Today, we’re talking about the good stuff. Some of the best reading I’ve had in a long time. The kind of stuff that only people who are in the know ask about. (At least, as far as I’m aware. Saga of the Forgotten Warrior and After Moses are criminally underrated.)

But first! Inner Demon is coming along nicely! The cover looks fantastic. My goal was to order test versions of the paperback and hardcover last Saturday, but the Amazon book previewer keeps coming up with issues with the sizing of the cover on the PDF—so my artist and I get to keep working through that before we have anything physical to show off.

The ebook version of the cover is live on the Inner Demon page of my website. As are the first two chapters of the book. Just throwing that out there…

The Courage in a Small Heart graphic novel adaptation is completed! It will probably be quite a while before this adaptation gets any art to go with it; my artist said she’s interested in the project, but she’s got a few things to finish first.

I’m going to start up revisions on Halfwhisker soon. Hopefully no later than May 1st. I really want to get things set up for the release of Inner Demon, which is my biggest priority at the moment. (I’m also figuring out how I want to do an advertising count down for release, hopefully generate some excitement. Stay tuned!)

Beyond that, I accidentally stumbled upon an open casting call for a voice acting gig—an animated pilot called “The Reiters.” I haven’t taken down my audio equipment from recording Inner Demon yet, so I thought, “Why not?” Hopefully I’ll know if I made it or not sometime in May. Probably more likely June.

Oh! Speaking of audio—the raw audio for Inner Demon is finished! I’ve sent it off to my audio guy and he, also being very busy, told me he expects to get the finalized audio back to me in August. So the audiobook will definitely not be releasing at the same time as the print and ebook versions, at least assuming nothing catastrophic happens to my timeline.

And as a final quick insertion before the reviews… You should subscribe. I’ll never give your emails out to anyone. You’ll just get an alert whenever a blog post goes live.

Bloggyness Review—Saga of the Forgotten Warrior

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again—the Saga of the Forgotten Warrior is one of the greatest, and most underrated, epic fantasy series of my generation. Larry Correia hit a real home run with this one.

Saga of the Forgotten Warrior is a six-book epic fantasy series set in a world of swords and arrows, where what’s left of humanity lives on an island continent in a rigid caste system. When political intrigue isn’t leading to humans killing other humans, demons with shapeless faces and an alarming inability to be killed are rising from the ocean and laying waste to everything in sight. Black steel blades are one of the few weapons that can be relied on to fight a demon—and not only are those rare, they become more rare with each generation as, occasionally, one of the dozen or so that are left will shatter in displeasure over the actions of its bearer.

Read. This. Series. This is the kind of series that I get so excited about I have to consciously hold myself back when describing it, else I will not only drone on far too long, but also run the risk of overhyping it—and no series, no matter how good, can survive being overhyped. Saga of the Forgotten Warrior is not a perfect series. It has its slow moments, a few odd character decisions, and the like, but its whole is far greater than the sum of its parts.

You like “knights” with rigid codes of honor forced to figure out how to actually operate in the real world? Ashok and Karno. You like magic swords with distinct personalities? Angruvadal! You like heroes that will make your heart stop when they are in danger, then cheer at the top of your lungs when they come away triumphant? All the protagonists. You want villains that you hate so much their much-deserved fates can’t come fast enough? Omand…

You want a deep, immersive world delivered naturally, without painful exposition dumps? You want fascinating hints of an epic backstory intentionally left ambiguous in all the best ways? You want flashbacks that don’t hurt the pace of a story, and also genuinely contribute to the here-and-now the characters are going through?

I could go on. Larry Correia is best known for stories set in more modern eras, with lots of guns and gritty action, but everything that he has learned in writing other series and genres is put to great use here.

In particular, I want to note that the Saga of the Forgotten Warrior reads fast. Each book is hefty enough, yet Correia is a master of removing all fat, with the result that the sluggish pacing issues that plague other fantasy series are nearly nonexistent here.

There I go. Didn’t I warn you I liked this too much? That I’d keep talking and overhype it? Never mind. Ignore all that. It’s a terrible series. Go into it hoping that it’s maybe equal to the most recent YA slop that’s been put out.

…

But seriously, go read it.

And as a final note, Angruvadal has made its way to the top of my list as one of my favorite magical swords of all time, right next to Nightblood.

(As a final note: Unlike almost everything else Larry Correia, I don’t need to give content warnings for swearing in the Saga of the Forgotten Warrior. All right, there’s a little bit of it [thanks, Gutch…], but mostly the swearing is specific to the context of this world and carries no weight or harsh connotation on Earth. There is a fair amount of blood and violence, though, as is to be expected in a Correia novel.)

Bloggyness Review—After Moses

Switching gears from epic fantasy to space cowboy/science fiction, my next hearty recommendation is After Moses, a novel by Michael F Kane. (The first book in a series I hope to binge.)

Hundreds of years in the future, humanity has colonized the solar system thanks to the efforts of an AI with near-divine intelligence that named itself Moses. However, since bringing mankind to the edges of its own solar system, Moses has vanished without a trace, leaving humanity lingering alongside remnants of technology too advanced for them to understand—and, in some instances, intentionally designed to self-destruct if broken open for the purpose of reverse-engineering. As a result, it’s only a matter of time before there’s a mass extinction among the stars, as systems fail and the people who rely on Moses’ technology are left without food, water, gravity, or even air.

Retreating back to earth isn’t an option, as nuclear war shortly followed the disappearance of Moses, leaving the little blue marble all but uninhabitable.

This setting may sound grim, but After Moses is an unexpectedly hopeful book. I had Firefly and Santiago vibes as I started the series and began to learn about Matthew Cole, freelancer (read: mercenary/bounty hunter) and man on the run from his past. He’s one of the best kind of characters: a genuinely good man with ghosts haunting him, who struggles to do right while having a hard time believing he can ever find redemption, and who still manages to be a unique character despite all those traits shared with many other heroes.

The beginning of the book, admittedly, was a little slow. It begins episodic and takes some time to get Matthew connected to what will become his crew and found family. Some of the crew members I had a hard time connecting with initially, but pretty soon I came to love all of them; Davey, in particular, went from my perhaps least-liked character to my favorite, with the switch being flipped around the time Cole took Davey to visit Cole’s father’s grave. When you get to the scene, you’ll understand.

After Moses paints the beginnings of a massive world with system–shattering secrets to uncover, but what really hooked me in and kept me reading (even when I really shouldn’t have been) were the heartfelt characters who grew and changed meaningfully throughout the course of the book. And what’s even better, After Moses is the first of a six-book series, the last of which is set to be published this year.

Here’s another impressive bit about After Moses: this isn’t atheistic science fiction.

Here’s what I mean by that. Unfortunately, so much of modern science fiction just assumes that religion will disappear once humans are technologically advanced enough (Theft of Fire), or otherwise actively condemns religion as part of its world building or story (everything Asimov); these genre threads are short-sighted and astonishingly ignorant of human patterns throughout history, and either gloss over the incalculable good derived from human faith or assume the comparatively little evil done in the name of faith and religion is solely what those ought to be judged by. (That doesn’t mean that all science fiction that draws from this heritage is bad—Theft of Fire is very good, and everything of Asimov’s that I’ve read I thought was still excellent even today. I’m just pointing out an ugly pattern.)

After Moses, on the other hand, chooses to wrestle with faith and nihilism in a much more nuanced and hopeful way—and entirely without being preachy at any point, thank goodness. Each character is distinctive and thinks differently, and each character—the main characters, and many side characters—have genuinely admirable traits and large flaws. It’s through this lens of exploring these characters and letting them have crises to overcome that God and faith are, at times, explored, and in a truly interesting way. Hope, in particular, is also put under the microscope in a few places.

But, as with all excellent fiction, After Moses isn’t a sermon—it’s here first and foremost to entertain. If you aren’t religious, or if you don’t really care about faith and God, you’re still going to have an excellent time, as each and every scene builds into the next really beautifully, slowly layering on world and character elements into a thick sandwich nearly too tall to fit into your mouth (without squishing it, anyway). And then it ends with an epic rescue mission that will thrill you, warm your heart, and leave you impatient to start the next book.

And, unlike most other books on the market, I can recommend After Moses with no hesitations. Swearing? None. Violence? People get shot and killed, but it’s not described in a way that would make me afraid to hand this book to any kid. Sexual content? None. It’s just good, clean, deep, well-rounded science fiction, an epic adventure story with deeper themes and roots you can dig into if you want to.

This (and Chloe’s Kingdom) were such amazing breaths of fresh air after my initial forays into indie publishing left me concerned that everyone swore like a Seth Rogan movie and had explicit sex like an HBO TV series, all while worshipping nihilism at about the level of a freshman philosophy major. But there’s good stuff out there, good all the way through, and it’s worth sifting through the rough to find those diamonds.

Bloggyness Review—Coromon

I’ve been sitting on this for ages, so I’m just going to get it over with.

Coromon is a monster collecting game that wears its Pokemon inspiration proudly on its sleeve. I initially found the game very cute, and I loved the art direction for the monsters. However, I got bored and drifted away from the game over time, probably because of how grindy it was. As well, the game’s focus on being “competitive” (something the Pokemon games have never cared about) I think works to the game’s detriment, taking out a lot of the magic that comes with Pokemon’s weird, wild, and sometimes frustrating (but still workable) mechanics.

If I want pure competition in a monster collector game, I’ll just go play Pokemon Showdown, which is free and lets me build teams from scratch without having to grind for hours.

That all said, I think Coromon is worth it on a sale if you’re a fan of Pokemon and are looking for an adjacent experience, but for whatever reason aren’t in the market for a ROM hack.

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That’s it for today, I’ve typed myself out.