THE SHIELD WAR preview

I am pleased to report that I am now 5,000 words into SHIELD OF STORMS, the first book of the new THE SHIELD WAR epic fantasy!

If all goes well it will be the first book I publish in 2024 on Kindle, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books, Google Play, Smashwords, and Payhip.

I think the series is going to be six books long, and it will be set in Andomhaim immediately after the events of DRAGONSKULL.

So what will the book be about? We will have four protagonists, and three chief villains.

PROTAGONISTS

1.) Ridmark Arban knows that while the Heptarchy might have been repulsed, someday the armies of the Seven Temples will attack Andomhaim again, and that they will use their stronghold on the Isle of Kordain as a base. Will Andomhaim be ready? Ridmark doesn’t know.

But if he can find a way to wrest the Isle of Kordain from the Heptarchy’s grasp, that might go a long way to deciding the coming war. The problem is that the Heptarchy has more warships than Andomhaim, and attacking the Isle of Kordain from the sea might mean bring disastrous defeat.

Unless he can find another way.

2.) Lika is the leader of the thieves of Teramis, the chief city of the Isle of Kordain, currently ruled with an iron fist by the Exarch of the Heptarchy. Once Teramis was the city of the Corsairs, free men who bowed to no king, and certainly not the High King of Andomhaim.

Then ten years ago Warlord Agravhask exterminated the Corsair lords, and the Heptarchy has ruled the Isle of Kordain ever since.

Lika needs to protect her people until her father’s return. For her father went to the abandoned halls of the Mountain House to seek a weapon to defeat the Heptarchy.

She knows that he will return.

Even though he left eight years ago…

3.) Niara Arban has returned to an Andomhaim far different than the one she left.

Far different…and far weaker. The modern Magistri are weak and feeble and no match for the First Magistri who drove back the urdmordar. At least in her opinion. But the realm still has enemies, and Niara will show them what war is really like.

4.) Nikomedes was once an assassin of the Heptarchy, and now he serves the Master of the Mountain House. He still isn’t entirely sure about the difference between right and wrong, but he’s trying to find out.

All he knows is that the Master will make a better world…and if Nikomedes has to kill a lot of people to make that happen, it will all be for the greater good.

ANTAGONISTS

1.) Seziravorna is the Exarch, a High Priestess of the Temple of the Crimson and the Heptarchy governor of the Isle of Kordain. It is her task to make the Isle a stronghold of the Heptarchy to prepare for the return of the Seven Temples in the decades to come.

But so many senior priestesses and battle mages perished in Agravhask’s invasion that Seziravorna sees her chance of complete victory.

She will lure the armies of Andomhaim into a final catastrophic battle, and then she will be the Exarch of not just the Isle of Kordain but all of Andomhaim.

2.) The Mountain House is the dangerous ruin beneath the mountains at the center of the Isle of Kordain, and long the Corsairs have had legends about the mysterious wizard who dwells there and the terrible powers he wields.

No one who crosses the ruined gate of the Mountain House ever returns.

For the Master of the Mountain House has been laboring for millennia to prepare a new and better world, even if he has to burn away the new one to make it.

3.) Urzo is…

Well…

Urzo is hungry.

###

Anyway, if all goes well, SHIELD OF STORMS will be my first book of 2024.

-JM