Via The Star: Malaysian author wins Best Newcomer at British Fantasy Awards. Excerpt and then a comment:
There was Malaysian magic present the British Fantasy Awards yesterday (Sept 25). Selangor-born Zen Cho was voted Best Newcomer for her book, Sorcerer To The Crown, at the awards held at FantasyCon 2016 in Scarborough, England.
The book is set in Regency-era London and sees Zacharias Wythe, England’s first African Sorcerer Royal, attempting to discover why the country’s magical stocks are drying up. Published by Macmillan, it is the first story in Cho’s Sorcerer Royal historical fiction trilogy.
She beat The Long Way To A Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers, The Vagrant Peter Newman, The Heir To The North by Steven Poore, and When The Heavens Fall by Marc Turner. Sorcerer To The Crown was also nominated for Best Fantasy Novel, but that award went to Naomi Novik’s Uprooted.
Cho, 30, currently resides in London and was the first Malaysian to receive the William L Crawford Fantasy Award from the International Association For The Fantastic In The Arts, for her book Spirits Abroad, a collection of short stories within the speculative fiction genre. She was also the editor of Cyberpunk: Malaysia, a collection of science fiction stories published by Fixi Novo.
We are presently in a golden age of global SF and fantasy, and Zen Cho is a big reason for it. Authors from all over the world, many of them women, are incorporating new cultural concepts in genres that had been at risk of what might be called ossified Tolkienism. In both her novel and her stories, Cho is a fresh, distinct voice. I look forward to her next novels and short stories.
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