Book of the Year 2012 - Winner

Due to an authors concern with the Book of the year Poll this year I have decided that the winner will be chosen by myself instead (these polls seem to attract trouble for some reason). Apologies to anyone who took the time to vote and I would like to thank each and every one of you for all for the support shown over the last month. Next year I plan on creating a shortlist and winner internally to avoid any further difficulties.

It's been a very tough decision to choose just one book, each of the nominated twelve are worthy of the honour - themselves chosen from over 160 book reviews written and published this year on SFBook. In the end through much thought I short-listed them to a final 3:

Choosing a winner from these three books has to be one of the most difficult decisions I've yet taken and there really isn't anything in it at all. Any of these three deserve to be read by many, many people. As Christopher Lambert once said though "there can be only one" and the SFBook of the year 2012 is (drum roll please):

School's Out Forever by Scott K Andrews

In the end the way that School's Out Forever gripped me and stayed with me for ages after I had finished reading made the difference. The story managed to affect me much more emotionally than either of the other two novels and for that reason has been chosen as the winner. Congratulations to Scott for a well deserved win!

Congrats also to Lavie Tidhar and Paul J McAuley for two truly incredible novels.