Tag: writing

Authors Sue ChatGPT

I’m not privy to the technical details, but based upon what I understand of how AIs are trained and how they work, I suspect the authors have a very strong case against the defendants.

John Grisham, Jodi Picoult and George R.R. Martin are among 17 authors suing OpenAI for “systematic theft on a mass scale,” the latest in a wave of legal action by writers concerned that artificial intelligence programs are using their copyrighted works without permission.

In papers filed Tuesday in federal court in New York, the authors alleged “flagrant and harmful infringements of plaintiffs’ registered copyrights” and called the ChatGPT program a “massive commercial enterprise” that is reliant upon “systematic theft on a mass scale.”

The suit was organized by the Authors Guild and also includes David Baldacci, Sylvia Day, Jonathan Franzen and Elin Hilderbrand among others.

“It is imperative that we stop this theft in its tracks or we will destroy our incredible literary culture, which feeds many other creative industries in the U.S.,” Authors Guild CEO Mary Rasenberger said in a statement. “Great books are generally written by those who spend their careers and, indeed, their lives, learning and perfecting their crafts. To preserve our literature, authors must have the ability to control if and how their works are used by generative AI.”

The lawsuit cites specific ChatGPT searches for each author, such as one for Martin that alleges the program generated “an infringing, unauthorized, and detailed outline for a prequel” to “A Game of Thrones” that was titled “A Dawn of Direwolves” and used “the same characters from Martin’s existing books in the series “A Song of Ice and Fire.”

AI is a fantastic tool, but just because it allows the less creative and the less talented to better exploit their imaginations, that doesn’t give anyone the right or the permission to tread upon the legal rights of others.

I’m a strong skeptic of copyright, particularly beyond the life of the author, but the fact is that it exists and while neither a title nor a style can be protected, the characters and existing works are. There really isn’t any difference between a human writing a pastiche – like Scalzi did with Old Man’s War or I did with “The Deported” – and an AI-written text that imitates an author’s style. That is, and should be, permissible.

The problem, of course, is that most people aren’t content with that, and they want to cross the line into the theft of the author’s actual characters and storylines. And if the AI manufacturer’s aren’t preventing their tools from being used in that manner, they are clearly complicit in the violations.

Regardless, AI is going to destroy the popular book market for the vast majority of writers. Because no author can compete with an automated book factories of the sort that AI now permits. In fact, we will probably explore creating one ourselves; some incredible and innovate sagas are going to be produced with these new tools.

Amazon is also limiting authors to three new self-published books on Kindle Direct per day, an effort to restrict the proliferation of AI texts.

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CS Lewis was Right

Actually, Clive Staples Lewis was right about many things. But he was especially right about the quality of his friend JRR Tolkien’s work:

‘When I reviewed the first volume of this work, I hardly dared to hope it would have the success which I was sure it deserved. Happily I am proved wrong. There is, however, one piece of false criticism which had better be answered: the complaint that the characters are all either black or white. Since the climax of Volume I was mainly concerned with the struggle between good and evil in the mind of Boromir, it is not easy to see how anyone could have said this. I will hazard a guess. “How shall a man judge what to do in such times?” asks someone in Volume II. “As he has ever judged,” comes the reply. “Good and ill have not changed…nor are they one thing among Elves and Dwarves and another among Men.” (II, 40-41).

This is the basis of the whole Tolkinian world. I think some readers, seeing (and disliking) this rigid demarcation of black and white, imagine they have seen a rigid demarcation between black and white people. Looking at the squares, they assume (in defiance of the facts) that all the pieces must be making bishops’ moves which confine them to one colour. But even such readers will hardly brazen it out through the last two volumes. Motives, even on the right side, are mixed.

Those who are now traitors usually began with comparatively innocent intentions. Heroic Rohan and imperial Gondor are partly diseased. Even the wretched Smeagol, till quite late in the story, has good impulses; and by a tragic paradox, what finally pushes him over the brink is an unpremeditated speech by the most selfless character of all.

It’s interesting that whereas most people laud Tolkien’s worldbuilding – and rightly so – Lewis recognizes the significance and depth of his friend’s characters. Aragorn and Treebeard and Samwise Gamgee have lasted decades, whereas Harry Potter and Hermione are already being forgotten, because they were magnificently conceived and written.

As for Jon Snow and Tyrion and Arya, they have already been forgotten. About all anyone can remember about Jon Snow is that he knew nothing.

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Guilty as Charged

The sad little freaks on Reddit are claiming that I have used the Gaiman allegations to promote my views. And I suppose that’s true, to a certain extent.

Some prominent TERF and far-right commentators (notably Julie Bindel, Graham Linehan, Vox Day, and Jon Del Arroz; feel free to add more) have used the Gaiman allegations to promote their views. Bindel has even linked to this subreddit. Please scrutinize these sources before sharing them.

And what are these views that I’m promoting? They’re pretty straightforward.

  • Men who sexually assault women should be held accountable, both personally and professionally, for their actions, no matter who they are or how much you like them.
  • Celebrities who abuse and mistreat their fans should be called out and held accountable for their actions. This is especially true of celebrities who happen to have young fans.
  • Neil Gaiman is a literary mediocrity who substitutes research into folklore for genuine originality or creativity. While he has a modicum of writing ability, his primary talent is relentless self-promotion.
  • Neil Gaiman is merely one example of the manufactured “successes” in the publishing industry. John Scalzi is a lesser example. I consider their “success” in selling books to be as genuine as the even greater successes of L. Ron Hubbard, Katie Price, and Hilary Clinton.
  • Terry Pratchett wrote the only funny parts of Good Omens, and despite them it wasn’t a very good book.

I wouldn’t think those views are terribly controversial, given how they are quite easily confirmed, but then, these are people who struggle to discern the difference between a man and a woman.

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An Incorrect Theory

Author Devon Eriksen expounds his theory of why George R. R. Martin can’t finish A Song of Ice and Fire. While he’s correct that Martin cannot, and almost certainly will not, finish it by himself before he dies, he’s totally and utterly incorrect as to the reason. He’s also wrong about what the saga “actually wants to be”.

Here’s what Song of Ice and Fire actually wants to be, and why George can’t finish it. The Song of Ice and Fire isn’t actually supposed to be dark, Machiavellian, hopeless, or a subversion of Tolkien at all. It’s just supposed to start that way. The details may be complex, but the formula is simple. Low-fantasy version of the British Isles, torn apart by multi-sided Machiavellian power struggle, loosely based on the War of the Roses. Things are bad because of Machiavellian power struggle. In the background, subtle hints of external, magical, otherworldly threat. Warring factions scoff and ignore it as first.

Enter the high-fantasy tropes; prophesied hero emerges to unite the morally-grey factions into an unambiguously-good pro-civilization force to confront and defeat the unambiguously-evil threat to all life. Full transition, in the end, to epic Tolkienesque high fantasy, played straight rather than subverted. Heroism triumphant, humanity triumphant, realm unified in peace and prosperity. Roll credits.

Were the story to be completed thus, completed as it wants to be completed, as it yearns to be completed, every dark, gritty, Machiavellian moment would be fully justified. Every chapter and scene filled with thugs and villains and no heroes at all would be fully justified. Because they would merely serve to emphasize the rarity of heroes, and the need for them. Because they would make the arrival of a true hero that much more satisfying when, late but not too late, he arrived. ASOIAF doesn’t really want to be a subversion of Tolkien at all. It wants to be a path out of darkness and into light. It wants to be a study in how Tolkien is deeply relevant, even to a gritty, morally grey world.

This is what George knows it needs to be. But George cannot write it. Why? Because he’s a socialist. And a boomer. Socialism’s motivational core is envy, and its one underlying rule is “thou shalt not be better than me”. The boomer’s single guiding principle is “whatever makes me feel pleasure right now is good, and whatever makes me feel bad right now is evil”. Take these together, and you get someone who has a real problem with heroes. Heroes are, by definition, the best of us, at least on some dimension, and if your underlying motivation is envy, standing next to one is gonna make you feel bad. This means that socialists, boomers, and socialist boomers tend not to want to believe in heroes and heroism. They want to convince themselves that anything which appears good is secretly evil, actually, and that anyone who makes them feel or look bad is obviously evil because reasons. So when they see a hero, they tend to call him a fascist. (Of course, when they see a fascist, they also call him a fascist, but that’s just coincidence, because they’ll call anything fascist… random passers-by, buildings, rocks, trees, squirrels, anything.) Because they want to feel morally superior to him. The only way they can admit that someone has a moral compass at all is if they can feel superior to him in some other way, usually by portraying them as naive, and hence doomed to failure because he is not empowered by cynicism and selfishness, to pursue the most efficient path to… whatever.

So if ol’ George thinks that everyone who appears good is either secretly evil, or openly stupid, then writing a character with heroic impulses is gonna be tough, and writing about how they succeed… impossible. This is why George can write characters with noble motives (Jon Snow, Eddard Stark, etc), but he keeps making them fail. You see, in George’s world, heroism must be a sham or a weakness, because then George’s own bad character is wisdom and enlightenment, instead of just lack of moral virtue. If heroes are all frauds or suckers, then George is being smart, because he has seen through the whole heroism thing. If heroes are real, and they do sometimes succeed, and they do make the world better for everyone, then George is just a fat, lazy, cynical old man who doesn’t wanna finish his art for the sake of art or integrity, because he only ever wanted money, and now he has more than he knows what to do with.

In order to finish the story, George would need to have an awakening of virtue. He would first have to develop a sense of integrity — a desire to fulfill his promises, even when no one can or will punish him for not doing so. He would then have to develop a sense of humility — because to write a better person than he is, he would have to admit to himself that there is such a thing, that people can be better, and that trying to be better is an actual worthy goal, not just the act of falling for a con game run to control you. The longer someone goes without admitting to their faults, the harder those faults are to admit to, because they have been more deeply invested in. And this means he would also have to develop the courage to admit to himself that he is, in fact, a fat lazy cynical old coward, and that Tolkien, whom he envies and despises, was the far better man all along.

This sort of thinking appeals to many fans of Tolkien who rightly consider Martin to be a lesser author, and correctly deem ASOIAF to be a lesser work, despite its much greater length, than LOTR. But it is incorrect, and not only is it incorrect, but it is irrelevant.

Eriksen is describing a work that he would write, if he was able to write an epic fantasy saga, which he is unlikely to be able to do. As Haruki Murakami observes, the longer the work, the deeper into oneself one has to delve, and the more laborious the effort required. As one of the very few who has written short stories, novels, and an epic fantasy saga, I can testify that it is as difficult to go from writing novels to epics as it is to go from writing short stories to novels.

Nihilism is not the problem. Envy of Tolkien is not the problem. Lack of virtue is not the problem. Morality, cowardice, and a refusal to admit to his own faults are not the problem.

To the contrary, Martin’s dilemma is chiefly a technical one related to the structure of the books that has been obvious since the release of the fourth book in the series. Consider the POV breakdown of A Game of Thrones, the first book of ASOIAF.

  1. 15 Ned 53,920 18.3% 3,595
  2. 11 Catelyn 44,522 15.1% 4,047
  3. 10 Daenerys 38,142 12.9% 3,814
  4. 09 Jon 37,480 12.7% 4,164
  5. 09 Tyrion 35,340 12.0% 3,927
  6. 07 Bran 26,980 9.1% 3,854
  7. 06 Sansa 23,560 8.0% 3,927
  8. 05 Arya 21,110 7.2% 4,222

Eight perspective characters, with Ned accounting for 15 chapters and 18.3 percent of the focus. Only Ned was eliminated by the end of the book, so Martin entered the second book of the series with a very manageable seven characters. He adds three characters to reach 10, then two more in the third for 12, however, he only continues the stories of three of those 12 characters as he introduces 10 more in the fourth book.

By the end of A Dance with Dragons, Martin had divided up his increasingly out-of-control story amidst 18 perspective characters and entered The Winds of Winter with up to 30(!) potential perspective characters whose stories require at least some degree of resolution! Ironically for an author whose biggest claim to literary fame is for his willingness to kill off his characters, Martin’s main problem is that he doesn’t kill off enough anywhere nearly enough of them. How do you satisfactorily close out a series when you can only devote an average of two chapters to each character?

Constrast this with my POV discipline in Arts of Dark and Light. There are seven perspective characters in A Throne of Bones, not counting the crows or the prologue. One of those characters died, leaving six. I added four new perspective characters in A Sea of Skulls for a total of 10, but three characters did not survive the second book, leaving me with a perfectly manageable seven perspective characters whose stories require resolution by the end of the final book.

The seeds of Martin’s present predicament were clearly sown in A Feast for Crows, when he unnecessarily introduced 10 new characters while failing to follow the stories of nine of his previous perspective characters. That’s why A Dance with Dragons was both a) even longer than the previous books and b) so disappointing. Indeed, that was the book that convinced me that I could not only write an epic fantasy myself, but write a better one than Martin.

The structural issue isn’t the only problem, of course. The other problem is that Martin divulged the ending via the HBO show and everyone hated it. So Martin should have gone back to the drawing board and come up with a different ending, but he is too old and too fat to have the strength required for the task.

As physical strength declines, there is a subtle decline in mental fitness, too. Mental agility and emotional flexibility are lost. Once when I was interviewed by a young writer I declared that “once a writer puts on fat, it’s all over.” This was a bit hyperbolic , and of course there are exceptions, but I do believe that for the most part it’s true. Whether it is actual physical fat or metaphoric fat.
– Haruki Murakami, Novelist as a Vocation

In conclusion, Martin is facing an extraordinarily difficult task of resolving two major problems at a time when he has probably never been less able to address them. Throw in his existing wealth and fame, and it should not be difficult to ascertain why he is very unlikely to ever finish his epic.

If you’re interested in this topic, you can see how I rated the various authors of epic fantasy back in 2017. If you feel I missed anyone significant, do bring them to my attention.

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When Retconning Works

Inverse contemplates the retconnning of Gollum:

In the 1937 version, Gollum is just a weird creature.

From the original Hobbit (1937):

But funnily enough he [Bilbo] need not have been alarmed. For one thing Gollum had learned long ago was to never cheat at the riddle-game, which is a sacred one and of immense antiquity.

From the revised Hobbit (1951, 1965, et al.):

He knew of course, the riddle-game was sacred and of immense antiquity and even wicked creatures were afraid to cheat when they played it. But he [Bilbo] felt he could not trust this slimy thing [Gollum] to keep any promise at a pinch. Any excuse would do for him to slide out of it. And after all that last question had not been a genuine riddle according to the ancient laws.”

Tolkien tinkered with “Riddles in the Dark” up until 1966, making him something of a George Lucas; continually modifying his story to fit with his other books.In the first, 1937 Hobbit, Gollum’s love of the Ring isn’t connected to any, deeper, sinister meaning. Tolkien initially mentioned in passing that “…if you slipped the ring on your finger, you were invisible…”. But in the 1951 revisions, when Gollum’s attitude became more intense, it became a “ring of power,” and the after-effects of using the ring would make you “shaky and faint.”

Without Tolkien utterly revising Gollum — and thus, revising the Ring — nothing about The Lord of the Rings would make sense, and arguably, the entirety of Middle-earth would be far less interesting. If Gollum had remained a curious, silly little creature who possessed a whimsical magic ring, it’s doubtful we’d all be obsessed with this wonderful fantasy world today. It’s also unlikely that, had Tolkien not utterly retconned Gollum and the One Ring, we’d even be talking about the careers of Peter Jackson and Andy Serkis.

So while the impending creation of The Hunt for Gollum might, for some, feel like a strange, unnecessary prequel at best (and a blasphemous retcon at worst), there is a massive and pivotal precedent to mess with Gollum’s story, straight from Professor Tolkien himself.

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What’s Wrong with Mary Sue

The intrinsic problem of writing self-inserts, demonstrated in a single meme.

Now what could be wrong with my Mary Sue?
She’s very important, she’s got so much to do!
She pretty, she’s smart, and everyone loves her;
She’s got endless depths for her fans to uncover.
Though it must be admitted there is one problem, true,
Since there’s nothing at all for her sidekicks to do!

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There is No “Imposter Syndrome”

People are often advised to “fake it until you make it”, but speaking as a publisher, I see a surprising number of people who never quit faking it even after they achieved a modicum of success. The main reason for “imposter syndrome” is that there are a lot of imposters out there.

Not all self-doubt is unwarranted. And to paraphrase Garrison Keillor, the urge to perform is not a reliable indicator of talent.

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The Gaiman Defense Team in Action

Behind the scenes, Neil Gaiman and his coterie of freakshows and followers and PR firms have been actively engaged in gaslighting his growing number of accusers for the last two months. This is probably the primary reason for the wall of silence from everyone who has worshipped at the feet of the modestly-talented charlatan, which is nearly everyone in science fiction and fantasy today. One target of this gaslighting has apparently had enough of the nonsense and was gracious enough to expose it publicly:

A summary of the SIXTH episode about Neil Gaiman’s decades long web of abuse. He can be heard in recorded calls. This is Neil. Listen to it for yourself.

Also of note, my former friend who is deep in his cultish inner circle sent me private emails from this woman speaking in this episode. Private emails sent to me in the hopes I wouldn’t believe her story (first aired on a different podcast). Emails from when she was 21/22 and was in the midst of her situation with Neil.

Neil sent this woman’s emails out to one of his lovers and god knows who else, along with lies about her claims…long AFTER these phone calls you’ll hear in this episode. He admits it. And later lies. Lies that arrived on my phone randomly from someone I considered my friend. Because apparently he really enjoys brain washing people.

I am livid. These women have been brave to come forward this way! Guess he’s not so far removed from his Scientology upbringing after all, eh? If you want to come forward about Neil in any way I hope you will feel empowered by the women who have spoken out. You don’t have to protect him any longer.

I won’t share screencaps of Claire’s emails themselves because those shouldn’t have been shared with me in the first place but this is from my former friend, the day after we fought by phone. Neil forwarded my friend these emails which she sent to me and at least one other person TO DISCREDIT CLAIRE.

The exact date was the day after Claire’s story first dropped. July 28th i believe? He was working overtime texting and calling people to get them in line. Also his lawyers apparently asked him for a list of names of all his “girlfriends” who might be “unhappy”.

It’s somewhat amusing how the Gaiman Defense Team tries to hit any angle that they think might work. But denigrating journalists who are literally doing their job as “sociopaths who just wanted a story” is never going to work with anyone. I’ve been the subject of more stupid, pointless, and unmerited hit pieces than Neil Gaiman ever will be, and it never even occurred to me to blame the journalists or call them psychopaths for trying to score a few points with the SJW crowd.

I mean, when a Tor Books author publishes a piece in a major UK newspaper quoting numerous Tor editors and authors about how evil you are for stealing nominations that should have gone to Tor editors and authors like they always do, it’s hard to take it personally. The motivation underlying the hit piece isn’t exactly opaque.

Anyhow, I really don’t think the defense team’s “get to know the real Gaiman behind the allegations” is a tactic that is likely to prove successful. Because the real Gaiman, the one you can hear on the podcast, is a creepy, self-pitying little Gamma male, whose success has obviously been mostly manufactured for him. Forget autism and narcissism, I’ll bet he’s got one whopper of a case of Imposter Syndrome, because he’s an even bigger literary imposter than John Scalzi. What Gaiman’s fans like about him is not the actual individual, it is the Wizard of Goth construction that conceals the wretched little man.

I just finished reading Gaiman’s Ocean at the End of the Lane. It’s not terrible. It has its elements and its moments. I’ll review it on the Darkstream sometime. But for me, the most noteworthy aspect of the little novel was not its whitewashing of a historical Scientology-related suicide that may or may not have actually been a suicide, but rather, its relentless and imitative mediocrity.

Jeff Vandermeer saw it too. Any halfway-decent author who actually reads a Gaiman book can’t help but see that it’s always been fraudulent. Given what we now know of his Scientology background, his success in bookselling shouldn’t be taken any more indicative of his literary talents than L. Ron Hubbard’s was.

Just stop quoting stupid ass Neil Gaiman writing advice. It’s always like “trust in your dreams” or other shit you see on a bumpersticker or on a sign in a Hobby Lobby. “Trust your dreams and pixie dust will shoot out of your ass.”

The art always betrays the author. I knew John C. Wright was a science fiction grand master from the first time I read The Golden Age. I knew Cornelius Claudio Kreutsch was a genuine magician at the keyboard the first time I saw him play in Barcelona. And I knew Neil Gaiman was a literary fraud by the time I finished reading the sixth issue of Sandman back in 2018; I’d previously read Good Omens, which aside from a few typical Terry Pratchett gems, I found to be a disappointing and not-very-funny Douglas Adams pastiche.

Neil Gaiman is Jordan Peterson for the Drama Club. He mirrors back to them what they want to see in themselves He was always John Dee, never Dream.

UPDATE: The Wall of Silence just developed a pretty big crack. The Bookseller is an important industry site in the UK:

The Bookseller reached out to Gaiman’s representatives, who did not respond, and his publishers, with Headline declining to comment, and Bloomsbury, Penguin Random House (PRH) and HarperCollins US not responding to requests to comment. The Bookseller also reached out to the Royal Society of Literature, of which Gaiman is a patron, which declined to comment, as did the Publishers Association. The Bookseller also contacted the Society of Authors (SoA) for a comment but it did not respond.

Just wait until the publishing industry realizes that a significant percentage of Gaiman’s alleged 50 million book sales went to Scientology, as with L. Ron Hubbard’s “bestsellers”.

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An Outdated Review

Didact’s Mind wrote a very favorable review of the preliminary edition of A SEA OF SKULLS back in 2017. It would be interesting to know if he feels the completed work holds up to his initial perspective on it.

Vox Day has not merely matched George R. R. Martin’s fantasy writing skills and output. He has exceeded him, by miles, leaving old Rape Rape wheezing and panting in the dust.

In fact, I am willing to go so far as to argue that, with this book, Vox Day has catapulted himself into the storied and rarefied rank of writers that sits just below The Master himself.

That’s right, I went there. I just said that Vox Day has written a book that is nearly as good as J. R. R. Tolkien’s work.

Not as good. But not terribly far off, either.

From one fantasy fan to another, praise simply does not come any higher than that.

Vox’s accomplishment is made all the more astonishing by the fact that this isn’t even the completed book yet. It’s less than half of the full work. This book is already far more complex, more layered, and simply bigger in scale and scope than its predecessor. There are far more point-of-view characters, the battle sequences are way bigger, the size of the world that Vox Day is playing with is far greater…

The result is so good that it deserves to be called the finest high-fantasy book of its time.

Make no mistake: this now puts Vox Day right below The Master himself in terms of writing- right up there with C. S. Lewis, John C. Wright, and maybe two or three others. And that is an astonishing achievement, given that neither Tolkien nor Vox can rightly be considered first-rate fantasy writers.

One of the interesting things about the comparison between Tolkien and Day is that neither of them are really writers to begin with. Vox Day started out as a musician and a game designer. Vox himself will readily admit that his writing is not as good as Tolkien’s- because it isn’t. Yet Tolkien was a linguist, whose strong Christian faith and interest in Scandinavian mythology helped him create a fantasy world. The reason both Tolkien and Day succeeded, where so many dedicated professional authors would have failed, is because they focused on their respective strengths and wrote works of epic fantasy that played to them…

This book is, quite simply, an extraordinary achievement. With it, Vox has separated himself from all of his contemporary rivals and has clearly laid down a marker for everyone else to match- and I personally don’t think anyone will be able to do so for years, maybe decades, to come.

It’s entirely up to the reader to see if the most recent volume in ARTS OF DARK AND LIGHT holds up to the promise of its earlier and abbreviated release. But for my part, what I will say is that one reason it took me so long to complete the book and get it out is that I was determined to at least try to deliver something that was consistently at the same level as A THRONE OF BONES. I took PG Wodehouse as my inspiration here, as his work is remarkably consistent throughout a novel; he was quite purposeful in attempting to ensure that every scene and every page stood up well on its own. This required a significant amount of discipline in not permitting the story to expand willy-nilly in any direction that happened to capture my attention at the time.

As we’ve seen from George Martin’s failure to finish his epic fantasy, while it’s much easier to churn out words by following one’s momentary whims and exploring whatever tangent happens to strike one’s fancy, this inevitably leads to a wider scope and excessive perspective characters that will, sooner or later, render the story too large to write. One of the many geniuses of JRR Tolkien was his ability to keep his epic story tied very tightly to a fairly small number of key characters, keeping them in physical proximity to each other, and thereby preventing the story from continually expanding to the point that it escaped his ability to reasonably describe it.

Only time will tell, but in A SEA OF SKULLS, I believe that I successfully conquered the challenge of the middle book, which in any trilogy is always the hardest book to write because it has to expand upon the first book without exploding in a manner that renders closure in the third book impossible. It’s interesting that one seldom hears writers discussing these technical matters, but this is probably because the sort of writers who attend workshops mostly write short stories, while the writers who teach them are either self-promoters like John Scalzi or successful mediocrities cruising for starstruck young women like Neil Gaiman, neither one of whom could write epic fantasy if they tried.

Anyhow, for better or for worse, it’s done now and I’m on to the final volume in the series. If Didact’s Mind updates his review, I’ll be sure to post a link to it here.

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ASOS on Amazon

The hardcover edition of A SEA OF SKULLS is now available on Amazon, as are its predecessors, SUMMA ELVETICA and A THRONE OF BONES.

Three down, one to go. The paperback edition has been submitted and should also be available through the retail bookstores early next week is also available. And, of course, NDM Express has them as well. Here is one of the first reviews, based on the Kindle edition.

The successor volume to A Throne of Bones, extends and deepens the Great Game played across Selenoth. The mysterious Watchers emerge as events grow wider and more subtle; with armies marching and leaders falling, they must now step out of shadows and reveal themselves to their selected minions in the Younger Races. The minions respond in various ways; what can be counted on is that The Watchers are not revealing the complete truth or timeline to their minions, each other, or maybe themselves. A gateway, an alignment, and an artifact are common elements, but the reader must determine which parts are true. Rudyard Kipling would approve of The Great Game play, and how leaders and common folk are portrayed.

Visions of intense beauty mix with prosaic household scenes, and acts of horror or terror are met with stern justice and supreme sacrifice. Treachery, double-dealing, and acts of mercy conflict and act at cross-purposes, creating unintended consequences and surprise outcomes. The action, battles, and intrigues build across species, realm, entire regions, with several startling climax moments of horror and glory, sufficient to make men weep in joy and grief. Some characters may not be seen again; others – perhaps leave a legacy, or return through Grace?

The narrative and writing style are reminiscent of The Lord of the Rings. The prose is well structured, but doesn’t have the depth or meter of an Oxford Don. The author would make Tolkien smile, with a sprightly and almost gleeful Thomistic analysis of a question by one character, something worthy of placement in Christian epic fantasy. This is a worthy addition to the set of Epic Fantasy as an homage to Tolkien, supporting the Good, Beautiful and True, and explicitly Christian in structure.

The characters range from an orc leader of decent but evil intellect, promoted for rational acts to protect his lads, to a decrepit, nearly deceased elf Magister who answers dire pleas for help – but with painful costs for his people and himself. Several heroes and villains continue, with greater depth and subtle character revelations. Some are introduced, some strengthen their positions, while others make their final curtain call. This is the way of all life in Selenoth, as is true in our world. All are striving to protect and defend what is Good, Beautiful, and True or its Inverse, driven by their faith, morals, and internal desires.

Highly recommended for high school ages and above. Be prepared to make side studies of politics, Republican Rome, faith and theology, logic, logistics, and poetry, and enjoy the excursions.

UPDATE: The paperback edition is now available on Amazon and on NDM Express.

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