Fantasy Book Critic: SPFBO Champions' League Has a Winner + Analysis of the results

SPFBO Champions' League has found its winner. The Sword of Kaigen took the first place by a comfortable margin. Using a simple Borda-style aggregation (1st = 10 pts … 10th = 1 pt) the results were as follows:

The Sword of Kaigen (89/100)
Orconomics (77/100)
By Blood, By Salt (73/100)
Small Miracles (61/100)
The Lost War (54/100)
The Thief Who Pulled on Trouble’s Braids (48/100)
Murder at Spindle Manor (45/100)
Gray Bastards (43/100)
Where Loyalties Lie (33/100)
Reign & Ruin (29/100)

Here are the score results each finalist got (yearly SPFBO are rated) in the year they won:

The Grey Bastards 8.65
The Sword of Kaigen 8.65
Orconomics 8.65
Small Miracles 8.65
The Lost War 8.35
Where Loyalties Lie 8.10
The Thief Who Pulled on Trouble's Braids 8.00
Murder at Spindle Manor 7.85
Reign & Ruin 7.70
By Blood, By Salt 7.70

As you see, the results don't align very well. Let's play with data and try to get some insights.

The Sword of Kaigen never placed dead last and appeared in the top 2 for 5 judges. It’s also one of only two books (Kaigen and By Blood, By Salt) that multiple judges ranked #1. Crucially, it avoids the “love it / hate it” split that drags down other entries. While it's not universally considered best, it's almost universally respected.

It seems the real race was for second place, where Orconomics beat By Blood, By Salt. Orconomics rarely won outright but almost never crashed. It was rarely anyone’s favorite, but almost never disliked and lived comfortably in the 2-6 range.

By Blood, By Salt peaked higher (more #1s) but also hit several bottom placements, which hurted its aggregate. In other words, polarization hurted it. It was the most divisive pick with multiple #1s and multiple bottom-3 placements. Judges either connected hard or bounced off completely.

Speaking of polarization, it hurted more books:

Reign & Ruin: regularly bottom 3, almost never top 3.
Where Loyalties Lie: multiple 10th-place finishes killed its chances despite some mid-tier love.
Gray Bastards: scattered placements with no strong center of gravity.
Meanwhile, Small Miracles benefited from mid-to-high consistency, landing a solid 4th without dominating anyone’s list.
The Thief Who Pulled on Trouble’s Braids won outright for some judges, but crushed near the bottom for others. Clearly, it hit some judges' preferences hard, but lacked broader appeal.

I found it fascinating that historical high scores don't align with the results of Champions' League. Four books tied at 8.65, yet they aged very differently. Now, it's good to emphasize that SPFBO Champions' League asks different question than any SPFBO finals. SPFBO scoring tries to answer the question “How good is this?” whereas ranking asks “Would you pick this over that?”. With that in mind, it's still fun to try to answer this question.

Gray Bastards scored 8.65 historically, got a deal from Orbit and was traditionally published. And yet, it dropped to 8th in the Champions' League. There are many reasons, but I think the most important one is that SPFBO began in dark fantasy/grimdark-adjacent circles, and it shows. The first few winners were on the darker side of the fantasy. With time and new judges with a wide variety of tastes, the scores in the finals generally dropped and it became trickier to find a clear winner. Gray Bastards didn't got worse, but the audience and its tastes changed. The same is true for Where Loyalties Lie.

By Blood, By Salt's final results is the most striking reversal: despite lowest historical score for SPFBO winner (7.70) it won 3rd place in Champions' League. And frankly, I have no explanation for this except for the fact that it may appeal to more craft-focused and detail oriented readers but irk those craving more action, here and now (that was my case). Objectively, it's a well-written book and, clearly, many readers adore it.

Anyway, it seems that early SPFBO scoring rewarded excellence within a narrow subgenre and technical success at executing a specific and rather dark vibe. With time we saw the shift of preference toward cross-genre literacy, emotional accessibility and structural clarity.

If SPFBO winners were decided by collective critical consensus, The Sword of Kaigen still wins. And while I know there are readers who don't understand its phenomenon, they're clearly in the minority. With almost 90 000 GR ratings (still growing) The Sword of Kaigen is one of the most successful fantasy-adjacent books of the last decade.