It’s that time of the year again, when the Dragon Awards randomly decide to drop their finalists with no fanfare whatsoever.
For those who are new here, what are the Dragon Awards? They are a popular vote SFF award handed out at Dragon Con, a large SFF media con in Atlanta, Georgia. They are in their tenth year now and have a chequered history, moving from participation trophy for puppies and Kindle Unlimited writers in the early years to to award honouring broadly popular SFF works in more recent years, which is what they were intended to be in the first place.
The 2026 Dragon Award finalists may be found here. And for my analyses of the past ten years of Dragon Awards, go here. In other awards new, the finalists for the 2026 World Fantasy Awards have also been announced and may be found here.
The World Fantasy finalists look good, but I have never done detailed analyses of the World Fantasy Award finalists and I won’t start now, if only because these posts are a lot of work.
However, Camestros Felapton, Doris V. Sutherland and I have been covering the saga of the Dragon Awards since their inception and are seemingly cursed to analyse them for as long as they exist, so let’s delve into the individual categories:
Best Science Fiction Novel
The finalists for the 2026 Dragon Award for best science fiction novel are a bunch of very popular novels by very popular writers, which is exactly what the Dragon Award was supposed to honour. We also have a few finalists that will make puppies cry in the mix, which is a bonus.
John Scalzi has been nominated in this category several times and won twice. This year, he is nominated for The Shattering Peace, the latest in his Old Man’s War series. The series as a whole is also a Hugo finalist this year.
Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck, writing as James S.A. Corey, also have multiple Dragon Award nominations and wins under their belts. This year, they are nominated for The Faith of Beasts, the second book in their Captive’s War series.
Ann Leckie was a Dragon Award finalist in its very first year. This year, she is nominated for Radiant Star. Coincidentally, this was one of my nominations.
I haven’t read Slow Gods by Claire North, but it got a lot of positive buzz, though this one strikes me more as a Clarke Award than a Dragon Award candidate.
I also haven’t read Operation Bounce House by Matt Dinniman. However, I know that Matt Dinniman’s Dungeon Crawler Carl series is extremely popular and a book from that series also won the Dragon Award in this category last year. I tried to read the first Dungeon Crawler Carl book, but I have to admit that Matt Dinniman’s books just don’t work for me. Maybe I will enjoy Operation Bounce House more, since it’s a standalone not connected to the Dungeon Crawler Carl series and doesn’t have the LitRPG trappings that annoyed me so much. However, Matt Dinniman is exactly the sort of author the Dragon Awards are for, someone who has a huge fanbase, but whose work isn’t necessarily suited to the other genre awards. Though the reissue of Dungeon Crawler Carl (the book was originally self-published) actually made the Clarke Award ballot this year to the surprise and bafflement of pretty much everybody, since it’s very much not a Clarke Award book.
I haven’t read God’s Junk Drawer by Peter Clines and to me, this is the most unexpected finalist in this category, though upon second thought, it isn’t that unexpected, because Peter Clines’ Ex-Heroes series and his tie-in work are the sort of thing that appeal to Dragon Award voter. Coincidentally, I just realised that I had Peter Clines mixed up with Peter James, the distinguished British crime fiction writer who also writes SFF and horror on occasion.
Diversity count: 2 women, 5 men (James S.A. Corey is two people), 1 international writer, 1 writer of colour
Best Fantasy Novel
There are a few more surprises in this category, but once again we have a lot of broadly popular writers here.
Martha Wells is not only a great writer, but also hugely popular these days for her Murderbot Diaries series. This year, she is nominated for the Dragon Award for her novel Queen Demon. The previous novel in the series Witch King won in this category in 2023. I think I nominated this novel, but I’m not one hundred percent sure.
Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files books are exactly the sort of series the Dragon Awards were made for, hugely popular and good, but not really that suitable for the Hugos and Nebulas, because the individual books don’t stand alone all that well. Of course, the Hugos now have a Best Series category, but Hugo voters don’t seem to like The Dresden Files very much. However, Jim Butcher has been a Dragon Award finalist several times and is also a regular at Dragon Con. This year, he is nominated for Twelve Months, the latest Harry Dresden novel
Sherrilyn Kenyon is both a somewhat unexpected Dragon Awards finalist as well as a exactly the sort of writer the Dragons were made for. Just like Jim Butcher, Sherrilyn Kenyon came up during the urban fantasy and paranormal romance boom of the early 2000s. Her Dark Hunters series was hugely popular at the time and probably outsold most Hugo finalists of the era. However, the SFF community of the time studiously ignored the urban fantasy and paranormal romance writers, mostly women, even though they were selling millions.
At the time, now twenty years ago, I burned out badly on science fiction after finishing my MA thesis and found refuge in the urban fantasy and paranormal romance novels of the era. As a result, I read a lot of them, including several books by Sherrilyn Kenyon. However, as time went on, the urban fantasy and paranorma romance boom faded and I moved on to other subgenres. As a result, I haven’t really thought about Sherrilyn Kenyon in years except as someone I used to read and enjoy twenty years ago. So I was surprised to see her on the Dragon Ballot with Hell to Pay, though in retrospect Sherrilyn Kenyon is exactly the sort of writer the Dragons are for, very popular but mostly ignored by other genre awards. Hell to Pay is the start of a new series about the son of the devil who is exiled to Earth, where he solves crimes, which sounds right up my alley actually. So congrats to the Dragon Awards for actually making me find a book I might enjoy.
Marie Lu is a very popular author mainly of YA fantasy. She is nominated for Red City, an (adult) urban fantasy novel set in an alternate Los Angeles. I haven’t read the book yet, but it did get quite a bit of buzz. It also sounds like something I might enjoy.
Former puppy-in-chief Larry Correia has several Dragon Award nominations and wins under his belt, all of them in the fantasy category. He also has a big fanbase and is apparently a Dragon Con regular, so I’m not surprised to see him on the Dragon Ballot again. His nominated novel Academy of Outcasts is the first in a new series and is billed as a Dungeons & Dragons inspired fantasy about a guy who desperately wants to go to magic school. Definitely not a book for me, but clearly for lots of other people.
The Lost Reliquary by Lyndsay Ely is the “What the hell is this?” finalist in this category, since I don’t recall ever having heard of the author or her novel before. Some googling revealed that Lyndsay Ely has written a weird west novel as well as some media tie-ins. The Lost Reliquary is the first in a dark fantasy series and has been compared to Gideon the Ninth by Tamsin Muir and Godkiller by Hannah Kaner, which is high praise indeed.
The Best Fantasy Novel category at the Dragon Awards is usually strongly dominated by epic fantasy. But interestingly, this year’s Dragon Awards finalists in the Best Fantasy category are evenly split between epic and urban fantasy. So does this mean that urban fantasy is about to make a comeback?
Diversity count: 4 women, 2 men, 2 writers of colour
Best Young Adult/Middle Grade Novel
This is a category where I haven’t read a single finalist and am not familiar with several of them, but then I’m very much not the target audience for YA and middle grade books.
Delilah S. Dawson is one author in this category I have heard of. She is nominated for Ride or Die, a middle grade horror novel about some kids hanging out in a scary amusement park by night.
I have also heard of The Executioners Three by Susan Dennard, largely because it has such a great title. Though the books isn’t about three executioners, but it’s a 1990s set teen horror mystery about spooky going-ons in a small town. I do sense a pattern for somewhat retro spooky small town teen stories. Might be the influence of Stranger Things making itself felt.
Sky on Fire by E.K. Johnston is billed as a fast-paced queer space opera that combines Arthurian myth and the history of North Atlantic fisheries, which sounds really cool actually.
Hazelthorn by C.G. Drews is billed as a gorgeously gothic queer YA horror novel, which sounds really cool as well.
Make Me a Monster by Kalynn Bayron is billed as a horror romance which also offers a twist on Frankenstein and sounds something that might be fun.
I have never heard of Queen of Faces by Petra Lord, but apparently it was a number 1 New York Times bestseller. It’s about a girl stuck in a boy’s body who goes to magic school, for of course she does, and has to become an assassin. Not for me, but I can see how it would appeal to others.
All in all, this is an interesting range of very different novels. It’s also notable that there are no less than three LGBTQ novels nominated in this category.
Diversity count: 5 women, 1 non-binary, 2 authors of colour, 1 international author
Best Alternate History Novel
This category is a holdover from the early days of the Dragon Awards when there were lots of separate categories for every subgenre under the sun, unless it was urban fantasy or paranormal romance, which had to compete with epic fantasy in the Best Fantasy category.
As for why Best Alternate History survived, while the likes of Best Military Science Fiction or Best Postapocalyptic Novel rode off into the sunset years ago, I suspect it’s out of deference for the late Eric Flint, who was instrumental in getting the Dragon Awards off the ground and who made his name with alternate history.
Harry Turtledove is a frequent finalist and winner in this category. This year, he is nominated for Powerless. It’s a story about a person attempting to resist in a US that’s a Communist dictatorship.
S.M. Stirling is another frequent finalist in this category. This year, he is nominated for The Winds of Fate.
John Birmingham is an author I mainly associate with his space opera series The Cruel Stars, though he apparently also writes alternate history. He is nominated for World War 3.2, which does what it says on the tin and is about the Cold War turning hot.
No Man’s Land by Richard K. Morgan is apparently a novel about a WWI veteran killing fae and rescuing kidnapped children in an alternate Britain. This one seems to be borderline alternate history, but I guess it fits in this category.
The Unnecessary War by Brian C. Thompson is actually alternate history, where WWII begins – completely unnecessarily – almost a year early. I’ve never heard of author nor book before, but Thompson apparently specialises in WWII alternate history, inspired by his WWII veteran great-uncle. Very much not for me, but clearly for someone.
A Resistance of Witches by Morgan Ryan is another book I’ve never heard of. It’s a WWII with magic story about Nazi witches infiltrating a magic school. Another one that’s not for me, because I dislike both WWII settings and magic schools and would be happy never to have to read about either again.
Also, with millennia of history to choose from, why are five of six nominated novels set in the the twentieth century? Only the S.K. Stirling book is set in Roman times, everything else is WWI, WWII or Cold War. It’s just so boring.
Diversity count: 1 woman, 5 men, 1 international author, 3 indie/small press books
Best Horror Novel
Unlike best alternate history, which mostly consists of books that aren’t for me, this category actually looks really good. I also am familiar with all of the authors and books.
The Bewitching by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and The Possession of Alba Díaz by Isabel Cañas are two great novels and I’m thrilled to see them on the ballot. These nominations also prove that 2026 is a great year for Mexican set horror by woman writers.
For some reason, I had Rachel Harrison mixed up with Kim Harrison, author of the Rachel Morgan urban fantasy series. However, Rachel Harrison is a horror writer and has been a Stoker Award finalist. Her nominated novel Play Nice is a haunted house story.
It Was Her House First by Cherie Priest is another haunted house novel. Cherie Priest has multiple Hugo, Nebula, Stoker and Locus Awards nominations under her belt and needs no introduction.
I mainly know Wendy N. Wagner as the editor of Nightmare Magazine, but she’s also a horror writer and her nominated novel Girl in the Creek is also a Stoker finalist this year.
Joe Hill needs no introduction either. He’s the oldest son of Stephen and Tabitha King and an excellent horror writer in his own right. He is nominated for his most recent novel King Sorrow.
Diversity count: 5 women, 1 man, 2 authors of colour, 2 international authors
Best Illustrative Book Cover
This is a newish category in the Dragon Awards and one that is also kind of underwhelming. Not that the nominated covers are bad, but they’re often quite average and also kind of old-fashioned. A lot of the novels whose covers are nominated in this category are also rather obscure, which suggests that the authors or artists have been urging their fans to nominate them, which is perfectly acceptable in the Dragon Awards.
Hemlock & Silver by T. Kingfisher, cover by the author, and Pretenders to the Throne of God by Adrian Tchaikovsky, cover by Joe Wilson, are the best of the bunch.
The Sapphire Heart by the mother and daughters writing team of Sandra Mead Miller, Abigail Bender and Victoria Hungria, does have a very nice cover by Jeff Brown, but it’s also a fairly obscure indie fantasy novel, so I wonder how nominators even found this one.
I enjoy Travis Baldree’s cozy fantasy novel a whole lot, but the US cover for Brigands & Breadknives by Carson Lowmiller doesn’t do a whole lot for me. It looks very old-fashioned, like a fantasy cover from the 1980s. But maybe that’s the appeal.
The Ishtar Deceptation by James L. Cambias, cover by Dominic Harman, is a Baen book. By Baen standards, it’s fine, not overly eye-searing or “What the fuck even is this?”, but it’s also very generic. However, Baen actively campaigns for the Dragon Awards.
I have to admit I had never heard of The Second Death of Locke by V.L. Bovalino, cover by Anna Moshak, before and assumed it was an obscure indie fantasy, but it’s apparently a very popular book that passed me by for some reason. And the cover art itself is very nice, but the author’s name is awkwardly placed and the font used for the author’s name is bad, which initially made me assume this was an indie cover.
Diversity count: 2 women, 4 men. I didn’t check race or nationality, because two of the artists have extremely common names.
Best Comic Book/Graphic Novel
With one exception, this category is full of popular mainstream superhero comics.
DC is represented by Absolute Batman, Absolute Superman and Absolute Wonder Woman, the latter of which is also a Hugo finalist. Marvel is represented by Daredevil and X-Men: Elsewhen, which is the first time in ages I’ve seen an X-Men book nominated for anything. But then, this one is by John Byrne, who did the art for the most famous X-Men story of all time, the Dark Phoenix Saga.
Talking of which, since Marvel is now bringing the X-Men into the Marvel Cinematic Universe and have introduced a new Jean Grey, I wonder whether they will get the Dark Phoenix Saga right on screen on the third try. And considering the previous attempts to do the Dark Phoenix Saga on screen both failed, because Jean’s turn to the dark side just wasn’t given the space the story needed to develop, I suspect the Marvel Cinematic Universe might do a better job, simply because they can let the story develop over several movies. And indeed, I wouldn’t be surprised if Dark Phoenix is their next big saga after Dooomsday and Secret Wars. Also, can we get [actress redacted] in the Black Queen’s black corset, something that neither Famke Jansen nor Sophie Turner ever got to wear. Cause honestly, if Diana Rigg could wear it in the 1960s, why can’t an actress wear it today? I also hope we will see Dark Phoenix roasting the Asparagus People, another thing we never saw on screen that I’ve been waiting to see for more than thirty years now.
Back to the Dragons. The one finalist in this category that’s not a mainstream superhero comic is Something is Killing the Children, a horror comic by James Tynion IV and Werther Dell’Edera. I haven’t read this one, but it sounds interesting.
No diversity count, too many people are needed to make comics.
Best SFF TV Series
As usual with the Dragons, this ballot is basically a list of SFF TV series that came out during the nomination period with little to no surprises.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, The Boys, Alien Earth, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, Pluribus and Widow’s Bay are all popular and well received series and I’m not surprised to see them here. Fallout is a bit of a surprise, because the second season doesn’t seem to have been nearly as popular as the first.
Season 3 of Foundation is also a surprise, because seasons 1 and 2 were not nominated for a Dragon. And while season 3 started off well, it completely – and I mean totally and utterly – fumbled the Mule storyline and also character assassinated one of the best characters in the entire series. Oh, and it ruined potential future seasons, too, because you can’t make a major change without ripple effects down the line. Honestly, I’m almost angry I paid for a month of Apple TV to watch this show.
As for what’s missing, I’m surprised Wonder Man didn’t make the ballot, since it was the best Marvel TV show in ages. But perhaps it’s a little too obscure for Dragon Award nominators.
No diversity count, too many people are needed to make TV shows.
Best SFF Movie
Once again, this is mostly a list of popular SFF movies with some surprise and a couple of notable omissions.
Starting with the omissions, where the fuck is Masters of the Universe? It’s not only my favourite SFF film of 2026, but it’s also the sort of movie that would seem perfect for the Dragons. And it was definitely eligible, though maybe the issue is that it came out on streaming after the nomination deadline and more people seem to have watched it on streaming than in theaters.
Also conspicuous by its absence is Supergirl, which was also definitely eligible, though it came out close to the nomination deadline. It was also a good film, though the usual jerks hated it. Though at least her cousin made the ballot, because James Gunn’s take on Superman is a Dragon Award finalist. Though Superman wasn’t really on my radar, because it came out a year ago shortly after the nomination deadline for the 2025 Dragon Awards.
Guillermo del Toro’s take on Frankenstein is another 2026 Dragon Award finalist (and Hugo finalist) that wasn’t on my radar. It’s actually a good movie, but for some reason I keep forgetting that it exists. I have no idea why.
Predator: Badlands is another movie whose existence I had completely forgotten. I also find that even Dan Trachtenberg makes pretty good Predator movies, I resent him for rejecting a Hugo nomination for Prey – the first time anybody has ever refused a Hugo nomination in Best Dramatic Presentation. As someone who nominated Prey – a fucking Predator movie of all things – that one stung, since it made no sense. However, Trachtenberg is apparently happy to accept a Dragon nomination (and the Dragons supposedly do inform finalists to give them the possibility to withdraw), so screw him.
I’m a bit surprised that Disclosure Day made the Dragon Awards ballot. Yes, it’s a Steven Spielberg movie about aliens, but it also got middling reviews, didn’t do well at the box office and seemed to sink without a trace. Honestly, it seems to me as if Disclosure Day came out thirty years too late. At the height of the X-Files mania of the 1990s, this film would have done much better.
Toy Story 5 is another surprising finalist for me, because I just don’t understand the popularity of the Toy Story movies and have no idea why we needed five of them. Yes, the original Toy Story was the first ever full length CGI animated movie and a technical feat. Yet I never cared about the movie itself. I was way out of the target audience, when it came out, and to me Toy Story is mainly the movie during which my poor cousin, who worked long hours as a chef, fell asleep in the theater, when he tried to do right by his young son and took him to see the film (and that right there is the reason kiddie films keep doing well, because guilt-ridden parents keep taking their kids to see them). At the time, I bought a Woody action figure for my cousin’s son, only to be told that he’d rather have Buzz Lightyear (whom I didn’t buy, because I found him incredibly ugly). And now, it’s thirty-one years later. The kid for whom I bought the Woody figure is thirty-nine, his little brother is thirty, my cousin has been dead for years (he didn’t even make it to fifty, succumbing to addiction and hereditary heart disease), but there’s still a fucking Toy Story movie in theaters and the same stupid Woody action figure I bought thirty-one years ago is still in stores, ditto for the same ugly Buzz Lightyear.
But that personal story isn’t the only thing that bugs me about the Toy Story movies. The usual jerks complained that supposedly no one under forty even knew what Masters of the Universe was, let alone played with the toys. However, I never knew anybody who played with cowboy dolls or Mr. Potato Head or astronaut figures or who had a Little Bo Peep lamp. That’s stuff from the 1950s and 1960s, stuff that the much disliked boomers played with (and American baby boomers at that). It’s nothing that my generation has any connection to nor the millennials who were taken to see the original movie by their weary parents. That’s part of the reason my cousin fell asleep, because nothing on screen meant anything to him. So Masters of the Universe is supposedly bad and underperformed at the box office because it’s nostalgia for the kids of the 1980s, but the boomer nostalgia of Toy Story is somehow deep and meaningful and makes a shit ton of money? I’m sorry, but that makes no sense.
But the Toy Story movies also irk me on another level. All five of the blasted things basically have the same pot: Children are fickle and forget all about their beloved toys, though the toys will continue to love them forever and have their little hearts broken as they are discarded and move from owner to owner, if they’re lucky (and end up in a landfill or waste incinerator, if not). And I’m sorry, but this was never my experience. I never stopped loving toys and I still have a lot of my childhood toys. Yes, I lost a few of them along the way, because they were damaged or I was badgered into giving them away to some other kid (the above mentioned cousin, his twin brother and his kids got several of them, more the pity), but I still have a lot of them and have also replaced some toys that were lost or that I wanted and never had. And yes, to me my toys were alive and sentient, but not in the way that Toy Story characters are. To me, they weren’t toys that happen to be sentient, but living, feeling breathing beings that just happen to look like toys, physical avatars for my imaginary friends.
In the real world, Woody, Jessie, Buzz and the rest of the Toy Story gang wouldn’t be the playthings of a first-grader. They would be in someone’s collection or for sale in a collectibles store like the delightful Fright Zone shop in Masters of the Universe (which has some Major Matt Mason 1960s space toys that probably inspired Buzz Lightyear) or they would be eliciting Ohs and Ahs at Toyplosion. Because you don’t give collectible vintage toys to a young kid.
Back to the Dragons: I enjoyed The Mandalorian and Grogu a lot and thought it was a very sweet film, so I’m glad to see it on the Dragon ballot, especially since it supposedly underperformed at the box office, even though it grossed twice its production budget, which isn’t a flop by my standards, but apparently by the standards of the box office analysts that suck all joy out of movies.
I did not like Andy Weir’s novel Project Hail Mary very much (nor any other of Andy Weir’s novels, since I just don’t care for his work), so I was surprised how much I enjoyed the film adaptation. I guess it’s because Ryan Gosling is just so damn likeable and a very good actor, too.
Finally, we have The Sheep Detectives, a movie that was just delightful, though it did take some liberties with the source material, including changing whodunnit, probably because the ending of Leonie Swan’s novel would be a hardsell for a Hollywood film. And since Masters of the Universe is not on the ballot, this is the finalist I will be voting for.
Also conspicuous by their absence, though definitely eligible, are Obsession and Backrooms, the two indie horror films by extremely young directors that only two months ago were supposed to be the future of cinema. I guess Dragon Award nominators no more care for those films than I do.
No diversity count, too many people are needed to make movies.
Best Digital Game
Once again, I can’t say much about this category, because I’m not a gamer. However, I have heard of all but one of the finalists, which suggests that they must be popular.
No diversity count, too many people are needed to make games.
Best Tabletop Game
As above, I can’t really say much about this category, since I don’t really play tabletop games either. That said, this category tends to get stale with the same games nominated again and again via their latest expansions. I think we’ve seen Magic the Gathering on the ballot every year since there have been Dragon Awards (and they’ve won several times). Warhammer 40000 and Forgotten Realms tend to show up over and over again as well. The remaining three finalists are new, at least to me.
No diversity count, too many people are needed to make games.
***
All in all, this is a pretty good ballot with none of the weirdness (weird categories, miscategorised finalists, dead authors) that characterised the early years of the Dragons. Ten years in, the Dragon Awards finally do what they were supposed to do in the first place, namely honour SFF works with big fanbases that tend to be overlooked by other genre awards.
That said, the Dragons still aren’t great with regard to transparency. Finalist announcements happen randomly and we still don’t know how many nominations and votes have even been cast, let alone do we have detailed nomination and voting data.
But considering how the Dragons started out, they’ve certainly come a long way.
My good pal Camestros Felapton also shares his thoughts on the 2026 Dragon Awards ballot and there is some discussion going on in the comments as well.
I haven’t found any other reactions to the Dragon Award ballot so far, but I will add them, as they show up.
sending...
