Lost War- Justin Lee Anderson.

    

I read this book in 2020 when it was in the SPFBO contest.  It won the contest and was my personal favorite as well in SPFBO 6.  Barely beating out Black Stone Heart in my personal ratings. If either had won, I would have been fine with that result.  If you are wondering what SPFBO is, I will give you a brief history of the Self Publish Fantasy Blog Off contest.  Mark Lawrence started the contest way back in 2014 as a way to get more eyes on self-published books.  Mr. Lawrence convinced 10 bloggers to join him in this venture. Each contest has 300 books that in turn are slit up amongst the 10 bloggers. The next phase, each blogger will pick one out of their 30 to be one of the finalists in the contest. In the final phase has all 10 bloggers review the 10 finalists. I have mostly agreed with the eventually winner. A few times I had ties. For SPFBO 5 I had a 6-way tie. For the current SPFBO 9 it took all of 40 minutes for 300 books to be summited. It is a contest that get more popular every year.  

     Orbit Books picked up The Lost War and signed Justin Lee Anderson to a book deal. Funny thing, I remembered the very beginning of the book and the very end.  But everything in between was lost to memory, so it was like reading it new again. Orbit's editors had Justin add and delete some things from the original text, not that I could tell. Just a great read with a major plot twist of epic proportions at the end. Book 2 The Bitter Crown come out in December of 2023, so I am either going to end the year with a great book or begin the year with a great book, I hope.