Here are the SF/F finalists for this year's LA Book Prize

The Los Angeles Times has announced the finalists for its 45th annual book awards, which includes an award for the best speculative fiction novel of the year. 

This is the fifth year that the award has been handed out from the festival. It used to be called the Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Speculative Fiction, but that moniker seems to have been dropped as of last year.

Here are this year’s finalists:

• The Naming Song by Jedidiah Berry
• The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman
• The Book of Love by Kelly Link
• Absolution by Jeff VanderMeer
• The City in Glass by Nghi Vo

As I noted last year, I really like this awards list because it's nicely varied. I’ve only read one book on this list, Grossman's The Bright Sword (which I really adored), but I have VanderMeer's Absolution on my short list to read. I've also heard excellent things about The Book of Love. Last year's winner was Tananarive Due for The Reformatory, and in 2023, Nicola Griffith won for her novel Spear.

This year's awards will be announced during a ceremony on Friday, April 25 at 7:00PM at USC Campus's Bovard Auditorium.