The Mage's Lantern is pleased to announce Mariana Palova's debut novel, Nation of the Beasts: The Lord of the Sabbath, has been named the Gold winner in the 21st annual Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards.
Foreword Reviews, a book review journal focusing on independently published books, announced the winners of its INDIES Book of the Year Awards on Friday, June 14th. The INDIES recognize the best books published from small, indie, and university presses, as well as self-published authors.
“Being surrounded by the year’s best books from independent writers and publishers is a humbling and invigorating experience that we take seriously at every step of the judging process,” says Managing Editor Michelle Anne Schingler. “As the INDIES progress, our editors, and our librarian and bookseller judges, have the honor and the privilege of discovering and rediscovering independent titles that give us hope about the future of publishing and that, at their best, make us consider the world around us anew.”
Over 2,000 entries were submitted in 56 categories, with Foreword’s editors choosing approximately 10 finalists per genre. Those finalists were then mailed to individual librarians and booksellers charged with picking the Gold, Silver, and Bronze winners.
"I confess that this has all been ... very strange, and that I am overwhelmed," Palova writes on her official blog. "Extremely overwhelmed, so much so that I've refreshed the page again and again to make sure I'm not dreaming. That this is not a weird fantasy of my imagination, because how a newbie writer like me, who has only written a single novel, who is not anyone, who is not famous or actually recognized in the publishing world of my own country, was going to achieve such a thing in a foreign country?"
As the first YA Fantasy novel from Mexico to be published and translated into English, this is a grand welcome for the four-book dark fantasy horror series.