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Middle Earth: The Secret History #1
Pandemonium
Welcome to "Middle-earth: The Secret History."
Middle-earth! - the very name is evocative of a time beyond memory, when a super-continent dominated the Earth. A mythical time of Men and Ælves, goblins and demi-gods, when Heroes and Heroines bestrode the land, and battled for supremacy with evil forces, sometimes winning a temporary victory, sometimes winning a Pyhrric victory, sometimes losing utterly. It was in this landscape that a young Hero, Ædwe, arose and challenged the Evil rooted in the North. The Secret History is an account of his exploits. Judge for yourself whether he succeeded or failed...
In the present volume, the first of fourteen, Ædwe grows up in Pandæmonium, the abode of The Enemy. As a boy, he explores the warrens, as they are called, and discovers a secret of The Enemy. He gradually comes to realise the importance of what he has seen, and eventually decides to escape from the warrens, to the outside world.
This volume features a limited amount of verse. An excerpt follows:
Hardy and haggard, the fell-handed leader,
Drove all before him, with Death devouring;
Onward the house-carles, not one was nithing,
Cleaving a way, where no way existed.
Silver his shield, and bright-sword shining,
Drawn in the morning, sheath'd in the evening,
Cutter-of-steel, the screaming sword-blade,
Sucking their souls, the enemy craven.
Routed and riven, wrackéd in torment,
Driven like leaves, swept he before him,
Counting their numbers, the fell-handed Hero,
Dealing out Death, as the toll mounted.
The present volume is some 10,100 words long. Future volumes are in preparation.
Middle-earth! - the very name is evocative of a time beyond memory, when a super-continent dominated the Earth. A mythical time of Men and Ælves, goblins and demi-gods, when Heroes and Heroines bestrode the land, and battled for supremacy with evil forces, sometimes winning a temporary victory, sometimes winning a Pyhrric victory, sometimes losing utterly. It was in this landscape that a young Hero, Ædwe, arose and challenged the Evil rooted in the North. The Secret History is an account of his exploits. Judge for yourself whether he succeeded or failed...
In the present volume, the first of fourteen, Ædwe grows up in Pandæmonium, the abode of The Enemy. As a boy, he explores the warrens, as they are called, and discovers a secret of The Enemy. He gradually comes to realise the importance of what he has seen, and eventually decides to escape from the warrens, to the outside world.
This volume features a limited amount of verse. An excerpt follows:
Hardy and haggard, the fell-handed leader,
Drove all before him, with Death devouring;
Onward the house-carles, not one was nithing,
Cleaving a way, where no way existed.
Silver his shield, and bright-sword shining,
Drawn in the morning, sheath'd in the evening,
Cutter-of-steel, the screaming sword-blade,
Sucking their souls, the enemy craven.
Routed and riven, wrackéd in torment,
Driven like leaves, swept he before him,
Counting their numbers, the fell-handed Hero,
Dealing out Death, as the toll mounted.
The present volume is some 10,100 words long. Future volumes are in preparation.
27 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 16, 2015
1 person is currently reading
43 people want to read
About the author
Richard Warren
77 books2 followersMarried with a young son, I am a Brit living in the U.S.
I enjoy writing, and write to please myself; if others enjoy this, then that is a bonus. As a writer, I find myself blessed - or should that be cursed? - with an active imagination; there is no way of turning it off; writing is one form of expressing that imagination.
As a single man I enjoyed reading, country walks, weight-training - which I still do, dancing - women love being held, and led around the dance-floor - you can learn a lot about a woman's character by dancing with her; try close-hold tango. I also did a bit of sailing in the English Channel - you should hear the radio traffic - self-inflicted emergencies. Hmmmm, there is material for a story there.
***
I am currently writing a series of 15/16 volumes forming "Middle Earth: The Secret History." This is intended to be 'High Fantasy', with a theme of good versus evil.
Volumes 1 - 11 are published, amounting to some 120,000 words so far. The complete tale should amount to about 172,000 words or more, initially; it is on this basis that the work is described as 'epic'..
Volume 12 exists as a 12,000 word draft. In total, I have written over 26,000 words of volumes 12 - 15. The intention is to complete all four remaining volumes, before publishing.
***
If you want to read a novel in which total eclipses play a central role role, then try this one.
***
There is an omnibus volume of volumes 1 - 3, giving a better price than buying the individual volumes.
There is also an omnibus volume of volumes 4 - 6, likewise.
All published volumes are available from Amazon as e-books; you do not need a Kindle to read them. If you are not satisfied, just return the book to Amazon; they will give a full refund, I believe, but check the t's and c's first..
There are reviews on www.Amazon.com, but also on www.Goodreads.com; search by author or book name.
***
Ideas can occur to me at any time, plus, when writing, they just occur on the fly. The story almost seems to write itself, with my acting as an amanuensis. Characters just seem to appear, and are as much of a surprise to me as they are to the reader.
A data-dictionary is used to keep track of characters names, place names etc. The names used are based on Anglo-Saxon roots. The Bosworth-Toller dictionary is used as the main source, aided by the Oxford English Dictionary. I will add the data-dictionary to the final volume.
Further volumes planned are as follows:
Vol 12 The Final Battle - Crystal Horse / Total Eclipse (12,000 word draft)
Vol 13 The Final Battle - Arrow-storm ( 5,000 word partial draft)
Vol 14 The Final Battle - Dark Abyss (6,000 word partial draft)
Vol 15 The End of Days (3,000 word partial draft.)
Volumes 12 - 14 cover the Final Battle, originally planned to be just one volume, but now expected to amount to 32,000+ words. Volume 15 includes some half-dozen puzzles for the Hero to solve, but they are also presented as puzzles to the reader; solutions will appear in an appendix to the second edition. Volumes 12 - 15 pull together various threads from the preceding volumes, and present more of a challenge to the writer than preceding volumes, and must not be rushed into print.
It has also emerged that there is a missing Volume 8 - part 2; this completes the description of the journey from the West to the East; this will probably create additional threads, picked up in the final volumes. The 16 volumes are likely to amount to 172,000 words or more, but there is scope for further expansion...
I enjoy writing, and write to please myself; if others enjoy this, then that is a bonus. As a writer, I find myself blessed - or should that be cursed? - with an active imagination; there is no way of turning it off; writing is one form of expressing that imagination.
As a single man I enjoyed reading, country walks, weight-training - which I still do, dancing - women love being held, and led around the dance-floor - you can learn a lot about a woman's character by dancing with her; try close-hold tango. I also did a bit of sailing in the English Channel - you should hear the radio traffic - self-inflicted emergencies. Hmmmm, there is material for a story there.
***
I am currently writing a series of 15/16 volumes forming "Middle Earth: The Secret History." This is intended to be 'High Fantasy', with a theme of good versus evil.
Volumes 1 - 11 are published, amounting to some 120,000 words so far. The complete tale should amount to about 172,000 words or more, initially; it is on this basis that the work is described as 'epic'..
Volume 12 exists as a 12,000 word draft. In total, I have written over 26,000 words of volumes 12 - 15. The intention is to complete all four remaining volumes, before publishing.
***
If you want to read a novel in which total eclipses play a central role role, then try this one.
***
There is an omnibus volume of volumes 1 - 3, giving a better price than buying the individual volumes.
There is also an omnibus volume of volumes 4 - 6, likewise.
All published volumes are available from Amazon as e-books; you do not need a Kindle to read them. If you are not satisfied, just return the book to Amazon; they will give a full refund, I believe, but check the t's and c's first..
There are reviews on www.Amazon.com, but also on www.Goodreads.com; search by author or book name.
***
Ideas can occur to me at any time, plus, when writing, they just occur on the fly. The story almost seems to write itself, with my acting as an amanuensis. Characters just seem to appear, and are as much of a surprise to me as they are to the reader.
A data-dictionary is used to keep track of characters names, place names etc. The names used are based on Anglo-Saxon roots. The Bosworth-Toller dictionary is used as the main source, aided by the Oxford English Dictionary. I will add the data-dictionary to the final volume.
Further volumes planned are as follows:
Vol 12 The Final Battle - Crystal Horse / Total Eclipse (12,000 word draft)
Vol 13 The Final Battle - Arrow-storm ( 5,000 word partial draft)
Vol 14 The Final Battle - Dark Abyss (6,000 word partial draft)
Vol 15 The End of Days (3,000 word partial draft.)
Volumes 12 - 14 cover the Final Battle, originally planned to be just one volume, but now expected to amount to 32,000+ words. Volume 15 includes some half-dozen puzzles for the Hero to solve, but they are also presented as puzzles to the reader; solutions will appear in an appendix to the second edition. Volumes 12 - 15 pull together various threads from the preceding volumes, and present more of a challenge to the writer than preceding volumes, and must not be rushed into print.
It has also emerged that there is a missing Volume 8 - part 2; this completes the description of the journey from the West to the East; this will probably create additional threads, picked up in the final volumes. The 16 volumes are likely to amount to 172,000 words or more, but there is scope for further expansion...
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 30, 2015
interesting idea.
It is an interesting concept, but I want to know more. I will reserve judgement until I can read more.
It is an interesting concept, but I want to know more. I will reserve judgement until I can read more.
October 3, 2018
This appears to be the beginning of a possibly interesting story. But I have a few issues with it.
First, the book is extremely short – one of the shortest non-children's’ books I have ever read that
is not actually a short story. This is good from the standpoint of its being a quick read. But it is bad in that the main character, Ædwe (dare we call him a hero in the making?), barely makes it out of the warrens of the underground society where he has grown up and has not yet encountered any people in the outside world before the book ends.
The book also takes its ‘history’ designation seriously. Although it is written in first person, the style is that of a diary or some other original historical source document. A lot is explained about the underground area known as Pandæmonium – its layout, economy, customs, etc. – and some about what Ædwe discovers on his forays out into the outside world, but if his writing style is any indication, Ædwe is a pretty dry, colorless character. We don’t get much of a sense of him as a person. He is more the silent observer type, gliding through the passages and climbing up the chimneys to find out what is going on.
Nevertheless, it appears that Ædwe is training himself to be a hero. He explores the tunnels of Pandæmonium memorizing and mapping them. He climbs up the chimneys to observe the goings-on in the chamber of strategy. And he prepares himself to move to the outside world, where he intends to explain to the men of the outside what he has learned.
There are a lot of books in this series – Supposed to be fifteen eventually I think. I may get some more if I can find some of them in collections or box sets, but it may be too much trouble to run them all down singly.
First, the book is extremely short – one of the shortest non-children's’ books I have ever read that
is not actually a short story. This is good from the standpoint of its being a quick read. But it is bad in that the main character, Ædwe (dare we call him a hero in the making?), barely makes it out of the warrens of the underground society where he has grown up and has not yet encountered any people in the outside world before the book ends.
The book also takes its ‘history’ designation seriously. Although it is written in first person, the style is that of a diary or some other original historical source document. A lot is explained about the underground area known as Pandæmonium – its layout, economy, customs, etc. – and some about what Ædwe discovers on his forays out into the outside world, but if his writing style is any indication, Ædwe is a pretty dry, colorless character. We don’t get much of a sense of him as a person. He is more the silent observer type, gliding through the passages and climbing up the chimneys to find out what is going on.
Nevertheless, it appears that Ædwe is training himself to be a hero. He explores the tunnels of Pandæmonium memorizing and mapping them. He climbs up the chimneys to observe the goings-on in the chamber of strategy. And he prepares himself to move to the outside world, where he intends to explain to the men of the outside what he has learned.
There are a lot of books in this series – Supposed to be fifteen eventually I think. I may get some more if I can find some of them in collections or box sets, but it may be too much trouble to run them all down singly.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews