As some of you know, I’m a novelist writing science fiction and fantasy. The first book in my new series launches today. It’s called Broken Blade and it walks the borders between fantasy and detective noir. It also touches on some of the issues of fairness and justice that are important to me as a progressive.
One of the things I’ve noticed as a fantasy author is that with a few notable exceptions like Terry Pratchett, the genre has a tendency toward the glorification of autocratic government of the one true king variety. This bothers me, so when I set out to write my own high fantasy novel, I decided to try something a little bit different.
The Fallen Blade series is built around a sorcerer-assassin who used to work for the Goddess of Justice, dealing with those rulers and nobles that started wars of aggression or oppressed and murdered their people, criminals too rich and powerful for the regular courts to touch. But, when you push a system like that, the system pushes back. Now Aral and his shadow elemental familiar are on the run.
The following is the short plot teaser book one, Broken Blade.
Aral Kingslayer was an assassin once upon a time, perhaps the best in the world, one of the fabled Blades of Namara, goddess of Justice. With his familiar, a living shadow named Triss, at his side, he killed for a cause, never for money. Life was hard but good.
That was before. Before they murdered his goddess and burned her temple to the ground. Before they outlawed his kind. Before the wanted posters and the sentence of death. Before his life fell apart and he crawled into the whiskey bottle.
Now he’s a shadow jack, a free lance problem solver who makes his living out of odd jobs on the wrong side of the law. He doesn’t much like what he’s become, and Triss likes it even less, but Aral doesn’t see any way out. Not until a young woman named Maylien hires him to deliver a secret message.
A simple enough job. Or is it? When Aral delivers the message, he gets the biggest surprise of his new life, and maybe, just maybe, the chance to forge a future where he won’t have to be ashamed of himself.
The three books in the initial series are built around Aral’s struggle to rebuild his life and to come to terms with the idea of justice in a more nuanced and human way as he decides that while much of what his goddess asked him to do was just, it wasn’t always for the right reasons.
At root, what I’m writing is adventure fiction; fast, fun, reads with swordfighting and zombies and magic and lots of special effects, but I’m also trying to layer in deeper issues about the problems of aristocracy and concentrations of wealth and power.
If you’re interested, the opening chapter can be read on my website, and I’ve talked about the launch of the book a bit more in a post there as well.
I’ll be doing launch events over the next few weeks in the Minneapolis St Paul area, starting tonight with a reading and signing at the Barnes and Noble in the Har Mar Mall in Roseville (St Paul) MN. at 7:00 pm.
I’ll also be signing and chatting with whoever shows up at Uncle Hugo’s science fiction book store in Minneapolis, MN. 1:00 pm Saturday December 3rd. I’ll be signing, maybe reading, and chatting with whoever shows up at Bookends on Main in Menomonie, WI. 5:00 pm Thursday December 8th. Finally, I’ll be signing and chatting with whoever shows up at Dreamhaven Books in Minneapolis, MN. 2:00 pm Saturday December 11th. This will be one of the last events at the book store before they become primarily on online book seller.
The book can be found at all the usual places, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or Indiebound (various independents) should you be so inclined, but Uncle Hugo’s and DreamHaven are especially close to my heart as local independents. I should probably note here amongst the commercial stuff that Book II, Bared Blade is actually already available for preorder at places like Barnes and Noble and Amazon.
Thanks for reading, I hope some of you find the idea interesting enough to go take a look at the sample chapter.
Also available in orange.