A Fantasy Reader: Gemmell awards 2011

Gemmell awards 2011

Posted by Phil on Saturday, April 30, 2011

The David Gemmell Legend award for fantasy may have been considered too much specific to a niche genre at first (where the Legend award is supposed to go to a novel in the spirit of the late author legacy) but it's getting more press every year. I know that its a kind of a popularity contest rather than an award based on peers/reviewers/organizations opinions but it's still kind of fun to comment.

The past years have crowned the following people :

Legend award for 2009 - Andrzej Sapkowski for Blood of Elves
Legend award for 2010 - Graham McNeill for Empire
Morningstar award for 2010 - Pierre Pevel for The Cardinal's Blades
Ravensheart award for 2010 - Didier Graffet, Dave Senior and Laura Brett for the cover of Best Served Cold

So then, here are the nominees for this year (the final shortlist) and my pick among the lot. If you want to vote, follow this link.

For the Legend Award, I would have chosen The Last Page by Anthony Huso but it didn't made it to the shortlist. So my pick among the six finalist would be The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson. Again, for the best new author, the Morningstar award, I would have chosen Huso but no luck. In the shortlist, I would go with Blake Charlton (close call with N.K. Jemisin). I really think he can pull off great stuff in the future and he already has one very interesting novel. As for the Ravenheart award, my pick would be
Cliff Nielsen for the cover of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms. Really nice piece of work.

Legend Award (Best Fantasy Novel of 2010)

Peter V. Brett for The Desert Spear
Markus Heitz for War of the Dwarves
Brandon Sanderson and Robert Jordan for Wheel of Time 13 : Towers of Midnight
Pierre Pevel for The Alchemist in the Shadows
Brandon Sanderson for The Way of Kings
Brent Weeks for The Black Prism

Morningstar Award (Best Fantasy Debut)

Blake Charlton for Spellwright
Darius Hinks for The Warrior Priest
N.K. Jemisin for The Hundred Thousand Kindgoms
Alexey Pehov for Shadow Prowler
Mary Victoria for Tymon's Flight

Ravenheart Award (Best Fantasy Book-Jacket)

Olof Erla Einarsdottir for the cover of Power and Majesty