Posted by Each year some things remain consistent with our team while we change some other aspects to our procedures as we try out new ideas to see what works best. This year we also have guest judge, Graham Austin-King, who will be reading the all of the finalists along with us.
All three of us are capable of writing REALLY long reviews depending on how we felt about the book. If we all get strong feelings about a finalist our review would easily go over 1K words. I know there are many readers who would find this too long and skim to the end. So, we are doing our reviews in three parts.
Each initial finalist post will contain just one judge’s thoughts, and the first judge to review will be the one with the lowest score. Then the next day I will edit the post to add the review of the judge with the middle score. Then, on the third and final day, the judge with the highest score will have their review added to the post and the final score for the book will be announced. If someone wants to reference the post in the future it will be one huge mega post – but for people following them release in real time it will be read as manageable chunks and maybe brew up anticipation of the final score. For the author the worst day will be day one, but it’s only up from there! Hopefully, this will be positive anticipation experience and not negative for the author.
I hope that made sense…
We are also taking a two month break and build a stock pile of reviews that will not be coming out until Jan 2021. I am doing this so we can keep to a schedule while also allowing for mood reading. Over the next 2 months Graham, Kristen and I will read at least Nether Light, Shadow of a Dead God, and then we will go from there. We will try and pick books that don’t have a ton of scores on the board to keep things exciting!
| Review Dates | Title of Book and Original Blog |
| Jan 4th – 6th | Nether Light by Shaun Paul Stevens – Fantasy Inn Finalist |
| Jan15th-17th | Shadow of a Dead God by Patrick Samphire- Fantasy Faction Finalist |
| Jan 25th – 27th | The Combat Codes by Alexander Darwin – Fantasy Book Critic Finalist |
| Feb 4th – 6th | TBD |
| Feb 14th – 16th | TBD |
| Feb 26th – 28th | TBD |
| Mar 9th – 11th | TBD |
| Mar 19th – 21st | TBD |
| Mar 31st – Apr 2nd | TBD |
| Title | Esme | Kristen | Graham | Raw Score | SPFBO Score |
| Last Memoria by Rachel Emma Shaw | 7.7 | 8.0 | 7.7 | 7.8 | 8.0 |
| Nether Light by Shaun Paul Stevens | |||||
| The Combat Codes by Alexander Darwin | |||||
| Voice of War by Zach Argyle | |||||
| Darkness Forged by Matt Larkin | |||||
| The Lost War by Justin Lee Anderson | |||||
| The Fall of Erlon by Robert H Fleming | |||||
| Wind from the Wilderness by Suzannah Rowntree | |||||
| Black Stone Heart by Michael R Fletcher |