The time has come when we have to say goodbye to the last 4 books and crown (pun totally intended) Team Queen’s Book Asylum’s SPFBO 10 finalist.
These past few months went away in a blur, but you know what they say – time flies when you are in good company. So I’d like to take this chance to say thank you to all the authors who submitted their books this year for our reading pleasure, as we all certainly found books to love, that provoked our thoughts and that ultimately made us have very different opinions and sparking a lot of conversations among the team. You are amazing, and no matter what the results today will be, keep up the good work, and know that you are always welcome at the Asylum!
To my team (Andy, Arina, Jen, Liis, and Tru), thank you for your work and time you put into the competition. Even if we have wildly different opinions on books. It’s always fun to read your thoughts. Here is to the next six months, then!
That being out of the way, time to be serious. We’ll take a quick look at our semi-finalists and then at the end of the post, we’ll let you know who we’ll advance into the SPFBO 10 Finals!
Semi-finalists are listed in the order as we announced them, including a quote from the review of the judge who picked it, and a link to the post where we all shared our thoughts. At the end of our review posts, you’ll find our scoring and links to buy the book. Or, you can head to our SPFBO 10 page to find everything in one place.
Tru’s Pick: A Circle of Stars by Craig Montgomery
I also really appreciated the diversity present throughout the book. Ultimately, regardless of all the cool worldbuilding, A Circle of Stars is a YA story featuring teens with space powers, and that may not be for everyone.
Timy’s Pick: Temper the Dark by L. Ryan Storms
The plot is not overly complicated, but that actually suited this book. On the whole, everything worked very well. There were sweet moments, brutal ones, and a lot in between.
Liis’ Pick: The Stranger of Ul Darak by S.C. Eston
The Stranger of Ul Darak is one of those fantasy tales that is as solid and as polished as it could possibly be. It feels like a finished product, ready for the bookshelves. It has a classical fantasy feel without graphic grimness. I mean, Eston manages to deliver a chonky, slow paced book, meant for enjoyment as the reader can get lost in the world and things yet to pass.
Jen’s Pick: Wolf of Withervale by Joaqín Baldwin
Despite my complaints about length, I enjoyed the hell out of this story and I’m positive I could go on about this book for another three pages because it was pretty damned amazing.
Arina’s Pick: Bringer of the Scourge by M. Daniel McDowell
Classic fantasy travel quest meets sweet berserker princess. I really enjoyed Bringer of the Scourge.
This year was another one where we had a really close setting of scores all across the board. And as usual, we were pretty much at odds with each other, which is part of the fun with a team, I guess. Annoying they might be when they go against my wishes 😛 Seriously though, this year we weren’t super enthusiastic about our semi-finalists, even if we liked them in different ways (or didn’t, for that matter…). And so, we ended up having a 0.2 points difference between our top two, which are:
This time our top two are not that different from each other. Temper the Dark is a short epic fantasy novel with a touch of romance, while Wolf of Withervale is a 750 pages long epic fantasy with queer characters and a vast worldbuilding. Both had their strengths and flaws, but it ultimately came down to one of us liking one much more than the other. I’m not going to lie, we considered taking a look at the SSNs provided by other teams (SSN stands for Senlin Safety Net, and it means that any team who has a strong book in their batch that they don’t pick, can offer it to the other teams to consider picking up as their finalist), but ultimately we decided against it due to lack of time in our schedules. So all that being said, it’s time to reveal who our SPFBO 10 finalist is…
Congrats to Joaquín Baldwin for Wolf of Withervale being chosen as Team Queen’s Book Asylum’s SPFBO 10 Finalist!
Please visit my SPFBO 10 page for all the scores, reviews, links, and more!
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Question: You said your choices of books were underwhelming. Did you consider a Senlin Choice?
We did consider, but as I said in the post, we didn’t have enough time to fully dive into the currently available Senlin options. Plus, the team together decided that we were happy with putting forward one of our own options, even if not all of us was really into it (like me). But that’s a team for you.