It's always a little bittersweet to come to the end of a series, especially if its one in which you grew truly fond of the characters. Plus, the end of a series is where all of the questions are answered and the open story-lines are tied up in some fashion, so the final book in a series can in many cases make or break the entire series. Getting the endings right is at least as important as getting the beginnings right. Did Checkmate give a great ending to a great series? Yes, yes it did.
The Grounds Warden Re-release
I've determined to re-release The Grounds Warden in the new format. No longer do you have to go to the page, pay, and download the PDF. Instead, you can just click here, and you will be taken directly to the page with the whole story. So if you haven't read The Grounds Warden before, I encourage you to head over and give it a read. You can find a lot more details on it in some of my older posts. This is actually one of the first stories that I wrote on which I received more than just "that's nice" kind of feedback, and I was able to turn it into something that I think is quite interesting.
The Ringed Castle Review
Honestly, I'm not even quite sure where to begin reviewing this book (it probably doesn't help that I started reading this series years ago, long before I started consistently reviewing books on this website). I will do a full series review after reviewing Checkmate, but let's focus for now on The Ringed Castle. To put it in as few of words as possible, I loved everything about this book, and not just because my fiancee bought the series for me. It's sort of like what would happen if you took a highly educated Jack Sparrow, and plopped him into the middle of Lord of the Rings level writing, and set the entire thing to the beat of 16th century Russia, but that doesn't even begin to do it justice.
Thicker Than Blood
With the end of the month falling on a day when I normally would write a post, I couldn't resist taking the opportunity to talk about Blood Magic's third episode. Although I will do my best to keep spoilers out of this post, if you haven't yet read Thicker Than Blood, I highly recommend heading over to the season 1 page and reading the episode, and any other episodes you haven't yet read. For now, let's assume that you've done that, and talk a little bit about episode three.
The Traveler's Gate Trilogy Review
In a way, you're getting three reviews in one this week, because I'm going to be reviewing the whole Traveler's Gate trilogy in this post, rather than doing a single post per book. That's mostly because I happened to read them all in a single book, but also because I think that's how they're best presented: none are really so long or so contained that they need or should stand on their own. And how I wish that I could have given this three and a half stars, because that's more accurately how I'd rate it. Let's get into why.
Blood Magic Episode 3 Preview
I hope that you've all been enjoying the second Blood Magic episode: Here There Be Dragons? While you've been hopefully reading the second episode, and eagerly awaiting the third episode, I've been working hard to write the third episode. That's right; this month's episode is the first one that I hadn't pre-written before going into … Continue reading Blood Magic Episode 3 Preview
Uncrowned Review
This is our last review of a Cradle book, at least for awhile, since there aren't any more currently written. However, this is by no means the last book in the series, so I sincerely hope that Will Wight will be returning to finish the series soon. As amusing as it would be to be able to say that I read this book both first and last in the series, that mild amusement would not come close to balancing out the disappointment of not being able to find out how the series ultimately ends.
Lost in Translation
No, I'm not above using cliche titles, when they serve me. Because I'm so very fond of stirring up controversy, I'm going to talk about something that divides more people than religion, politics, or the Great Pumpkin: movie/book adaptations. Fair warning: we're going to talk about some big name franchises, including Harry Potter, Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, Star Trek, Jurassic Park, and others, so if you don't want to risk potential spoilers from either the book or movie versions of any of these, you might not want to read this post. Otherwise, let's mire ourselves in controversy.
Underlord Review
I came off of reading Ghostwater especially eager for this sequel, Underlord. Ghostwater provided a substantial amount of imaginative information about the deeper intricacies of the magic system, and I was hopeful that Underlord would give us the chance to see that new knowledge applied. Instead, Underlord gave us insight in an entirely different direction, involving the characters (and by extension us) in the fringes of world-wide political intrigue.
Where’s the Science Fiction?
Broadly, I classify my writing as speculative fiction, which includes the genres that are typically shelves under both the fantasy, and science fiction categories. Yet, you will notice that the majority of my works, both published so far on the site, and in progress, fall in the fantasy genre. Considering that my "real" job involves working with advanced, experimental satellites, that might seem somewhat counter-intuitive, and indeed I've gotten a lot of questions recently about why I don't write more science fiction. So, I've decided to try to provide an answer, other than the fact that I'm not nearly as skilled or imaginative, to why I'm not the next Isaac Asimov.
IGC Publishing 