Demon's Throne 3 - Detailed Commentary

Intro

I’m writing the commentary for Demon’s Throne 3 a little earlier than usual. This book was an absolute mess to write, which probably sounds like normal to you, but I had hoped for better after Spellblade 4 came together so neatly. I had thought that my feelings might be too raw, but I’m feeling juiced due to release (and pre-orders make me far less anxious about releases) so this is being written immediately after the book came out.

Reading this back after writing it, it kind of is a bit raw. A fair bit of the commentary focuses on stuff I’m uncertain about and expect pushback over. But for various reasons I’m expecting a few negative reviews and figure to get this out before any can get into my head.

As a sidenote, it deeply amuses me that everybody says that Spellblade and Demon’s Throne are basically identical. Because they feel completely different when writing them.

This post will include broad commentary on Demon’s Throne 3, including many of the editing decisions I made (and didn’t make). As such, it is loaded with massive spoilers. There are also spoilers for the Spellblade books. 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 things, 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.

Act 1 Commentary

I said that Spellblade 4 was hard to break up into three acts, but still managed it. Demon’s Throne 3 kind of craps on the three act structure. I kind of forced it into one, but I had to accept that this series doesn’t work like that and I’ve probably made the books worse by sticking to them. That topic will be discussed much later in this post, as it’s a very authorly topic.

Act 1 covers Chapters 1-17. That makes it extremely broad, because it includes the initial fox politics, some set-up and discussion of later events, the Labyrinth dive and seal breaking, and discovering that Darus is actively working against Rys.

If you remember Spellblade 3, then you might recall that it had a similar opening with some kingdom building stuff before an extended visit to Aleich and politics. This is somewhat similar, but not as elegant. In Spellblade, the Aleich visit neatly transitioned into the visit to the Spires. Here, the Labyrinth dive is forced in because Rys basically has a huge progression gate. He cannot progress further in the story until he breaks another power conduit, gains the magic crystal that lets him unlock the gate into Hyrule Castle and—

Wait, no.

But you get the point.

The fox politics takes up a lot of the early story stuff, and I imagine their presence annoys or confuses a lot of people. Why do the foxes get so much screentime when there are like 100 of them in the archipelago? Does the series really need extra characters and political machinations? Is this happening just to meet K.D.’s desire for floof?

You already know the answer to the last question.

But once Imira shows up later and Rys starts mulling over Gauron in detail, I feel it becomes clearer why I had the foxes show up. In retrospect, I should have had Vallen draw back to the shady investors from Book 2. But maybe those are just bonuses for people who remember them or who reread them (they’re fairly obvious by the time you finish this book, if you hadn’t already guessed).

In short, the fox politics is my attempt to show how the continents underestimate the archipelago, and also how Rys is actively drawing attention to himself. Liorne only came in person because he wanted Fara and dismissed Rys. Later in the book, it then becomes a way to have the continents take an active role in the archipelago, which will be important for later in the series.

Also, there is some major character development stuff here. But I’ll talk about that later. Suffice it to say that Fara is linked in here, especially with Nia taking an active role.

With the Labyrinth dive, you likely saw that I cut out a lot of the combat. While I know a lot of the genre and litrpg/prog fantasy have massive combat scenes, I’ve chosen to actively eschew combat other than when it serves the plot – especially in Demon’s Throne. Labyrinth dives could take up huge amounts of space otherwise.

The “flashback” will likely prove divisive. It happens at basically the same point as in the past two books (yes, I’m aware of this and will talk about it later) and doesn’t end with the oomph of previous ones. There’s no Azrael nuking a fortress and pulling apart Rys’s soul, or huge revelations that deeply affect Rys.

Unfortunately, this is one of those scenes that matters more in the long run. The nature of the Labyrinth has been hinted at repeatedly and this shows that it is some sort of monstrosity chained into service. At the same time, Rys has a huge memory gap related to an inner part of an angelic fortress, roughly a century after the Cataclysm, and it shouldn’t be too hard to piece together who it relates to if you pay attention.

Finally, Darus gets to taunt and be yandere. Some people might want these scenes to be spicier, but Rys must remain very in-control and stoic. He’ll be playful and silly when he has the power, but he’ll lock up and refuse to let others take control of a situation. Denying Darus sex and pleasure here, even if he wants it, is very important to him – that’s also why he knocks Faeris and Imira back despite how lustful they are (although Imira is far more complicated). He needs to be on top.

Act 2 Commentary

Act 2 covers Chapters 18-33.

This basically covers all the politics of the book, and there’s a lot of it. New powers show themselves, a conference happens, and then a war breaks out. Rys also does some preparation and empire building in the background.

Morai’s appearance here is mostly to lay the groundwork for later in the series. I was conflicted about whether to have her show up. A lot of authors prefer not to introduce new characters or concepts until they’re necessary, but this also results in weird things at times. Like, if Morai cares so much about otherkin and the Circle’s machinations, why would she just fuck around on her island for years and never talk to Rys?

So I had her show up, act ominous, let Rys pull off a dangerous trick (which also plants a seed for some payoff in Act 3), and establish her personality. This lets you form your own opinion of her in contrast to that of all the rumors that have been spoken about her. Then she doesn’t show up again for the rest of the book.

Harah’s point of view does a lot of heavy lifting, which is how most of my PoV shifts work – the Mina scenes are actually my first major exceptions to this. Harah is established, along with Sesrah, Varian’s plan is explained, a fair bit of history is covered, and the core plot is set into motion… roughly 45% into the book. We’ll talk about that, I promise.

Despite being the cover girl, Ariel doesn’t have much screen time. This is fairly natural, as she’s the Devil Queen. She got the cover by happenstance, because my cover artist drew something too amazing to be Vallis and I didn’t want to redraw it to match our growing viceroy. I did want Ariel to establish herself during her brief appearances, however.

You get to be the judge of how well I succeeded. I feel that I managed to get across Ariel’s competence and ability to inspire fear and project power, while still being a relatively competent negotiator – she managed to draw Rys out for a fairly cheap price by her standards, after all. And already knew where he was by the time she closed the deal.

I’m more conflicted about the conference. I could write an entire book based on this if I wanted to, with political machinations taking place inside and out of the palace while Rys and his harem entertain and handle the delegates. But the book only needed a couple of things out of the conference.

The first was that this was a chance for Rys to show off his power and huge palace, and act like a huge ham, while others bow and scrape. What’s the point in building the palace if it’s not shown off?

The second was for Imira to sneak in and attach herself to Rys and his schemes. She’s a fairly complicated character, whose story is ridiculously detailed and difficult to cover in the book without spending a chapter infodumping it. Her main roles here are to be sexy, crazy, a source of havoc fox transformation, and to draw Rys into greater political schemes.

Finally, the conference needs to deliver on a bunch of political goals. There are a bunch achieved at once, and they serve both immediate and long-term narrative and character goals. Getting Tarmouth onside also attracts attention from Gauron, which gets Rys’s mind churning. He bulldozes the Federation but now they’ll actively work against him, setting the stage for the rest of the series. Faeris doesn’t prove as useful as you might have thought she would have been, which establishes a pattern of behavior that started last book.

I also took the chance to show how comfortable Fara and Mina are with Rys now. This also juxtaposes Mina against Fara. I’m still disappointed in how the threesome turned out, but I think it would be a mistake to change the book. I’ll chalk it up to a lesson learned and move onto my next book (and maybe do a better version on Patreon in a month or so if it still bugs me).

Finally, Varian and Tephrys launch an ambush on the palace. I bet a lot of people expected something like this. Rys has been upgrading his walls and the League has teleportation  (which I didn’t really explain well enough to have the characters be super surprised about, so I didn’t make it a huge plot point). I kept the siege short and sweet and used it as a way to show off how Rys fights versus another devil.

A few people complained in DT2 that the demons had been weakened because they could be harmed by mages. This wasn’t really the case, so much as huge amounts of magic could always kill demons. A single combat magister was threatening enough in Book 1 to require Grigor to hunt him down. But by establishing that demons aren’t really immortal machines of destruction, it also means that Rys can defeat them when he’s outnumbered.

I had planned to expand the fight against Tephrys and the devils, but it kind of hit all the notes it needed to. Tephrys is a spymaster and acts like an arrogant idiot. Rys shows off his skills and uses his current trademark fight winning ability.

Act 3 Commentary

Act 3 covers Chapter 34 onward. It contains a brief pre-war preparation section, then the extended climax (which is more a series of hero battles), and then the ending.

The pre-war stuff mostly checks off a few boxes. Deploy a few people, Rys’s allies are worried but committed, Imira is a thirsty girl with her own agenda, Varian flees, and Ariel is onto Rys. Oh, and I empower some folks.

The empowerment happened because holding off on it would raise questions and potentially annoy people. A bunch of people were bothered that I didn’t give Seraph a third gem in Spellblade 4 for largely structural reasons (it wouldn’t have made much of a difference, but would have absorbed a huge amount of screen time really late into the book). So I slipped in the empowerment at the appropriate times, even though Grigor never needs his regeneration Gift and Terry doesn’t play a major role in this book. I also get to park the Taras powerup for a joke.

Over the course of the book, I’ve been building on the character arcs of both Mina and Vallis. Both of them hit major moments here. Mina’s PoV chapter is massive, literally and figuratively. It was also a scene I added very late – initially I planned to do more of a war opener, followed by the assassination. I’m much happier with how this turned out, but I don’t know how everyone else will feel.

Unfortunately, the final version had a bit of a cockup here. In the final days before publication, I tried to edit and add back in an updated version of the war opener that allowed Mina to still have her moment. In the process, I accidentally removed the subhead formatting from the Mina PoV chapter, which is why it showed up the way it did on everybody’s devices if you downloaded the book on the first couple of days.

I do wonder if people are beginning to expect these sort of “the princess is in another castle” twists in my books. Spellblade 3 had civil war break out at the same time that Thanatos invaded the Spires and then a rebellion broke out there. Spellblade 4 had a whole lot of stuff after taking down Tharban, including a final twist during the climax.

And that’s not even mentioning the fact that Rys then pulls the whole “join me or die” after rejecting Maliah entirely in Book 2. I got mixed responses from betas on whether they saw this coming, which feels fitting. Rys is supposed to be pragmatic, and his perspective on what he needs to do next is different now that he’s in the sights of the entire world with the destruction of the League.

As for the multiple endings… Well, I have a section dedicated to those.

For now, I hope you enjoyed the Taras jokes. I genuinely struggled to one-up those, and the Mina chapter saved me here as I realized that Taras didn’t need to keep upping the physical ante, but the metaphorical one.

Also, being able to have Argran show up in person was nice. I wanted Rys to summon one of his old buddies to defeat the pacted devil during the initial planning process of the book. That then required me to plant the seeds of a lot of other things, such as the contract with Morai with implied terms, explaining how temporary contracts worked (which existed in Book 2, but I never explained it properly), and establishing a time pressure that would convince Rys to take the risk (Varian fleeing and his use of portals). The amount of crap that needed to exist to convincingly establish this scene in-character was high.

Deleted/Unfinished Scenes

A lot.

A beta reader suggested I should have an Asa sex scene, which made sense. There had been reasons I avoided one, but in the end I didn’t write one because I simply didn’t find the time in the final days before publication.

Originally, there was an Alaretta scene after the palace siege where Tephrys gives her the transformation potions. I took it out initially because I wasn’t sure if I wanted to commit to a Gorgria plot that involved her turning into an infernal. Then I still left it out because I felt that the hints that something was awry in Gorgria and Faeris was ignoring it was stronger than just telling you what was going on beforehand.

I wanted to expand the Harah PoV scene to have her visit Maliah, which would have better established the rift between him and Varian.

As mentioned earlier, there was a chapter that covered the intro to the war. I expect some folks will be upset that the war basically doesn’t get covered, but I didn’t want to do “Battle of Lapisloch, but bigger.”

Finally, some character development scenes didn’t make it in for various reasons. Tyrisa had one penciled in for after the palace siege, but I simply didn’t find the time. Alsia got cut because I struggled to squeeze her in without side-tracking the topic to Kinadain politics, which isn’t a major focus of the book. She’ll be back next book, although I need to deal with the fact she’s not strong enough to keep up with everyone else.

Mina’s PoV Chapters

These felt like a major risk for me to take, and I’m certain there are people who will really dislike them. I usually ensure my PoV chapters are packed with content so that they feel “worth it” even for people who dislike shifts away from the main character. The Mina chapters are the opposite, and do a lot of establishing of her character, underpin her character arc, and paint Rys in a different light to usual.

The second PoV chapter in particular is a big one. It’s a massive chapter and is the longest one I’ve included in any of my books so far. In terms of character arcs, this is where Mina self-actualizes and takes the reins as spymaster instead of relying entirely on her subordinates. She actions her plans, decides when to pull out, and then pulls the rug on Hyrie, while also dragging Sarae along for the ride.

With that said, these chapters are also somewhat self-indulgent. Mina is one of my favorite characters. She was a favorite of readers in the source material, but so was Alsia, and the reception Alsia received in Book 1 is sure proof that Amazon’s readerbase is a different beast.

In any case, while Mina will remain in focus as spymaster and has some big moments to come, she probably won’t receive major PoV chapters again for plot-related reasons. The havoc fox transformation will make it difficult to do a PoV chapter for both Mina and Fara.

The Ending(s)

Another hugely risky decision I made fairly late, and one that I can guarantee people will complain about (if they haven’t already by the time this post goes up).

Rys recruits Maliah after defeating him, then defeats Varian in a relatively anti-climactic fight.

But then the stinger is that Varian isn’t dead. This was hinted at in the original Patreon chapters, when Rys eyed the still active magical battery and chose to take it. For narrative effect, he’s not as savvy in the published version but the intention was for this to be a hint that Varian might be alive if I wanted to use him in the future.

Unfortunately, I remembered a problem, which Rys states outright – if somebody isn’t dead, their summonings and contracts remain active. For Rys, he was locked up in his seal and lost his powers, so that didn’t apply (plus, his seal cuts him off from Harrium). But if Varian isn’t dead, then Sesrah is still active, so Rys would find out immediately, as he did.

So I had to commit, or rather than people getting mad now, they’d get mad at the start of Book 4 at what would look more like an asspull than something I could lay breadcrumbs or hints about.

Keeping Sesrah active does make it easier to keep Darus involved. It saves me from having another mage conveniently summon Darus or Sesrah, which would have been silly.

Ariel doesn’t really offer new information about the archipelago or its mysteries, because it is a huge mystery. Instead, it serves as a huge summary of everything so far, and to establish the two possibilities of what Orthrus is, and what he might be up to. The fact that so little is known about a now-active pre-Emergence relic of such power should also be of interest, and it establishes a continuing interest of the angels, which links back to Rys’s missing memories.

If you’re annoyed about the lack of answers, then you’ll be glad to know that future books will begin rapidly answering everything. The series is structured in a question and answer arc format, which is inspired more by Japanese mystery formats.

Finally, the Alaretta “stinger.” Or cliffhanger. I prefer to think of these more as stingers, because the book ends on a clear note in the previous chapter, and the final chapter then gives you a solid hint about what you might expect in the next book.

Alaretta has always been destined to go a bit crazy and turn on Faeris/Gorgria. I may not have laid enough hints in retrospect, as she only gets brought up a few times, but Faeris’s characterization is intended to suggest that she’s not a great queen. You should also know by the end of the book who Maeve is in relation to Faeris and Alaretta, as it’s all but outright stated.

The Second Half of the Series

So Rys now controls an island, has a firm grip on his kingdom, has defeated those who are directly hostile to him, and has a loyal harem. He has also attracted a lot of attention and made Hell aware of his return, and has yet to regain enough power to go head-to-head with any of the great powers of Harrium or Hell.

There are also a bunch of outstanding mysteries, most of which are wrapped up in Rys’s memories and the Labyrinth. Most of these are tied together and will require dedicated time to unravel.

Funnily enough, without an immediate enemy to deal with, there’ll be lots of time to handle outstanding issues. Rys has plenty of political issues in general to keep him busy in general, but there’s no war that needs to dominate the plot. So far, the overall story has focused entirely on Rys’s overworld expansion. While that will continue, his needs will shift to the seal much faster and his expansion will be in service to breaking the seals.

The good news is that while writing this book I got a better grip on what the next three books will be. That’s why this book has so many establishing events and characters – Book 2 left me in a bad place, and I don’t want to start Book 4 in that position.

So while Spellblade will be on the forefront of my mind for a while, I do have some fun stuff already in mind for Demon’s Throne. There’s a character that I’ve been chafing at the bit to introduce since Book 1. She’s the one Grigor is sad about. I have two plots for the book: one where she shows up halfway, and another where she shows up at the end, depending on my overall plot for Books 4-6.

Luara and Children

No idea what people think of Luara. As with other aspects I’ve introduced, I know there are some vocal complainants about harem members having kids. But I’m older and want to write a series where Rys expands his empire while also raising some tyrannical daughters, so they can go jump.

Because Luara is basically toddler, she mostly gets to be a little mysterious and comical this book. Rys isn’t really father of the year material, so it’s not like he’s playing peek-a-boo or anything. Luara is also weird and acts docile around him for reasons, so he doesn’t mind taking care of her (so long as somebody else does all the actual caring).

Luara has some fairly strong plot relevance to both Alsia and the Kinadain in general. That should be clear from Morai’s appearance.

There will be more children. The focus is more on them as characters as they grow up rather than on pregnant mothers or anything.

Timeskips

I’ve been bringing up lots of stuff that I know is controversial, so let’s talk timeskips.

Man, do some people really hate these.

Something I try to do in my writing is accurately convey time. Armies take time to muster and march. Kingdoms are reliant on harvests for tax revenue and they time their wars on the seasons. The same goes for when parliament/court is held. A brand new kingdom will need time to train troops, raise funds, establish territory and rules etc. Travel also doesn’t happen instantly.

But a lot of readers strongly dislike when anything happens “off-screen.” I got some pushback during beta reading over this, it was something that came up in the source material, and I suspect it will grind some gears in the general readerbase.

This pushback is why a lot of books either take place over nonsensically short timeframes (“I gained my magic, became a master, traveled the world, gained a harem which I banged all night long, and then conquered a kingdom in three days”) or move at glacial paces, however.

I did shorten the timeframe of this book as it felt pretty crazy to try to stretch the book out over several years. There would have been a huge timeskip at the start of every chapter during the middle of the book, and then I would agree with the complainers. As it is, I’m trying to find a middle-ground to justifiably cover a fair bit of time over the series. Book 5 needs Luara to be a fairly specific age for plot purposes and I can only stretch that age so much.

The result might be fairly lengthy timeskips between books, but we’ll see.

Mina

I kind of talked about her above, so I’ll keep this brief.

Mina gets a lot of screentime, and her character arc largely completes. I don’t really have a formal character arc system (I felt that too much structure hurt me more than helped) but in Mina’s case, she’s intended to self-actualize. She can’t become a super elite make-no-mistakes-ever spymaster. That’s not how spycraft works, and I tried to beat that in over the course of the book (oh, look, another thing some people will dislike).

In general, Mina is actively trying to make the best of a chaotic and uncertain situation. She starts off with rebellious subordinates trying to replace her, feeling uncertain about her position with Rys, and with a sister who she feels has what she deserved – and she’s still making mistakes that Rys needs to overlook. By the end of the book, she’s confident, making plans that she rolls with, actively dealing with her subordinates, and much happier with Rys and the other foxes.

Mina arguably begins another character arc with her havoc fox transformation, as she will now be trying to pursue the power to stand beside Rys. Plus a kid later. But the arc won’t be as massive as the one she’s already gone through.

From my perspective, this is easily the most complete character arc I’ve written in any of my books so far. She did get a lot of screentime for it, though.

As an aside, Marin mostly exists for the sake of Mina. I originally planned to write out Marin and a fair bit of the fox politics. But Imira tempted me to leave it in, along with the fact that a lot of Mina’s and Fara’s character development links back to Pharos. Marin is the physical embodiment of Mina’s rejection by her clan, and there’s a fairly important scene in the next book for the two of them.

Vallis

The other major character arc being developed. Vallis’s arc is still going, however. The next book will have more empire management, and that will be when Vallis will cement her position and role.

For those who think she has completed her character arc, it’s important to remember what Vallis gave up when her father fucked everything up (I, uh, probably should have brought this up during the book – oops). Her magical studies were suspended at the last minute in order to become a merchant, so while she’s now proved to herself that she deserves her position, it’s not necessarily her dream.

From a character arc perspective, we’re actually only at the halfway point. Vallis is at the point where she doesn’t need to keep receiving advice from Rys about how to manage people, but instead needs to evaluate her next steps in life and what she wants to be.

This will drag Fara back in, as she made the firm decision to focus entirely on herself during the series, and can have some motherly advice for Vallis.

I really should find some time to continue the Vallis miniseries.

Asa, Harah, and Freisa

The new devils. Asa is a fun-loving succubus that I’m worried will trigger some trolling for frustrating reasons. Her laziness is a bit of an informed attribute, because she’s happy to be back and keen to please Rys. Like Laura and Maura from Spellblade, she tends to linger in scenes, but isn’t quite as over the top as they are, so I don’t feel I need to worry about overusing her as much.

Harah, however, is a blatant tsundere. Somehow, I suspect the same people who dislike Nurevia will dislike Harah.

As much as Harah tries to disobey Rys and claims to dislike him, she secretly likes serving somebody so powerful and isn’t as averse to the punishments he dishes out. Especially as he’s been gone for a while and she hasn’t been as useful for the past 1500 years.

Still, she didn’t get to do much this book. That should be rectified next book.

Finally, Freisa. I had planned to summon her in Book 2, but she seemed superfluous. So I summoned her this book, and then immediately realized it made a lot more sense for her to guard Luara than Vallis. That then led to making her more comical.

Freisa was always a fairly silly character. I altered her background to develop some background for Argran and Lacrissa (which, in retrospect, I probably should have used when Argran was summoned – oh, well). Her dopey demeanor coupled with her ridiculous power allows for some scene whiplash, while also preventing her from being too dangerous. Freisa is power without skill. A great meatshield for Luara, but useless against somebody like Tephrys who could dodge everything she threw at him.

Anyway, her background means she doesn’t get to feature in any sex scenes. That’s probably for the better, as it keeps her away from the harem.

Imira

A bouncy, chaotic, and sexy fox who doesn’t know if she wants to fuck Rys or rip his head off.

I leaned toward the former, with a side-dish of threats. Part of this is that it’s genuinely difficult to write powerful characters into harem fiction, particularly something that leans hard toward the power fantasy side like Demon’s Throne.

Right now, Imira can destroy Rys. No contest. Her powers aren’t the fanciest, other than her illusion power, but she has astral power and excels at physical empowerment. The result is that Rys probably can’t even scratch her with an infernal blow, his Absolute Disruption doesn’t work on her, and she can knock him across the palace with a single palm strike.

In short, Imira is to Rys right now what Azrael was in the flashback in Book 1. But while that worked back then, showing that here would piss people off. So her overwhelming power is hinted at, compared to Morai (who is a little weaker) who Rys thinks he might have a slight chance against, but danced around.

Fortunately, Imira is a schemer and Rys fits into those schemes. She’s not really a loyal subject of Pharos. The rest of her behavior is connected to her transformation and her history with Karrem and the Alliance.

Much of this will be explained, but Karrem won’t be. Just think of Karrem as Imira’s old flame, who she doesn’t like to talk about. He’s not really that important, which is why the book glosses over him. He’s like the Kushan of foxes – a huge evil dude who tried to take over Pharos, but where Kushan nearly succeeded, Karrem got his shit kicked in instantly.

Imira’s conflicted behavior will be explained over time. She’s not all that she seems, and she’s definitely a harem member.

Darus and Ariel

Darus finally gets elevated to villain status, and will remain there for a while. Rys only really has one way to handle them: become powerful enough to bind them to his will. Given they’re powerful enough to carve out their own empire in Hell, that’s easier said than done.

They got to show off some harsher yandere elements in this book, and I expect to continue that in future books until they’re bound. Tyrisa’s character arc (when I finally start it) will be wrapped up with them, as well.

By contrast, Ariel is more a vice that knows that Rys will only summon her if he’s pushed into a corner. She’ll be in his ear, acting nice, while also using her connections on Gauron to apply pressure. Unlike Darus, who is desperate and crazy, Ariel is willing to play the long game. She’s waited 1500 years, what’s another decade or ten?

And unlike with Darus, Rys doesn’t really have an easy out with Ariel. I’ll be honest: I haven’t even decided if it’s possible to bind the Devil Queen. In the source material, Ariel and Malusian could only be summoned with Pacts. Lacrissa was off limits because Rys wouldn’t consider summoning her.

However, now that Rys has summoned Argran, who works for Malusian, and has Ariel pressuring him, who is a potential harem member, I’ve definitely written myself into an interesting corner. I, uh, don’t know where I’ll go with this.

Best of luck to me.

Harem Size

Yes, it’s getting bigger. No, I don’t care that a vocal minority are becoming increasingly noisy about this. I juggle the girls and shift them in and out of the limelight as necessary. My upcoming cyberpunk series will have smaller-focus harems, but for my epic fantasy stuff, it just doesn’t fit what I want to write.

I probably won’t talk about this topic again, given it’s usually the same problem repeated point-for-point. But usually angrier and louder.

The Plans of Mice and Men

We’re now onto the authorly topics. Things will get fairly pointy and potentially difficult to discuss here. There are a couple of topics I want to touch on that are dicier than usual, but I want to bring them up anyway.

To start off with, what the fuck happened while writing this book?

If that sounds bad, then let me make it clear then I’m being gentle. I usually say that every book is bad, but this one was so down to the wire that I cannot overstate how much stuff got changed and redone.

Spellblade 2 and Demon’s Throne 1 might come close? Spellblade 2 required me to toss a large chunk of the first third and rewrite much of the next third because of a mixture of IRL events and the fact it was just bad. Demon’s Throne 1 was kind of tortuous for different reasons.

But in this case, I ended up compressing a lot of my original plot, which involved reordering many scenes and dumping many others (such as the war, because it didn’t work as well as what I decided on). I also had to do extensive modifications because I removed a magical powerup Rys got that affected his emotions and those of others, and it was referred to many times through out the book.

Heck, in the original draft, the battle against Maliah is part of a huge siege against his tower. Sesrah then attempted to assassinate Faeris, was defeated, then bound. Harah is found at Varian’s tower instead.

I also planned to resolve the Gorgria plot, but didn’t have an extra 20k words to spare for it. Alaretta was supposed to be recruited during the conference, then take over Gorgria while Faeris is attacking the League.

So, yeah, things changed. A lot. And when I cut stuff later on, adjusted my plans, and made new scenes, that sometimes required me to go back and plant stuff earlier on. I’m glad that the Argran stuff was planned from the start.

The question is: why?

I don’t entirely know why. Spellblade 4 was like a dream to write. It took as long as it did because that’s how long it took. The outline came together, and the changes I made were because they were cool ideas that improved the story. Only the final battle against Maylis got toned down compared to what I wanted.

Part of it was that my original outline was far too ambitious. I knew this when I first wrote it, and admitted as much in the planning.

But the other part is that the two series feel very different to write. People tell me that they’re identical, but they don’t feel that way.

Spellblade is more of a traditional epic fantasy series driven by the plot, where I know where everything needs to end up because that’s the story I’m telling, and the characters slot neatly into that story and provide spice. But Demon’s Throne feels like a character-driven story about Rys’s (second) rise to power, and sometimes I struggle to find the plot between all the intersecting character threads.

That’s why I ended up jettisoning the war chapters and cutting the parts I did. Time spent with the characters felt more valuable than time spent smashing heads in and admiring crazy plot stuff. Rys also doesn’t really grow as a character, unlike Nathan. Everyone else grows, and he sort of cultivates them – although he certainly reacts to everything he’s (re)learning about his past.

Finally, the biggest problem was structural, and it came down to Demon’s Throne 2.

During DT2, I ran into the issue that the book seemed pretty bland. So I spiced some stuff up. But this meant that I tossed away quite a bit of development – Grishaw went poof, and then I threw in the Darus Twins so there still was a villain. It seemed okay.

But I also hadn’t set myself up for success. Rys faced a progression wall in terms of the Labyrinth seal. He hadn’t organized an alliance or allies to deal with the League. Nothing had been done to start the war with the League, in other words. That meant all of this needed to be done before that could be happen.

Sure, I could skip over it, but that would be kind of dumb. Instead, I had to repeat a lot of the structure of Book 2. This makes the book feel a little formulaic.

Oh, it opens with some political stuff with foxes (that was established at the end of Book 2). Oh, then there’s a Labyrinth dive with Rys’s past (that must happen because Rys needs the power before he can do anything else). Oh, there’s a whole lot of politicking and the act ends with a battle (admittedly, this is a little different to DT2, but the structure is very similar). Then there’s a big climax with a Mina PoV chapter, then a fight with Maliah, and then a surprise fight after.

I’m making this sound much worse intentionally. The structure is similar not because I’m lazy, but because it’s a structure that lends itself to setting up for a war. It needs to do that setup because that setup wasn’t done, and I felt that skipping over it would hurt more than condensing the war.

There’s never a perfect book. I feel this one achieve what it needs to, even if it doesn’t live up to the impossible outline I had. But it never could have.

It also makes it clear that the reason Spellblade succeeds is because I make sacrifices in earlier books for the sake of later books. I dislike Spellblade 2 because it mostly exists to close off a lot of threads, and I know that some dislike Spellblade 3 because it feels like a lot of setup.

But Spellblade 4 would be half the book it is without Spellblade 3. And I couldn’t have written either book without drumming out Spellblade 2 and getting a lot of stuff out of the way. But it bothers me that I wrote those books before Demon’s Throne, then learned this lesson later. Kind of feels like I’m doing things backward.

On the other hand, given the length of the book, a fair bit of what I’ve included is longer than the same content in other genre books anyway, so eh?

Is Rys Nicer?

After that bitter topic, let’s talk about something nice. Specifically, is Rys suddenly a nice person.

A few of you might feel that Rys is a little more attached or emotional this book. That’s intentional, as it’s a side-effect of him regaining his power and true self, although he’s also fairly attached to people close to him in general. He’s always appreciated Grigor and enjoyed being around Fara after she warmed up to him.

The attachment to Luara is plot-related, though. There have been hints about the paternal stuff since Book 1.

However, some of you might notice that Rys doesn’t wax lyrical about the nature of evil or cynically manipulating people. This isn’t because he’s had an epiphany or anything and suddenly become less pragmatic or started becoming nicer.

No, it’s because I didn’t want to write those scenes.

I sincerely doubt you missed this, but a real life war started while I was writing the book. I won’t talk about this much because I know a lot of people don’t want to be reminded of it, but the reality is that it made it difficult to write about those topics. At least for the time being. I’m pretty sure a few people felt similarly about reading or listening to Spellblade 4, as it’s a heavier series and there has been a sudden uptick in people complaining about how harem has too many serious series recently.

So Rys hasn’t changed, save for the plot-related children stuff. It’s just that without his speeches to make him appear a little more pragmatic or callous, there’s nothing to offset his nicer actions. I’ll probably return to write them again when things aren’t quite so bad, but I’m not forcing myself to do something I really don’t want to. I also don’t think the book needs them, as they risk becoming repetitive

Comedy, and Lots of It

A very brief section.

I think all of my beta readers commented on the amount of humor in the book. I actually quite like the relative light-heartedness of the series. Originally, the humor helped offset some of the heavier topics and to make Hell and the demons sillier. Now it’s just part of the appeal.

I probably need to look closer at some of the comedy I use, however. While some of the absurdist elements such as the imp union (which doesn’t exist) and Taras would never work in Spellblade, I could use more non-sexual humor in Spellblade. It’s not that the series isn’t funny, as the Twins exist in Spellblade, but that the jokes are either dry or sexual.

Character Appendix vs Wiki

This is something I’ve been struggling with for a while.

One of the reasons I haven’t added a character appendix is that I’m worried Amazon will be a bit fucky with KU page reads. Nobody really knows how KU works under the hood, but it’s known they’re a bit touchy about people jumping around the book. Adding more reasons for people to do anything other than turn the page is potentially harmful, which is really fucking dumb.

On the other hand, there are a lot of characters and I know people mix them up. This often results in me reintroducing characters. Then the people who do remember them get annoyed that I reintroduced them. Or people who are binge-reading get annoyed when I reintroduce characters or concepts at the start of each book, even though there is 4-6 months between books.

Amazon does offer X-ray, but nobody seems to actually use it and it’s a pain to set up. It’s also not really a character appendix, as much a way to remind yourself of what a character or thing is.

A reader did start a wiki for Heretic Spellblade a while back (heretic-spellblade.fandom.com). This might help active readers who need a refresher, I’m still torn on how to help people in the book.

So yeah, this remains a painful topic due to Amazon weirdness. Maybe it will be confirmed to not be a problem one day.

Thematic Shit

The final topic of the commentary.

I mentioned back in the commentary for Demon’s Throne 1 that looking back at the source material for this series made it very clear what state of mind I was in when I wrote in. Some folks don’t like this sort of deep analysis, but I’m the author and I get to say that the curtains are blue because they’re symbolic of my deep hatred of order.

So skip this part if you don’t like hearing about stuff like “themes” for your easy read fantasy fiction.

This popped up again when writing both Maliah and Imira, and it’s the reason Maliah lives.

Because in the source material, Rys has Maliah killed and recruits Varian instead.

Yeah. If you thought what happened was predictable, then you, uh, basically got lucky (or know me better than I know myself). Because until I plotted this book in January, I planned on doing exactly that.

But thematically, it doesn’t really work. In case you haven’t noticed, basically everything and everyone in Demon’s Throne is corrupt or decrepit. Pharos is a hotbed of corruption that is ruled from the shadows. The Circle of Brethren does nothing while the Federation sells weapons and catalysts to the Federation. Gorgria is in stasis because Faeris wants to remember her dead husband forever (and is now losing interest in the country because she wants to fuck Rys). Everything about the Kinadain represents corruption. Gauron itself has been falling over itself for the past two millennia.

And Rys himself is basically corruption incarnate, but he’s also trying to escape systems that he feels destroy themselves.

Maliah and Imira are both pushing back against corrupt systems themselves, and in turn becoming sources of corruption. They were largely the same characters in the source material. Writing them in the book, it became fairly clear that they’re much closer to Rys, but with different methods. Imira’s a bit crazy, and Maliah’s a bit extreme. So it’s a matter of taming them.

I'm also being fairly careful with how I write Rys. I’m actively avoiding turning him into a generic harem fantasy action hero. Because the power fantasy he represents is mine, from a time in my life when I was pretty unfulfilled and burning out in my career and life. I wanted power, control, and influence.

That’s why the scenes with Vallis aren’t about Rys doing things for her, and having her bang him for being so amazing at doing her work for her. He’s creating loyal subordinates, in a way that can be sometimes unachievable IRL. (This is actually pretty funny, because the one highlight of the job I worked back then was that I had a great team, despite the trashfire we were involved in). He also can influence other people with power and status, and is respected by them.

And so on. The power fantasy is that of somebody of high status and power in life. I suspect this appeals less to you the younger you are or if you haven’t dealt with a corporate hellscape. I slammed into management fairly young and quickly learned I didn’t like it.

Of course, I’m out of that now, thanks to you and everyone reading my books. So I try to capture that old spirit for Demon’s Throne, but reflect it through a much healthier and mature prism.

Anyway, that’s my dosage of “2deep4u” for those who bothered to read this. In the end, it’s still just some smutty fantasy with some thematic links.

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That’s it for the commentary. Hopefully it was enjoyable or insightful. I also hope it wasn't too negative or raw, but I also feel this might be the best time to write it.