When the ideas of the Far Stone Cycle first came to me over twenty years ago, they were just glimpses of a narrative that captivated me and wouldn’t leave me alone. In all my musings to write it down, I did not consider fantasy tropes, because I’d never heard of them before.

So, if you are as I was and don’t know what tropes are, let’s define them. Rolling with the times, I asked ChatGPT, and here is what it gave me:

A trope is a common theme, motif, or storytelling de...