Heretic Spellblade 5 - Detailed Commentary

So, I created this commentary using the Spellblade 4 commentary as a base and the first thing I saw was how thrilled I was with the Book 4 reception and overall result. It’s a bittersweet feeling, as I remember how much effort I put in during the end of 2021 and how great it felt to pull it off. This commentary has much of the opposite emotions, as Spellblade 5 was a very difficult book to write and it’s done significantly worse than expected (much more so than Demon’s Throne 3 did).

This post will include broad commentary on Heretic Spellblade 5, including many of the editing decisions I made (and didn’t make). As such, it is loaded with massive spoilers. If you haven’t read the entire book, come back later. This post will be waiting for you. Also, it’s really long.

Before I jump into the commentary, I’ll briefly mention a couple of things. There will be some discussion on more “authorly” topics, but I’ll try to keep those to the latter section of the commentary. Second, if I feel a topic is sensitive, I’m probably going to skip over it without comment.

The Elephant in the Room

Normally, I do authorly topics at the end but I guess I’ll address this at the start so it doesn’t completely upend any thoughts you have while reading the rest of the commentary. I debated whether to include this section at all, but after the response to my last update I wanted to at least let people know what my current headspace is like.

Book 5 ended up being one of my more disappointing experiences as an author. The process of writing Book 5 was draining, it didn’t turn out how I wanted it to, and it’s seen a large drop in readership. Review reception is significantly more positive than I expected (and that does help), but the gap between reviews and the fall in readership makes me suspect that a lot of folks didn’t get past the earlier chapters or were uninterested in returning.

To me, this feels like a sign of a widening gap between the sort of books I want to write and the expectations of a growing bulk of the harem genre readership. This is exacerbated by current trends in the genre, which I don't really have any power over especially as I’m disinterested in them.

This will hopefully contain most of the negativity in the commentary. There’s not really a magical solution to this, and this isn’t a cry for support or anything.

I also don’t really like the fact I’m talking about sales/readership/reception every book release and will stop talking about it in the future, particularly as 2022 has turned out to be a bit of a disappointing year for me besides Neural Wraith.

Ch1-9 Commentary

I’ve commented before that I sometimes have difficult breaking up my books into three acts. This book definitely suffers from that. Based on my outline, roughly 2/3rds of the book is Act 2, which is why it feels like it has such an extended opening and such a powerful, fast ending. Big Act 2s aren’t entirely uncommon, particularly given how much I’m trying to establish in this book, but it’s a major contributor to the slowness.

Anyway, I’ll be breaking up the commentary into chapter groupings instead.

Chapters 1 to 9 cover the opening of the book, picking up a number of plot points from Book 4 that were never closed off (the funeral, Vala, what happened to the rebellious nobles and Nationalists) while also establishing Charlotte and Trafaumh as the central focus of the plot.

The funeral was a scene I really wanted to include and open on. As I suspected at the time, I probably shouldn’t have as it probably scared away a lot of the low effort readers. The nature of the scene means it’s a slow, rolling scene with lots of narration and visuals and not much of importance happening beyond aesthetics. The mood also meant I didn’t get to talk about how big everybody’s tits and asses were, a staple of the genre.

Otto makes his appearance here, and is a character of surprising importance. I considered cutting him entirely, and a beta advised shifting his scene to later in the book. In an earlier draft, this would have worked, but by the time publication approached it wasn’t really possible. Otto and the factions play a role in the later chapters as Falmir rears its head.

The primary reason he exists is to act as a questionable ally in the political sphere. Alice has won, but as with anything in politics, it’s not absolute. Unlike the old archdukes, he has presence and motivations other than seeking raw power and hating beastkin.

I did find some time to slip in some “day in the life of Nathan” stuff. His life in the palace is substantially different to what it was like in Gharrick Pass. Much more breakfast in bed surrounded by beautiful women and less eating in the mess hall.

Ch10-25 Commentary

These chapters cover Nathan’s buildup of power as well as the battle with Siv.

As Book 4 was basically “the war book,” there wasn’t much of an opportunity for Nathan to progress much in strength. He learned how to teleport, but that was about it. Everything happened pretty fast and he relied on what he’d worked on over the previous years. That meant there needed to be time set aside for him to “catch up”.

For flow reasons, I handled this as a sort of road trip. He claimed a ton of binding stones, created new Champions, revealed his plans to create super Bastions and super Champions, became a count, and even followed up inside the Enclave. A lot happens fairly quickly, although some of it isn’t followed up on for some time.

The Kadria sex scene came out of nowhere, to be honest. I had been umming and ahhing over whether to include her in this book. Originally, the plans were for Sen, the Twins, Fyre, and potentially an Anna/Alice threesome. It was definitely fun to write, though. Everything gets better with fluff.

Part of me questions whether it was necessary to return to Gharrick Pass. It is considered Nathan’s “home” but it also doesn’t have much presence in this book compared to the palace. The downside of returning to it is that it reduces the sense of location in the book, as Nathan bounces around a little too easily. With that said, it let me reintroduce Kara, a cute little side character that I suspect many forgot about.

Narime also gets a little scene. She’s been unlucky in that I haven’t given her much over the course of the series. A large part of that is that she’s significantly more static than most characters. What she wants is simpler, and her nostalgia and unwillingness to look too deep are intentional, if hard to easily show. Her personal awakening is also a little deeper and philosophical than most, even if potentially riles a few people given the trend in litrpg to do exactly what she condemned.

Finally, the Siv fight. The hard part here was making her dangerous despite the sheer number of Champions involved. She singlehandedly destroyed the Empire and only got stopped after the Hound crippled her. In Kurai, it’s been said that they threw dozens of Champions and Bastions at her, and she still killed a lot of people. So, if anything, Nathan went in underprepared. If his Champions weren’t so amped and his and Sunstorm’s spatial slashes so lethal, the fight would have been a slaughter.

I’ll talk about my full approach to potential character death in a separate section, but I will mention that I never seriously considered killing anybody here. Maiming was another matter.

To me, this fight wasn’t a great choice for character death. I haven’t established a sense “anybody can die” in the series, and don’t really like writing that stuff. That means character death needs to either be during a serious climactic moment or serve an important purpose to the plot or a character arc. Leopold served all of those. If a Champion died against Siv, it would have overshadowed much of the book and arguably not for good reason. Her power and danger is established just as well by having the entire team struggle against her for multiple chapters. This was also a random Messenger invasion, not a climax.

Maiming got ruled out as I didn’t have many great options. Letting Sen or Narime be seriously injured would make then appear extremely stupid (Narime can counter and Ciana has barriers). Fei just got a regeneration ability. Astra is literally immortal. Fyre is special, which is why she apparently got vaporized and reappeared in a berserker rage. Plot reasons dictated who got deployed elsewhere and I was unwilling to change them much (besides, maiming Nurevia serves what purpose?).

If I hadn’t just done some Sunstorm stuff in Book 4, I potentially would have hurt her and used it as a chance to kickstart a character arc. As it was, she already has an arc going with her inferiority complex and maiming was unnecessary.

I did get a chance to introduce Nathan’s growing inhumanity, too.

Ch26-34 Commentary

Trafaumh. That’s what these chapters are about.

This was a troublesome block of chapters and a source of major angst. For a lot of people, Trafaumh was expected to be the focus of the book (and arguably should have been) and blowing through it in 10 or so chapters was unsatisfying. For others, it was just more politics and worldbuilding without a battle at the end or Nathan giving one of those awful “and everybody clapped” speeches they always give in bad isekais.

I came into this block of chapters with a specific set of objectives, as well as a personal goal. Book 5 has a lot of parallels with Book 3, and Trafaumh can be easily compared to the Spires. The biggest issue with the Spires was that it never had the time to really establish itself before a major problem sparked and forced Nathan to act. Sureev was a villain without an established motive as little of the Spires was shown.

Much of the problems in Book 3 were due to pacing. I forced in conflict to keep events interesting at the expense of establishing the Spires plotline, which meant it didn’t make a lot of sense beyond the fact that somebody was manipulating stuff behind the scenes.

Here, I made sure to take the time to build things up so that the reasons for Trafaumh’s problems are clear. There are also clear parallels to the issues elsewhere: the nobility want to retain the wealth and power in the face of change, much like in the Empire; a disempowered general populace are growing increasingly desperate (as in the Enclave, Spires, and Amica); and there’s a weakening central power that is supposed to tie everything together.

The difference is that while Nathan could easily justify propping up the throne in the Empire, and didn’t understand the Spires, he knows how awful the Inquisition is. Hence why the question is left in the air about supporting the Inquisition for the sake of stability, versus the revolutionary Populists.

By the end of this sequence, and the book, it probably looks like that question has been taken out of his hands. But that’s not really the case. As Narime pointed out earlier in the book, Nathan has the power to change things. Once the shit hits the fan, the concept of supporting the lesser evil morphs significantly.

Rosewald’s chapter was arguably superfluous, but it reflects Nathan’s inner turmoil and the general mental battles that people face while trying to change things. If you’re young, don’t care about politics, or haven’t dealt much with people involved with politics, you’ve probably never dealt with this sort of raw jadedness – the internet (and the general public) excels at showing off a sort of “who cares” nihilism that is fine for everyday life but doesn’t exactly shake the halls of power. Rosewald wants to accomplish something, and while she’s questioning how it will happen and the genuineness of those around her, she’s still bent on making it happen.

This does, of course, have a mirror in Maura’s commentary on Nathan. Maura is the exact opposite of Rosewald – somebody who slammed into the bullshit of life and became a pleasure-seeking nihilist. Nathan has the fortitude and ideals that slipped away from her but that she personally adored, and might recontextualize some of her commentary about him in Book 3.

As a sidenote, I do wonder how many people picked up on the pun about Ciana. She’s a bi unicorn. A bicorn.

I’ll see myself out.

Ch35-42 Commentary

One of the Patreon comments about this block of chapters was how fast it escalated. Well, that’s partly because this section initially took place a little later. There was some fairly negative beta feedback about how Trafaumh basically went nowhere, and then the book returned to the palace to tie up some loose ends, leaving readers lost. So I brought forward the Messenger invasion.

With that said, it still would have been a little sudden. Part of the intention of this book is to bring the reality of Messenger invasions and the power of Black (Kadria’s boss) to bear. As Nathan demonstrates in his reactions to the three invasions in the book, this sort of invasion is normal to him. He spent most of his adult life in a world where it was normal to be awoken in the middle of the night to the news of a Messeneger breach.

The Thanatos chapters are complicated, however. They serve multiple purposes and even with the post-battle explanations, I question whether all of them reach readers.

Charlotte orchestrated Thanatos’ invasion, as she explained in her later PoV chapter. But Atlas snuck in under Black’s orders and had Thanatos breach in a weaker location (i.e. further west of Mortiswatch). Atlas then faffed about until he bumped into Nathan, realized that this was all a bigger plan by Black and vanished. Charlotte then appears, but is repelled by Nathan and is thrown off by his refusal to countenance her at all.

There are multiple layers here: first, Charlotte is trying to win over Nathan, but is willing to destabilize Doumahr in the process. Second, Black is actively sabotaging Charlotte and is entirely in control of the situation (or so it appears). Third, Atlas was under orders to make an appearance in front of Nathan, but didn’t fight him.

I’m not going to give away the reasoning for all of this, but I did want to make it clear that this is all intentional. This small block of chapters is the pivot of both the Book 5/6 arc and the Book 5-7 arc in different ways.

I suspect a lot of people expected Trafaumh to really be the major focus of all conflict in this book, and when it ended up just being some worldbuilding and political stuff with later payoff, it caused some headscratching. This is kind of the downside to not doing the boring, straightforward writing that is expected in the genre. Arguably, I’d be more successful if my books were just 100k romps where everything was more straightforward. The book could have just been “the Trafaumh book” and the climax would have been Deverese eating the heart of some imprisoned Messenger and then battling Nathan in some overdescribed battle that takes far too many pages.

Writing the Thanatos fight was a lot of fun at least. The Siv battle was extremely serious and I didn’t want to just repeat the same style of battle, just with different powers. Especially with another Messenger battle at the end of the book. So I focused on the comedy.

Messengers are essentially a parody/satire of isekai, and Thanatos put that on display here. His backstory is effectively that of an isekai, and includes a bunch of references to various elements of Japan. I suspect much of it flies over the head of the average American reader and descends into farce (e.g. the greatest pearl being a government job), which just makes the scene better.

Ultimately, Messengers aren’t always fleeing horrible tragedies. They’re running away from existential crises. The Twins came from poverty, became educated, traveled the world, only to return and find that they still struggled to escape their abusive father and awful home. Siv treats being a Messenger like a burned out 9-to-5er. Thanatos burned out, went broke, and now lives out his dream of being a shounen anime villain, complete with a “tragic” backstory that he can monologue about (except that time doesn’t stop and his ability can run out).

Finally, the Twins get their dick and Kadria is on her last legs of trust. As more is revealed, Kadria’s plan isn’t turning out to be as concrete and her knowledge isn’t as extensive as it first appeared to be. There’s also a clear shift in power, as Nathan has dominance over her in the mental world now. I had some more extensive plans for the Twins’ sex scene, but scrapped them over concerns that they might fly too close to the sun regarding Amazon’s rules.

Ch43-49 Commentary

A brief final block of chapters that handles the Enclave/beastkin stuff, before the climax. As I’ll mention below, a fair bit of stuff got cut from this section, which makes it feel a little abrupt.

The beastkin/Fei stuff in the Diet is important, in my mind. I suspect a lot of people skimmed or skipped it, and I won’t bother to go into the reasons I believe this. However, the themes and story of the series should make it fairly clear why Fei’s ennoblement is important.

While Fei doesn’t play the same sort of strategist/tactician role that Narime and Seraph do, she does hold an important leadership position under Nathan. This has been repeatedly shown throughout the series and becoming a noble only reinforces this. Her position here mirrors Fyre’s own ambitions for the beastkin.

In retrospect, I probably should have included Reine in this section, given her own role in the Fyre-Fei-Reine triumvirate of beastkin politics. I’ll need to rectify that in Book 6.

I’ll talk about Kara in her own section.

Finally, let’s talk about that ending and the surprise guest.

Quite a few people have mentioned they expected an Alter version of one of Nathan’s Champions, but that it would be Astra. I mean, the Twins did bring it up in Book 3 and she’s apparently connected to Black. But the issue is that of motivation: Astra took power to become somebody capable of protecting her people. Her ties and interest in her people, and feeling of betrayal toward Omria for leaving, have been openly stated. What Astra wants isn’t personal, and while it’s existential, it’s not easily achievable as a Messenger.

By contrast, Jafeila was established as a deeply troubled Champion. She lost her home, multiple Bastions, had a complicated sexual relationship with Nathan, and seemed to be on the lower end of the trigem totem pole compared to Narime and Vala. Given how many people dislike the opening chapters, I suspect those aspects were overlooked, but I’ve been mining them a fair bit.

That’s why Artemis’s undead appear the way they are. They’re clearly representations of guilt. Hordes of beastkin soldiers from the three nations she fought for. Elite knights from Falmir and Trafaumh that Jafeila would have led. The scouts from the Reaches Guard.

Her powers aren’t extensive, as much as hyper focused. She’s a trigem turned up to eleven, with nigh immortality and a scream that can disrupt magic. The epitome of simplicity is best. Because her abilities are focused on 1v1 combat, she’s incredibly lethal to Bastions and Champions. She has raw speed and strength in spades, a ranged slash, and a surge ability that allows her to do a lot of damage quickly.

Sen and Nathan can hurt Artemis for very specific reasons. As these won’t be explained for a while, I may as well briefly cover them here. Sen’s magic is tied into her bond with Ifrit – she’s tapping into a special kind of ascended magic only possible using the primordial spirits. Ifrit is timeless and immortal, and his magic has a similar quality (it’s the same idea as Demon’s Throne’s conceptual magic, because that’s what it is).

By contrast, Nathan can hurt Artemis for the reason Kadria hinted at earlier. He’s getting very good at reshaping reality. So if he wants to sever something and keep it severed, it’s harder for other beings to undo his magic.

I’m personally more of a fan of this sort of soft magic than pure hard magic systems. Then again, the fact that some people find this stuff difficult to follow while nodding along at the frequently nonsensical cultivation stuff deeply amuses me.

The ending of the book is, I’m certain, still controversial. For me, the main benefit is that it allows me to pick up Book 6 in the middle of the action without needing to build up new villains and plots. It also leaves Nathan in a difficult situation that he needs to resolve. Given the length of the book, it’s not like I gave people something incomplete either.

Artemis serves as a reminder that Messengers can and will grow stronger, but Nathan was at least strong enough to hold her off, unlike when Kadria blew him away instantly at the start of the series. In a New Game Plus scenario, this is like when you fight the boss who effortlessly defeated you originally and can progress onto the rest of the story. You might have been a little naïve to think that everything would have been super easy just because you got to this point.

Deleted/Unfinished Scenes

Most of these are around the end of the book, simply due to how obscenely long it got. I personally feel the book is too long as is for the genre audience and keeping the plot of such a long book straight is increasingly difficult, even if some people would probably read the book no matter how long it is.

The wedding was supposed to take place before Artemis attacks. This will be moved into Book 6 for obvious reasons and was the reason the Anna/Alice threesome got bumped. The removal of this block of scenes is the main reason the book jumps from Thanatos/Atlas to Artemis so fast, as it took out a huge chunk of scenes.

Reine’s gemming was scrapped when I reorganized the post-Trafaumh section of the book. Originally, there was a break between Trafaumh and Thanatos. This would enable her gem to arrive and she would use it to help suppress the demons. Again, I suspect this also resolves some questions about why Reine’s just seems to fall off around the end of the book.

The Seraph Bastion stuff was intended to also take place around here (she’d pick up some of the abandoned binding stones in the south-west), but I think ditching it is actually better as it means the event takes place during more important times in Book 6.

However, there is one major set of scenes that was in the outline but never written. I actually wrote around these as I didn’t know if I’d be able to fit them in (and hinted at their existence in the planning post).

These consisted of a Spires mini-arc that would involve Astra and Gareth. This would serve multiple purposes: it would kickstart Astra’s character arc (which is now on hold until Book 6, as it requires some interaction with Charlotte/Omria); push the Gareth stuff forward; make the Sureev comparisons to Trafaumh’s current dilemma more relevant than a brief mention in Nathan’s monologue; and act as the trigger for the climax.

As explained in the story, the places that Omria touched in life are important to the prophets. Soreaux was never really intended to be one. The idea was that Charlotte pulled her stunt in the Spires instead, but this required an entirely independent plotline.

It also predated some of the updated Charlotte stuff and altered character PoV stuff I did. Hence why I never wrote it. Instead, I used Soreaux as an alternate option that had enough establishing clues to work (or be easily edited out if I decided to use the Spires after all).

Probably the other big deleted section were the original PoV scenes before I settled on Charlotte. Both Siv and Ester were candidates.

Ester got scrapped as although she could show off some interesting Trafaumh stuff, it would require me to make those scenes interesting (e.g. to have Baudelaire reveal her secret basement where she harvests Messengers and her secret to going Super Saiyan or something). Also, some people may have been unhappy about Nathan likely taking Deverese’s Champion in the future.

Siv was next up, and I planned to use this as a way to show her lack of interest in Omria’s plan as well as how the multiverse stuff works for Messengers (which would have been great for when Kadria and the Twins talk about being cut off from alternate selves later). However, this also acted as a setup for Siv to meet Nathan rather than a great way to establish the plot. I didn’t feel I had the time to handle Siv as a major player instead of a minor villain.

There’s probably other stuff I’m forgetting.

Multiverse Shenanigans

The fun part. For me, anyway.

The entire series is basically a multi-layered plot between different entities who screw with the multiverse. Sofia created Omria, and may have been led to do so by Black (her boss). This led to the meatgrinder that is modern Doumahr, with the cycles. Now Kadria and Atlas planned to use Omria’s power to escape from Black’s grasp. That’s why she wanted Nathan and used Fyre.

Except it seems Black was one step ahead still, and has likely always been. Kadria has been intentionally spared her employer’s wrath and it seems that Black is actively manipulating the cycle. Given the power he has available, it seems likely he could end everything whenever he wants. So he must want something. The question is what?

For his part, Nathan isn’t paying too much attention to this nonsense. His focus is on dealing with immediate problems.

However, it is the driving force behind the exogenous conflict in the plot. Charlotte is being possessed by Omria and has been sending Messengers to destabilize the Empire. Black is also sending Messengers, including with the assistance of his partner. Kadria and the Twins are sick of their current situation and want to escape, despite the risks. Fyre is desperate for the power to change things as well as Nathan’s approval, and therefore accepts Omria’s power through Kadria. And Artemis is hunting for Nathan.

Therefore, while Nathan isn’t that focused on the multiverse problems beyond the possibility that he’s being tricked by Black, they still affect him greatly.

As an FYI, the reason the partner’s name isn’t capitalized is because that would imply it’s a name of power and can’t be spoken without summoning the outer being in question. It’s used in the same sense that “employer” is: a generic term.

If you want a brief summary, it goes like this:

Black consumes worlds in the multiverse as food. He recruits humans from Earth as Messengers to prepare worlds for him to eat. He has a partner who recruits Messengers from the worlds that they eat.

Sofia was a succubus Messenger who went to Doumahr and created Omria, which is a magical system built into the multiverse archetype of Doumahr, preventing Black or any Messenger from removing it. However, Omria is bound by a set of rules. This includes the prophet system, as well as restricting her power to match that of any outer being invading her world (which is why Black invades using the portals and why Messengers need binding stones).

The cycle system is basically subsets of the Doumahr multiverse where portions of the world are gradually consumed by Black. Omria rebirths as the prophet under a new race, defends them until Black’s Messengers become too much to stop, and then vanishes. This appears to be linked to weakening Black’s invasion efforts, at least temporarily, or may be a measure to stop Black from consuming her. She then reappears as a new prophet in a new cycle eventually.

Kadria hitches a ride on Nathan into a world that is ready for a new cycle. Before Omria can create the prophet, Kadria does so through Fyre, stealing the power. However, Omria’s defense system kicks in and creates a new prophet in Charlotte (who is also world hopping). Both prophets are attempting to claim legitimacy from the populace as well as important sites of Omria. Black is actively destabilizing Doumahr in the process and is aware of everything happening.

Character Death (Again)

I largely covered this in the Book 4 commentary.

I’m a firm believer that character death needs to serve narrative purpose and be consequential. I don’t really enjoy series that thrive on shock deaths, and I especially dislike them when the atmosphere and expectation isn’t there (e.g. an otherwise normal genre book suddenly killing major characters as a shock twist).

Book 4 established that characters can die and I’m now increasing the threat they face. I ended this book by cutting off Ciana’s arm and seriously injuring Narime. Some could argue I should have gone further (and the fact I didn’t get any 1* review complaining about the ending makes me suspect I probably should have, but I suspect those people are just complaining through ratings or elsewhere).

I’m not going to tell you flat out that I’m going to start killing characters, but I will say that I’m intentionally increasing the temperature so you shouldn’t be too surprised if it happens.

On the other hand, crippling is another interesting discussion. The topic comes with a bunch of rabbit holes, including on what counts as crippling. Some will argue that the crippling doesn’t matter if the character isn’t forced to live with the damage and constantly overcome it.

Berserk is one of the classic examples of this: Guts loses an arm, but it gets replaced by a metal one with a cannon. Is he really crippled?

There are some larger issues in relation to the particular case I have. Namely with Ciana losing an arm, Nathan refusing to trigem her, his crippling guilt toward her from his own world, and his increasing grasp of reality-altering powers. It’s difficult to argue with a straight face that Ciana is going to suffer consequences for the remaining two books, but I can say that she’s not going to just stick her arm back on in Chapter 1, Book 6, and hop to it.

Fyre

The primary focus of the book, despite not being the cover girl. She tag teams with Ciana in a lot of scenes, though, including her sex scene.

Fyre gets a lot of development and exploration in large part because much of it was left out of Book 4 due to concerns about how people would receive her. She’s much more than just a yandere, but that goes for almost every character I write. While she has a hero complex for Nathan, her passion for her race is genuine and a little terrifying in terms of the things she is willing to do.

It’s also made clear that Fyre’s willing to do things that Nathan may never forgive her for, if she thinks it will be in service to both her race and him. She’ll happily have her cake and eat it, but failing that, she’ll smash the cake into the faces of her hated enemies.

Much of the book is spent on parallels to Ciana, which have always been there but become even more apparent. She gains the same emotion reading, has a threesome, the two make up from their apparent jealousy of each other, and they’re both devoted to him in their own ways. A beta reader even suspected Fyre was an alternate timeline version of Ciana (this was a possibility at one point, but I dismissed it as less interesting than Fyre just being an ordinary beastkin).

The other parallel, which I forget if I brought up in the book, is about Fyre’s attitude toward beastkin and humans. She’s actively friendly to Fei and Ciana, and openly defensive for Reine, but doesn’t seem to really care about Alice or any other humans. While she preaches for all, she’s troubled by the fact that she’s representing humans who don’t care for the issues she does.

This is the main reason I wanted to keep the line where Nathan mentions there is one Omria (which I forgot to edit in the original book upload and had to fix, oops!). It’s a reminder that while Nathan has been struggling with his lifelong faith throughout the series, it’s still important to him and he recognizes that. At some point he’s going to need to confront the fact that Fyre is more than just a horse beastkin, given his habit of putting off internal problems.

After all, Nathan is arguably the one who is claiming ownership of Omria these days, given Fyre’s proclivities.

Kara

A side character that got introduced in the Sen sidestory and grew to be somewhat important. She doesn’t even have a proper description other than big tits and floppy dog ears.

In each book she’s gotten a role for convenience reasons in the story. Book 3, it was Fei’s character arc and the gemming stuff. Book 4, I needed a Champion to hold down the fort and Kara had been established as Fei’s trusted lieutenant (and paperwork handler).

So as Seraph began to move up the food chain in terms of work and Nathan needed somebody to handle Straub, I realized that Kara would be an excellent candidate to handle that problem. It also gives Nathan a subordinate who clearly loves him, but in a non-sexual way (because she’s man’s best friend).

On the topic of Straub, I suspect more than a few people wanted me to do more with it. But the reason Nathan rejects Straub (and his mother’s history) is the same reason he tells Fei to stop caring about her alternate self. He’s his own self. Nathan doesn’t have the personal connections here that he otherwise should and a mere county is well and truly below him.

It’s always kind of weird when a story that is about much larger stakes suddenly tries to make a character spend lots of time in a really minor area for the sake of town building or castle management nonsense. That can work in a video game (sometimes), but in a story it has the same problem that academy detours have. The character is way above this nonsense.

Anyway, Kara gets to be cute and help me wrap up some loose ends at the same time. I can also use her in some Anna scenes (which are well overdue given there’s a wedding coming up).

The Twins

So the truth behind all the behavior of the Twins is finally revealed, if you somehow didn’t see all the clues (or simply assumed Laura’s actions were bad writing, as I suspect many people did).

Of course, I never planned this element from the start. Instead, it emerged during Book 3 after I heard Steph’s amazing performance of Book 2. I’ve said before that I adore the way she does the Twins and I mean it. The drastic increase in the screentime they got is due entirely to Steph’s voicework. If I’d known in advance, I’d have written out Kadria and just done the Twins from the start.

However, that’s not to say the situation is perfect. Laura’s lack of activity got some flak in earlier books, even though it was intentional (as she was playing wingman to Maura, and knew that Maura was playing hard to get as she was in denial).

A beta also pointed out a broader issue with the series, and arguably the genre as a whole. I personally think of it as “character condensation.” The sheer volume of characters in harem works means that there’s almost never enough time to fully explore them in any real depth. If their motivations and characterization runs more than skin-deep (or trope-deep, arguably), the best that can be shown off are usually glimpses of that depth.

This is fundamentally the case with the Twins. I could easily write an entire series focused around the Twins and a male MC, with minimal other characters, and there’d be plenty to unpack. Maura has a lot of deep-seated issues, she lies, and lusts for something that she fundamentally gave up on herself. By contrast, Laura’s personality seems obvious, but she’s hiding a lot of her thoughts and actions for the sake of her sister.

In a more dedicated series, there’d be more opportunities to hint and allude to the deeper problems. If Spellblade had less plot, I could also spend more time doing that.

Overall, I’m still pretty happy with how much development the characters get. Due to time constraints I don’t get around to everything and everyone, but I get to put in a fair bit of depth alongside the plot compared to most of the stuff I read. And I don’t rely on tropes to give the illusion of depth (1.5D characters).

Vala

Vala’s intended to be difficult and standoffish for Nathan. He’s not being entirely honest about his opinions toward her, but as the Twins said, he always has another option.

The possibility of using mental abilities was intended to be a more important option. However, with all the other risks I was taking in this book, inviting another excuse for people to troll about this topic (as it’s come up for more than a few times by people looking to dissuade others from touching the series) was put off.

Book 6 will have a scene where Nathan will need to tackle some of his personal hangups over Vala, and the fact she’s simply not the woman he loved in his world. Narime is largely the same woman. Fei is a younger, more adorable version he got to shape and prevent the trauma from harming (and now he’ll need to face the impacts of that in Jafeila/Artemis).

But Vala was left to last, left to rot in Falmir with an incompetent Oliver, and she’s fundamentally wary of him.

At this point, I’m undecided on whether Vala will actually become a harem member. But expect at least one painful scene with Nathan confronting reality.

Baudelaire

The villain who may or may not be a villain.

One of my objectives with Baudelaire was to establish somebody that you know has done awful things, is actively dangerous while in power, and yet has aims that you don’t fully understand.

With Trafaumh about to fall into turmoil and potentially outright civil war, Baudelaire’s role and actions will become even more important. That’s why none of the political actions are completely wasted.

Nathan may not want to work with her, however. That’s a choice he’ll need to make next book.

Charlotte

I strongly recommend skipping this section if you don’t want to see behind the curtain too much.

So, gonna be completely honest here. Charlotte changed during the writing process of this book.

I always have a few possible paths for characters and plots, so that I’m never forced to take any one path. The Omria/Sofia stuff was planned from the get-go, and Charlotte was always connected to it.

However, that wasn’t as a world hopper. I know a few of you suspected this from some lines in Book 4, but those were intentionally ambiguous. As we’re past the point of no return, I’ll explain the original version.

What I had planned (and what I actually communicated to Steph in the VA character notes) is for Charlotte to be effectively possessed by Omria/Sofia. The idea was that Charlotte had been the scared princess in Book 2, and Omria had taken control as of Book 4, resulting in the ice bitch persona. Her focus on Nathan was due to her prescience of his role in the multiverse and importance to the cycle, just as mentioned in this book.

But when I scrapped the alternate PoVs of Ester and Siv, I decided I needed somebody to help with the Falmir plotting. Male PoVs make people really pissy, so I wanted to avoid Gareth, and people might get the wrong idea if I used his Champions. So I decided to use Charlotte.

That meant I needed to make her a separate character, however. Letting you see Omria’s thoughts directly is dangerous. So I went for my Plan B and made her a world hopper, and you know the rest.

I’ll be able to discuss some of my Charlotte plans in later books when the time comes. Suffice it to say that this doesn’t change as much as you might think, although it does mean I need to work a bit more with Nathan’s own internal drama regarding the princess.

Revolutions and Inspiration

I think we’re onto authorly topics now?

Most of the research process for this series involves history. Each nation has a historical analog and in turn I’ve looked into various issues they’ve faced. Not everything is related to historical problems faced, however.

But in this case, Trafaumh had some very clear inspirations. It’s France, and there’s a Revolution that looms large when you’re talking about croissant land.

The French Revolution and resultant Napoleonic Wars are complicated topics (made more complicated by the cultural biases they’re frequently viewed through, as France adores Napoleon and Britain wants everybody to think that entire 20-year period accomplished nothing except a lot of dead people). The immediate cause is separate from the larger issues that had been rolling downhill for centuries.

The paralytic corruption shown in Trafaumh is an attempt to represent some of the more fundamental problems France (and Europe in general) faced. The knights being given tiny parcels of land as a technicality; a clergy openly on the payroll of the nobility (historically, they would be family members who would likely have been appointed by virtue of a large bribe); as well as a gap between the commoners and the nobility in terms of influence and actual importance.

I avoided an actual economic crisis in Trafaumh as the main spark for the issue (as, like with many revolutions, was actually the trigger) because it would have distracted from the main point and also looked like a real world analog. There’s some fascinating literature on how accurate the depictions of a stuffy nobility keeping down the new money. But, as with modern politics, perception won out.

In Trafaumh, the issue is complicated by a deliberately archaic system of governance. This was easy to represent in the book by simply talking about the various noble positions and contrasting it to the deliberately simplified system I use in the Empire. But adding on layers of councils and parliaments made it bewildering to readers, which hopefully had the desired effect of making it clear that things are kind of fucked in Trafaumh.

With that said, this isn’t the French Revolution. I didn’t have the time to truly go into depth about these sorts of political issues and I’m mining the topic for inspiration and realism, rather than for allegory. I’ve read books that explore historical movements like this in fantastical allegory (such as The Light Ages).

So I used some of this as shorthand to get across the issues in relatively short order, and also relied on past issues that Nathan has faced in the Empire and Amica. I probably should have brought up noblesse oblige and some of what Anna talked about in the earlier books—but I’ll make sure to do that in Book 6 when it’s immediately relevant.

I mentioned above the personal side of Rosewald’s speech, but there’s also a slightly allegorical element to it. I usually avoid allegory, but it’s kind of hard to avoid in a topic such as this. Hell, I mentioned The Light Ages above, and it touches on the same topic – namely, the general idea of “new boss, same as the old boss.”

Pretty much any revolution needs to succeed with the help of members of the elite. In the Roman Republic, the Populares battled the Optimates through the byzantine bureaucracy of Roman politics, and the corruption endemic in the system eventually led to Caesar just taking Rome by force when the Optimates overplayed their hand (and led to the eventual fall of the Republic).

The problem with these elites is that they’re frequently opportunists. Much of Caesar’s personal interest was in rising to power and fulfilling promises he’d made (such as granting land to his soldiers, reforming specific elements of Roman society, and repaying debts) – it’s unlikely he had any particular ideals that aligned with the Populares.

So this is one side of Rosewald’s venting. The fact that many of the nobles supporting the Populist faction of Trafaumh really just wanted to seize more power by removing the Inquisition, and switched to supporting Trafaumh when Charlotte made a better deal (even though this is clearly just trading out one religious overlord for another).

The other side is that of principles versus outcomes, and is a murkier topic. In this case, is supporting a religious dictator such as Charlotte because she’ll, say, build homes for the poor worth sacrificing the principle of freedom from such a dictator? In many movements, the people who fight for change find themselves in the same or worse circumstances afterward while those at the top play musical chairs. Things can appear different without actually changing (even if the people who take over think they’re changing things). Hence Rosewald’s frustration as she tries to avoid that fate.

As a side note, for anyone confused by Alice’s fashion talk, you should know that is based on the actual change in fashion caused by the French Revolution. The wealthy have always loved to express themselves through fashion and it’s a great way to give the illusion of social change. It was also alluded to earlier in the series (the first book, I think) when the French maid uniforms went out of style due to war with Trafaumh.

I don’t really have any direct historical analogs for the rest of the series. Falmir isn’t really about revolution, given what Charlotte is doing there. Arcadia is complicated, as the elves are coded as Turkish but I’m undecided about the faeries (using the traditional faerie names can be a bit repetitive) – the elves are refugees, after all, and the issue there is more akin to a corrupted democracy.

Gem Powers and the Magic System

One of the problems with the series is coming up with gem powers that both matter and are linked to the character in question. With the scale of fights changing drastically, I tried to focus more on useful powers than flashy ones.

Hence why Sunstorm’s trigem power is basically just that anime ninjutsu that replaces their body with a log when struck, Seraph can absorb and reflect spells, and Fei basically supercharges her existing flames. Narime’s ability is arguably the most powerful but it’s somewhat limited by plot, and also has the risk of overshadowing other characters (fortunately, only Sen is that reliant on pure spellcasting and she’s using special Ifrit powers now).

A significant element of the gem powers is to show that Nathan is changing his approach from his old one, where he favored pure specialization, because that’s what was thought to be best (e.g. Jafeila is a duellist; Narime casts lots of spells; Vala fights hordes). When his goal is to keep everybody alive and still defeat Messengers, he needs to have more versatility.

Hence why most of the Champions are ending up with a somewhat familiar skillset: some sort of powerful attack ability, an endurance ability, and then a flex slot that makes them unique. This also means the best Champions for each fight will change dependent on the Messenger’s abilities.

The downside is that the fights can seem small or underpowered compared to some displays in other books. I forget where I saw it (some video essay) but I believe there’s a point where the scale of fights loses all meaning. At a certain point, the fight is identical with just different descriptions or visuals. In fact, it’s possible to lose track of what’s important if the scale gets too silly and it’s one of the reasons I get bored with a lot of infinite skills litrpgs.

Siv had one of the larger displays of raw power the books will see. I’m wary of doing army battles of any importance, because as demonstrated in Book 4, Champions can take out armies effortlessly and Nathan is opposed to simply massacring tens of thousands because that’s kind of psychopathic for a dude trying to unite Doumahr. Sometimes, battles are going to be smaller scale and viciously fast like the Artemis fight.

This leads into the magic system. If you were paying attention (and could make sense of it) then you might have seen some similarities in the general themes of ascended magic with another series (well, two, actually). I’ve mentioned before that there’s a soft link between series, and this is part of it.

Ascended magic is, essentially, just a fancy name for astral power and spiritualism. Where Demon’s Throne has a much more scientific and rigorous approach to magic in general, Doumahr (and the Messengers) don’t. The Messengers are demigods who are basically just kicking around sandcastles, in contrast to the angelic automatons of Demon’s Throne who have goals more in accordance with the outer beings.

When Kadria talked about different levels of ascended magic, she’s alluding to the gap between astral power and spiritualism. This is one of the dangers of capturing a world that doesn’t fully understand its own magic, and probably one of the reasons the modern trend is to have everyone have an impossibly detailed understanding of the magic system (no, seriously, it’s always laughable to me that literally every Podunk martial artist or wizard seems to understand the ins and outs of the magical equivalent of quantum physics in so many progfantasy series these days, when the concept of aether was considered possible IRL until relatively recently).

Truthfully, I’ll probably avoid this sort of magic in the future as while I’ve enjoyed writing about it, it clearly just confuses lots of people.

Nathan’s Power and the Mental World

On the flipside of the magic system, there’s Nathan’s continuing powerups. Although I’m certain there’s a continuing contingent of people angry that he’s not stronger.

I’m going to be fairly blunt here. If you don’t understand why Nathan can’t battle Messengers, then I think you might be missing the point of the series. Then again, this is a genre where people still say stuff like how pure pulp is its apex so I can’t say I’m surprised.

Nathan’s power is rapidly developing in the dimensions of a Bastion. Namely, support skills and building stuff. This is a series where logistics and travel time have always been important and regularly mentioned. In this book, I’ve been able to cut out a lot of that because Nathan can just zip around. Hell, gateways have been a boogeyman since Book 1. Cascades and the way they ripple across an entire country have also been the greatest threat because of how hard it is for Bastions to suppress them, and the fact Messengers outrun them.

I guess part of the problem is that a lot of this stuff is just waved away in most series because it’s inconvenient for most authors to deal with.

But Nathan’s reached a level of effective demigodhood by virtue of what he can do in the world. He can teleport armies; has a series of secret, impregnable teleporters; has his own unscryable control room that he can use to spy on others and hide stuff in; has another secret throne room for extra special stuff; and can even create food and drink from nothing.

Do I need to depict him walking on water and have Reine ooh and aah over him?

His offensive ability is lagging behind because it hasn’t been his focus. He’s fumbling with mental magic as an attack vector now, but elite Messengers are used to battling succubi so he needs a bit more practice to accomplish much (hence why Artemis was only weak to him because she secretly wanted to obey). He hasn’t spent a year training in a Hyperbolic Time Chamber while only an hour passes so he can master spatial combat (and that won’t happen because it’s cheap in a series where time is also important).

Anyway, unlike Demon’s Throne where the power progression issues are a genuine problem (Rys’s focus on summoning results in some repetitive fights reliant on his disruption ability), Nathan’s focus has always been on his support skills as a Bastion. The expectation that almost every MC is Chad McChaddington, the only person capable of being important in a fight, remains a boring facet of the genre.

How Much of the Series is Truly Planned Ahead?

An interesting topic I figured to include as I’ve seen people in various (non-harem) places disparage the idea that things can be planned ahead without the author explicitly including them in earlier books. I suspect a lot of this is just due to an internet backdraft over a certain wizarding author and her (sometimes literally) shitty retcons…

Anyway, I sit in the middle of the plotting vs making it up spectrum (also called plotting vs pantsing). When I start a series I usually come up with a bunch of ideas, a very rough outline of where I expect the series to go, and then go from there.

In the case of Spellblade, while many of the principle ideas were in place during Book 1, I rewrote much of the series outline following Book 2 when I committed to doing 6 books (now 7). From there, I haven’t deviated too much from my plans but have been able to include some ideas that I never really fleshed out.

For example, the civil war was planned from Book 1 and Leopold’s death in Book 2. There are some things in Book 6 that have been planned since Book 2 as well. The ending of Book 6, and therefore all of Book 7, has been planned since Book 1. Sofia was planned from the beginning, although her relationship with Kadria has changed (hence the weird explanation of the Sister Kadria stuff).

By contrast, characters like Fyre and Artemis are newer. Artemis came up during Book 3 but I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to squeeze her in as she was kind of a fun but oddball idea.

As explained earlier, I often have multiple ideas for where a character can go. In Book 4, I talked about Schrodinger’s spymaster, where I had multiple possibilities for who the spymaster might be. I do a similar thing with certain characters. Fyre could have been an alternate version of Ciana. Charlotte might be connected to a certain other character.

This sort of planning means I can improvise in a book if my original plan simply doesn’t work. Not all ideas work during the writing process. Sometimes you need to liven things up. Other times an idea is just really tortuous and you want to simplify it because it doesn’t add anything.

The main thing I’ll say is that while individual books are playing out differently than planned, the overall series story still largely matches the outline I drew up to start with and that I expanded on following Book 2.

Future Books

Without retreading the earlier section much, I’ll quickly mention future plans.

After the difficulty writing this book and the soft reception, I don’t think I can write a good Book 6 without at least a short break. I don’t think the book itself will change much, as I know what I want it to look like (and it really can’t change too much). But putting the words on the page is another matter.

In the meantime, I’ll work on Neural Wraith 2. I’ve had a lot of ideas kicking around for this and I think it’s a much easier piece to work on. I might even be able to coincide the Book 2 release with the audiobook of Book 1 if things come together quickly.

As for series length, series length is unchanged with Spellblade ending at Book 7. I suspect that will be close to mid-2023 given my usual writing timeline, particularly as I want to slow down. Maybe I’ll change my mind with time (and there’s plenty of it), but I’m leaning away from combining epic fantasy with harem as it ends up being an immense amount of effort compared to the payoff and is draining.

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Anyway, that’s the commentary this time around. Some downer topics, but I hope I provided some insight into some of my intentions and plans. This book was especially difficult to talk about prior to the book, given it was morphing as I wrote it and some of the ideas were rather spoilery. A lot happens despite the relatively low amount of action.

As always, let me know your thoughts and if you have any questions.