NEWS: David Gemmell Legend Award Winners Announced

This past weekend saw the world of fantasy collide in London as luminaries from all aspects of the publishing industry mingled with fans at the prestigious Magic Circle in the West End to see some popularly newly crowned royalty at the third award ceremony for the David Gemmell Legend Award, named after the much missed genre author who passed in 2007.

Whilst not all the winners were in attendance, the evening’s event (hosted by Stan and Anne Nicholls) continued in the tradition of the previous years to help promote the best that the genre has to offer as well as reward the fans with the chance to meet and greet the authors and artists that they voted for in their thousands.

According to reports, emotions ran high and with sterling performances from James Barclay (who’s reading from Shield of Thunder kept the audience in rapture) was also greeted with cheers as well as humour during the auctioning of the lots this year organised by Gollancz’ Gillian Redfearn and a great time was had by all. Yet the key to the nights events were the big winners, those who’d won each of the three nomination categories.


For the Morning star Best Newcomer Award (presented by Juliet McKenna) the winner was Darius Hinks for his novel Warrior Priest (reviewed here) published by Black Library. On hearing of his nomination Darius said that it was “…an honour to even be nominated for the Morningstar award…”


Whereas the winner for the Ravenheart Award for Best Cover Artist (presented by Anne Sudworth) was taken by Icelandic Artist olof Erla Einarsdottir for the cover of Power and Majesty by Tansy Rayner Roberts published by Harper Collins Australia who was “… thrilled to be among the top in this incredible pool of talent.”





The final award of the night (and the most coveted, the Legend Award for Best Novel which was crafted by Simon Fearnhamm of Raven Armoury) was presented by last year’s winner Graham McNeill and went to Brandon Sanderson for his novel Way of Kings (reviewed here) who said that the award “… means a lot to me...” as it was fan nominated.

Congratulations to the winners and long may fantasy reign supreme.