Independent Literary Awards - Speculative Fiction

I've mentioned this in passing a few times, but here's a bit more. I'll be judging the Independent Literary Awards for Speculative Fiction, which is an award for authors voted on solely by bloggers. This has been a fun process so far and now we're to the point where we've narrowed the field down to a short list of 5.

The Short list for the 2010 Independent Literary Awards for Speculative Fiction are the following:

Monsters of Men [US] [UK] - Patrick Ness
How to Live Safely in a Science Fiction Universe [US] [UK] - Charles Yu
Dante's Journey [US] [UK] - JC Marino (my review)
The Passage [US] [UK] - Justin Cronin
Kraken [US] [UK] - China Mieville

I think this is a well-rounded list especially looking at how broad the Speculative Fiction category is. This top 5 includes YA, Science Fiction, Small Press, and some big names for the year.

I've read two so far (Monsters of Men and Dante's Journey) and well on my way with Kraken. The reading period is over at the end of this month and then we'll pick our winner from there.