I debated whether I should do a reflections post for season two at all. Since I started doing the release posts, most of the ground that I would cover in such a post is covered in those, instead, and I don’t want to be redundant. While Blood Magic is a major part of IGC Publishing at this point, making up the bulk of its content, I still want to be able to appeal to and attract readers who may not be interested in that particular series. However, I found after I finished the season two finale that I had enough to say about the season as a whole to make this post worth writing. Plus, I try to keep from putting spoilers to the events of the episode in the release posts, so consider this you spoiler warning: I do not intend to be so careful here.
Blood Magic S2:E3: Strange Lands Re-Release
My main goal, going through revisions having now completed the Pifechan invasion episodes at the end of season two, was to help readers understand the Pifechan mindset, and to make them seem less like a tropy evil empire out to dominate the world.
Child of Light Review
new and non-Shannara, I was therefore skeptical, but intrigued. Perhaps the only notable non-Shannara works he has published are The Magic Kingdom of Landover series, which I thoroughly enjoyed. It was my hope that Child of Light would tap into whatever had enabled Landover. Unfortunately, my hopes were misplaced, and Child of Light proved to be anything but fresh.
Forsaken Kingdom Review
Some books under-promise and over-deliver. Swordspoint, which we reviewed last week, is like that. The summary was enough for me to read it, but I didn’t expect anything remarkable; it proved to be one of the best fantasy books I’ve read this year. Forsaken Kingdom’s cover blurb was, unfortunately, the opposite. While the book wasn’t exactly bad, the main emotion I experienced while reading it was boredom. This coming from the man who recently read Human Dimension and Interior Space from cover to cover, and found it interesting.
Blood Magic S3:E2: The Society of the Broken Promise Release
On the surface level, it is about the straightforward problem of countering the Gälmourein threat. On a deeper level, it is about the mysteries involved, and in that respect this is a little bit of a bait-and-switch.
Blood Magic S2:E2: Witch’s Heir Re-Release
The separation between morality and law is something that has long fascinated me. It's a similar question to Socrates' famous query: "is conduct right because the Gods demand it, or do the Gods demand it because it is right?"
Blood Magic S3:E1: Shards of Glass Release
Writing the first episode of season three as a denouement for the Pifechan invasion made a lot of sense. Unfortunately, it left me with a small problem: plot. More specifically, it left me with a profound lack of plot.
Blood Magic S2:E1: Flailing in the Dark Re-Release
For the most part, revisions to season two episodes are going to consist (I hope) almost exclusively of editing functions, rather than substantial revisions, and as such I doubt that I will have many original and interesting observations to include in these re-release posts.
Blood Magic S2:E12: Pifecha, Part Two Release
down now, because the second part of Pifecha, season two’s finale, ended up almost twice the length of a typical episode. Putting the two parts together, we have a very respectable novella-length story. I mention this, because the increasing length was among my biggest concerns as I was writing the final episode. That might seem silly when I publish these on my own website and am beholden to no one as far as word counts go, but the fact is that word count is an important indicator of pacing and plotting considerations.
Blood Magic S1:E12: Old Blood, Part Two Re-Release
I’d like to consider it a testament to my improved revision abilities that I was going through and making minor changes to Old Blood, Part Two I identified an entire scene that should probably get cut. I identified it, I wrestled with it, I came to terms with cutting one of the scenes that was the most fun for me to write, and ultimately I decided to leave it intact.
IGC Publishing 