in your predictions list? it is a great quick read. You should check it out, and surely Brandon Sanderson is one of the more popular writers around these days.; November 15, 2012 at 8:32 AM
Liviu said...: My prediction was not based on "quality" just on what I think people will vote based on what I saw here and there and I think that Emperor's Soul will not have the votes threshold as it is an expensive novella which will appeal mostly to hard core fans, a small press one that may not be available everywhere etc

I actually read it and put a quick mini-review on Goodreads; on the other hand I do not claim to be infallible so who knows you may be right and Brandon Sanderson will have lots of Goodreads voting fans who will propel it to the final round; November 15, 2012 at 8:44 AM