Phase 1 has come at its end, and we have the unpopular task of cutting 4 of the remaining 5 books and reveal Team RockStarlit BookAsylum’s SPFBO 6 finalist!
These five months went away in a blink as we were busy with reading, reviewing, talking and ultimately deciding which books to roll forward and which to cut. I think I can say all five of us – Jen, Belle, Nick, Peter and myself – found new books to love, authors to follow.
But before we jump to the exciting part, let’s take one last look at our semi-finalists in the order we picked them:
Jen’s pick
“The financial parts are explained just enough to understand and be more exciting you’d ever expect commodity trading could be, but not so over-explained that they are boring as all hell. Or at least I didn’t think they were boring but I do like finance so it may be a “me” thing.”
Belle’s pick
“I highly recommend Beneath Black Sails to anyone who wants a fun, rollicking adventure on the high seas, with a healthy dose of intrigue and shenanigans throughout.”
Timy’s pick
“Black Stone Heart will make you uncomfortable, will make you question the actions of the characters but will never let you go. Do a favor to yourself and listen to the audiobook narrated by Fletcher himself. If you won’t fall in love with his voice and wish he was reading everything to you from now on, then there is something wrong with you.”
Peter’s pick
“This was a fantastic read! It has a story that ticks all the right boxes for me, an original magic system with a rules based system, and a classic story of good vs a long forgotten evil storyline and yes it was epic!”
Nick’s pick
“I enjoyed The Knights of Dragonwatch a great deal. It is by no means a perfect book. But there was an intensity and suspense, not to mention a really vile villain, that made this book the choice to carry the banner of semi-finalist for me.”
After we finished reading our semi-finalists and everyone added their scores, things became clearer. There were two books, which ended up on the top of our list, separated only by 0.3 points. And so we were left with:
Since both Beneath Black Sails and Black Stone Heart got high marks from us and the difference between scores was really narrow, we did a last voting on which book we’d like to see in the finals. And thus, we have our SPFBO 6 finalist:
Congrats to Michael R. Fletcher for Black Stone Heart being chosen as Team RockStarlit BookAsylum’s SPFBO 6 Finalist!
Thank you for the semi-finalists for the awesome books, and please keep on writing! We are sorry to let you go, but only one can survive…
Please visit my SPFBO 6 Phase 1 page for all the scores, reviews, links and more!
Congratulations, Michael! And thank you to all the bloggers for taking the time to do this.