The 1st of June marked the start of the sixth Self Published Fantasy Blog Off (details here.)  My Introductory post is here and my first batch of books is here.  I’ve made a good starting on the reading and hope to post an update soon.  In the meantime, this year I’m aiming to shine a little bit of focus on some of the books either through posting excerpts to act as teasers for potential readers or through posting some of the covers and highlighting the book that way (not just for my own books but other entries).  The invitation is open to all authors from the competition – if you’d like to post an excerpt then give me a shout in the comments.

As part of the competition there is a cover contest.  The details can be found here.

The winning cover this year was : The Race to the Blackened Nevers (The Woeful Wager, #1) by Douglas Bain (Goodreads Author) – cover by Damonza.

This really is a stunning cover – feast your eyes:

And the description on GRs:

The race is on! The gods careen toward the Blackened Nevers. Pray you don’t get in their way!

An army of criminals runs to reclaim its honor. An old knight wakes to find a child pointing to the finish line. A prison guard is cursed to return to the start. And the last two members of the Rowlach tribe run to ask their god why the race was more important than his creations. Meanwhile, deep inside their mountain, a brother and sister run to prevent the awakening of a leviathan. Will it rise to destroy creation, or is it just their god’s cynical attempt to increase his odds of winning?

‘The Woeful Wager’ is the first book in the new, dark fantasy series ‘The Race to the Blackened Nevers’. It won the Gold Medal in the 2019 SPR Book Awards, and was a finalist in the Fantasy (Adult Fiction) category of the 22nd Annual Foreward INDIES Book of the Year Awards, and the 2020 Feathered Quill Book Awards (Science Fiction/Fantasy).

Come join the race of the gods!

This is one of the three covers submitted by Kitty G.   Her other two covers are also rather lovely:

Dames and Demons  by G. Campbell

This is a real beauty – it gives me horror vibes.  Cover by Carolina Fiandri.

Description:

Twenty years ago, a pandemic ripped through the world and forever changed society. Where Man once stood, now stand the Women and the Demons. They rule the city through magic and money. Men like Tom and Chris Redfield have nothing. The brothers live under the heel of society and fight over the scraps dropped by the upper classes. Or at least they used to.

Cock your pistols, sharpen your swords, and fill your magic reserve… Not everyone’s going to make it out alive. 

Æroreh (The Ealdspell Cycle #1) by Jesikah Sundin

This cover is very eye catching with the beautiful colours and ethereal feel.  Cover by MoorBooks Designs.

Description:

She wants to choose her happily ever after.
He wants to remake his once upon a time.
Only magic can re-spin their tales.

Princess Æroreh Rosen was faerie blessed before her birth. To promote the New Dawn Era, the Queen coded her daughter with every feminine perfection.

Beauty. Gentleness. Obedience. Musicality. Kindness. Grace. Good cheer.

Hunger and lung sickness plague the Kingdom of Ealdspell. But Æroreh is plugged into The Dream, a program created by a sect of faeries to control the realms through illusions of beauty and contentment. All Æroreh has ever known is blissful servitude to a cursed system, and she believes her realm is prospering. Until a different faerie sect decides to wake her sleeping mind and set her true magic free.

Meanwhile, Félip Batten MacKinley holds a dangerous secret. One made more threatening by the frostbite scar across his cheek. He’s spit on, beaten, and demonized by a community that values a pretty face over all else. With no easy future in sight, he accepts that he’ll die a burden to his foster parents, his true history erased. But a tempting offer from the faerie’s Fate Maker leads Félip to cross paths with the hauntingly beautiful Æroreh—a young woman who represents all he loathes.

Yet only she has the power to awaken a new Dream.

Æroreh is a gritty spin on the romantic tale of Sleeping Beauty and blends faerie magic and pagan ritual with high technology.

So, which of these covers is your favourite and which book really appeals to you??