Battle of the 2013 Books, Bracket One :: Final Four

We're down to the Final Four in Bracket One of Fantastic Reviews Battle of the 2013 Books:

Electricity & Other Dreams by Micah Dean Hicks
vs.
The Best of All Possible Worlds by Karen Lord

Burning Paradise by Robert Charles Wilson
vs.
The Cusanus Game by Wolfgang Jeschke

We hope you've enjoyed this tournament so far. Now only four books remain of the starting sixteen. This bracket contained books from across the genre. There were fantasy novels, YA fantasy, science fiction, mainstream speculative fiction, story collections and a horror novel. To get to the Final Four, these four books won their first two matches. The other books in the competition, and some of them were quite good but by chance faced a strong competitor, have been knocked out of the running, like in college basketball's March Madness.

Judging between books, which can be totally different, based on reading only 25 or 50 pages can be difficult. It's also inherently subjective. But our Battle of the Books format allows us to sample and spread the word about many more new books and authors than we otherwise could.

In this bracket, two of the four books which were "seeded" reached the Final Four. The unseeded books which made it to the Final Four are Electricity & Other Dreams by Micah Dean Hicks and Burning Paradise by Robert Charles Wilson.

Thanks again to all the authors and publicists sending us great books to consider. If you're an author or publicist, click here for the rules and an address to send your book if you'd like to be included in a future bracket.

We have had a great response to the Battle of the Books format. Several future brackets of Battle of the Books are now in the hands of our reviewers, so check back for many more battles to come.