The Sword and Laser discussion

Round 3 has begun!

https://challonge.com/b9vf0sp2


Voting runs from March 8th-14th 11:59 PM EST

Sword Bracket
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Match 1:

(1) Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree

vs.

(12) The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty

Vote Here


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Laser Bracket
---------------------------------

Match 2:

(2) Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky

vs.

(3) The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz


Vote Here

Congrats to City of Brass for making it this far, but....

Anyway, I'm thinking the final will be as predicted.

You make it sound like City of Brass is neither an awesome, or extremely popular book, when it is both!

The main reasons I suspect the coffee book will beat it anyway are that it’s got a lot of recent buzz, it was the most nominated book, and I suspect a bunch of folk here have long since read City of Brass following the wonderful author interview, and may be interested in something new.

But I voted for Brass anyway, because that book is everything I love.

I voted for Brass sheerly out of anti-Cozy sentiment :-D

Haaaa, I have not read it and was only reacting to the #12 seed!

But really both fantasy choices are outside my usual wheelhouse as I'm so heavily oriented to the SF side. Yet Legends & Lattes really pulled off a good story. Will probably put City of Brass on the TBR. Too much hard SF is dystopian these days, and not "light dystopia" like Niven's A Gift From Earth, but full on "the universe is out to exterminate your species" like most Alastair Reynolds.

My head says team Orc will win, but my heart is saying Brass so that is another vote for team Brass :-)

Shucks I was hoping the Spare Man would beat out The Terraformers.

The only one of the semi-finalists I haven’t yet read is The Terraformers, which seems like an underdog but maybe it’ll ride to victory on the arachnophobia vote. If Children of Time wins I’ll probably read Children of Memory, the third part of the Uplift trilogy.
Unusually, the Sword bracket isn’t really exciting for me - both the books were a solid “meh” for me. City of Brass started out promising but then got bogged down once they reached the actual city. Legends and Lattes was a fun quick read but I’m already forgetting it. So I’m hoping for a Laser victory!

Hoping for Terraformers to win!

I enjoyed both Children of Time and City of Brass. Both solid reads.

I think Legends & Lattes will win. But I did really like the only Annalee Newitz book that I've read.

I did read their book Autonomous.

So overall their are no bad choices left, for me.

This is obviously an unpopular sentiment, but I'm abstaining from the Fantasy bracket, because of all the books that started, those were the two I was least interested in.
I've learned from reading Becky Chambers that while I'm all for optimistic reads, Cozy is not my style. And if I'm going to read a fantasy taking place in the Middle East, I'd rather read a Middle Eastern author.
If either of them turn out to be great books though, I'll happily eat my hat.

Rooting for the Terraformers, but my non-existent challonge bet would be that L&L and CoT will win, then L&L.

We’ll be wanting hat-eating video in the “What are we nomming” thread, Paul

Just a heads up to folks who are here and not Discord. Tom mentioned that some weirdness just happened with the pole, and a lot of the votes in the fantasy pole just disappeared. They are in contact with Goodreeds, but in the meantime, it doesn’t sound like it would be a bad idea to revote if you read this before the polls close.

It appears the votes for the Sword final were cleared. Please go and check that your vote was counted.

Just to give everyone a chance to make sure their vote is counted, we are going to push the end date back a day until tomorrow at 12am ET.

https://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/2...

Pure “coincidence” and totally “accidental” I’m sure.

Hashtag lizard people.

Nah, it's that Pi Day wants to go on and on.

John (Nevets) wrote: "Just a heads up to folks who are here and not Discord. Tom mentioned that some weirdness just happened with the pole, and a lot of the votes in the fantasy pole just disappeared. They are in contac..."

Thanks to you , and Rob who sent out a message, for flagging that up to the non Discord folks. As one of those people it is appreciated. :-)

Results from Round 3:

View the full bracket: https://challonge.com/b9vf0sp2

NOTE: Due to the voting issues, the number of votes in the Sword semi-final are higher than is typical and therefore may be inaccurate, which of course skews some of the overall tournament statistics. However there isn't much I can do about it, so I'm using the numbers we got.

Tournament Statistics
Total Votes Cast: 3,417
Average Votes Cast: 263
Book With Most Votes: Legends & Lattes - (205 Votes) (Round 3)
Match-up With Most Votes: Legends & Lattes vs. The City of Brass (370 Votes) (Round 3)
Largest Win: The Grace of Kings - (82 Votes) (Round 1)
Smallest Win: Children of Time - (2 Votes) (Round 3)
Average Win: 33 votes

Round 3 Statistics
Total Votes Cast: 658
Average Votes Cast: 329
Book With Most Votes: Legends & Lattes - (205 Votes)
Match-up With Most Votes: Legends & Lattes vs. The City of Brass (370 Votes)
Largest Win: Legends & Lattes - (40 Votes)
Smallest Win: Children of Time - (2 Votes)
Average Win: 21 votes

Sword Bracket
---------------------------------

Match 1:

(1) Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree - 205 Votes

vs.

(12) The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty - 165 Votes


Winner: Legends & Lattes
Total Votes: 370
Margin of Victory: 40


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Laser Bracket
---------------------------------

Match 2:

(2) Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky - 145 Votes

vs.

(3) The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz - 143 Votes


Winner: Children of Time
Total Votes: 288
Margin of Victory: 2

Congratulations to whoever made Hot chocolate for table 4 ! (https://challonge.com/tournaments/125...)

They are still perfect so far, and will remain so if Legends and Lattes takes the final.

However, no matter what happens in the final they will win the prediction bracket since all the other brackets also predicted L&L

Wow, what a nail-biter of a Laser Finals!

I feel like it's my fault Terraformers lost because every book I voted for in this tournament has lost (except Ken Liu in round 1).
By that logic, L&L will definitely win because I am voting for CoT, haha.