SFINCS Semifinalists Announcement
15 Dec 2023
After passing the last three months reading our assigned batch, Team Jamreads has finally reached a veredict on which five books will advance to the next round.
It has been a really tight competition, with small details marking the difference; congratulations to the chosen ones, and conmiserations to those that have fallen.
Let's take a look at the five semifinalists!
Susanne Schmidt - Bad Grains
Eleven-year-old Jo loves Halloween and all things horror, but she doesn't believe anything bad could ever happen in Fels, her small German hometown. When Hektor, her annoying older brother, disappears on his way home from school, Jo assumes he is playing a prank on her. But then both her father and grandma forget Hektor's name, and his stuff mysteriously disappears from his room.
With the adults of no help whatsoever, Jo starts an investigation of her own, uncovering an old legend that has haunted the children of Fels for centuries. A monster lives in the rye fields, and draws children into its world under the roots. With two days until the gate between their worlds closes, and only Hektor's obnoxious best friend to help her, Jo must figure out a way to rescue her brother, or lose him forever.
Lily Anne Crow - A Wolf in Thief's Clothing
Phrai joins a crew to pull off a dangerous heist. Little do her fellow thieves know that the end of their job is just the beginning of hers.
Our reviews:
Nils' review
Jamedi's review
Laurie Silvers - Rat City: Book One of the Rat City Chronicles
In the walled city of Aman Kala, the grisly murder of a sacred Rat Keeper pulls Detective Derya Mack into an investigation that threatens to expose the power struggles that guarantee the very safety the fortress offers from the plague world.
The year is 986H/1578CE and Derya Mack lives and works in Aman-Kala, a plague fortress located between Arab, Persian, and Turkic lands. The rebel Zanj have toppled the Abbasid Caliphate, outlawed slavery, and turned regions and cities into client states. The Zanj Caliphate governs from Baghdad backed up by the force of their empire-wide army. Regional militaries are outlawed and cities are left to govern themselves without police or jails. In Aman-Kala, private detectives solve crimes, large and small. Derya Mack is one of those detectives.
Rat City is a retelling of The Count of Monte Cristo OUT NOW IN REVENGE IN THREE, a collection of novellas based on the classic novel entitled Revenge in Three.
Our reviews:
Jamedi's review
Nils' review
Simon Tull - A Mirage in the Memory
Dogged by a digital ghost and his own murky past, he must scour the city to kill the killer … or lose the woman he loves.
Earth, post-Apocalypse. Thibault Allard is determined to save his wife. After he escapes the addictive virtual reality that enslaved them both, he works as a bounty hunter for their unsavoury captor to gain inside access and search for his beloved. But when the morally flexible immortal is handed a ruthless ultimatum, he derails his plans in order to pursue the man who terminated his boss's spouse.
Getting close to the dangerous cult leader responsible for the woman's death, he scrambles to survive after he's captured and imprisoned. And thrown into a pit for a gladiatorial battle against a blood-lusting monster, Thibault fears he'll die before he can rescue the bride he left behind.
Can he double down on his duty without losing the rest of his soul?
Douglas Lumsden - The Demon's Dagger: A Noir Urban Fantasy Novella
Once he checked in, checking out became an obsession!
Crawford the were-rat checks into a shady hotel and promptly stumbles over a dead man. A mysterious troll is obsessed with finding the dagger that killed him—a dagger possessed by a demon! The demon denies that he is a demon and is obsessed with regaining his freedom. Meanwhile, the hotel’s night clerk is obsessed with the hooker on the third floor. Crawford is obsessed with what’s in the hooker’s room: a solid gold statuette of a demon-slaying goddess! Crawford has checked in, but, when obsessions collide, does he have any hope of checking out?
Our reviews:
C.J. Daley's review
Nils' review
Jamedi's review