The winners of the 2016 Planetary Awards have been announced.

The winning short story was “Athan and the Priestess” from the collection Thune’s Vision by Schuyler Hernstrom. I’ve purchased a copy, and I’ll review it once I’ve read the entire book. I’ve only read the winning story so far, but I enjoyed it. I found it very Conan-esque, so if you enjoyed Conan stories or movies in the past, I think you might like it as well.

The winning novel was Swan Knight’s Son by John C Wright. I haven’t read it, so if you have, feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts.

A final thought on this year’s awards: although the number of voters was up this year, the ratio of bloggers who voted to bloggers who were aware of the award was again very low. I never imagined that asking book bloggers to blog about books (and in the process, possibly gain some new readers) would be a hard sell. The only theory I can come up with is that people are gun-shy after reading about Hugo-related hostility. Speculation is welcome in the comments section.