Last year, we began publishing a series of short stories called Blood Magic here on IGC Publishing. I've written extensively about why and how I chose to do this, and the benefits it has provided me from a writing perspective, but there are things that I would like to do better, and things that I would change about how the publishing was executed if I had to do it over again. Fortunately, as I discussed in our announcement for the second season, I've given myself the opportunity to do just that.
Blog
Oathbringer Review
If you’ve been following along over the past few reviews, you probably won’t be surprised by another rave review for a Stormlight book. To be honest, I probably have a somewhat unhealthy obsessions with these books. There are plenty of books that I enjoy, and stories that I will happily reread and have a new experience with each time, but my experience with this series is on a different level. Maybe it’s the philosophical questions it confronts, or maybe it’s the incredibly imaginative and vividly detailed world, or maybe it’s the compellingly flawed, fascinating, and terribly relatable characters. Whatever the case, Oathbringer continues to be, to my mind, the gold standard for what epic fantasy ought to be.
Good Reading
Despite the fact that I run a website, and encourage people to share said website on social media platforms and with their friends, families, and enemies, I personally live under a bit of a digital rock. Though that's really an understatement - it's probably a digital boulder - but I couldn't resist putting in that subtle "bit" pun. Even though I know that engaging on social media is among the best ways for me to continue growing the audience for IGC Publishing, I just haven't been able to bring myself to do it.
Sententia Discussion Series 1: Language
Orwell, author of 1984, wrote an essay decrying the decay of the English language. Specifically, he lamented that when most people go to write or converse, they rely on stock phrases which they stich together into different patterns, rather than developing original content.
The Fall of Shannara Series Review
Supposedly, that's the end of Shannara. Terry Brooks claims that The Last Druid was the latest he intends to go in the in-world timeline. This series was supposed to radically alter the Four Lands forever, and I was expecting something big. The first couple of books were promising, with the Skaar invasion and the fall of the current Druid Order (the Fifth?); the Skaar were such a compelling, dominant force that it seemed certain that they were going to be in the Four Lands to stay.
Lengths and Forms
I've noticed something about my writing recently, a struggle that I've been having but have not fully acknowledged. The problem is this: I'm too focused on the form of the words on the page.
The Last Druid Review
As I mentioned in my other Fall of Shannara reviews, it is difficult to separate out a single book to discuss it when that book is a part of a series that is part of a saga stretching over decades of real world time and dozens of installments, but I will do my best. This book, quite frankly, had enormous shoes to fill: it had to be a good book in and of itself, it had to be a satisfying conclusion to the Fall of Shannara series, and it had to be a pleasing ending to the entire Shannara series. Next week, we'll do a review that covers how it did in the latter two categories, but I will do my best in this post to constrain myself to looking just at this piece.
Pride
One of these days, I intend to write an essay on the origin and nature of morality. It is a topic that has fascinated people throughout history, and arguably one that underpins some of the most remarkable accomplishments of this species. Anything with such a lengthy history that has already been tackled by so many other people is full of risk - what peculiar hubris is it to think that I have anything original to contribute to such a supersaturated field? - so for now I continue to think and ponder, without putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard on the broader topic. Yet that does not stop me from occasionally exploring a subset of that larger framework, as I intend to do here.
Arcanum Unbounded Review
If you've been following along for the past few weeks, you know that I've been rereading the existing books in the Stormlight Archive before I read the newly released Rhythm of War, which I've been eagerly anticipating since I finished Oathbringer for the first time back when it came out. When I finished Words of Radiance, I realized that I should probably also read Edgedancer, which is a Stormlight novella, and part of Arcanum Unbounded. Since I haven't posted reviews for any of these stories before, it seemed worthwhile to also post about them here on the site.
The Frankenstory
Between working on Blood Magic and Fo'Fonas, which while very different are both larger-scale projects than anything I've attempted before, I'd like to think that I've been getting a lot better at building characters and plots. Certainly Blood Magic has forced me to stretch in this respect. Since I've been working a lot on them, I decided that I needed another, newer project to keep my writing fresh, since I find that if I sink too much into one or two projects I start to get too deep into the world and the storytelling suffers as a result.
