SPFBO Semi-Finalist: Hiu’s Pick

It’s time for our penultimate post for Phase 1 of this year’s SPFBO!

From my initial batch, there have been two books that caught my eye. The rest of which, unfortunately, have been eliminated as shown in our SPFBO Hub post. Since then, Travis has passed J.R. Rasmussen’s A Dream of Fire on to me for consideration, a novel which narrowly missed out on his semi-finalist spot.

Which puts me in the position of having to choose between three books that I found enjoyable for my own semi-finalist. Here are those books:

The Nothing Mage by J.P. Valentine

The Nothing Mage was actually the first novel I finished for this competition, and it set the bar at a decent height, as evidenced by my review. This is a progression fantasy with a really imaginative world and a magic system that certain readers will love to geek out over. It might appeal to fans of books such as Will Wight’s Cradle series, as it has a similar started-from-the-bottom character arc and is incredibly easy to binge-read. I would have liked some more depth from the wider character cast, and I feel like the abrupt ending may harm its suitability for a contest, but I can’t deny that I really enjoyed reading this one. The right reader will want to dive into this story with two feet, and that’s why The Nothing Mage is in contention.

Legacy of Bones by Kirk Dougal

Sometimes there are really small, specific things that you love in a book. That’s the case for me with Legacy of Bones, where I have to give a shout-out to Kirk Dougal’s skill at manipulating sentence structure to convey tension. There were several scenes that had me holding my breath, and this one also gets bonus “cool points” for the inclusion of a big cat companion.

Legacy of Bones is part traditional epic fantasy and part grimdark — with those “parts” varying depending on the point-of-view character for any given chapter. I had a bit of trouble with the switching between these, but this may be a YMMV situation. For those readers who love both genres, this may be the perfect match.

A Dream of Fire by J.R. Rasmussen

As stated previously, A Dream of Fire wasn’t initially in my batch of books. However, we at the Inn wanted to give the most enjoyable stories in our allocation the best chance of success, which meant passing certain books that may have just fallen short of semi-finalist status on to other judges.

And, y’know, I can see why Travis enjoyed this. This is a really unique take on the magic school trope — told from the perspective of a teacher with no magic of his own. There’s a mystery element, there are hints at a wider world beyond the school, and it’s far more conversationally-focused than action-focused. But what really struck me about this is that there are very few things that I can pick out for criticism. While I thought that the “highs” were maybe not quite so high as my other contenders, I also thought that there were very few “lows”. For me, A Dream of Fire is solid. A good book, but maybe missing that bit of spark, charisma, or engaging narrative voice that would make it a great book.

But… as you might have gathered, I had my likes and dislikes for all three of my picks. And all three were very much in contention.

I agonised over my pick for quite a while, because these are three very different books that will appeal to very different people. The Nothing Mage is compulsively readable, and stylistically reminds me a little of Pirateaba’s The Wandering Inn. Legacy of Bones is full of tension and great ideas, wrapped in a sometimes-classical-sometimes-grimdark package. And A Dream of Fire is a fun and unique twist on a magic school story. If I had to pick one to recommend to a stranger… well, I don’t know that I could. I’d have to ask their preferences first.

But with everything considered, and with one eye on what my fellow judges would enjoy, my semi-finalist pick is…