3rd Annual SFR Galaxy Awards: Round Five by Jo Jones

Most Unusual Business

Mercenary Instinct by Ruby Lionsgate

Who knew Alien Poop would be so valuable and that you would use a pink shuttle to collect it.

Best Difficult Courtship

Overload Flux by Carol Van Natta

 How two very different people make it work.

Most Interesting Use of Time Travel

Temporal Shift by Nina Croft

This is one story where Time Travel does not help the romance.

Most Elegant HEA

In the Black by Sheryl Nantus

How the pilot of a space going brothel and the law get together.

Best Opening Scene

The Seer by Ariel MacArran

Will she or won’t she save a life and what happens if she does.

3rd Annual SFR Galaxy Awards: Round Four by Marlene Harris

Best Dystopian Worldbuilding Award

Magic Born series by Sonya Clark

Trancehack (2013), Witchlight (2014), Firewall (2014)

To get the full effect, and because it’s way more fun this way, you need to start with the first book in this series, Trancehack, which was published in 2013. 

This series has some really awesome dystopian worldbuilding that resonates both with some of the less savory parts of history and with modern-day politics. Throw in three completely different but equally well-done romances and this near-future series becomes marvelous SFR that sweeps you up in the romance and makes you think about the way the world works. Not just our world, but theirs.

If people started being born with “magic” talent, what would happen? Katherine Kurtz said it best, “the humans kill what they do not understand” and it rings true in this series. In many countries, the majority non-magic users embrace the talented, admittedly with some bumps in the road. In the US, the religious fanatics take control, locking the magic born up in ghettos and making the US a world pariah. Economic sanctions, and economic depression, inevitably follow. But the Magic Born series isn’t about how bad things are, it’s about solving the problem.

First we have a cop who falls in love with a magic user, and is willing to give up his badge and his future to keep her and her people safe. Then we have a politician who has been passing all her life, discover that she can no longer keep her secret in the face of a new round of repression. And last, but certainly not least, we have a former collaborator becoming the ringleader of a group of social media hacktivists who finally break the government/corporate firewall and get the word out. Their stories, and their loves, make their universe change in a way that will make readers stand up and cheer for the good guys. And the happy endings will warm your heart.

Best Superhero Origin Series

The Phoenix Institute by Corrina Lawson

Phoenix Rising (2011) Luminous (2012) Phoenix Legacy (2012) Ghost Phoenix (2014) Ghosts of Christmas Past (2014)

This series is kind of an X-Men/Batman crossover, if everyone is not just gender-bent but also talent-switched. And even that Batman analogy requires that Batman’s gifts be more super and less obsessed-neurotic based. But still awesome.

The Phoenix Institute starts out as “The Resource” run by one of the very definitely bad guys. His mission is to find people born with super talents and train them to be super soldiers obedient to his every whim. His evil plan is foiled by supers that got away, aided and abetted by one of his own. If Professor Xavier was a firestarter married to a telepath, you get the Phoenix Institute. Pun is intended, the Phoenix Institute rises from the ashes of the Resource and reaches out to supers everywhere, while righting the very big wrongs perpetrated by its predecessor.

On the main series, we have a telepath who rescues the firestarter, and a self-healer who finds his way back to the woman he left behind, who just happens to be in a long line of charismatics. We end with an invisible woman who falls for her clean cop in a dirty city, and a teleporter thief who saves an immortal queen. The alternate history angle in Ghost Phoenix is surprisingly twisty and results in a happily ever after that may just really mean “ever after”. This is paranormal romance with a delightful superhero twist, made even better by continuing into 2015.

Best Use of a Cheesy Pen Name Or Best Not-Quite-New Author

Mandrake Company series by Ruby Lionsdrake

Mercenary Instinct; Trial and Temptation; The Assassin’s Salvation and The Ruins of Karzelek

Ruby Lionsdrake writes fantasy/steampunk as Lindsay Buroker, and her Emperor’s Edge series is absolutely fantastic, but not SFR. Quite.

However, when she decided to write unabashed SFR (and include more romance and sex) she decided to test out a new penname for her new endeavor, and Ruby Lionsdrake was born.

The Mandrake Company is a mercenary group headed by one Viktor Mandrake. He left the Galactic Conglomeration armed forces when they bombed his home planet out of existence. Other exiles from Grenavine joined him, and he became the captain and leader of a mercenary outfit that tries to be just a little bit more honorable than your usual run of space mercenaries while still making a profit and staying out of GalCom’s sights. So think of Mandrake’s company as being a bit like Firefly, if Mal had any kind of head for business. 

Mandrake captures a trio of women running a bioengineering firm on a fake bounty, and the owner of the company escapes repeatedly and manages to charm his socks off (along with everything else). As the series progresses, Ankari and her company of gut-bug researchers integrate themselves into the life of the ship, and find terrific romances with some of the men in Mandrake’s company. Starting, of course, with Ankari and Mandrake. 

For an SFR series with a high quotient of fun (not to mention the gut-bugs) the Mandrake Company is terrific. 

Best SFR Masquerading As Space Opera

Paradox series by Rachel Bach

Fortune’s Pawn (2013), Honor’s Knight (2014), Heaven’s Queen (2014)

This series starts out as pure space opera, but includes a love story that can be read as either “Romeo and Juliet on steroids” or “Beauty and the Beast” where both parties think that their lover is “Beauty” while they themselves are the “Beast”. Considering that both parties are perfectly capable of destroying the universe if they lose control, they are both “Beast”. (Also, no one should name a romantic hero Rupert ever again). 

The Paradox story is one about “the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or of the one” definitely crossed with “who watches the watchers”. The universe has a big secret that everyone involved is trying to keep under wraps. Unfortunately for those secret keepers, it is absolutely impossible for anyone to keep mercenary Devi Morris wrapped up in any way. 

The personality of mercenary Devi has a lot of similarities to Torin Kerr in Tanya Huff’s marvelous Valor Confederation series, and the person that Devi needs to save is an even scarier space girl than River Tam in FIREFLY. This series is space opera for those who are looking for a gut-wrenching plot twist around every corner, and where the bad boy in the romance not only isn’t as bad as he thinks he is, but isn’t even half as bad-assed as the girl he falls for.

Still Standing Award (Best Long Running Series)

The Hot Zone (Harmony #11) by Jayne Castle

The first book in the Harmony series, After Dark, was published back in 2000, and the series now stretches to 11 books and ties in with Castle’s long-running Arcane Society series, written as Amanda Quick when it’s historical and Jayne Ann Krentz when it’s contemporary. But this long and genre and generation spanning series is SFR at its core.

The people who in the Victorian Era found the Arcane Society to regulate those who are born with extra-sensory gifts run a psychic-based detective agency in the 20th century and their descendants fly to the stars in the Harmony future.  In all the series, the Arcane Society or its descendants is based in science and not superstition. The source of many family gifts is a mad scientist who went very much astray. But in the Harmony series, Castle has crafted a far-future society where power is based on how much and what type of psychic talent one is able to muster. 

And on the planet Harmony, the human colonists have found a place that enhances their psychic talents even as it throws up new challenges for the talented. We see the society grow from its early days as a lost colony struggling to make the place habitable, while at the same time Harmony throws its new population challenges and opportunities that favor the survival of the gifted. With each new generation, they explore more but often discover they know less. And human nature has not changed just because we’ve left Earth behind. Many of the romances being with someone discovering that their power is greater or different than they thought, and that they need to combine their talents with someone they never expected. The sparks are physical and psychic (and very hot)

This series also deserves an award for introduction of the best new pet ever. The creatures that the colonists label “dust bunnies” are cute predators with a cat’s sense of the absurd and the intelligence to communicate with the people they adopt and protect. They are adorable and deadly. And every reader wants one.

3rd Annual SFR Galaxy Awards: Round Three by Laurie A. Green

Best Edge of Your Seat Mercenary Heroine

Fortune's Pawn by Rachel Bach

The heroine, Devi Morris, is Paradoxian by birth, and a professional mercenary by trade, who’s driven to achieve her ultimate goal. The man in her life and their on-again, off-again, just-in-it-for-the-minute relationship is no match for her ambitions. She's independent, career-oriented and beyond the influence of mere male persuasion. Proposal of marriage? Pshaw! Not when the adventure of a lifetime is calling. She's determined to win a security position on a ship called the Glorious Fool, a sought after gig that's led many a talented merc to graduate to the ultimate prize of mercdom—being accepted into ranks of the elite Devastators. Or else to meet a horrible, untimely death. More typically, the latter. But the MC isn't intimidated by the mere threat of death. Little does she know what lies ahead! 

The hero is Rupert Charkov. I didn't know what to make of him at first. He doesn't seem your typical hero material and he isn't employed in your typical hero's job. He's a...well...he's a cook. Yes. A cook. Oh, and he babysits the captain's daughter, too. Okay, he's got those classic good looks, he's an all-around nice guy to the heroine and he does have the ponytail thing going on, but....yeah. He's a cook.

This story features some truly alien aliens. I love me some Xith' cal! Devi's first introduction to the aggressive, killing-machine alien species is actually quite humorous. Her second encounter is anything but. The Xith' cal are a bit like the Alien franchise bad boys, but bigger, badder, meaner, lizardy-er and much more mobile. The stuff of pizza-driven nightmares. Can anything be badder or more deadly than the Xith' cal, you ask? Surprise! Yes. There is one thing. The cook. Wait! Seriously? Yes. The cook.

From Devi's deft handling of chauvinistic peers and overbearing superiors to the spine-tingling encounters with things that go bump, boom, and squish in the night, Fortune's Pawn was a rollicking, suspenseful adventure, and a superb introduction to both Devi Morris and the wild and strange universe she lives in. The romantic conflict between Devi and Rupert was beautifully developed, and author Rachel Bach crowned it all with an angsty surprise twist at the end that had me scrambling to order book two. 

Most Outstanding Alien Conspiracy

Honor's Knight by Rachel Bach

The second book of the Paradox Series took some of the mysterious elements in Fortune’s Pawn and expanded them exponentially. I had a feeling that there were big conspiracies swimming just beneath the dark surface in the first book, and in Honor’s Knight they begin to surface and develop. First there’s a monstrous threat that can’t be seen, touched or fought, but is powerful enough to destroy planets and bend time. Add then there’s the wonder surrounding the elusive Lelgis species, their huge and beautiful fish-ships, and their powerful, all-knowing, void-dwelling queens. And perhaps strangest of all, the “shields” used by the (supposed) good guys, a powerful but insane entity named Maat and Maat’s “daughters.” 

Honor’s Knight is almost non-stop action and tests Devi and her partner—a custom mech suit she named Lady Grey—to the limits. Devi is on the run from just about everyone, human and alien alike, and especially from Rupert. She survives Lelgis attacks, Xithcal gladiator games, and a knock-down, drag-out brawl with Rupert. The alien threat continues to grow until it seems there is nowhere Devi can go to be safe and no one she can trust. Except, perhaps, Rupert. If she dares.

Most Satisfying Trilogy Conclusion

Heaven's Queen by Rachel Bach

By book three of the Paradox Series, Devi is in so deep she seems utterly doomed. Everyone and everything is trying to hunt her down, both for the deadly secret she carries and the grave threat she poses. The situation keeps going from bad to worse to impossible, until it seems there is no escape for her but death. Her only true ally, Rupert, is captured and slated for execution…or worse. But giving up isn’t in Devi’s DNA. She still manages to save the universe (literally) and Rupert in spite of insurmountable odds. She simply never gives up. 

Devi’s reward is to finally accomplish what she set out to do, although she pays a heavy toll to achieve it. Heaven’s Queen puts a positive wrap and a HEA on the end game, but still leaves the door open for more adventures in Devi’s future.

Exceptional Story Elements

Spark Rising by Kate Corcino

Spark Rising is a fresh, imaginative tale that takes place in a recovering post-apocalyptic Southwest US where select humans have been bred for the ability to generate power by interacting with Dust, a mysterious substance left behind when a cataclysm destroyed all fossil fuels on Earth centuries before. These special individuals are called Sparks, but their level of power and control can vary. The heroine, Lena, is an extremely talented--and very dangerous--renegade Spark who lives "off the grid" and avoids capture by those who control her zone. She's been in hiding or on the run for most of her life, ever since her parents reported her dead as a young girl in order to protect her from their malicious leaders. 

The hero, Alex Reyes, is an agent sent to find and recover Lena to deliver to those in power, but he's also secretly working as an underground activist. When Alex first confronts Lena he immediately recognizes—and is affected by—her rare and potent abilities, and knows he must get her to safety before she falls into the hands of those who would use and destroy her. Alex recognizes that this is a game-changer. Lena could change the future—for everyone. But getting the wary and untrusting Lena to accept him as an ally may be impossible. 

The intricate world building in Spark Rising is a real delight, as are the high stakes of the plot and lush descriptions. But perhaps the most spellbinding is how the abilities of the two main characters create a compelling romantic conflict that crackles with tension and energy. Spark Rising is the first book in the very promising Progenitor Saga.

Most Entertaining Motion Picture with SFR Elements

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY

Marvel Studios

Directed by James Gunn

Screenplay by James Gunn and Nicole Perlman

Starring Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana and Vin Diesel

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY is a Science Fiction romp with romantic elements that makes for a fun, feel-good Sci-Fi celebration. The film took great strides in bringing the entertainment value of quality Science Fiction back to the forefront of the American consumer's mind, with its huge scopey sets, interesting characters, action-packed storyline and nostalgic sound track. GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY is an engaging, energetic cinematic experience.