The seventh annual Dragon Awards was held at Atlanta’s Dragon Con on Sunday, with another 15 winners being chosen from the ranks of science fiction and fantasy novels, films, TV series, comics, and games. According to official statistics, more than 7,000 fans cast their ballots in the awards, which are decided via an online poll.
The Dragon Award for Best Science Fiction Novel went to Leviathan Falls, an entry in James S. A. Corey’s series The Expanse; this marks the second Dragon for the series, as an earlier instalment — Babylon’s Ashes — won in 2017. Holly Black’s Book of Night was named Best Fantasy Novel, while Chuck Wendig’s The Book of Accidents took the Best Horror Novel category; both of these authors are first-time winners at the Dragons.
Other newcomers amongst the winners are Sarah Hollowell (who won the Best Young Adult/Middle Grade Novel category with A Dark and Starless Forest) and genre stalwart Mercedes Lackey (whose novel The Silver Bullets of Annie Oakley took the prize for Best Alternate History). Returning to familiar faces, A Call to Insurrection by David Weber, Timothy Zahn and Thomas Pope was named Best Military Science Fiction of Fantasy Novel; the same three authors had previously won in 2019 for their book A Call to Vengeance. Zahn also won in the Best Media Tie-In Novel category with Thrawn: Ascendency: Lesser Evil, an instalment in a popular Star Wars spin-off series that also furnished a winner in 2019 and a runner-up in 2021.
Stranger Things won in the television category, while Dune took the Best Movie prize. The success of the Dune film, based on the much-loved novel by Frank Herbert, may also be reflected in the Best Graphic Novel category, where the winner was Dune: House Atreides Volume 2 — a comic tie-in by Brian Herbert, Kevin J. Anderson, and Dev Pramanik. The award for ongoing comic series, meanwhile, was won by Kieron Gillen and Mark Brooks’ Immortal X-Men.
In the games categories, the juggernaut that is Elden Ring took the prize for Best PC/Console Game, while Diablo Immortal won in the mobile category. Star Wars Outer Rim: Unfinished Business was named Best Board Game, while the Dragon Award for Best Miniatures/Collectable Card/Role-Playing Game went to Adventures in the Forgotten Realms — a crossover between Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons, marking Magic‘s fourth victory in the category.
As a final note, the year saw yet another of the oddities that have long plagued the Dragon Awards. Whether it is Victor LaValle being misgendered as “Victoria LaValle” in 2017 or Rebecca Roanhorse’s fantasy novel Black Sun being misfiled in the Best Science Fiction category in 2021, seldom have the awards taken place without some sort of eyebrow-raising slip-up. This year is no exception, as the runners-up for Best Alternate History Novel include The King’s Daughter by the late Vonda N. McIntyre — despite the fact that the book in question was originally published under the title The Moon and the Sun in 1997, and thereby misses the eligibility period by about a quarter of a century. Oops.
