The David Gemmell Award 2009 for Heroic Fantasy: Sanderson among nominees

[Werthead]

The 2009 (and first) David Gemmell Award is currently being voted upon. The design of the award is to find the best 'heroic' fantasy novel of the year (although that definition seems to be applied rather loosely, based on the shortlist) and there are about 80 books on the final shortlist. My vote went to Paul Kearney's excellent The Ten Thousand but other nominess include Joe Abercrombie's Last Argument of Kings (which seems to have a good chance of winning at the moment), Richard Morgan's The Steel Remains, Peter Brett's The Painted Man (a strong showing for a debut novel), Steven Erikson's Toll the Hounds, Ian Esslemont's Return of the Crimson Guard and KJ Parker's The Company. Brandon Sanderson also gets a nomination with Mistborn: The Hero of Ages.

 

Voting is open for all. It's an interesting year to start the award off, as there's a distinct lack of the normal big names whose fanbases would turn out in strength for this. Next year I can see GRRM (hopefully), Jordan (for AMoL Volume I), Rothfuss, Bakker and Lynch fans piling in in huge numbers, but this year the field seems more wide open, and thus the result should be more interesting.

[Kalle alTear]

Thank you for posting this. I went to vote :)