Welcome to The Eloquent Page’s annual awards/review of the year (2017 Edition). Ten awards created at random for your delectation and delight. The rules remain deliciously simple. I make up a series of categories and I choose a winner. Eligibility is also easy, if I’ve read it this year, it’s eligible. First some stats (I apologise, I’m a stat whore and so I’m often compelled to start throwing numbers around). I’ve read sixty-one books this year. There were an additional fifteen I started but didn’t finish. Fantasy fiction featured most heavily with twenty-two books, while Horror came a close second with seventeen. My longest review was one thousand two hundred and thirty-four words long, my shortest was four hundred and twenty-eight. The total number of review words written in 2017? A suitably satisfying fifty-two thousand and sixty-six words. “Enough of this statistical folderol”, I hear you cry. Alrighty then. Please take your seats and direct your attention towards the stage. Without further ado on with the show… The “They’re Good Dogs Brent” Award for Canines in Fiction – For some inexplicable reason, 2017 seemed to feature more dogs in fiction than in previous years. Adrian Tchaikovsky brought us Dogs of…

YOU DIE WHEN YOU DIE . . . You can’t change your fate – so throw yourself into battle, because you’ll either win or wake up drinking mead in the halls of your ancestors. That’s what Finn’s tribe believe. But when their settlement is massacred by a hostile tribe and Finn and several friends, companions and rivals make their escape across a brutal, unfamiliar landscape, Finn will fight harder than he’s ever fought in his life. He wants to live – even if he only lives long enough to tell Thyri Treelegs how he feels about her. Hardwork doesn’t really live up to its name. It is actually quite an idyllic place to grow up. The villagers lead a cosy life, the local native tribespeople are more than happy to provide them with resources like food. Everything is nice and tranquil up until the point where a group of warriors arrive with the intention of killing every man, woman and child. A massacre ensues, but a small group of Hardworkers manage to escape their gruesome fate. Pursued by the fearsome Owsla*, the elite warriors of the Calnian empire, the villagers run for their lives. When we first met Finnbogi the…

LEGENDS AREN’T BORN. THEY’RE FORGED. Dug Sealskinner is a down-on-his-luck mercenary travelling south to join up with King Zadar’s army. But he keeps rescuing the wrong people. First, Spring, a child he finds scavenging on the battlefield, and then Lowa, one of Zadar’s most fearsome warriors, who’s vowed revenge on the king for her sister’s execution. Now Dug’s on the wrong side of that thousands-strong army he hoped to join ­- and worse, Zadar has bloodthirsty druid magic on his side. All Dug has is his war hammer, one rescued child and one unpredictable, highly-trained warrior with a lust for revenge that’s going to get them all killed . . . It’s a glorious day to die. Turns out Iron Age Britain is not an easy place to get by in. The country is fragmented into many warring tribes constantly at one another’s throats. Bickering warlords try to grab hold of as much land and power as they can manage while trying to ignore the ever growing threat of the Roman Empire. Dug Sealskinner is a slightly shabby warrior, past his best, with a suitably world-weary outlook towards life. It’s not difficult to spot, the sardonic attitude, resigned acceptance of…