More Year-End Nonsense

And there’s more Nights of Villjamur year-end-best-of-round-up-awards-quite-liked-of-the-year shenanigans.

Sci-Fi London puts Nights in the top ten:

Nights of Villjamur is a terrific debut, it starts with a bang and keeps on going, building action upon action with terrific pace and plenty surprises before relenting and letting you catch your breath until it starts up again.

As does Dark Wolf’s Fantasy Reviews:

I was caught in the spell of “Nights of Villjamur” but the end of the novel didn’t bring my release and I was left wondering about the outcome of its story. Mark Charan Newton shows in his novel a great potential, for him as a writer and for his fantasy series, “Legends of the Red Sun”, and I believe that he can sit without question in the hall of the new names of epic fantasy writers and bring his contribution to a great new generation of such authors.

Graeme includes the novel in his year-end round-up:

…one of 2009’s most anticipated reads and for very good reason.

And Next Read lists it as a top debut:

This is a book that I purposely didn’t include in my top ten. Don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed reading it, Newton has a great story to tell and has a strong imagination that makes a textured and colourful read. But it is a debut novel and as such serves as an introduction to him and his writing. I just feel that Nights showed that he’s got a lot of potential and I couldn’t help feeling that this is just the beginning. I have high hopes for City of Ruin.

There, that should do for now. Enough solipsism. People like it, that’s cool with me.

Update: And best debut at A Fantasy Reader:

I expected good things from Nights of Villjamur mostly because of James Long (Speculative Horizons) review. Mark created engrossing characters in a rich world without much flaw. With his writing style, he really set out from the crowd. Noire fantasy like this is bliss.