The competition continues! This is my first year as a judge and I’m thrilled to be a part of it.

A few notes on my review process: for a semifinalist, I wanted to find a book that I'd personally rate 3.5/5 or better. To me, that rating signifies a book which has some notable flaws, but whose flaws (for whatever reason) didn't stop me from enjoying the novel. In general, a novel isn't a 3.5/5 for me unless I'm actively interested in reading a sequel. If and when I bounced off a book in the opening pages, I typically put it down for a few days before giving it another try. I didn’t set any hard rules for myself about when or if I could drop a book, except that I wanted to give every book a fair shot on its merits.

My batch (in randomly-determined reading order) included the following six books:

1. Carrion Saints by Hiyodori
2. Legacy of the Crown by Tim Wilbur
3. Let Sleeping Gods Lie by Ben Schenkmann
4. Rise of the Phoenix by Brendan Arnold
5. The Butterfly Koi by A Sherman Karlsson
6. The Sound of the Supernova by Jordan Butler

Without further ado:

The Butterfly Koi follows six POV protagonists, most of whom are involved to greater or lesser degrees in the criminal and magical sides of the novel’s slightly-futuristic Tokyo setting. There’s Eika, a celebrity and socialite who wants to use her influence to change the world for the better; Misora, a magitech engineer with ties to organized crime; Taehyun, Misora’s celebrity boyfriend; Cameron, another magitech engineer and American expat; Hatsumi, a journalist driven to uncover certain secrets others want to keep hidden; and Kenji (far and away the most entertaining character), a low-level criminal in the Tokyo underworld.

For starters, while I do think this book is technically fantasy, it’s not traditional fantasy fare. That’s not disqualifying, but it’s something readers should know going in. Although the story revolves around magical technology, the magitech doesn’t feel particularly magical – the kind of magitech we see most often is basically a modern cell phone.

There are some real positives here: each of the six POV characters is well-realized with a distinct internal life that feels psychologically real. The prose is good, and the slightly-futuristic Tokyo setting is richly envisioned. I’ve never been to Tokyo so I can’t speak to its accuracy, but it feels like the author both knows and loves the city and wants to share that love with the reader. These strengths kept me reading and enjoying The Butterfly Koi all the way to the end.

Unfortunately, the story has some pretty severe flaws. For starters, I think the book would’ve been much better if 2-3 of the 6 POVs (all of whom exist in each others’ orbits) had been cut. Of the 6, only 1 (Kenji) got what I’d consider a completed plot arc, while 2 could be cut as POVs without any loss to the overall narrative. The author has a frustrating habit of backtracking chronologically at the end of many chapters to retell the events of the prior chapter from a second character’s POV. This slows the story’s progression and stops it from building momentum. It felt like the author only wanted to convey a person’s internal experience via present-tense first-person perspective, rather than via recollection or another character’s observations. Also, the author places several of the POV characters in opposition to magitech-related social ills (mostly related to how a minority of the population lacks the innate ability to use magitech effectively). In my opinion, the author needed to demonstrate more clearly why the reader should share the characters’ concerns.

I'd call Let Sleeping Gods Lie as an urban fantasy or paranormal mystery set in New Haven, Connecticut. The story follows adjunct anthropology professor Corbin Pierce as he digs into some mysterious magical oddities that begin popping up in town. He investigates and faces threats to the local people, the local spirits, and the local environment, all while trying to figure out what’s behind it all. The magical lore and worldbuilding place a strong focus on Native American history and culture.

There’s a lot to like about this novel. To start with, it wins my personal award for Most Unique Animal on a Fantasy Cover! I've seen dragons, wolves, lions, tigers, and bears (oh my!), but a raccoon? That's a first for me. As for the content, the story reminds me of Wildbow's serial Pale, as well as the early novels of the Dresden Files. Schenkman has a knack for infusing real-world settings with magic, making it feel like the supernatural might be hiding under our noses in real life as well as in fiction. The prose is straightforward and readable, with a nice bit of humor coming through in the narrative voice. In contrast with Butcher's Dresden (a small business owner working closely with the police), Let Sleeping Gods Lie takes a distinctly progressive perspective (activism, environmentalism, a focus on Native American heritage). I found Corbin a tad self-righteous at times, but not enough to interfere with my enjoyment of the story.

I really had only one issue with the book, but it's a big one. A mystery needs at least a little complexity to keep the reader in suspense: multiple suspects, red herrings, misdirection. Here, we don't really get that. The focus of the novel is the mystery behind the dark happenings in New Haven; it feels like the reader is supposed to be wondering who's responsible and why. But the list of potential villains is tiny, so much so that the mystery loses any suspense. The major plot moments are interesting on their own terms, but each resolves a little too quickly and neatly. I feel like this novel would've been greatly improved by another hundred pages of story — just enough to add the layer of extra complexity and misdirection the mystery needed.

Rise of the Phoenix, which I’d categorize as YA high fantasy, follows Will Tavner, a teenage blacksmith’s son in the kingdom of Arulean. Arulean suffers under the rule of its tyrannical king and queen. Will and his closest friends Seb and Aylise live quiet, ordinary lives until Will begins to manifest strange symbols on his arms and strange magical powers to go with them. After which, cue the chaos.

It’s a classic fantasy novel setup. Unfortunately, I bounced off of this one a few times before putting it down at the 40% mark. Nothing here really bothered me, but nothing caught my interest either. Will and his friends felt bland as protagonists, and likewise with Arulean’s rulers as antagonists. The prose and dialogue both felt a little wooden.

Legacy of the Crown follows Aislynn, an immortal tired of her eternity, on a quest to end both the world and her own existence. The story is about her, the hunter Wraith she encounters by chance, the relationship they build between them, and how their quest fits into the prophecy devised by the titular undead Crown, the world’s last wizard.

This book was entertaining enough, but nothing really wowed me. The worldbuilding is what I think of as “DnD style” – many worlds, races of people, and types of magic, all of which coexist without a unifying conceptual foundation. Two of the novel’s primary settings (Wraith's village and the city of Keshet) feel a little generic. We get a broad outline of politics in Keshet and a glimpse of the city's underworld, but what about their economy, religious and cultural practices, local foods and music, style of architecture, and so on? For the setting to feel properly real instead of fantasy-standard, I think we needed more of those little details that differentiate one culture and location from another. And frankly, Aislynn’s POV isn’t nearly as bleak as it would need to be to justify her rather unheroic goal of ending the world.

My favorite parts of the book were the prologue and the chapters spent in The Beyond. Wilbur is at his best when he’s going for atmospheric eeriness, I think, since the story hits those notes quite effectively. Unfortunately, this is just a fraction of the book. Much of the story instead focuses on (1) a romance storyline and (2) a political intrigue storyline. The former didn't give me the sense of chemistry I wanted and didn't feel emotionally powerful until the In-Between. The latter crammed a book's worth of machinations into just a few chapters, so it all felt much too simple, as though major political change is just sitting there for the asking.

Sound of the Supernova begins in the fictional island setting of Kamini, whose people seem to live happy lives. Unusually happy, since, by virtue of the magical Nova traded to them by a foreign power, they can never get sick. In exchange for a steady supply of Nova, all they're required to trade away are some some (apparently) worthless weeds – a plot hook which intrigued me. The protagonists are three young islanders and friends: Jonah, Luca, and Amaya.

Unfortunately, I was only able to get about 10% into the story before I had to put it down for good. This book needed several more rounds of editing before publication. Each page had several grammatical errors and awkwardly-phrased sentences and the tense kept flip-flopping between past and present, which was especially jarring. I was a little sad to DNF, since it seemed like the plot was about to take some interesting turns, but the prose issues made it impossible to immerse myself in the story and I couldn’t see this book as a possible semifinalist.

I really can’t describe this story better than the author does on Goodreads: “Carrion Saints is a sapphic enemies-to-lovers romance between an immortal saint and a severed head.” Now, romance isn’t my favorite subgenre, but talk about a hook! The author sets that romance in a delightfully creepy postapocalyptic setting. The world is slowly eroding into the void, human civilization is in shambles, and immortal monsters of every variety prey on the survivors. 

Enemies-to-lovers is such an easy trope to do badly. I feel like the most common approach is to base the initial opposition on a misunderstanding which the author can resolve to set up a reconciliation. That’s the easy path, which the author does not take. Instead, we’re treated to the fascinating complexity of an evolving relationship between two beings who are genuinely, fundamentally at odds. This is the most screwed-up, manipulative, psychologically twisted relationship I’ve seen since the TV show Hannibal. And it’s so well done.

The story is structured like a travelogue, which often bores me, but the author makes it work. I think it’s all the little details of the setting. Did the pasta in that village need to be shaped like a human ear? Did the tea in that other village need to be brewed from pink beetles? Of course not, but congratulations, you have my undivided attention.

The story is an extremely slow burn. It’s not always clear where the story is going, so the book demands a fair bit of trust from the reader. All I can say is that it all pays off in my favorite sort of ending: beautiful, bittersweet, and deeply existential. 

Verdict

Our next semifinalist is:

Carrion Saints, by Hiyodori!

Not only was this my favorite book of the batch, it’s one of the best books I’ve read in the past year. I doubt a sequel is in the cards, but I’m definitely going to pick up something else from this author. Congratulations to Hiyodori and my thanks to all of these authors for their submissions!