Andrew Hindle's Blog

I’m not actually going back to writing a post a day, but I’m kind of on a bit of a roll right now (the weekend’s going to be a bit full though, so I’m getting my kicks where I can).

So I ended up writing a bit of meta-info and added a couple more drawings, and I thought what the Hell. I’ll put them on the aki’Pedia. I have to start filling that out with the Phase 3 stuff eventually, right? I know I haven’t finished writing in the Phase 1 and Phase 2 stuff, shut up. I also know I haven’t updated the Phases model with the right book titles or covers yet, shut up.

Malaks: Now on the aki’Pedia!

Enjoy! I repeat, it’s got pictures! I also self-rabbit-holed and ended up writing a little page about Elves as well, since that will help connect this phase to the wider Phase 1 and Phase 2 urverse.

No it won’t. But shut up!

Look at what a handsome boy he is!

Have I lost the ability to write proper blog post titles? Did I ever have the ability to write them? Whatever. Screw it, we’re doing this.

So, as of today I have finished chapter 3 (of 9) of The Faere Named Dredna and that brings my totals to:

Chapter 1: 75 pages, 38,455 words.

Chapter 2: 19 pages, 9,319 words.

Chapter 3: 63 pages, 29,483 words.

Whole book: 157 pages, 77,257

So it’s already a decent-sized book. But for reference, The Girl Named Hell was 675 pages, 229,174 words (the page numbers are different in the final copy though so that’s not really relevant). I suspect this second book will be smaller, but who knows?

Also, yes those chapters are very uneven! I’m writing an A plot and a B plot, and the B plot (while fun) is also considerably thinner than the A plot. That’s kind of by design, because I feel like too much of the B plot will wear the readers down, but still. It’s a big difference, and the even-numbered chapters are more by way of a bit of light relief in between the heavy stuff. Maybe that will change as we go. I don’t know what I’m going to have in chapter 4 (of 9) exactly, but if I fit in all the things I’ve scribbled in my notes it might end up being a respectable size.

But so far, with chapter 1 (of 9) and chapter 3 (of 9) being essentially short-novel length and chapter 2 (of 9) being a big short story at best, I don’t know. The average chapter length based on the current three is ~25,752 words, and if the remaining six chapters are around the same average then we will end up with a total of 180,266-and-one-third words for the whole book. Still big, but not as big as book one. And also, I’m not sure I’ll stick to those averages. The Girl Named Hell had a big opening chapter and then smaller ones. Let’s see.

Have I also lost the ability to do metrics?

No, I say!

No! For here are the metrics for book two, and book one for comparison! Chapters 4 (of 9) through 9 (of 9) are projections based on the average so far so I guess that will shift. And book one had a pretty wild weight distribution on the chapters too, and visible A plot and B plot differential. So I guess we’ll see. That chapter 2 (of 9) is a bit of a tiddler though.

Am I only doing this so I can eventually say “I’ve just finished chapter 7 (of 9)” and then post a picture of Jeri Ryan from Star Trek: Voyager?

No! See? I can do that whenever I like.

The pictures of Jeri Ryan from Star Trek: Voyager will continue until morale improves. I’m pretty sure morale has already improved at least among certain Hatstander demographics, but whatever.

So. Perfect, click Publish.

Let’s have a little check-in, because I thought my month was going to go differently. For a start, I thought it would be over already but apparently there is another week to go until pay day. Which is ridiculous, because February was two and a half weeks long and March has already been going on for approximately seven years.

Well, anyway. What’s new?

Nothing much. I’ve been in a waiting line for a non-life-threatening surgery (those of you who have read my first book will be delighted to hear it’s just more of the same from my absolute mad lad of a large intestine) for the better part of a year now, and was scheduled to go under the knife in April. This has now been thrown into doubt in the most Finnish Healthcare possible way, by them telling me all about it and then allowing me almost an entire day to inform my employers and customers and sort out my home schedule, then calling me back and saying “lol, no, that was a lie, we’re probably not going to do anything until you get your blood pressure and other shit sorted.”

Please note the probably there, it’s important. Never at any point is a Finnish citizen or resident to be given actual concrete information. Not because they would then have grounds to sue if that information was then overturned, but just because we’re fucking into that shit I guess.

So anyway, that’s annoying. But what can you do? Being mad makes my blood pressure higher, so.

Otherwise things are mostly good. Mrs. Hatboy is doing great in her new career as a tour guide, and Wump and Toop are doing well in school despite it being an ulcer-inducing stressful nightmare even on good days. They’re smart kids and they’ll get through it. And my own work is going nicely, which is great because holy shit, is the unemployment bad right now. And while I may not be at risk of deportation like some of my friends (thanks, right-wing fucktards in charge!), it’s just another wonderful little spike of low-key stress that we all love. Maybe I should try yoga.

I’m kidding, of course. Everything is fine as long as I get to write, and right now I am definitely getting to write!

The Cursèd Playground apparently remains my most popular book although it has gotten zero (0) reviews, and in fact my Amazon pages have been an absolute wasteland lately. Don’t care, got an amazing new set of headphones from my boy Joonatan (check out his reviews at Region Free, he’s a fucking legend) and they are perfect for sitting and writing. I’m using a google doc these days which is good for writing on phone and PC without a lot of emailing back and forth of Word docs, too.

I have finished writing book one of The War of Mortal Aggression, entitled The Girl Named Hell. Editing is mostly done too, and I am just adding some drawings for the front few pages and considering the creation of a few maps that will help the reader to get their bearings in this insane high-fantasy world.

Here is a rough sketch, just to let you know where I’m at. These are the three “varieties” of Humans in The War of Mortal Aggression series. I am once again working with evolutionary-level timelines and even my Humans are complicated enough to need a drawing, and they are one of fourteen species in this thing. I think it is fair to say that I have in fact decided to get worse.

Book two, entitled The Faere Named Dredna, is also underway and I am just finishing off chapter 3 (of 9). It’s a fucking doozy if I do say so myself. Then I have the third book still to write, and I am thinking I will finish all three before publishing the trilogy. I don’t know if that will happen this year or next year, because I dearly love this story and I am taking my time with it. Also, so far they’re shaping up to be real chonkers. Like I said though, I am using a google doc system now and each chapter is a separate doc, so I don’t have an easy way to track my word counts and total progress (beyond this “chapter 3 [of 9]” kind of shit). I haven’t really looked into it.

I also have covers for book one and book two! I may share them later. My cover artist is very eager and has pushed me into getting covers long before I usually think about them. She’ll probably start nudging me about book three soon, but I need to recover some financial sanity first. A bunch of trees being professionally felled in our yard, and a new clutch and bearing for the car, has eradicated most of my savings for the moment – and the world remains batshit insane.

You said it, Wade.

Got a ton going on lately and the coming week is going to be a lot, but I had a bit of time this morning and since I won’t have time to actually write, I figured what the heck. Why not throw up a sketch I thought up last night?

This is a rough MS Paint scribble of some comparative depths of different structures in my current book’s world. Just to show how they stack up against each other.

I didn’t put actual measurements yet, might do a proper version of this later, but just out of interest here are some key bits for you to enjoy. A lot of this doesn’t really make it into the story itself – you know, that’s why they call it worldbuilding and not plot, I guess. But you never know.

I’m not sure if the picture will be legible, it’s pretty large so if you can open it full-size it should be readable at least.

Anyway, just a bit of fun. Hoping to get some more work done this evening but it’s doubtful.

This month I decided to take part in a little indie book promotion, which saw me donating one of my many book reviews to the cause of boosting the visibility of some deserving authors. The promo is called A Month of Rain and Reads, because it’s rainy and chilly up in the northern hemisphere at least, so it’s time to curl up with a good book.

Anyway, today was my turn to give an interview! I’m also taking part in an e-book give-away but I am not sure what that’s going to look like yet. As my social media presence is very limited these days, I am happy to show up wherever I’m invited.

AMoRaR Interview – Andrew Hindle

Regulars to this blog will be shocked – shocked! – to hear I waffle on at considerable length during this ostensibly short and punchy interview. But I appreciated being included and urge you to check out some of the recommendations that are coming up as a result of this promo.

Some of the other authors being interviewed or having their books reviewed are esteemed peers of mine from the SPSFC and elsewhere. They are all most excellent.

So here’s a thing.

The year was 2015. Mrs. Hatboy and I were in Australia on holiday with Wump and Toop (they were … I want to say five and one at the time?). On this particular day, though, the kids were off with the grandparents, and it was just me and Mrs. Hatboy and a friend of ours at the old Hatboy family beach house.

Our friend was reading an article, or relating some kind of long-winded anecdote to us but I wasn’t really paying attention. I think I already knew the conclusion to the story, and I was distracted by this amazing moth that I’d spotted in the living room. It was kind of bee-formed, but even furrier and with more regular moth-wings and moth-antennae. It was striped black and purple and I’d never seen anything like it before. Oh yeah and it was about the length of my hand, which is big even by Australian standards.

Of course, this being Australia I didn’t need the bee-shape or the striped patterning to tell me it was probably dangerous, so I kept my distance as I checked it out and tried to get a picture of it. I had to interrupt my friend’s monologue to tell them and Mrs. Hatboy that this was some weird shit and they should check it out. Our friend, incidentally, was also just visiting Australia so I wouldn’t have expected her to know what type of moth it was either.

Anyway, the moth flapped around the room, pretty aimlessly, and I was trying to figure out a way of getting it back outside without being stung or bitten or having my skin assaulted by venomous burning fur-fibres (that’s a thing. Australia.). At one point I lost track of it, but then it came back. I thought I’d misjudged its size at first, because it seemed to be barely the size of a dust-mote – but then the mote settled on the wall and the moth backed out into full size again as though it was emerging end-first from a hole in the wall. Also not impossible, since all kinds of creepy crawlies can make nests inside walls. Still, it was kind of weird the way it was behaving.

I kept following it and it ended up at the windows and the glass front doors leading out onto our beach house’s front verandah. I opened the windows and door for it and it looked at me – I always liked to think it was surprise and gratitude – before flying out into the yard. Then, when it didn’t seem like it was going to fly away, I stepped out onto the verandah to watch it some more. There was a girl, maybe five or six years old, standing in our yard. Like some kind of weird fae-folk child, she was just standing there like she’d been the moth all along, and was now showing her true form. Had I heard voices while the moth was flying around our beach house? I don’t know. Probably not. But she was speaking, asking if I knew where she was, if I was going to go with her.

I tried to talk to her, find out where she had come from or what her name was, but she seemed too young or confused to have a coherent conversation with. That was when I was reminded of something, and I looked it up on my phone. Now, my phone wasn’t particularly great back in 2015 (was I still on Mopho Cake I or II? A very early smartphone anyway, maybe one I’d received from No*ia back in the day … wait, I can actually track this through the blog! I had given up Mopho Cake II in 2014, and welcomed Mopho Cake III [ironically with an autofill poem that Mr. dreameling suggested in the comments might have had A.I. involved, although he was talking about actual A.I., because we knew the difference between autofill and artificial intelligence back then] the same year, before Mopho Cake III finally met its end by BRKN archery firing squad in 2017 … but I digress), but … what was I saying? Right, my phone wasn’t that great so it took some digging for the article but I eventually found it.

So these twin girls, Poli and Poni Dwyer, had disappeared while swimming in an old quarry. And no, it hadn’t been a shark or a crocodile. There were some pictures of them that didn’t look very much like the girl out in our front yard, but there was also a grainy low-res video of the two of them at the swimming hole, splashing around and laughing. That one did look like the girl in the yard.

They’d disappeared six years previously, in 2009.

I told Mrs. Hatboy about the missing girls and when they had gone missing, and she was appropriately spooked out by it all. The creepy little girl in our yard, you see, was still the exact same age Poli and Poni had been when they’d disappeared.

I attempted to find the video again, just to confirm what I was seeing, but all I could find was a bunch of makeup-and-photoshop-enhanced Instagram pictures and a lot of mean comments about the missing girls and their parents being attention-seekers, followed by a strange ream of “A.I.” slop videos featuring an army troop sitting in front of a burned-out school bus with a battered blue robot as part of their unit.

It became clear to me that the three of us who’d actually seen the moth, and the girl in the yard, would be dismissed as hoaxers. The moth hadn’t looked real, after all. “Poli and Poni” was destined to go from a sad story of two missing girls to one of the first big fake mystery memes of the misinformation age. Enhanced and enabled with obvious “A.I.”, of course.

Anyway that was when I woke up this morning. The entire thing, including the tenth anniversary article with the exact title of this blog post, was in fact a dream.

So, I just finished reading The Elitist Supremacy, book 1 of The Elites and the Rogues series, by Niranjan. This one isn’t SPSFC related, although the author is a Friend of the Competition.

In short (*pause for laughter*), The Elitist Supremacy is a sci-fi espionage thriller with some nice interweaving of future tech and future history with human storylines. What does that mean? Well, in the distant future of 2936, people are still very much people. And having a bunch of new toys to play with doesn’t change that. It just changes the way the same old primitive dance is performed. It is nothing if not a story about the lengths people will go to in protection of those they love, whether that is a child, a partner, or … well, themselves.

Warning: There may be random spoilers throughout the rest of this review, mainly because I just don’t know how to discuss half of what happened here without spoiling something.

In 2241 an execution goes awry, and from that interesting opening we jump forward 695 years to find that humanity has gone interplanetary and is now ruled by “the State” (or “Cynfor”), and the “Elites” at its core. The Elites, led by the shadowy Cesar Thaxter, are immortals and practically indestructible, because of the thing we sort of saw happening in the prologue. It’s actually a pretty cool concept, there’s no shortage of them in this book. A lot of these immortals are sealed up in stasis prison, but the ruling class is basically above the law. And there is a Resistance, with more Elites (or “Rogues”, hence the name of the series) at its core.

This is the set-up, and a lot of the book is dedicated to establishing this in preparation for the rest of the series. The story in this book is a little bit all-over-the-place as a result, as we skip from group to group and planet to planet getting all our pieces in position. The Resistance is looking to find a safe base of operations out from under the all-seeing and all-knowing technocracy of the State, and there is a lot of manoeuvring to allow that to happen. Against this backdrop, the very human stories of love and trauma unfold quite nicely in their simplicity. Families torn apart and brought together, political and corporate intrigue, and some good old-fashioned technobabble and action sequences keep it all bubbling along nicely and give the world (worlds) good depth and texture.

Where I really had trouble was the characters.

Don’t get me wrong, I feel like the two main guys – Alexander Selwood and (by the end) Nolan Patrick – are compelling and I knew where they stood and who they were. They have backstories that demand exploration, as one would expect from (at least in Alexander’s case) immortals whose origins (or family origins, in Nolan’s case) are scattered through almost seven hundred years of future history, but they were put together well enough to make me want to explore that.

Other than those two, there was one character I was expecting to be used more. There’s this kid, Paige, with a little bit of a neurodivergent superpower that enables her to tell when someone is good or bad. That was a really interesting hook and made me remember the character … but then she appeared like one time after her intro in chapters 5 to 7, to deliver a little exposition about aliens which was the only time that was mentioned, and that was it. And yeah, I have notes about that. But okay.

The rest of the characters and their relationships, motivations and interwoven stories are extremely convoluted and it’s not helped by a lot of them having what I felt were very generic names and (if even mentioned at all) appearances. And that a lot of them have different names and identities at different points in history, as one would expect from shadowy immortals. This is at once an excellent part of the story, and a frustratingly confusing element. Sometimes it is treated as a plot revelation (to reader and characters alike), and at other times it is hard to tell if it has just appeared that way because that’s how the story is structured.

I’m just going to list a bunch of characters and the relationships I think I figured out, and put it in spoilertext in case you don’t want to know.

Marvin Griffel (2241) is Lucas Hendricks, the man who invented the immortality drug in the first place and father of Niek.Gerald Lane (2241) a hacker, is Alexander Selwood, the dude being executed at the start and is now looking after Marvin’s / Lucas’s kid Niek.Mason Davis (old world, former head of Elites) is John Patrick, Nolan’s father. Are the children of Elites also Elites? I am not sure if that was ever covered, but Niek and Nolan would qualify.Cesar Thaxter is the big bad, one of the initial Elites who started the whole thing and now runs the State. Alexander / Marvin went to him and told him about the immortality drug back in the old world.Shayla Lambert is kind of Alexander’s girlfriend for a minute there but she’s not in it long.David Flett, his (sick) wife Ellen, and their daughter Paige – the one I thought was going to be more of a thing in the story. Flett might have more to do but I was kind of at a loss about him.Kaylee Ashton is hired as a tutor for Paige. Also not really a thing. Colin Blythe is her uncle but so what? Her parents had died and she’d stolen come money from her uncle so she could get away. May also end up being more of a thing later.Carmine? No, that’s just Sergio’s car.George Savin is a rising star reporter / journalist who sniffs around at the main plot for the duration of the book, and has a thing with Alexander / Marvin late in the story.Nolan Patrick is Alexander’s assistant, he has a twin brother Dylan (a painter) and a younger sister Ashley, their dad is Mason / John, their mother Aria.Raul Beltram is also a character. His fiancé Isabel Duran is described physically (a lot of the female characters are, the males not so much for some reason) but we don’t get much insight into their story.Niek Hendricks – now Niek, I also liked. He didn’t have a huge role either but his story – as son of one character (Marvin / Lucas) required to live as ward to another character (first Ruben “uncle Ruben” Dekker, but he was a creep and Niek ended up with Alexander / Marvin) and conflicted over his place in things and with political and legal savvy beyond his years – was an interesting one. My dumb arse at least understood it.Elliott Houghton is legal counsel for McManus Corp – not really important.Sergio Martinez (67) and his assistant Kaya Richards. Sergio dies. He turns out to be Felipe Diaz, the son of Pablo Diaz, an “executed traitor” of the past … now, as to whether Pablo was an Elite and whether this means elderly and infirm Sergio (who, as stated, later dies) is evidence that Elites’ offspring don’t inherit immortality, I can’t say. I also didn’t really follow the death and whether it was actually meant to be a murder mystery or part of the plot.Then there’s Zain Baako, Amir Rahal (characterised as the son Sergio never had), Ania (head of tech security), Eva Costas (Resistance), Davu and Niki (Resistance?), the Ansari brothers Ibrahim and Hassan (Elite Defenders?) Valeria Chernova (head of Enforcers, Investigators and Defenders, also an Elite), Saito? Toshi? His dead wife Misaki, because of Mason / John?…

Dear God. So, anyway, that’s a lot, is what I’m saying. And there should maybe be some better way of contextualising it all. If not a dramatis personae, or some more memorable names or character quirks or descriptions, I don’t know. All I know is I remembered Alexander because he was the main character, and Nolan because he had interesting characteristics and was connected to the main story, and Paige and Niek because they had stuff going on, and all the rest were kind of a blur.

I liked the future history as laid out, and the technological advances we get to see. The teleportation tech, stasis tech, the A.I.s and the Nishati dimension (which was kind of related to the teleportation, teleportation had existed before but since Nishati was discovered teleportation had improved), Zhidium and DNA tracking, teleportation blockers and the various weapons they’d come up with to battle Elites … it was all very cool, and I think it should have been forefronted more. Especially as the Elites (I am using this as a shorthand for all the assorted immortal characters) had a first-hand connection to a lot of those developments and discoveries. There’s so much potential to explore there!

Oh yeah, and speaking of the A.I. assistants (the Sentients), they all have very normal names and are sometimes easy to confuse with people in the way they are referred to and talked about – again, a potentially cool idea that risked being frustrating and confusing at times. April, Miley, Quinn, June, I think Martin might also be one but it’s only mentioned once in the first chapter … Niek says he thought all Sentients were named April at one point. And the Sentients have bots, and manage teleportation and other conveniences. There’s a lot to unpack there too.

The setting is also endlessly fascinating, with interplanetary civilisation apparently made possible by teleportation but not really fully info-dumped in a way probably only I would have wanted to see. There’s Ignis, a hot and inhospitable planet with habitats … we don’t get a really good idea of what most of these worlds are like and how the systems are set up, is it a local group of systems or spread across the galaxy? Multiple galaxies? Like I say, farther systems and aliens are mentioned one time and that’s it. The Nishati dimension is used for the transportation of stuff, but the characters are planning some use of the technology that could mess Ignis up, but also aid in their transport of habitat materials and water or whatever to make the planet profitable … it’s difficult to track. There are other planets mentioned as well. Ytres, Nizhoni, Aeras, Hafi, Prith … and Earth is mentioned once in passing, as the origin world but there isn’t any clue as to whether it is now gone or where these all relate to each other.

Our setup ends on a cliffhanger as Thaxter calls Nolan and they start to make a deal about Nolan’s father. I’ve gone on way too long here, let’s take a look at the meters real quick.

Sex-o-meter

George and Alexander have one tasteful off-screen doink and that’s about it. Aside from that, and a lot of flirting and mooning and amusingly awkward don’t-they-realise-I’m-gay discomfort from Nolan, this is a pretty tame one.

I’m not sorry.

One mutually bristly yet warmly comforting cologne-scented firm-bicep’d man-kiss out of a possible five for The Elitist Supremacy.

Gore-o-meter

No gore to speak of. The spikes are a bit nasty (especially in the final scenes), the Elites are immortal so they can take a bit of damage but we don’t see much of it, and all in all I’m giving this one a mere half a flesh-gobbet out of a possible five.

WTF-o-meter

There is some good old-fashioned espionage-mystery in here, and the fuzzy line between “past” (still the future, for us) and “present” (distant future) is fascinating and I hope it’s further explored in the rest of the trilogy. And the Nishati dimension and of course the aliens are great WTF fodder. There’s just not enough of it to feed a growing boy, that’s all. A “concept of WTF as a kind of food stuffed into a nose-bag for readers to chew on” out of a possible “aliens walk into an exposition scene in a secret room in Nishati and say ‘what the fuck are you upright apes doing in our cloud storage’ in alien at the expositioning characters” for this one, if you follow my convoluted grammatical logic. And if you don’t, tough.

My Final Verdict

I didn’t spot a character named Garth in here. But I had a good time reading it and it left me thinking about a lot of stuff, so even if the character tangle left me feeling dumb, I came away with a positive vibe. Give it a try, maybe! Three stars, I say.

Day 11,680. 660 pages, 223,134 words. Finished .

Friends, I am really not certain about this book.

In case it wasn’t obvious from this introduction, and because I haven’t done a book-metrics post since .. ooh, I think since the heady days of The Final Fall of Man … let me just remind you how it looked when I finished, I want to say, Damorak. Back in 2016.

Yeah, so.

I’m being a little tongue-in-cheek about the book-metrics here, because I started writing this story for the first time about thirty-two years back, when I was fourteen or fifteen years old. I’ve been writing it, and re-writing it, and putting it away, and bringing it back out, from the days of hand-scrawling in exercise books through the electric typewriter phase, to my first PC.

If my calculations are correct, I have written this book at a rate of a solid 19 words a day since 1993.

It’s about twice the size of Damorak. It is not in fact as big as Bad Cow, which according to Calibre weighs in at 232,411 words. But damn it, it felt bigger as I was putting it together.

In fact, for anyone paying attention to this crap, Bad Cow fits neatly in between The Hound of Greyvor and reigning champion Iron Truth on the chonk-o-gram.

Anyway. It’s huge. It’s the first book in a planned trilogy (The War of Mortal Aggression), and it is nine chapters long and half of the chapters are as long as whole books.

It’s high fantasy (with a B-plot that is pure grimdark) and has world-building on a scale at once more microscopically intimate than The Final Fall of Man, and massively more extensive. I’m not sure yet whether I will release it once the editing is done (oh my God, my poor editors), or if I will set it aside until the whole trilogy is complete. Because as well as the world-building, there is interlocking story-parts and more, and I don’t want to have to retcon the first book if I fuck something up.

The main character is a self-insert farmhand-who-becomes-a-wizard I wrote when I was a teenager. She’s nothing like me (as the pronouns may have given away and a sneak peek at the cover certainly will once we get there), except she is the inheritor of a world-dominating power that she comes to realise the more she sees, may in fact be the villain of the story. Which doesn’t necessarily make them bad, but it is a truth that invites grappling.

It has a timeline and history and prehistory that covers millions of years. Its civilisations register on evolutionary timescales.  And it ties into the rest of the books I have written so far in a dozen small and large ways that I can’t wait for someone – anyone – to actually pick up on. And I dread the very real possibility that nobody will.

But … I’m probably not going to stop.

In fact, on reflection, I have decided I will become worse.

Book two (The Reaper Named Dredna) will probably be smaller. It will hopefully take less than thirty years to come out. It will, I assure you, be a lot.

Recently I picked up and read Shadecursed, book 1 of The Bestiary series, by Aeryn E. Christie. This isn’t SPSFC related, I just interacted briefly with the author on social media and decided her book sounded interesting.

And interesting it certainly was! As one would expect from an author who is also a pretty darn impressive visual artist, Shadecursed is a rich and insanely colourful tapestry of worldbuilding, characters and creatures. The series is well-named, because Kyrnis is filled with flora and fauna (no pun intended, there are fauns) of every fantastical kind, and they are all reimagined by the artist. Banshees and liori (liori are manticores [male] and sphinxes [female]), trolls and gnolls, gods and magic, and so much more. This is a huge story and it is crammed cover to cover with the sort of reckless, delighted creativity I crave.

Part of what took me so long to actually read this book wasn’t just its epic-level chonkiness, it was the pure enjoyment I took in finding something I wish there was more of – and it’s why I love indie books so much! Intricate world-creation and species backgrounds aren’t for everyone, and neither is the sort of combined fantasy and sci-fi on display here (it is an old world, but it’s had its technological revolution and feels like it’s found a balance … the mandatory bygone disasters and assorted gods notwithstanding), but for me it was just grand. When people complain that The Lord of the Rings is just people walking across a country and telling random stories about its prehistory, I’m usually the one who’s like, “yeah! I know! …why are you making that face?”

Am I comparing this book to The Lord of the Rings? I mean look, it’s not controversial to point out they’re both books, right? And you know what The Lord of the Rings didn’t have? A sick guitar solo, there I said it.

But imagine.

In short, Meadow the faun and his literal band of friends set out on a road trip to get their musical fame and fortune started, and also save the world because there’s a dread god-slaying force afoot in the mystical plane and it’s making the plants manky. And it’s impressive how seamlessly those two levels of story work together.

It has a map (made by the author)! We love a map. On this map, I’ve scrawled a red line to show more or less where this book takes our adventurers. As you can see, there’s so much more to explore!

The story is interspersed with songs, not in a distracting or clunky way but as separate little chapters to break up the monotony of the table of contents. And they’re good songs! Could this author be the elusive triple threat? Writer, artist, songwriter? I mean, that’s a rhetorical question, she literally is. Anyway, that’s the synopsis, this was meant to be a quick review. Let’s check the meters.

Sex-o-meter

There isn’t really explicit sex in the story (mainly because all the characters are different species, not that that’s necessarily an issue), for all that there are definitely interpersonal relationships and admiration, and soupçon of horny. It’s fine. It’s not the point. Three fauns out of a possible three satyrs (if you know what I mean) for Shadecursed.

Gore-o-meter

While I wouldn’t exactly call this a grimdark in faefic clothing, it’s pretty solid on the violence and body horror. From people being turned into “monsters” against their will to an assortment of dismemberments and poisonings, it’s enough to register at three flesh-gobbets out of a possible five on the gore-o-meter, which is three and a half more gobbets than I would expect from a book with a main character named Meadow the faun.

WTF-o-meter

The WTF is strong with this one, and I love it. The world is so deliciously bizarre, and so lovingly detailed, I could picture it in my mind as the characters travelled through it. It was weirder without the map, which I only really took note of after I’d finished reading – and it really can’t do the world justice anyway (although it is an excellent map). The magic systems, the creature lifecycles, the spheres of mortals and gods and dreams, it is all extremely strange, alien and yet well-told so the reader doesn’t feel out of their depth. There is a ton of unanswered questions here and I look forward to seeing where the series takes us.

My Final Verdict

Four stars! Check this book out if you ever wondered how much of a fucking flake Mister Tumnus would be if he had a smartphone, or how a cross-country road trip can be improved by adding a large A.I. mechanical truffle pig (spoiler: it improves it by about 17%), or what Middle Earth’s central energy grid would look like if Saruman had gotten his military industrial complex off the ground without those eco-terrorist ents wrecking his shit. It’s my blog I’ll say what I like.

Back in the closing years of the 20th Century, there was an odd little corner of Usenet called alt.fan.robert-jordan, or “the monkeyhouse” to its members and detractors alike. It was one of the first online communities I ever entered, approximately a week after upgrading from an electric typewriter to a PC. I’ve talked about the group fairly frequently on this blog, since – well, I owe a lot to its existence.

There were a lot of people there, on and off over the years (most famous of them, on this blog, being Mister ThePatriot himself of course). Only a few of us stayed in touch after the feet death of Usenet and the onset of the social media age, and eventually a half-dozen or so of us settled on Discord.

I was saddened to hear, just this morning, of the passing of one of the great grandmonkeys of the community, Michael “KMA” Carey.

I never did actually ask him what “KMA” stood for. I always assumed it was “Kiss My Arse” and I guess now we’re never likely to find out.

Michael and I, as fellow Australian men of a Certain Age (although his Certain Age was a decade or two past my Certain Age), enjoyed a jocular mutual piss-taking type of a relationship that (like many Australian relationships seen from an outside lens) could have been mistaken for antagonistic. We had our disagreements and our healthy differences of opinion, but he was good people – a top bloke, one might even say.

Not pictured: whatever the opinion was that we were having a healthy difference of in August 2000 for example. Unless that’s German for “the Chucky, the”. Yes, I am Chucky in case that was unclear.

All told, it’s been a good quarter-Century or so and the world is a duller, sadder place for his leaving it. But you know what they say. GNU KMA, the Internet is not going anywhere (and will probably only keep getting worse).

KMA – Common names: KMA, KMA the Thief, The Thread Stealer, The Lowdown Thief, KMA the Lowdown Thread Stealing Thief. Well known for: His collection of prize-winning daffodils, what do you think? KMA arrived some time between website updates while I wasn’t paying attention, but fitted into the community like a peenie into a hole in the wall. He became a well-liked regular, sent his photographs to DEBS, participated in a number of parties, and generally put his feet up. He is Australian, so it is more or less understandable that thievery and evil runs in his veins…this was demonstrated applaudably one dark afternoon when he snuck into the Contro Party, resplendent in his balaclava and suction-cup booties, and made off with an entire party conversation topic stuffed into a big sack with a $ sign on it. He took the conversation topic back to his pad, re-painted it, and posted it up as a series of five or six new threads, none of which made two hundred posts. The 1700 post-long (at that time) Contro Party, meanwhile, deprived of its nutrients, began to wither and die. ST. CHUCKY went absolutely spare for a short time, then got sort of cold and sarcastic, and promised sweet revenge in the form of a Bestiary entry. Aside from that, KMA fitted in rather well in the group, wallowing in the smut, laughing at the schoolyard humour, and delighting in the porn. Appearance: In the words of Constable Eddie from The Simpsons, “Classic burglar.” KMA is tall, thickset, with stubble on his chin, a scar on his cheek, a wooden leg, an eyepatch, a striped singlet, hooks for hands, and carrying that trademark sack with a $ sign on it. Hat: Balaclava, or a plain black beanie when rolled up for less formal occasions. Distinguishing features: Those daffodils again, idiot. Status: Sporadic.

From the monkeyhouse bestiary. I really did make a big fuss over him poaching topics from a Usenet thread I made. It was a different time.

He has now joined our pal Morgoth’s Curse (gone these past ten years, and still loved and remembered) in the big monkeyhouse in the sky, probably. And he will be missed.

Unlike this hat.

The whole hat thing is probably too convoluted and silly to explain, but I guess it is ultimately central to this blog since it is Hatboy’s Hatstand and I am Hatboy (as well as Chucky, yes, and Edpool…), so … sure. This could be considered part of the blog’s very reason for being. At online parties back in the late ’90s and early ’00s, one was expected to wear a hat. Actually it was just one party really. The Contro Party. Yeah, that name is probably familiar too. It’s all connected, man.

I was privileged, in my capacity as Edpool the editor, to get first look at a lot of Michael’s strange and hilarious writing, which I edited on a very informal basis. I also did some fully professional work with him and his sister on a book, but it’s the mad rambling tales of Bernie Sanders and his cross-USA murder spree, and a little story called Reborn: An old tyre with new rubber that are going to stay with me. I shall cherish them in all their stupid, smile-inducing glory. His was a unique and quirky mind, and I will remember him fondly.

But yeah, what I guess I’ll mainly remember is that one time he stole a Usenet thread idea. What the fuck mate.

So long, fucker fucky. Ride again on the winds of time.

Hur hur hur, “winds”.

It’s like the heat death of the universe, but at once stinkier and mildly perverted. Like the monkeyhouse.