After nearly a year of work, my thirteenth book in the Astral Alignment series is finally complete. Academy took me a long time, in part because I was finishing my bachelor's degree (congratulations, me!), but also because it's one of my longest works yet. As a main series installment, Academy follows the pattern of Atlantis and the original Astral Alignment, with two main parts and an extra short story, which I decided to put at the end as a bonus in this case, rather than as an interlude. I did this for chronological reasons, since it takes place hundreds of years after the two main sections.

Regarding the two main stories though, “The League of Inconvenience” takes place in the titular academy, a galactic university that is based loosely off a science outpost from one of my favorite video games. You can read it standalone, but if you’ve read my spinoff novels, you’ll be excited to know that the main character is Archimedes Marshal, the son of Vim and Quentin from Seasons of Alfheim. As for “The Necro-Lord’s Bakery”, it features numerous characters from the Forestrunner saga, and the main character, Naotalba, is a bit of a teaser for something else I’ve been working on. You’ll also pick up clues in part one too, if you’ve been following the series.

In terms of the timeline, this book is set a couple of generations after the alignment, but long before the Alliance era when The Pioneer’s Star and Delta Freya take place. Humanity is just beginning to spread out through the astral plane, form ties with subtle beings, and in what’s left of the solar system, another species has emerged from hiding to take our place. You’ll recognize them if you’ve read Aftermath, but I won’t spoil too much. Hopefully, you enjoy this book as much as I enjoyed writing it, and a lot more than I enjoyed editing it!