Kerry Allen

Good evening, and welcome to the First Ever Annual Lampie Awards, where we (by which I mean I) pay tribute to excellence in books read (if not necessarily published) during 2007. The field this year can be described in only one way:

When they were good, they were very, very good, and when they were bad, they were too bloody awful for words.

I have never not finished so many books as in 2007. I’ve been unable to determine if they were really that bad or if I have simply lost the patience to stick with a story in hopes the author pulls it out of a nosedive, but I hit my typical annual allotment of wallbangers by the beginning of March, and it only snowballed from there. Even widely lauded books found their way onto my Never Again list, resulting in a certain loss of faith in those doing the lauding.

(You want me to crack and name names with the bad ones, don’t you? I can feel it. The Greatest Disappointment. The Most Overrated. The Great Big Book of Cliche. The Biggest Monetary Ripoff. The I Hope the Hero and Heroine Die Because They Disgust Me Book. The Suckiest Book in the History of Written Language. You want them all. Well, TOO BAD. I have drawn a line in the bitchy sand, and it is here!)

At the other end of the spectrum, the good books were phenomenal. Today we (by which I mean I again) honor those books in all genres that stood head and shoulders and sometimes entire torso and a good bit of ass above the crowd.

Most Fortuitous Discovery

WebMage by Kelly McCullough

I have no idea how I ended up with this book. It may even have been a shipping error. If that is the case, fall to your knees and pray to the deity of your choice that all errors henceforth are like this one.

From the cover:

[Ravirn's] Aunt Atropos, one of the three Fates, decides that humans having fee will is really overrated and plans to rid herself of the annoyance—by coding a spell into the Fate Core, the server that rules destiny. As a hacker, Ravirn is a big believer in free will, and when he not only refuses to debug the spell but actively opposes her, all hell breaks loose.

The sequel, Cybermancy (expounded upon here) is a worthy followup, and I hope there are many more adventures for Rav and Melchoir in the future.

Most Controversial Book I Enjoyed

Lover Unbound by J.R. Ward

Expounded upon here and here.

Gawd, how people bitched about this book. I think J.R. Ward is a victim of success. She’s slammed for pandering to her fans, then slammed for not pandering to this other bunch of fans a second later, when she probably had this book laid out before J.R. Ward had a reader base to pander to.

Just write, woman. We all know they’ll keep buying anything with your name on it.

Hero I’d Most Like to Cuff to My Headboard

Colin, as written by Meljean Brook in Demon Moon

Expounded upon here and here.

I expounded so much, I really can’t add anything here. How about pimpage for Demon Night, coming our way February 5?

Most Welcome Resolution of a Cliffhanger

Thin Air by Rachel Caine

Expounded upon here.

In case I haven’t made this clear yet, I love the Weather Warden series.

Biggest Damn Book I Read

The Rabbit Factory by Marshall Karp

This bad boy was 574 pages and trade sized—bigger than my thesaurus and far more entertaining.

From the cover:

When the actor playing Rambunctious Rabbit—the mascot of Lamaar Studio’s Familyland theme park—is brutally murdered on park grounds, LAPD detectives Mike Lomax and Terry Biggs are brought in to investigate. Asked to keep the investigation under wraps in order to protect Lamaar’s idyllic image, Lomax and Biggs face a dilemma when a second—and then a third—brutal murder takes place and they uncover a conspiracy to destroy one of the country’s largest entertainment conglomerates.

Yes, it’s all kinds of funny, and it lends itself to the obvious comparison to Disney. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if Wily Walt was really… hmmm. I’ll definitely be grabbing the next Lomax and Biggs book, Blood Thirsty, when it’s released in paperback in March. Killing jackass actors—how can you go wrong with that?

Heroine I Most Want to Be When I Grow Up

Mercy Thompson, as written by Patricia Briggs in Blood Ties and Blood Bound and the forthcoming Iron Kissed.

Mercy’s a mechanic and coyote shifter with the hardship of having two alpha wolves and a vampire find her irresistible. For the record, I favor Stefan. Sure, he’s dead during daylight hours, he keeps a house full of slightly crazed blood donors, and his seethe mostly wants Mercy dead, but he obviously loves her. Sam and Adam fight over her like two dogs with a rope, and at times it seems more about their dominance issues than their feelings for her. I often wish one of them would just pee on her and get it over with.

Biggest Diversion from My Usual Repertoire

Enchanted, Inc. by Shanna Swendson

Katie Chandler is extremely valuable to members of the magical community because she is one of the rare humans without a single iota of magical ability, which translates to no magical susceptibility, so she can see through illusions that deceive even master wizards. Given only one word (and given my well-known loathing of all things “cute”), I would describe it as “charming” (no pun intended… or is there?).

My favorite part, of course, is Naked Frog Guy.

I knew there were a lot of less than mentally stable people who lived in the streets and parks of New York, and a guy who thought he was a frog wasn’t out of the realm of possibility, but the fact that everyone else also thought he was a frog made me suspect that something else was going on here. It must have been the result of an illusion spell rather than an exhibitionist crazy homeless guy or a real enchanted frog prince.

Or perhaps the two aren’t mutually exclusive…

And that, ladies and gentlemen, concludes this evening’s award ceremony. Were there other books we (by which I mean I) enjoyed in 2007? Sure. Could we (by which I mean I) have made up weird categories to ensure their inclusion? You bet. But these were the ones that jumped out at me when I looked over the spines of 2007’s reads, so they get extra credit for calling attention to themselves.

Besides, there’s a certain symmetry to seven awards in 2007. Maybe there will be eight in 2008.