Battle of the Books, Summer 2012 Bracket

James Renner's The Man from Primrose Lane is in the record books as our Spring 2012 champion, but the review copies keep pouring in, so . . .


Welcome to the Summer 2012 Fantastic Reviews Battle of the Books!

For more about why we decided to do a Battle of the Books, click here. For all the rules, click here.

Aaron reviewed and judged the Winter and Spring brackets of Battle of the Books. Now he hands the baton to Amy to review and judge the Summer 2012 of Battle of the Books.

We've received 16 more contenders, selected four "seeded" books -- the four we are most looking forward to out of this group (marked with asterisks) -- placed one seeded book in each quarter of the bracket, and then filled in the rest of the Spring 2012 bracket randomly. Here are your matchups.

First Quarter of Bracket:

John Love, Faith
(Night Shade, Jan)
vs.
Gene Twaronite, My Vacation in Hell (self-published, Mar)




E.C. Myers, Fair Coin
(Pyr, Apr)
vs.
Ian Tregillis, The Coldest War*** (Tor, July)

Second Quarter of Bracket:

Elspeth Cooper, Songs of the Earth (Tor, Mar)
vs.
Ted Kosmatka, The Games***
(Del Rey, Mar)




Philippa Ballantine, Hunter and Fox (Pyr, June)
vs.
Jason Heller, Taft 2012
(Quirk, Jan)

Third Quarter of Bracket:

James Lovegrove, Age of Aztec*** (Solaris, Apr)
vs.
Sean Austin, The Ultimate Game
(AAA Reality Games, Mar)




Mark Chadbourn, Destroyer of Worlds (Pyr, May)
vs.
Rhiannon Held, Silver (Tor, June)

Fourth Quarter of Bracket:

Grace McCleen, The Land of Decoration (Henry Holt, Apr)
vs.
Julianna Baggott, Pure
(Grand Central, Mar)




J. Kelley Anderson, Casting Shadows (World Castle, Feb)
vs.
Neal Stephenson, Greg Bear & five others, The Mongoliad Part One*** (47North, Apr)




To see the whole bracket, click here.

Some notes on the field:
-- By my best count, 4 of the books are science fiction or space opera, 3 are high fantasy, 4 are contemporary or urban fantasy, 2 are military fantasy, 2 are satires of sorts, and 1 is a fantasy/alternate history.
-- The field includes 10 books by men, 5 books by women, and 1 book by a group of 7 authors, almost all men.
-- This bracket includes 3 books from Tor, 3 from Pyr, and 1 each from Del Rey, Henry Holt, Night Shade, Solaris, 47North, Grand Central, World Castle, Quirk, AAA Reality Games and a self-published book.
-- Only 2 of the books seem to be sequels: Ian Tregillis's The Coldest War and Mark Chadbourn's The Destroyer of Worlds.

Good luck to all the entrants!