[jscarbo]

I'm enjoying the discussion and hope it keeps up. Butcher of Khardov doesn't fit my definition of fan fiction. The author Dan wells is a well-established and well-respected professional author and the story is well-written. The problem I have with it is that it is a tie-in to the popular Warcaster RPG and is nothing more than an extended character sketch telling the backstory of one of the characters and doesn't tell a complete story at all. Since I know nothing of the game it was pretty meaningless to me and will be ranked low by me, despite the high quality of the writing.

I thought Chaplain's Legacy and Equiod were both excellent and well-dererving of their nominations. Wakulla Springs was also well-written but simply doesn't fit my definition of SF&F at all and will also receive a low rating from me based on this. I didn't care for Six Gun Snow White at all and don't understand how it even made the nominations list.

In the Novelette category, I though all five nominees were worthy of nomination but I have a clear favorite in Lady Astronaut. It's very much in the tradition of classic SF and, for a short work, does a good job of telling a complete, interesting story.

As for the Wheel of Time series, I'm sorry so many feel that it has gamed the system and doesn't deserve nomination. Perhaps, in a sense it has but, to me and to the nominations committee, it falls within the rules as a multi-part serialized single work and belongs on the ballot. I have mixed feeling about where I'll rank it but will definitely consider it for the Best Novel award. To me, all five of the Best Novel nominees are worthy of consideration and this is the only category where I'll have much difficulty deciding on my ranking.

I think the nomination of the entire WOT series for the Best Novel award may open the floodgates for other series in future nominations and am not sure this is in keeping with the intent of the award. A better suggestion would be to create a new award category for Best Complete Series. My recommendation would be that eligibility be limited to completed series of three books or more. Many of us, myself included, like to read series and I'd certainly be willing to vote in such a category. The biggest problem with this is how to know if a series is truly completed since many authors seem to add onto series ad infinitum, such as Lee and Miller's Laiden Universe series, for example. Maybe it's not necessary that the series be completed, so long as there are three or more books in the series.

As I mentioned in one of my earlier posts, I thought all of the short stories were awful and will vote "No Award" for the entire category.