Tag: books

Mapping Selenoth

JartStar didn’t find it easy to map out Selenoth, mostly because I don’t think in spatial terms.  This map to the right is from a very early version when the book was only half-written and we were kicking around the idea of eventually creating a VASSAL wargame around the story.  I’ve long been interested in combining the zone-based game mechanics of War at Sea with a Divine Right system that combines diplomatic intrigue with battle, and perhaps one day I’ll even get around to designing it.  The primary challenge he faced was translating locations into map terms from my description of events; if it takes 30 days to go from Amorr to Elebrion and one passes through an uninhabited forest, then that provides a certain amount of information about how things have to look.

I’m sure there were times he desperately wanted to beat answers out of me, but the problem was that because I am spatial relations-challenged, I couldn’t really provide them until I had figured out exactly what I required for the story to work as conceived.  Was Lodi travelling west or east?  If Theuderic was traveling to Amorr, why did he have to go through Malkan?  The plot affected the geography and the geography affected the plot; as JartStar noted himself when he introduced the map to his Cartographer’s Guild.

“The map took nearly a year to do as author didn’t know where certain
locations would be until he had worked out the plot! It meant a lot of
revisions all of the way until the day it was literally going to press.”

The particular challenge was how to portray the allies and provinces of Amorr, since they were too small to show up on the continental map.  The first attempt proved a little confusing; the editor at Marcher Lord actually got it backwards. But the zoom lines he suggested worked very well.  It did lead to one minor problem in the text, as Falerum was described at two points in the original text as “the largest ally”, which is quite clearly not the case.  But that was cleaned up in the errata.

As for rivers and lakes, they were left off for legibility reasons.  In general, it can be safely assumed that every major city is built on a river, as is the case with regards to nearly all medieval European cities. Most fantasy maps that contain rivers are entirely misleading, as they only feature one or two rivers when the number of cities shown would indicate the need for an order of magnitude more; for some reason most fantasy lands don’t contain a reasonable number of lakes either.  Given my ferocious hatred for long literary river journeys, it is totally appropriate that the rivers are not shown on the map as they will never, ever, feature in such a regard.

The map of Selenoth can’t hold a candle to the beautiful map of Middle Earth that I once owned in the form of a much-loved jigsaw puzzle.  I can’t think of a single map that does.  But I hope the readers find it both attractive and useful in following the story; thanks to JartStar’s heroic efforts, I think it is more geographically credible than most of the maps one sees in the genre.

A GoodReads review

D.M. Dutcher reviews A THRONE OF BONES:

It’s hard to sum it up since so much goes on in the book. At 800854 pages,
it’s long, and the first MLP hardcover release. The length doesn’t feel
too tedious though, with only the start of the book dragging a bit. Once
it gets past discussing the upcoming goblin fight, it gets much better,
as each new character has their own story and part to play.

The
world is very interesting too. It’s sort of a fusion of Rome and
medieval Europe-imagine Rome with its legionnaires and patricians with a
church like in Thomist times and Vikings mingling with supernatural
creatures like elves and werewolves. The main focus is on Rome though,
and it adds a lot to the book by setting it apart from the generic
fantasy land it could be. It’s not just the gladiators and phalanxes,
but he gets the ethos of each nation and group right. You get inside
their heads, and it’s well done indeed.

I also found that it
fixed something that I didn’t like about Game of Thrones. One of the
issues I had with the first book in that series was that the
supernatural and fantasy aspects felt tacked in, as opposed to purely
human drama. Vox though always makes the fantasy part noticeable if not
prevalent. This isn’t just “let’s make it fantasy because we really want
to tell a historical fiction story and ignore the parts we don’t like,”
but magic and fantasy have as much a part to play as the intricate
machinations between nobles. If anything, you wish there was a bit more
focus on it. The elves in particular….

All in all, it’s a good, epic fantasy novel. It was better than I
expected. If you like more traditional Christian fantasy fare that is
clean and more aggressively spiritual (if not evangelistic) you may not
like this. But people who like well-written fantasy and Christians who
are okay with more realism and edginess to their books will probably
enjoy it quite a bit.  

I’m pleased to see that readers are understanding that THE ARTS OF DARK AND LIGHT series is not traditional Christian fantasy fare.  It was never intended to be, any more than it was intended to be a mindless attempt to do to GRR Martin what Terry Brooks did to JRR Tolkien in his Shannara series.  I’m still amused by the charge that I am simultaneously mimicking Edward Gibbon and R. Scott Bakker(1); while it would still be wrong, one would do significantly better to assert the book is the bastard love-child of J.B. Bury and Joe Abercrombie.  If critics want to claim that I am a derivative writer in the vein of the retrophobes, that is certainly their prerogative, but I would expect they might at least have the perspicacity to get the genuine influences right.

The reviewer is correct.  The ethos of the book is definitely more concerned with the martial values than the Christian ones.  This is the natural result of half the perspective characters either being military officers or what could reasonably be described as military intelligence.  When I write my characters, I always attempt to focus on their current concerns rather using them as a vessel for some larger point.  This is why the Marcus Valerius who is actively engaged with theological matters as part of a Church embassy led by a pair of noted ecclesiastic intellectuals is simply not going to be anywhere nearly as concerned with such elevated matters while commanding a cavalry wing in the middle of a battle involving some 30,000 combatants.

(1) In all seriousness, Bakker would probably be the last of the epic fantasy writers that I would attempt to mimic. Well, no, that would definitely be Jordan.  Then Erikson, simply because I don’t even know how I would go about trying to imitate him. But I can’t mimic the best thing about Bakker, his florid, but absorbing style, and I can’t imagine wanting to imitate any of his plots or his characters.  His worldbuilding is competent and reasonably substantial, but it doesn’t take a form in which I have any interest whatsoever, nor does it have anything in common with mine.  Moreover, a simple look at the publication date of Summa Elvetica should make it obvious that Selenoth(2) is a world I created long before I’d ever heard of R. Scott Bakker.


(2) I will send a free hardcover to the first person who correctly guesses what computer game served as the original inspiration for the name of Selenoth.  This offer will stand for one week.

It seems I was wrong

You don’t have to buy the hardcover from Marcher Lord.  Apparently you can also purchase the hardcover from Amazon.  Or, for that matter, from Barnes & Noble. It seems the official page count turned out to be 854 pages, not 852.

I couldn’t help but be a little amused by the first one-star review.  Reader Beware! “I was sorely disappointed to find profanity, and vulgarity and a few
other things I found objectionable. If you are into Christian fiction,
this is not the book for you.”

The charge isn’t entirely accurate, however.  While there is a fair amount of vulgarity, there is no profanity in the original Latin sense of the term.

Stay on target

I’ve been trying to keep this rant by a perceptive reviewer of A Storm of Swords in mind as I begin writing Book Two in ARTS OF DARK AND LIGHT:

My third and final gripe remains roughly the same as it was with the first two books and is, in a nutshell, this: too damned long. Forget the page count; Martin’s writing is good enough to read for ten thousand pages, I mean that he’s taking too long to get to the point. This third installment of the series ends in a quick succession of highpoints. It’s meant to build interest and steam going into the fourth, which it does (frustratingly so, given the time between releases). But most of the third book, like most of the second and the first before it, are build up. Three thousand pages of build up are simply not welcome, and certainly not in the face of a projected three thousand to come. There was even a point, somewhere near page 600 of this book, where I started to question my investment. After all, do I have any assurance that the next book, or the book after, will offer any satisfaction? How long will I have to wait, exactly, for any sort of a sense of closure on anything? How good is Martin’s heart? His cholesterol count? Blood sugar? I suppose, on the bright side, that this series helps a person develop their patience and endurance. But, I’ll tell you, couple this with my doubts of Martin’s having a master plan, and you have a potential nightmare in the making. Is it still possible that he does have a direction in mind, and that book six will end up with all of the strings neatly tied in a satisfactory bow? Yes-that’s still possible. But the hope dwindles with every passing page.

In the end, I will continue. Onwards to book four, I say, and quick about it. Frankly, I may have invested too much to turn back, now, no matter what happens. But I’m punishing Martin with one star less on this novel than I’d awarded the previous two. The book has the same quality as the others in the series, and the last fifty pages or so are rather exhilarating (and the scene with Sansa building the castle in the snow is just awesome-the kind of thing Martin must have had planned for a long time), but the slight problems become large over time, sort of like Malcolm’s explanation of fractals and chaos theory in Jurassic Park, or something. Unabated, these problems will choke him all the way down to a single star by series end. I only pray it doesn’t come to that.

The guy’s subsequent review of A Feast for Crows makes for reading that is more than a little amusing, as everything he feared and worse came to pass. It made me curious enough to see if he’d bothered to read A Dance with Dragons; apparently he hasn’t because despite reviewing everything from a Rob Zombie movie to Charles Dickens novels, he didn’t review that.  But I thought it was remarkable that he anticipated the problems Martin subsequently exhibited as far back as the second book.  In his review of A Clash of Kings, he presciently wrote:

[E]ven after two gargantuan novels, it is hard to see where the series is going. It’s hard to know, not what will be the final climax, but what even could be the final climax. As a for instance, somewhere near the beginning of Star Wars, we understand that eventually it will come down to a confrontation between Skywalker and Vader. In Rocky, we know that the crux will be Rocky’s confrontation with Creed. In Thelma and Louise, we know that the final climax will be a resolution of their flight-either they’ll find a way to get back into society, or they won’t in a profound way (incarceration, death, disappearing into another country). In A Clash of Kings, there are so many major characters and so many major events all awaiting a resolution, that I can’t even precisely piece out what forms the core conflict requiring resolution. Or what event short of global annihilation could bring about such a resolution. Is there a main protagonist or antagonist? Perhaps the Houses of Stark and Lannister provide those. Or, perhaps not (what of Daenerys, for instance, or the oncoming Winter)?

The problems he perceived so early are readily grasped by comparing the number of perspectives in the various novels.  The count grew from 9 different perspectives in the first book to a combined 25 in the last two, which you may recall were originally supposed to be a single book.  What of Daenerys indeed… what of Tyrion!

Anyhow, these are excellent object lessons to keep in mind as I’m starting to roll on the second book.  I’m determined that Book Two will be better than its predecessor.  It’s not too hard to see how things can spin out of control in books of this size, especially if you don’t have a tight grasp on who should be a perspective character and who should not be.  I’ve already written scenes with one secondary character who has been newly promoted to the perspective level; I have to be careful to not to get too carried away with that.

I originally intended to go with two fewer characters than Martin, because the geographic separations meant that I’d probably need to go into more detail and devote more words to each since I didn’t have the benefit of the overlapping physical proximity that Martin did in A Game of Thrones.  However, after writing A Magic Broken, it became apparent that the dwarf required his own storyline.

A few items of business.  First, I noticed that one of the Amazon reviews mentioned the 225 errata.  Those, and a fair number more, have all been fixed now and the cleaned-up version is already up on Amazon and BN.  Marcher Lord will be sending out the new files to all of those who bought from them next week, both preorders and ebooks.  I’m told that Amazon sends out an email confirmation when you buy an ebook from them, so if you were one of the early buyers and have the original version with the errata, please send me a copy of that email confirmation and I will send you the new .mobi file.

It’s easy to tell which version you have.  If the title page on Location 2 of 13826 features a skull, that’s the original one with the errata.  If it looks like a carved Roman wall and there is an appendix at the end of the book, that is the new one.

And if anyone knows how to get in contact with Don Athos, the Amazon reviewer, let me know.  I definitely want to send him an ebook for review.

The Black Gate Christmas list

I first have to praise John for having the courage to announce a Christmas list rather than the increasingly common, and ludicrously insipid holiday list.  And then, I would be remiss if I did not point out his good taste in including works by Howard Andrew Jones and yours truly in his top 10:

  1. A Guile of Dragons, James Enge ($17.95)
  2. The Bones of the Old Ones, by Howard Andrew Jones ($25.99)
  3. American Science Fiction: 9 Classic Novels, edited by Gary K. Wolfe ($70)
  4. Universal Classic Monsters: The Essential Collection ($149.98)
  5. Lords of Waterdeep, Wizards of the Coast ($49.99)
  6. The Weird, edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer ($39.99)
  7. Epic: Legends of Fantasy, edited by John Joseph Adams ($17.95)
  8. A Throne of Bones, Vox Day ($4.99)
  9. Three Parts Dead, Max Gladstone ($24.99)
  10. Books To Die For, edited by John Connolly and Declan Burke ($29.99)

I should note that if you’re looking for something you can wrap, A Throne of Bones is also available in hardcover from Marcher Lord Hinterlands for $34.99.  To see the rest of the list, which goes 50 items long, go to The Black Gate Christmas List.

Errata etc

Team OCD compiled a list of some 225 errata in the ebook, most of which were simple typos, for the final proof of the hardcover which went off to the printers yesterday.  That is actually pretty good in a book this size; the three EW books that were published by Pocket turned out to have over 300 combined in about the same number of words when we prepared the texts for the ebooks.  The upshot is that while I appreciate being sent the occasional typo or error spotted, it’s probably not necessary in this case as we almost surely have it identified based on those that have been sent to me thus far.

I really have to thank everyone who ordered the ebook yesterday; we assumed there would be lower first-day sales due to the preorders and the higher price of A Throne of Bones compared to A Magic Broken.  And yet, the combined total of the preorders and the Amazon orders was higher than the Amazon orders for AMB; it was nearly half again as many as I’d anticipated.

Anyhow, I hope you’re enjoying the book and encourage you to post reviews on Amazon when you finish it.  I’d also encourage you to tell others, particularly Martin fans, about it, since it’s not going to be appearing in any bookstores.  If you are enjoying it, then you’ll probably be pleased to hear that Kirk and I were discussing the cover for Book Two today; I can’t guarantee anything, but there is a chance it will be even more striking than the one for Book One.  Speaking of which, I’ve seen the final dust jacket and can confirm that the rest of the it lives up to the cover.  I think those who have gone the hardcover route won’t be disappointed; for all its size, it’s shaping up to be a very attractive book. 

MJS has posted the second review; here is an excerpt from it:

The novel is more meat and substance than polish and style, though even
the political intrigue was well-written enough that it kept my
attention, which is often not the case. Vox does an excellent job of
piquing your interest and then taking developments in way you don’t
expect. He’s also not shy about killing characters, yet does so in a way
that again compares favorably to Mr. Martin’s nihilistic bloodbath.
This is not a book for children; there is graphic violence and
unflinching presentation of evil. Yet neither is glorified, and though
the world is realistically portrayed with few truly good men, there is
no moral ambivalence here either.

One thing that might amuse some of you is that it wasn’t until reading that review that I suddenly realized I no longer need to write a sequel to Summa Elvetica anymore.  I had become so accustomed to thinking of Arts of Dark and Light as its own creature that I actually forgot the new series can reasonably be considered the oft-requested continuation of the story begun in the shorter novel.

A THRONE OF BONES is out

In Selenoth, the race of Man is on the ascendant. The ancient
dragons sleep. The ghastly Witchkings are no more; their evil
power destroyed by the courage of Men and the fearsome magic of
the Elves. The Dwarves have retreated to the kingdoms of the
Underdeep, the trolls hide in their mountains, and even the savage
orc tribes have learned to dread the iron discipline of Amorr’s
mighty legions. But after four hundred years of mutual suspicion,
the rivalry between two of the Houses Martial that rule the
Amorran Senate threatens to turn violent, and unrest sparks
rebellion throughout the imperial provinces. In the north, the
barbarian reavers who have long plagued the coasts of the White
Sea beg for the royal protection of the King of Savondir, as they
flee a vicious race of wolf-demons. In the east, the war drums
echo throughout the mountains as orcs and goblins gather in great
numbers, summoned by their bestial gods.
And when the Most Holy and
Sanctified Father is found dead in his bed, leaving the Ivory
Throne of the Apostles unclaimed, the temptation to seize the
Sacred College and wield Holy Mother Church as a weapon is more
than some fallen souls can resist.

I am very pleased to be able to say that A Throne of Bones is now available for $4.99 for Amazon Kindle and $4.99 for Barnes and Noble Nook, as well as $34.99 in hardcover from Marcher Lord Hinterlands.  It is 852 pages in hardcover and it is not at all necessary to have read either Summa Elvetica or A Magic Broken first.  Both SE and AMB are little more than an extended chapter in the story of a perspective character from A Throne of Bones.

The Responsible Puppet was the first individual other than the editor to read it, and he kindly took the time to review it on his blog in time for this announcement.

When I reviewed `Summa Elvetica’, Vox Day’s last fiction book, I wrote,
`My feeling here is that this book could be a “The Hobbit”-like prelude
to a much more significant fictional writing.’ This, I’m pleased to say,
is what the author has done. `Throne’ is placed in the same universe as
that book and only a few years (months?) later.  And what is this
universe? Just like with Summa, imagine Rome in the fifth century,
complete with a Christian heritage. Now add in magic. And elves. And
dwarves and goblins and some kind of new immortal creature.

But the geography is completely different. The Empire is Amorr. In it,
there are two very strong family houses that are growing more and more
at odds with each other. In one of these houses, two brothers are in
conflict – for good reason…

It
is, in turn, humorous, shocking and exciting. There are beautiful
moments, there is clever dialogue, there is deep mystery. It took some
level of genius to write it. 

And because every epic fantasy needs a map, this one arguably more than most, I was fortunate to be able to once again call upon the artistic talents of JartStar.  This is the map of Selenoth and Imperial Amorr that appears in the book.

For those who have followed this process from the start and are interested in the minutiae, today marks
499 days since the two conversations with Spacebunny’s cousin and the
Original Cyberpunk about A Dance With Dragons that inspired the writing of the book.  A Throne of Bones contains
297,862 words, 15,875 of them unique.  This compares favorably with
George Martin (295,929 and 13,717, respectively), Joe Abercrombie
(191,393 and 11,260), and Louis L’Amour (94,297 and 7,598), but pales before
the greatest author of my generation, Neal Stephenson (409,365 and
29,239).  And thanks again to those who preordered, as we exceeded our goals by nearly forty percent.  The hardcovers go to press tomorrow and should arrive well in time for Christmas.

UPDATE:  It is nice to see some appreciation for Kirk’s superlative work from Instapundit: “VOX DAY’S NEW NOVEL, A Throne of Bones, is now out at Amazon. Very nice cover.” By all means, judge the book by it….

UPDATE 2: Dr. Helen mentions the release on her site too.

UPDATE 3: I’ve posted an announcement at Black Gate too, with a brief summary of the connection between the book and some of my past posts there.

On the book front

It looks like we’re going to have to move the official release date for A THRONE OF BONES back two days until Monday.  I have the proof that’s being corrected for the hardcover; the book will be 950 pages and it looks really good.  However, the conversion to epub and the upload to Amazon is going to take a little time.  I’m sorry about the delay, but fortunately, it’s only going to be a brief one.

Preorder period ending

In Selenoth, the race of Man is on the
ascendant. The ancient dragons sleep. The ghastly Witchkings are
no
more; their evil power destroyed by the courage of Men and the
fearsome magic of the Elves. The Dwarves have retreated to the
kingdoms of the Underdeep, the trolls hide in their mountains, and
even the savage orc tribes have learned to dread the iron
discipline
of Amorr’s mighty legions. But after four hundred years of mutual
suspicion, the rivalry between two of the Houses Martial that rule
the Amorran Senate threatens to turn violent, and unrest sparks
rebellion throughout the imperial provinces. In the north, the
barbarian reavers who have long plagued the coasts of the White
Sea
beg for the royal protection of the King of Savondir, as they flee
a vicious race of wolf-demons. In the east, the war drums
echo throughout the mountains as orcs and goblins gather in great
numbers, summoned by their bestial gods.

And when the Most Holy and Sanctified
Father is found dead in his bed, leaving the Ivory Throne of the
Apostles unclaimed, the temptation to seize the Sacred College and
wield Holy Mother Church as a weapon is more than some fallen
souls
can resist.

We’re working hard on getting the ebook out on December 1st.  The hardcover won’t ship for about two weeks after that, so if anyone spots any errata of any kind in the ebook, be it typos, grammar, or continuity, please don’t hesitate to email them to me immediately and we’ll get them corrected.  We will, of course, be providing updated ebooks to those who have purchased them.  This is a little unusual, but then, the book is a hefty monster that is going to run around 900 pages in the 6×9 format and given that you guys managed to find over 100 errors in each of the three EW novels published and line-edited by Pocket, I have no doubt we’ll miss a few howlers here.

Marcher Lord also asked me to remind those who are interested in buying the hardcover, but have not yet preordered it that the preorder discount offer will end on Monday, November 26th.  Remember that in addition to the discounted price, those who have preordered the hardcover will receive the ebook when it comes out.  Thanks to all of you who have preordered already.

End this depression II

In Chapter Two, Depression Economics, Krugman resorts to his favorite analogy, the babysitting coop, whose travails were chronicled by a 1977 article in the Journal of Money, Credit and Banking.  This is at least the third book in which he has resorted to the analogy, this time to demonstrate that overall lack of demand can’t hurt the economy and that “your spending is my income and my spending is your income.”  But this time, he also cites the 150 babysitting couples as an example of his proposed cure for the global economy

“That’s where we come to the third lesson from the babysitting co-op: big economic problems can sometimes have simple, easy solutions. The co-op got out of its mess simply by printing up more coupons.

This raises the key question: Could we cure the global slump the same way?  Would printing more babysitting coupons, aka increasing the money supply, be all that it takes to get Americans back to work?

Well, the truth is that printing more babysitting coupons is the way we normally get out of recessions. For the last fifty years the business of ending recessions has basically been the job of the Federal Reserve, which (loosely speaking) controls the quantity of money circulating in the economy; when the economy turns down, the Fed cranks up the printing presses. And until now this has always worked. It worked spectacularly after the severe recession of 1981–82, which the Fed was able to turn within a few months into a rapid economic recovery—“morning in America.” It worked, albeit more slowly and more hesitantly, after the 1990–91 and 2001 recessions.

But it didn’t work this time around. I just said that the Fed “loosely speaking” controls the money supply; what it actually controls is the “monetary base,” the sum of currency in circulation and reserves held by banks. Well, the Fed has tripled the size of the monetary base since 2008; yet the economy remains depressed. So is my argument that we’re suffering from inadequate demand wrong?

No, it isn’t. In fact, the failure of monetary policy to resolve this crisis was predictable—and predicted. I wrote the original version of my book The Return of Depression Economics, back in 1999, mainly to warn Americans that Japan had already found itself in a position where printing money couldn’t revive its depressed economy, and that the same thing could happen to us. Back then a number of other economists shared my worries. Among them was none other than Ben Bernanke, now the Fed chairman.

So what did happen to us? We found ourselves in the unhappy condition known as a “liquidity trap.””

Krugman’s first claim is harmless enough.  Obviously, an overall lack of demand can hurt the economy, those who erroneously insist that supply is always capable of creating demand notwithstanding.  His second claim is partially true, but incomplete, because not all spending comes from income.  A considerable amount of spending also comes from credit, but since that is neither part of the Neo-Keynesian aggregate model nor the babysitting coop story, Krugman simply omits it.  And it can’t be denied that the babysitting coop did appear to get out of its impasse by printing more coupons.

However, Krugman is guilty of a significant omission when he claims that Fed inflation – cranking up the printing presses – worked spectacularly in ending the 1981-1982 recession.  And what he omits is that one of the chief causes of the recession was the Fed’s need to slam on the brakes due to the rampant inflation of the 1970s, inflation that completely failed to cure the high rates of unemployment as it was supposed to according to conventional Neo-Keynesian economic theory.  In fact, it was this failure that led to the widespread rejection of Neo-Keynesianism and the adoption of Milton Friedman’s monetarist spin on it.

Also, when Krugman claims that the Fed was cranking up the money presses in 1983, he omits to mention that throughout that year, which more than covers his “few months” the interest rate never fell below 10.5 percent, which is higher than it was at any time after November 1978!  Somehow, we’re supposed to believe that observably tighter monetary policy amounts to cranking up the money presses!

That being said, the money supply did observably begin increasing in 1983.  From mid-1982 to mid-1983, M2 rose $228 billion.  However, L1, total credit, grew $598 billion over the same period.

Now, Krugman admits that tripling the monetary base has not succeeded in moving the economy out of depression.  If the true lesson of the spring 1983 expansion is that credit, and not money supply is the issue, then we can assume that the current dearth of economic growth should be correlated with a similar lack of growth in Z1.

As it happens, that is precisely what we see.  Z1 has been very nearly flat since 2008 and is currently $5 trillion lower than its 60-year historical rate of growth would predict.  So, the basic foundation for Krugman’s case is not only incomplete and historically inaccurate, but flawed in precisely the way that those familiar with the Neo-Keynesian model would expect.