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…

“Snapshot” is the disturbing story of a Silicon Valley adolescent who finds himself threatened by “The Phoenician,” a tattooed thug who possesses a Polaroid Instant Camera that erases memories, snap by snap. A young man takes to the skies to experience his first parachute jump. . . and winds up a castaway on an impossibly solid cloud, a Prospero’s island of roiling vapor that seems animated by a mind of its own in “Aloft.” On a seemingly ordinary day in Boulder, Colorado, the clouds open up in a downpour of nails—splinters of bright crystal that shred the skin of anyone not safely under cover. “Rain” explores this escalating apocalyptic event, as the deluge of nails spreads out across the country and around the world. In “Loaded,” a mall security guard in a coastal Florida town courageously stops a mass shooting and becomes a hero to the modern gun rights movement. But under the glare of the spotlights, his story begins to unravel, taking his sanity with it. When an out-of-control summer blaze approaches the town, he will reach for the gun again and embark on one last day of reckoning. I’ve become a real admirer of Joe Hill’s work over…

In a change from the norm this post is a first for The Eloquent Page, a review written by two people. Thanks to Nadine for her invaluable insight. The Fireman has prompted much vigorous discussion and debate in our household.   No one knows exactly when it began or where it originated. A terrifying new plague is spreading like wildfire across the country, striking cities one by one: Boston, Detroit, Seattle. The doctors call it Draco Incendia Trychophyton. To everyone else it’s Dragonscale, a highly contagious, deadly spore that marks its hosts with beautiful black and gold marks across their bodies—before causing them to burst into flames. Millions are infected; blazes erupt everywhere. There is no antidote. No one is safe. Harper Grayson, a compassionate, dedicated nurse as pragmatic as Mary Poppins, treated hundreds of infected patients before her hospital burned to the ground. Now she’s discovered the telltale gold-flecked marks on her skin. When the outbreak first began, she and her husband, Jakob, had made a pact: they would take matters into their own hands if they became infected. To Jakob’s dismay, Harper wants to live—at least until the fetus she is carrying comes to term. At the hospital,…

Time for a guest review from my partner in crime @MadNad. The sharp eyed amongst you may have spotted I’ve reviewed this title before, but it’s being re-released as a movie tie-in so I thought it may be high time for someone to revisit and offer their opinions. So without further ado over to @MadNad and Joseph Hillstrom King Once, Ig lived the life of the blessed: born into privilege, the second son of a renowned musician, the younger brother of a rising late-night TV star. Ig had security and wealth and a place in his community. Ig had it all, and more – he had the love of Merrin Williams, a love founded on shared daydreams, mutual daring and unlikely midsummer magic. The beautiful, vivacious Merrin was gone – raped and murdered, under inexplicable circumstances – and Ig the only suspect. He was never tired for the crime, but in the court of public opinion, he was and always would be guilty. Now Ig is possessed of horns, and a terrible new power – he can hear people’s deepest, darkest secrets – to go with his terrible new look. He means to use it to find whoever killed Merrin…

In the run up to the convention we’re attending this week my better half @MadNad has indulged her latest passion… some fella called Joe Hill.  Imogene is young, beautiful, kisses like a movie star, and knows everything about every film ever made. She’s also dead, the legendary ghost of the Rosebud Theater. Arthur Roth is a lonely kid with a head full of big ideas and a gift for getting his ass kicked. It’s hard to make friends when you’re the only inflatable boy in town. Francis is unhappy, picked on; he doesn’t have a life, a hope, a chance. Francis was human once, but that’s behind him now. John Finney is in trouble. The kidnapper locked him in a basement, a place stained with the blood of half a dozen other murdered children. With him, in his subterranean cell, is an antique phone, long since disconnected . . . but it rings at night, anyway, with calls from the dead. . . I shall be attending the World Fantasy Convention in Brighton, where I will be one of a few lucky souls to share a room with Joe Hill and Peter Crowther in a unique opportunity to discuss  the…

Once, Ig lived the life of the blessed: born into privilege, the second son of a renowned musician, the younger brother of a rising late-night TV star. Ig had security and wealth and a place in his community. Ig had it all, and more – he had the love of Merrin Williams, a love founded on shared daydreams, mutual daring, and unlikely midsummer magic. The beautiful, vivacious Merrin was gone – raped and murdered, under inexplicable circumstances – and Ig the only suspect. He was never tried for the crime, but in the court of public opinion, he was and always would be guilty. Now Ig is possessed of horns, and a terrible new power – he can hear people’s deepest, darkest secrets – to go with his horrible new look. He means to use it to find whoever killed Merrin and destroyed his life. Being good and praying for the best got him nowhere. It’s time for a little revenge; it’s time the devil had his due. I think that Joe Hill has managed to tap into a genuine primal fear with this novel. What if you could read their minds with a single touch? Now part of you…