If you follow #SPFBO or have been taking note of my recent reviews you’ll know that today I am making my Semi Finalist announcement (more about the competition below for info).

Our batch of 30 books was split equally between myself and the Critiquing Chemist’s team.  I have now completed my batch.  Out of my fifteen books I fully read seven of the books and have reviewed them during the course of the past week (links below).  Today I am choosing three books to be semi finalists.  Please note that these are my semi finalists – my partners will be announcing their semi finalists shortly.  We will then read each others SFs and after a good deal of back and forth discussion arrive at our finalist (it sounds so easy doesn’t it!)

Anyway, after much head wrangling and wringing of hands I have my three books.

Firstly, here are my seven hopefuls (I have posted links to the reviews below):

My apologies to the authors whose books are being cut today.  I had some fantastic books in my batch this year and so whilst that’s a really good thing and makes the reading much more enjoyable it comes with the problem of narrowing the field down.  All I can say is a huge thanks to all the authors who entered their books, my commiserations if your book didn’t make this round of cuts, I hope you’re making the most of SPFBO in other ways by reaching out and connecting with other authors and reviewers – and to anybody reading this then please check out some of the other books here – there are some gems.

Without further ado my semi finalists are:

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Congratulations to PJ Nwosu, Carol Carman and Hiyodor.  Good luck in the final stage of Phase 1.

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More info below:

What is SPFBO 9?  This is  a competition where authors of self-published fantasy can enter their work. The objective to find a winner out of the 300 entries submitted.  Ten judges (or judging teams) each receive 30 entrants.  Each judge/team will eventually submit one finalist to the second round where a winner will eventually be decided upon. Check out Mark Lawrence’s post here to look at this year’s entrants, judges and allocations list.

My introduction post can be found here and also the Critiquing Chemist recently posted their first elimination post.  I posted my first ‘cuts’ last week.   My second elimination post can be found here.

My reviews the past week:

Here’s my first review for Of Thieves and Shadows (The Heart of Quinaria #1) by BSH Garcia.

Here’s my second review for Dark Innocence by PJ Alexander

Here’s my third review for The Bone Spear by Alexander Layne.

My fourth review is for The First and Last Demon by Hiyodori.

My fifth review is for The Heron Kings Rampant by Eric Lewis

My sixth review is for Twicetime by Carol Carman

My final review is for Dream of Death City by PJ Nwosu