* Disclaimer *
Everyone is different and likes and dislikes different things. Reading is no exception. One person’s all-time favorite might seem too bland or too high stakes for another. That being said, the opinions of our judges in this contest are just that, opinions. Just because we let a book go, doesn’t mean it isn’t good. It could be your next favorite, who knows?
However, since this is a contest, there can be only one winner. Hence it is necessary to work our way down to our favorite from our batch of thirty titles. We will be letting books go five at a time, until we reach our semi-final list for Round One. These groups of five are being let go in no particular order. So, the books we say goodbye to today are not worse than books we let go in the next batch. They are just the first ones we read that didn’t quite click with us as a group.
If you have no idea what I’m talking about, you can learn more about the contest here.
Today we say goodbye to our fifth group of books from Round One of SPFBO#8. In this group of five are some intriguing concepts, good writing, and interesting characters. Unfortunately, for different reasons, they didn’t stack up against the rest of the competition.
Here are our Fifth, and Final, Five to Fall.
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The Alchemyst’s Mirror by Liz Delton
Petra and Maisie Everturn just want to run their family’s tea shop, but when their explorer brother Jiordan goes missing while looking for an alchemycal artifact, none of them are safe.
The sisters must enlist the help of another explorer to find Jiordan or the artifact—before the mysterious alchemyst society finds them first.
When one of the sisters stumbles into the clutches of the most dangerous alchemyst in the city, the race to unravel the clues becomes desperate. And when they discover the truth about the artifact, their quest to infiltrate the alchemyst’s secret society becomes a matter of life and death.
The Alchemyst’s Mirror ticked a lot of our judges’ boxes. The main characters are sisters, and we love a dynamic family relationship in our stories. The steampunk and alchemy gave the world flavor, and as one judge put it “having sisters who run a tea shop and like scones as much as their pistols” was definitely a plus! The story had plenty of action, both the physical kind and battles of wits, and kept us interested until the end.
However, we would have liked this wonderful world of magic, alchemy, and science to have been explored a bit deeper. At times the setting felt more like set dressing than worldbuilding, and the main characters switched between being brave and timid a bit too much, making them feel a bit wishy-washy at times. Overall, it was a fun, fast paced story and our judges all breezed through it in a few days. Lots of things to love, but not enough to keep it in the contest. But if you love steampunk and tea, you should definitely give this story a read!
Blood on the Canvas by David M. Samuels
A kindhearted apprentice falls under the sway of a murderous master. Together, their careers, families, and feuds will shape the fate of kingdoms.
Five hundred cherubim is the price of freedom in Kellotho Cay. It’s a daunting fee, sure, but fledgling painter Sidneya fully intends to free her brothers from serfdom. But first she must sharpen her skills under a master of the craft. One doesn’t simply wake up and decide to paint a portrait for the Vernal Queen.
There are words for that sort of person, and Nicolaf V’Tramo knows them all. As a personal rule, the misanthrope never takes on apprentices. Not after last time. Besides, he’s busy enough fending off rivals from the Honorable Guild of Brushmasters. But when Sidneya is caught stowing away on his homeward voyage, he finds himself in a bit of a pickle.
Blood on the Canvas gave us a focus we don’t often see in fantasy novels. Both main characters are artists, and their lives and plot focus on visual arts rather than the written word, which tends to be a plot device more often. Our judges loved the characters and the descriptive prose, and felt the world was well fleshed out and interesting.
But even though art was such a big part of the hook and the characters’ passions, the actual art parts didn’t have as much impact on the story as our judges would have liked. And while the plot was interesting, it was nothing we hadn’t seen before. So, while there was a lot to like here, it just couldn’t hold up to our other entries.
Breaker by Amy Campbell
Unless this outlaw mage tames his magic, everyone he cares about will be crushed by the enemy.
Blaise Hawthorne fears all he’ll ever be is an outcast, stuck living with his parents for the rest of his days and unable to realize his dream of working in a bakery. Born a Breaker, his unbridled magic wreaks havoc with a touch of his hands. When an enemy Commander storms into his town in a cloud of dust hunting for spellcasters, Blaise escapes and flees the only life he’s ever known.
While on the run, Blaise’s chance encounters with a pegasus and a surly gunslinger set him on the path to a new life where he’s accepted for who he is. But things go awry in his new town and Blaise is suspected, forcing the terrible choice between taking the blame or running from the only people who embraced him. When his chosen family is threatened by the Commander he thwarted, can Blaise find the grit to harness his volatile magic into a saving grace, or will his most dangerous challenge be his last?
Breaker combines two things you wouldn’t necessarily think would go together: Westerns and pegasus. But we are happy to say they are a winning combination! Our judges also loved the variety of characters, including a m/m relationship, and the unique magic system.
The story leans towards the YA end of the spectrum and is not as complex as it could have been. Some of the judges also thought the morality was a little too black and white, which made some of the characters seem shallow at first, but they do deepen as the story progresses. And while there were enough mysteries and adventures to make an entertaining read, this one just didn’t catch us the way we hoped it would. If you like Westerns and want to read something with a new twist, we would suggest trying this one out! But for us, we will have to say goodbye to this story.
The Soul Trade by Edward Rose
When you’re the one and only private eye in Purgatory no case is going to be easy, but when a lost young woman walks through Patrick Judas’ door things take an even more dangerous turn than normal.
The City he calls home might be full of the worst people north of Hell, but there have always been rules. Live a good life this time around and your final journey in the great Elevator might take you to a better place, live a bad one and, well you get the idea.
But now someone is breaking those rules, switching the fates of decent people with the worst scum in the City—and Judas’ new client seems to be caught up in the middle of it all. With only his wits, a foul-mouthed cat, and the help of the scariest receptionist in the universe, Judas will have to risk everything to save the City he hates.
The Soul Trade is an urban fantasy with a twist, in that the urban bit is actually happening in Purgatory, and its citizens are all dead. But rather than being gimmicky the author did a great job of fleshing out the worldbuilding and the City at its heart. The City felt gritty and real, as did its inhabitants. Our judges liked the banter and the noir feel to the story, and its mysteries kept us glued to the page!
The area that felt a bit lacking was the main character’s effect on the plot. Any problem he didn’t already know the solution for, seemed to work out regardless of his actions, as if the plot was simply carrying him through it. He also didn’t seem to face any physical or mental consequences that lasted for any extended period of time, and our judges felt that took away some of the suspense and immersion.
None of this stopped us from finishing the book, which was a quick and enjoyable read, and we will definitely be seeking out more adventures from Judas in the future! It just wasn’t strong enough to compete with the other books in our group, so we let it go.
The True and Accurate Log of the Sand Ship Uncertainty by Fowler Brown
Reality is an uncertain thing. It shifts and warps without the taming yoke of human agreement to bind it in place, especially near the twisting chaos that is Nightmare. As Keeper of Days for a band of pirates, Teivi Nishiir maintains the log of the sand ship Uncertainty, holding back the world’s insidious influence by recording the crew’s deeds. She knows the cruelty of the desert. She has sailed into Nightmare and sung her defiance to the corrupting aberrations that make the boldest pirate hunters balk.
But even Nightmare is nothing beside a comrade’s betrayal.
A deadly secret lurks among the Uncertainty’s latest plunder, one that pirates and kings alike will kill for. With the Uncertainty thrown into chaos, fleeing friends and dodging fleets, Teivi’s quill won’t be enough to keep her crew from a sandy grave. If she can stay one step ahead, she might have a chance to achieve everything she’s ever dreamed of. So long as she’s willing to pay the price in blood.
This story has a long title, and our judges have just as much to say about it! The world of The Sand Ship Uncertainty is an endless desert filled with ships that sail on the sand. In this world exists Nightmare, a horror that changes people who enter it.
“Nightmare left its mark on anyone who braved the desert for long enough, and no two marks were alike. In my case, letters slithered across my skin in slow, eerie patterns, like ink flowing over stone.”
Because of Nightmare, the world’s reality is not a sure thing, and people are altered on a daily basis, so keeping a record of true events is vital to Uncertainty’s crew’s sanity. Teivi is the ship’s log keeper. It’s her job to write down what happens so it can be remembered, for here belief actually shapes the world, and accumulated belief in something makes it (more) real.
“Nightmare is a phenomenon of unceasing change, but perhaps by binding it with words, it can be tamed to some slight degree.”
Between the fascinating world and the way people’s beliefs shape it, this story caught our attention immediately! And while it was a rather grim tale, the excellent characters, smooth pacing, and surreal imagery were a delight.
Unfortunately, the grim bits divided our judges, but not in the way you imagine. For while we are fans of well done grimdark, this story leaned more towards eldritch horror than simple dark fantasy. The Nightmare did not change things in only benign ways, and the dip into the more squishy parts of speculative fiction made some of our judges less engaged in the book.
“Captain Dren scratched at his throat, where normal human brown slowly gave way to skin of solid brass. The boundary between the two was cracked and bleeding. They’d called him the Brass Captain for as long as I’d been alive. How long before Nightmare’s touch rendered him more metal than flesh?”
Even with these issues our judges thought the story was engaging, and would be a must read for those who enjoy this flavor of fantasy, but there were other books in our group that we enjoyed more, so we had to let this one go as well.
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We would like to thank all the authors for letting us read their work! We congratulate you on having the courage to enter the contest and wish you all much success in the future!
We will be reviewing our final semi-finalist one a day until Friday (Oct 28) when we will reveal our winner for Round One!
Our judges this year are Julia Kitvaria Sarene, Kartik Narayanan, Kerry Smith, Max Freeman, and Jennie Ivins (me). If you’d like to learn more about us, including our likes and dislikes, you can read about them here.
Any queries should be directed at me, Jennie Ivins, via DM (Facebook/Twitter).
Title image by Ralph (Ravi) Kayden.
JC Kang