The Golden Tentacle is awarded annually to the debut novel that best fits the criteria of progressive, intelligent and entertaining. The book must be the author's first published work of novel-length fiction in any genre.
The winner receives a £500 prize, a hand-crafted trophy and a bottle of The Kraken's black spiced rum.
Previous winners of the Golden Tentacle include Maurice Broaddus for King Maker (2010) and Kameron Hurley for God's War (2011).
Redemption in Indigo
Karen Lord
Jo Fletcher Books
"Paama, who is a great cook, has returned to her family after 10 years of marriage to the gluttonous Ansige, but two years later he hires the master tracker Kwame to find her. Kwame needs the money to finance his own wanderlust and reluctantly takes the job. These events draw the attention of Chance, the Indigo Lord, one of the powerful spirits called Djombi."
vN
Madeline Ashby
Angry Robot
"Amy Peterson is a von Neumann machine, a self-replicating humanoid robot. For the past five years, she has been grown slowly as part of a mixed organic/synthetic family. She knows very little about her android mother's past, so when her grandmother arrives and attacks her mother, little Amy wastes no time: she eats her alive. Now she carries her malfunctioning granny as a partition on her memory drive, and she's learning impossible things about her history."
The Panopticon
Jenni Fagan
William Heinemann
"Anais Hendricks, fifteen, is in the back of a police car, headed for the Panopticon, a home for chronic young offenders.She can't remember the events that led her here, but across town a policewoman lies in a coma and there is blood on Anais's school uniform."
Seraphina
Rachel Hartman
Doubleday Childrens
"When a member of the royal family is murdered, and the crime appears to have been committed by a dragon the peace between both worlds is seriously threatened... Into this comes Seraphina, a gifted musician who joins the royal court as the assistant to the court composer. She is soon drawn into the murder investigation and, as she uncovers hints of a sinister plot to destroy the peace in Goredd for good, finds herself caught desperately in the middle of the tension."
The City's Son
Tom Pollock
Jo Fletcher Books
"Expelled from school, betrayed by her best friend and virtually ignored by her dad, who's never recovered from the death of her mum, Beth Bradley retreats to the sanctuary of the streets, looking for a new home. What she finds is Filius Viae, the ragged and cocky crown prince of London, who opens her eyes to the place she's never truly seen."
