The 2012 Hugo Awards nominations are out, and amongst the typical gritty fantasy and zombie apocalypse novels are Jo Walton's Among Others, which sounds genuinely intriguing.

Part the second: while its length allows George R. R. Martin to delve deeply into some of his characters, others remain under developed or underutilized in the lengthy epic that is A Song of Ice and Fire.

Let it suffice to say that perhaps Martin doesn't always do gritty realism as well as it could be done (but at times he does), but it is a cut – a detailed, bloody one from groin to collarbone that causes bowels and other assorted entrails to fall out – above the standard bookshelf fare when it comes to quote-unquote realistic fantasy.