Tag Archives: Books

The Redemption of Erâth: Midwinter Pause

So I hope you’ve been enjoying Brandyé’s journey into the world of Erâth over the past few months. Throughout the last fifteen chapters we’ve seen Brandyé be captured by, and eventually live alongside, the seafaring Cosari. He reunited with his childhood friend Elven and learned of terrible happenings in his home country, and set out to discover the world with him. Along the way they met a mysterious race of beings called the Illuèn, who appear to know much of the world past, and something of what is to come.

I am just as excited to know where this is going as you are, but the time has come for a pause in the telling of this tale. My current focus during the autumn is going to be A Gothic Symphony, a work that I’ve been continuing for many years. I would like to finally see that near to completion, and this is the year to do it. Alongside this I will be working toward the (finally!) publication of the first book, Consolation. I can’t wait to get it back from the editor, and I’m becoming very anxious to send it off so that I can finally see it in print. If I can get it out before the holidays, that would be fantastic.

So what does this mean? Things will be quiet on the …Erâth front for a while. Expect updates when I get the manuscript back; I will certainly be letting you know how things are going toward publication! However, there will be no new chapters at least until the new year, at which point I hope to have the first book published and most of A Gothic Symphony finished.

It’s been a wonderful journey so far, and I hope you’ll forgive this temporary absence. I can absolutely promise you that Brandyé’s journey is not over; there are still five-and-a-half books left to write!

Take care, enjoy yourselves, and if you’re interested feel free to dive back into the world of Erâth from the beginning: all the chapters are here.

I look forward to seeing you in the new year!

~

Satis 2013

A Gothic Symphony: Chapter Three – Introductions

If he hadn’t known better, he would have thought it was a setup. Considering where things ended up leading, it might as well have been. All of it, just to meet that one girl.

Marlon was crazy. He owned a huge apartment in the expensive part of the city, and no one really knew where he got the money; he worked at a divorce attorney office, the kind that don’t require a spouse’s signature. He had first met Marlon when he still worked at the big law firm, and he’d fallen in with him right away – the guy knew how to throw a party.

He never quite figured out why Marlon left; something to do with his boss, who Marlon had never really liked. In his mind, that didn’t really justify leaving a cushy job with an almost infinite upward path for a downtown crap shack that got people out of your life for $300. There was no way he was making any decent money there, even if they kept things off the books (which was pretty likely). It didn’t change a thing; he’d kept the apartment, the expensive TV and white leather couches, and he still threw mad parties.

Most of the people who’d shown up were young urbanites fresh out of college (some still in college), starting their career and living the good life in a big city. There was always something to do on a Saturday night, and apparently this was the thing to do this night. There must have been fifty people crammed into that apartment, and there was wine and champagne and expensive beer. The music was loud, the people were louder, and there was a lot of laughter, a lot of joking, and a whole lot of flirting.

He’d come because Marlon had invited him; he liked the atmosphere, when people started getting hammered, when their hair and their guards came down. A lot of the girls were single, and it was a good place to pick someone up (or get laid, if the mood was right). At any given time, there was something or other going on in the bedroom.

Tonight, though, he wasn’t really all that into it. He’d just come off the back of a week of fifteen-hour days, and frankly was planning to stay an hour, get wasted, and go back to his apartment to sleep for twenty-four hours straight.

He’d secured himself a comfy seat in a corner near the windows, having made sure it was only big enough for one. He had a glass of scotch in his hand – no ice – and had surreptitiously liberated the bottle from the little bar shelf in the open-plan kitchen. If he didn’t finish it, he told himself, he’d be taking it with him. It was Marlon’s, and it was expensive, and he didn’t give a shit. […]

Read the full chapter here.

Thought of the Week: The Role of the Fantasy Sword

When I first began delving into the world of fantasy, a quest that would eventually lead to the world of Erâth, Brandyé Dui-Erâth and his journey into darkness, I came across a number of articles outlining common themes throughout fantasy literature. At first, of course, I thought I had to adhere to these commandments, laid down by the god of fantasy, J.R.R. Tolkien. As time, and the novel, progressed, however, I began to realize the value of originality, and discovered certain aspects that deviated from the tried and true classical form of fantasy. One key element was that I came to realize there were no true ‘heroes’ in my story. The protagonist, Brandyé, is weak, both physically and emotionally, preyed upon by both beasts and darkness. There are no master figures, no Aragorns or Gandalfs to save the day. There are people with kind hearts that nonetheless do cruel things.

The metaphor is (I hope) different as well. Whereas Tolkien’s darkness was (in my mind) a metaphor for the dismal horrors of war, for me it holds a much more personal facet: it is the great, all-consuming and unsurmountable darkness of depression and despair. The world is already covered in darkness; the forces of good have already lost. Our hero has no conviction, and despairs that he can ever do good in his life.

However, there are still many elements that fit neatly the stereotype of high fantasy, such as a dark lord, fictional worlds and languages, a quest to defeat said dark lord, kingdoms great and small, etc. And one of the elements preserved, though I didn’t know it at the time, was the fantasy sword.

Narsil

The Shards of Narsil

Nearly every high fantasy story I can think of (though I’m not as widely read as I should be) has swords, which is natural for a genre that tends to romanticize the middle ages. But more than that, there is usually at least one sword, if not several, that has a merit beyond its ability to kill. These swords have a history, their forging is legendary, their uses are magical, and in the right hands they are undefeatable. The Lord of the Rings has Narsil; Elric has Stormbringer; Harry Potter has the Sword of Griffindor, although I would argue that the wands represent the same functional place as these others. The Redemption of Erâth has Namrâth.

It’s hard to deny that these swords are an integral part of such fantasy, but it became curious to me that it should be so. Certainly swords are necessary if the story is to contain fighting of any kind, and it would be poor fantasy indeed if there were not epic battles involved. But the question remains precisely why it is so important that there be at least one sword with mystical origins and powers.

I have one or two thoughts on the matter, which may or may not be way off the mark. Wikipedia has a fantastic list of famous fantasy swords, and one of the first things I noticed is that, with the exception of J.K. Rowling, every author who has invented such a sword (including myself) is a man. Cue the obvious sexual innuendos. High fantasy rarely has sexual content of any kind, and even romance is often sidelined (the relationship between Aragorn and Arwen in The Lord of the Rings is hardly touched upon in the book, as opposed to Peter Jackson’s film versions). And it’s easy to see how a great, whopping sword could be seen as a phallic symbol. (Interesting, then, that Rowling’s wands are so small!) These swords are themselves almost invariably wielded by men, and represent their great strength and prowess. It’s certainly possible that, consciously or unconsciously, these magical swords represent the manliness of their bearers.

A magical mace?

A magical mace?

Another, more mundane explanation could be that there have to be mystical swords. After all, what fun would it be if the great demon lord was defeated by any old blade kicking around on the battlefield? Great, magical beings require great, magical weapons, and the sword is the natural weapon of choice. (Brandyé, in The Redemption of Erâth, actually carries a crossbow for the majority of the first book.) But why not magical maces, or whips (Indiana Jones, I suppose), or daggers? Perhaps because there is something clean about a sword, that it can effortlessly stab, slice and decapitate with little or no mess. A great spiked mace is a pretty messy weapon, it has to be said, and high fantasy is, along with being romance-less, usually pretty bloodless.

Finally, the thought that comes to me is that the magical sword represents power greater than the wielder can manage; the metaphor of runaway technology leading to the wars in which they are actually used. Elric’s Stormbringer, sucking the souls of any it touches, is exemplary of this: the sword is a curse to its wielder, who becomes ever more bound to it the more he uses it.

Perhaps there is another, socio-psychological answer to this pondering question; if so, I am too blind to see it. Perhaps the fantasy sword just is, no questions asked. But I’d like to turn this over to you: what do you think the purpose of these fantastical swords is?

Featured image taken from http://www.deviantart.com/morelikethis/artists/274055104?view_mode=2.

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