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Finalists for the 2011 Kitchies announced

The finalists for the 2011 Kitchies have just been announced. The awards are for the year’s most progressive, intelligent and entertaining works of genre fiction published in the UK. Please find a list of the finalists below and we have provided extra information and links on those titles we have read and reviewed here on Fantasy Book Review.

A cover image of Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London.The finalists for the Inky Tentacle for Cover Art

  • Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch; illustration by Stephen Walter, design by Patrick Knowles (TAG Fine Arts) (Gollancz)
    My name is Peter Grant and until January I was just probationary constable in that mighty army for justice known to all right-thinking people as the Metropolitan Police Service (and as the Filth to everybody else). My only concerns in life were how to avoid a transfer to the Case Progression Unit – we do paperwork so real coppers don’t have to – and finding a way to climb into the panties of the outrageously perky WPC Leslie May. Then one night, in pursuance of a murder inquiry, I tried to take a witness statement from someone who was dead but disturbingly voluble, and that brought me to the attention of Inspector Nightingale, the last wizard in England. Now I’m a Detective Constable and a trainee wizard, the first apprentice in fifty years, and my world has become somewhat more complicated: nests of vampires in Purley, negotiating a truce between the warring god and goddess of the Thames, and digging up graves in Covent Garden . . . and there’s something festering at the heart of the city I love, a malicious vengeful spirit that takes ordinary Londoners and twists them into grotesque mannequins to act out its drama of violence and despair. The spirit of riot and rebellion has awakened in the city, and it’s falling to me to bring order out of chaos – or die trying.
  • The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan; design by Peter Mendelsund (Canongate)
  • The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco; design by Suzanne Dean, illustration by John Spencer (Harvill Secker
  • Equations of Life by Simon Morden; design by Lauren Panepinto (Orbit)
  • A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness and Siobhan Dowd; illustration by Jim Kay (Walker Books)

A cover image of Ransom Riggs's Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children.The Golden Tentacle for Debut

  • Among Thieves by Douglas Hulick (Tor)
  • God’s War by Kameron Hurley (Night Shade Books)
  • The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern (Harvill Secker)
  • Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs (Quirk)
    A mysterious island. An abandoned orphanage. And a strange collection of very curious photographs. It all waits to be discovered in "Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children", an unforgettable novel that mixes fiction and photography in a thrilling reading experience. As our story opens, a horrific family tragedy sets sixteen-year-old Jacob journeying to a remote island off the coast of Wales, where he discovers the crumbling ruins of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. As Jacob explores its abandoned bedrooms and hallways, it becomes clear that the children who once lived here – one of whom was his own grandfather – were more than just peculiar. They may have been dangerous. They may have been quarantined on a desolate island for good reason. And somehow – impossible though it seems – they may still be alive.
  • The Samaritan by Fred Venturini (Blank Slate Press)

A cover image of China Mieville's EmbassyTown.The Red Tentacle for Novel

  • The Enterprise of Death by Jesse Bullington (Orbit)
  • Embassytown by China Miéville (Tor)
    Embassytown: a city of contradictions on the outskirts of the universe. Avice is an immerser, a traveller on the immer, the sea of space and time below the everyday, now returned to her birth planet. Here on Arieka, humans are not the only intelligent life, and Avice has a rare bond with the natives, the enigmatic Hosts – who cannot lie. Only a tiny cadre of unique human Ambassadors can speak Language, and connect the two communities. But an unimaginable new arrival has come to Embassytown. And when this Ambassador speaks, everything changes. Catastrophe looms. Avice knows the only hope is for her to speak directly to the alien Hosts. And that is impossible.
  • A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness and Siobhan Dowd (Walker Books)
  • The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers (Sandstone)
  • Osama: A Novel by Lavie Tidhar (PS Publishing)

The winning author of the Red Tentacle will receive a £750 prize; the winners of the Golden Tentacle and Inky Tentacles each receive £250. All three will also receive iconic, hand-made Tentacle trophies. All finalists will receive a bottle of The Kraken Rum.

The winners in all categories (including the discretionary Black Tentacle) will be announced on February 3, 2011 at the SFX Weekender 3.

You can find the full details on www.thekitschies.com.

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