Heretic Spellblade 4 - Detailed Commentary

Heretic Spellblade 4 is out and the response so far has been phenomenal. It’s a gratifying feeling given how much work it was, particularly over the Christmas/New Year period. This book is, for me, my greatest achievement as a writer given it tied up an arc, had appropriate climaxes, and proved to myself that I can pull off long-term planning for my books.

This post will include broad commentary on Heretic Spellblade 4, 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 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

This book is a little hard to divide into a Three Act Structure, for reasons I’ll discuss near the end of this post (as it’s a very “author” topic). I’ll still try to break it up anyway, for convenience, but don’t sweat the details. I was fairly rubbery about the structure of this book.

Act 1 covers Chapters 1-15. It covers all of the pre-Aleich setup, of which there is a lot. Clues for later events need to be established, the broader stakes of the civil war need to be established, and character development still needs to take place. There are a number of call backs to earlier books – arguably too many, given some are quite minor.

The act can be split into two halves: the intrigue in the first half, and the visit to the Enclave in the second.

One of the more difficult decisions I faced was whether to pick up directly after Book 3, or have a timeskip. I chose the latter because I felt it would preserve the pacing of this book. While some might be surprised that Book 4 takes place over such a short timeframe, it’s very intentional. This is a book dedicated to a single event. If you read Books 3 and 4 together, I imagine it will be much clearer how much of the slow stuff and set-up is done in Book 3. Repeating that in Book 4 would be a waste of everything I did in the previous volume.

However, that also meant I needed to reintroduce and reexplain a lot of stuff. Kadria reappearing was convenient for much of the finale, as she was mysteriously missing. It also was an opportunity to introduce Thanatos’s real name and Nathan’s growing power. I don’t do too much with his increased strength – strictly speaking, much of it was in Book 3, but I think people missed it. Despite multiple comments about him training all the time and countering Thanatos’s own spatial attack. Hence I made it more blatant.

The Falmir stuff helps me build up to later events, although not all of it works or has been explicitly revealed in the story yet. There are hints and warnings about some of it. Tharban was used as a villain because the archdukes felt they would be ineffective, but I don’t think Tharban worked as well as I liked. More on that in Act 2.

Finally, I brought back Torneus because it’s a neat nod to how much Nathan is changing. He’s willing to work with a man he once reviled because Torneus is useful to him now, and he understands his motivations better.

And for those who don’t understand what Torneus keeps referring to, he’s implying that Nathan is the son he never had. That’s what the special ouzo at the end of Book 2 was about. Torneus recognized he was outplayed by Nathan and surrendered, because he felt Nathan had a chance of succeeding where he didn’t. Whereas in Nathan’s original world, Torneus burned down everything with him because Nathan was just another dumb Bastion (in Torneus’s eyes).

Finally, the Enclave. This is an area that’s been talked about a little bit since the start of the series. Fei’s background is revealed and it’s a fairly straightforward one: she’s controlled and effectively driven out from her village.

Plot-wise, this is Beatrice’s first appearance. She’s the beastkin priestess who goes missing. The fact the Twins get so close to her without detecting that she’s a Messenger is important later in the book, given Beatrice is able to both interfere in the battle between Leopold and Tharban and kidnap Gorthal.

It’s also when the Spymaster starts interfering in the plot, instead of being somebody in the background. I dropped the explanation of Reine’s involvement in this attack, but it will need to return in Book 5 as it’s important to her characterization.

Sunstorm gets to become a character. Funnily enough, I’ve had difficulty writing her in the past books, which is why she often ended up being the third wheel that got left out or sent off. I think writing that PoV chapter in Book 3 helped her click with me, as I found Sunstorm very easy to write and she was a lot of fun. I feel I managed to un-Flanderize her a little.

Finally, Fei has a somewhat darker past than likely expected. It’s not as dark as the Twins hinted, but it’s clear that Fei is very conflicted. Combined with a couple of other moments elsewhere in the book, I feel that I’ve established where Fei’s new character arc is going as she becomes her own person, instead of constantly worrying about being the shadow of Jafeila.

Oh, and the Twins exaggerating Fei’s past is intentional. They clearly like Fei, have their own shitty past, and were projecting. The Twins aren’t the sort to sit down and talk about their feelings and pasts, so I try to show it through their actions and comments like this.

Act 2 Commentary

Act 2 covers Chapters 15-34 (yes, that much) – there’s some overlap in Ch15 because of the Trafaumh thing.

This act handles the flashpoint of the civil war: Aleich. When I first envisaged the plot for this book, I planned on some extra battles and such, but realized there wouldn’t be time to do them justice. Instead, I built the entire plot around a singular massive focus, while adding in a sort of surprise climax at the end that had been hinted at throughout the book (and, arguably, the previous book). Given the length of the book, I feel that paid off.

Trafaumh’s presence is mostly to establish their existence for future books, as well as their relevance to the “battle of the prophets” later. Baudelaire’s a fun character – originally she was a man, but I felt like a zealous, wry old inquisitor would be too overplayed a trope. With that said, it’s hard not to make her feel too much like a character from a certain game by another author. I’ll need to work on Baudelaire before Book 5.

As I mentioned in the chapter commentary, the Hound is inspired by a character from my oldest online story. He pales in comparison, but I wanted to reuse the character type. Nathan needed somebody to antagonize him throughout the book, and who was powerful enough to trouble him without being instantly ganked in every fight.

The actual Battle for Aleich was difficult, for a few reasons. Most of Nathan’s actions are taken in the context of his failures from his world – Torneus bringing down the Federation; the Spires’ sudokuing after refusing to assist for years; Gareth’s death; Falmir’s coup. As such, whether he’s aggressive or cautious is dependent on how successful that was in his world. He’s aggressive about starting the civil war and dealing with the Spires because he knows that treading softly is a mistake. But he also knows that being too aggressive once the war starts will end poorly.

However, Nathan doesn’t know everything and misapplying knowledge from his world to this shifting one is dangerous. I wanted his actions to make some sense, particularly as some readers will get irritated that he doesn’t follow the usual harem hero tropes of ignoring politics and murdering everyone in his path. But I also wanted there to be consequences and a reminder that Nathan needs to start making decisions based on the information he has, not worries about repeating the past.

One thing I’m not sure about is whether people understand how the battle at the palace played out. There was supposed to be a scene where Nathan and Fyre talk, and this is explained, but I never got it into a finished state. There’s a line in the Vala PoV scene where Beatrice mentions she was involved. Ultimately, I do think I messed this up in the final version of the book.

So to make it clear: Beatrice was the one who prevented Nathan from teleporting to the palace. She also interfered and helped get Leopold killed, which caused Fyre to freak out and intervene (instead of focus on protecting the palace, as she had been the entire time to keep Omria out). The Hound then intervened and chased Beatrice away, as he’s not under her direct control.

Also, Mae’s mask is a minor mistake from previous books. I never included it in her description, but thought I had, so it suddenly appears. She’s a minor enough character that I just shrugged and moved on.

I did receive at least one comment about the enemy Bastions still not knowing how to fight in battles. This was an attempt to provide something that I felt was realistic: militaries are terrible at adapting to change. There’s a reason that there’s a saying about generals always fighting the last war.

I’d like to say the Fyre reveal wouldn’t surprise too many readers, but I got the feeling most didn’t like her so, eh? She’s genuine, a little crazy, still has her own agenda, but has been bottling up her desire for Nathan.

Finally, the Tharban mind control scene was one I decided on during the outline stage. I had originally planned to kill him, but it seemed too weak of a resolution. Given the Twins have been needling at Nathan, having them succeed at a moment when Nathan is searching for an alternate solution felt fitting. In the genre, this isn’t a big thing – mind control is often squeezed in under all sorts of questionable circumstances, but it is a big thing for Nathan. He already backed away from a similar thing after Sen and Sunstorm during Book 2.

I didn’t show the scene because it’s not one Nathan enjoyed. That probably steals away the moment of catharsis for some readers, but oh well.

Act 2 ends on something of a quiet note, after the loud and nasty battle. The Falmir revelation acts as something of a midpoint, redirecting the focus to the prophets, but I imagine that even with Tharban dealt with, some people are left uncertain about where it’s going next. If I did my job right, that should have been a tense uncertainty, as you don’t know what Falmir will do. If I didn’t, then it would have been a muddy uncertainty, where you knew something would happen because the book is only 75% read.

Act 3 Commentary

Act 3 covers Chapter 35 onward. It contains a gigantic infodump about Omria, a new character, and the climax.

The Omria infodump was hard to write. Really hard. My original version was panned pretty hard by my beta readers – most kind of understood it, but with some level of uncertainty, and some had no clue. Another issue was that some people flat out don’t care about this stuff, and would be irritated by an entire chapter explaining weird metaphysical shit.

I feel like I caught a neat balance in the final version, but if there was anything that could have used even more time with people, it was the infodump.

On the other hand, I wonder how many people were surprised to see Kadria be Fyre’s backer? I felt like the clues were almost too obvious, with how many people got it in Book 3. There were many clues, from the circumstantial (Kadria missing) to intentionally similar descriptions (the mental attack used by Fyre and the one used by Kadria in Book 1).

Anyway, the infodump is a narrative explanation both of Kadria’s plans since Book 1, but also of the shift of focus of the series. Nathan has defeated his mortal enemies, achieved great status in the world, and his power and experience greatly exceeds that of natural threats. So it’s time to aim higher, and Kadria can now explain how the rules of the Big Boys work.

Back in the palace, it’s left intentionally unclear how and when Gorthal was kidnapped. Alice mentions before how he had become more ill and she couldn’t visit him. At the same time, beastkin priestesses showed up with Trafaumh’s delegation. The Twins can’t sense Beatrice anyway, so it doesn’t really matter if they were there or not.

Truthfully, this was because of a last-minute change. Originally, Gorthal was kidnapped during the Battle for Aleich. But so much stuff happens between the battle and his disappearance that it made no sense that nobody would notice that he was missing. Especially as Leopold, his oldest friend, had just died.

Reine finally shows up as the Spymaster. I had misgivings about introducing a new character in the last act, but she played enough of a role earlier in the book I did it anyway. More on her in a separate section.

The assault on Castle Aleich was a neat scene, although all the spectacle takes place in the siege. I wanted to give an idea of scale and what is involved in cracking the fortress of a genuinely powerful Bastion (unlike Theus). Armies marching through the streets, entire mage towers launching multiple army-destroying spells etc.

The battle against Maylis isn’t as huge. I’m of mixed feelings about this. Part of me wanted it to be bigger. Maybe I should have had the demons etc lock down Nathan’s Champions while he had a manly one-on-one with the Hound. Or Maylis should have actually been able to do something.

Instead, I went for something more character-focused. The Hound was still a loyal servant of the Empire, even if he fought for Maylis, and this recolors a lot of his fights with Nathan. It also allows Nathan to win through a team-based strategy with his Champions, which he had been using in the previous fight in Aleich. He’s had thoughts before about how this sort of synergy is his advantage.

The Falmir fight was supposed to have a big fight between Nathan and Gareth, where Gareth shows off his ascended magic and brags about it. I cut it for both length reasons and because it didn’t feel in character. Gareth is lazy and an unwilling servant of Falmir – while he’s learning more about magic, why would he risk his life in a pointless battle with Nathan, who he knows excels at ascended magic (and has a trigem nearby)?

Oh, and Vala is captured. That’s important.

The story of Act 3 is: lots of stuff cut or rewritten because it didn’t make sense, even if that sometimes results in a little less hype or craziness. At least Ciana finally got some, after showing up in the first chapter of Book 1 and getting deleted from Book 2. I probably should have included more horn stuff in her sex scene, as it’s easy to forget about it (and its ability to impale Nathan).

Deleted/Unfinished Scenes

Lots. I posted one for Ch15 that mostly explains Life Magic and was cut for being filler.

Fyre had a scene right after the Ch36 infodump that never made it in. In it, she would talk with Nathan about her motivations and frustrations, as well as what happened when Leopold died. The idea was to finally characterize the prophet behind the rebellion. My difficulty with this scene was keeping her somewhat likeable, while maintaining her character. In the end, I never wrote a version I liked. It will turn up in early Book 5.

Vera was supposed to have a separate scene in Ch35. It was of a lower priority than the Fyre scene to write, and I hit writer’s block trying to draft it. I’ll talk about Vera near the end of the post.

There were some extra tidbits about gemming ceremonies. I mentioned this in a comment on my website, but Nathan had reasons for not creating trigems. I left them out because it felt like explaining something that wasn’t of immediate relevant. Some of this is left in as his comments about Sen and whether she can get gems.

There was originally going to be an Alice PoV scene about the confrontation between Fyre and Maylis. This never made it past the outline stage because it was of such low priority, and had too much potential to spoil a lot of stuff early.

A scene about Ciana’s emotion reading got cut, because it wouldn’t be resolved this book. Rather than explain it, then reexplain it next book, I decided to instead drop a few hints this book and fully explore it next book.

Finally, I had a flashback scene penned in but with no place in the book. It was going to be between Nathan and Jafeila, and show the complicated relationship he had with her (and her relationship with her Bastions, given she had been screwing Nathan for years despite serving other Bastions). It would have touched on some of the Trafaumh funny business and prophet stuff. Unfortunately, it felt like a superfluous scene and more of a short story idea.

Kadria and the Big Plot

Now that the cat’s out of the bag, let’s talk about it.

This has been Kadria’s plan right from the get go. While some other elements of the book have changed or been shifted (the idea of Fyre or a prophet was invented during Book 3’s planning, which is why they weren’t talked about before), I always intended for Kadria to usurp Omria’s power, for Omria to descend to battle her, and for that to be the second half of the series story as Nathan muddles through this mess now that he knows what he was really brought along for.

For people following along, the mystery character I’ve had penned in for the final cover is an incarnation of Omria. Given you’ve read the book and know that there isn’t one Omria, that still leaves some mystery as to who will be on that cover.

Anyway, let’s start from the beginning. Or as close as we can given what you know.

The Boss (an outer being and Lovecraftian entity) is consuming the archetype the contains Doumahr. In the process, Omria appears. She became a goddess by accepting a bunch of limitations on her power. This split Doumahr into two archetypes: one with Omria, and one without. We may as well assume the Doumahr without Omria became food.

Omria’s power is that she is integrated into every instance of Doumahr. An infinite number of them. But in each of those instances, the outer beings are trying to destroy the world and they have an eternity of experience. Omria’s power means she can’t be directly destroyed and the outer beings can’t directly interfere, but this does lead to the cycle of doom that Kadria has been referring to. Eventually, the outer beings gain the upper hand.

The cycles are effectively Omria’s reset button. While she’s active, she can influence the world directly. When she’s not, then it’s very easy for the outer beings to perpetuate the cycle of doom (hence why cycles start with a new Omria, and would feature a long period without her at the end). The downside is that her presence stimulates the activity of the outer beings, because their goal is to consume her and they don’t want her to escape.

This is where Kadria comes in: she wanted a way to trigger a new cycle, but to steal Omria’s power in the process. That way, she would become the Omria of this instance and be able to enact her own strategy against the outer beings. The other advantage she would have is that she wouldn’t be restrained by Omria’s limitations – Omria made the deal, not her.

The reason Kadria wants this power is that anything less isn’t enough to stop her boss. Omria keeps losing Doumahrs, but she never dies. But no matter how strong any Messenger becomes, they can be killed instantly. Maura freaked out during the fight with Thanatos when she thought he’d piss off their boss. The power of Omria terrified Nathan when he felt it. They are orders of magnitude more powerful than ordinary beings.

Kadria needs Nathan for his connection to Doumahr. The goddess is Doumahr, effectively, and so are the binding stones (as explained by the Twins).

Whether that’s all Kadria needs Nathan for, or how she altered her plan after meeting him, is still open for debate. If you recall, she’s mentioned multiple times that she was surprised at his capability.

Anyway, this is primarily to set up the focus for the rest of the series: Nathan’s true enemy is the multiverse-consuming entity behind the Messengers, and he needs power on the level of a goddess if he hopes to win.

Character Death

The question for Book 4 wasn’t whether to kill characters, but who and how.

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).

That creates some interesting challenges if I want to introduce character death to the series. The series has been very light on death in general, in part because Nathan is trying to reduce damage. In Book 1 he recruits Seraph. Book 2 involves Theus dying, but Torneus lives. Book 3 kills Sureev, but not Tharban etc. No friendly characters have died or been in serious danger.

Expectation-wise, that means I need to start small and make it clear that things are changing. That means no harem members, especially as only very minor flags exist for any.

Of course, I’m explaining this as though I thought it up on the spot. In truth, Leopold’s death was planned since Book 2. There’s a line about how Leopold doesn’t want to kill Tharban, and Nathan asks whether Tharban thinks the same thing.

This is part of the reason I didn’t want to depict the battle directly. While you know that Beatrice interfered, it’s unclear precisely how Leopold lost. Was he holding back? Did Tharban recruit new Champions with anti-Leopold tricks? It’s unclear whether either party wanted to truly kill the other, especially as Tharban immediately fled the city.

Maybe Nathan should have brought it up with Tharban, but at the same time, it felt almost too cliché (“Why did you do it, Tharban? Why did you kill Leopold?”). I dunno.

Leopold is probably the most significant secondary character in the book who isn’t a prospective harem member. He’s important to several characters, which means his death affects them greatly. While many readers won’t bat an eye that the old man is dead, they’ll understand why Alice and Ciana are upset, and why Nathan is frustrated over his own actions.

This comes back to the “narrative purpose” point above. Leopold’s death served considerable narrative purpose. He didn’t die for shock value, or just to raise the stakes. His death slides neatly into the story and character arcs, hopefully without feeling too forced or as if it was done purely to cause conflict. I know it’s been suggested that it was, particularly with the Tharban thing, but my plan was to always kill Tharban and Leopold, and I changed Tharban’s fate.

Anyway, the old man will be missed. Gareth and Deverese will take his place as the “bro/rival” characters. Video game-wise, Leopold is almost like the Jeigan character, who dies and allows the ordinary party members (i.e. younger Bastions) to slot into the story. I do like to have some male presence in the story despite the genre, as it always feels a little weird otherwise.

While Maylis died, she wasn’t really that important. There were a couple of planned character deaths I didn’t go ahead with.

As mentioned above, Tharban was supposed to die. I changed that to mind control because I felt it worked better with Nathan’s darker character arc.

Gorthal was supposed to die when kidnapped. Maylis was originally meant to be standing over a corpse, shown to be certifiably insane. I backed down on this one a little, as it felt too over the top. Gorthal ended up surviving because killing him felt like a pointless attack on Alice – having her lose her grandfather while winning the civil war and becoming Empress would be a sour note to end on. The scene where he passes on the crown is a little sappy, but I do prefer it.

Harem Rotation

I’ve mentioned before that I rotate through the harem members that get focus in each book. This book, Fei, Sunstorm, Alice, Fyre, Ciana, and Seraph got time in the sun. Sen and Narime are waiting in the wings for the chance to power up and progress their arcs.

Nurevia got nudged a little later on, but while I originally planned to do more of her and Astra this book, I put it off until next book. This was mostly due to priorities. Also sex scenes. I wanted to do that foursome, and the other three sex scenes were mandatory. Adding in a threesome with the dark elves felt extravagant.

I can’t promise who will get focus next book. Part of the problem is also rationing out the sex scenes. I have multiple built up, but I don’t like oversexing my books. Astra/Nurevia; the Twins; Fyre; and Kadria are all waiting for their turn. That already fills up the next book, so those may be the primary foci, and I’ll pick and choose which other characters I feel need time in the sun.

Some folks will never like the way that I deprioritize cast members like this, especially as some girls never leave the roster (like Fei, who always gets at least some development due to being the mascot). Realistically, this is the only way that I feel a larger harem can be handled. I prefer a rotating harem where I give more focus to some members at different times, than one where most girls don’t get a character arc other than the very flat one they get when they’re introduced.

Fyre

We’re onto talking about individual characters. Let’s start with Fyre, because I was really worried about her.

When writing the book, I felt that most of you had a negative opinion of Fyre. Given what you know now, the idea is to reform her. She’s still dangerous, but in a different way – a passionate girl with her own agenda and an intense desire for Nathan. As mentioned above, the scene that would have explored her motivations in-depth got cut.

Before I outlined the book, I had actually planned for Fyre to be involved in some of the sex scenes. I nixed this idea when I realized how awful that would be to Ciana and the fact it would be pretty off-putting to everyone else. Fyre always puts on her act around others, and only takes off her mask for Nathan. Sneaking in while he’s banging Alice would have broken that.

This is also why her attitude toward Nathan shifts after the frozen time scene. You’ll notice that she remains restrained when he’s around others, but openly flirts with him in private.

You could call her a yandere, but people call every girl with obsessive tendencies a yandere these days. I feel like dere tropes have become so broad to become almost useless these days (see: the debate over what tsunderes and kuuderes are).

Anyway, I think people came away with a soft positive feeling toward her. My worry was that people would still dislike her a lot, or she would become another hugely polarizing character (boy, I don’t need more of those). I’ll build her out in the next few books, as Fyre will have more screentime.

Reine (the Spymaster)

Funny story: the Spymaster was a Schrodinger’s character of sorts. She had a few possible identities by the end of Book 3. I narrowed them down based on whether they made any sense, and then chose the final one on a mixture of whim and it feeling less contrived.

Alice and Mae were contenders. Alice was ruled out because it made no sense that she wouldn’t tell Nathan. Mae was a boring option, and potentially tasteless given Leopold was going to die.

Some of you suspected Gorthal’s mistress. She never occurred to me as an option, though it seemed like an interesting shock option (it’s very much a “the butler did it” choice). I included her when he was found missing as a small nod to your theory.

Maylis was one of the two final contenders. In fact, when I first outlined the book, she was the Spymaster.

Here’s an excerpt from the original outline, before revisions:

During the chaos, the Emperor (who is still gravely ill) has gone missing. Tharban is suspected of abducting him during the chaos.

Nathan chases down Tharban. He revisits his childhood home (of this world’s Nathan), but far more powerful. Bitchslaps his way to Tharban, with help from the beastkin who he supported when he was a count.

Nathan and Tharban fight. Once again, the Hound intervenes but this time, Nathan’s Champions intercept him. Nathan defeats Tharban, but Tharban doesn’t have the Emperor.

Tharban reveals that Maylis is the spymaster and was a double-agent, working to undermine both sides. Says racist shit. With the news that Falmir is invading, the archdukes are dead, and Maylis is a traitor, Tharban knows that he’s too powerful and influential to be removed. He taunts Nathan about this – but the Twins show up and convince Nathan to mind control Tharban.

You can see that there are a bunch of changes that take place, in part due to the change in who the Spymaster is and the shift in motivations for hunting down Tharban. And, yes, that is my actual initial outline.

Maylis didn’t feel like a great candidate. At some point, the idea of Trafaumh experimenting to create prophets came to me (I genuinely don’t remember when or how) and Reine was born. The scene with the special knights, the mask, and the competent but naïve wolfgirl who has never been part of the outside world was born instantly, and I then started writing in the agent-knights to Aleich scenes. This unfortunately means they never showed up in Book 3, but one can argue that Reine never had reason to deploy her agents until Maylis went rogue.

I like Reine. She’s very tropey, but they’re tropes from characters I like, so sue me. That combination of innocence, obsessive loyalty, and a desire to experience the “real world” is a fun one. I adore those sort of characters in sci-fi stories and anime. She’s also a welcome shift from the oversexed characters in the rest of the series, as while she might be interested, her responses will be naïve rather than witty.

Story-wise, she gives Nathan something he desperately needs: spy capability. Her scrying ability enables him to keep up with enemies of increasing power in a world that he needs to keep under control now that Omria/Charlotte is messing around. The gem she’ll get was hinted at in the story.

The Twins

Another fun pair of characters, but they’re also polarizing. The Twins grew on me the more I wrote them. When I received the audiobook for Book 3, I fell in love. They sound amazing when voiced by Steph.

Not everyone likes them. They’re loud and obnoxious. They’re oversexed. They drag everyone on tangents. They make pop culture references. Nathan hasn’t fucked them yet. They’re pseudo-antagonists.

But I really like them, and I know that there are quite a few others who do as well. I don’t know what their overall popularity is, though.

One of the criticisms that feels less polarizing and more of an observation is about the divide between Laura and Maura. Their behaviors are intentional, even if the desired effect isn’t achieved.

Laura was the first Twin introduced and is the one that wants the fantasy. She does the stupid actions, likes edgy, tortured heroes, and is completely uninterested in all the complicated magical mumbo-jumbo. She’s repeatedly shown herself to be generally uninterested in him since partway through Book 3, with spurts of interest at specific points.

Maura is the one who didn’t care about Nathan at first, but ended up helping him a lot. Nathan comments that she’s not as dumb as she acts (although Laura also shows bursts of insight, but not knowledge). The general impression is that she’s the one driving everything regarding Nathan. Even when Nathan claims them in Book 3, she makes both decisions to resist and give in.

In short, Maura being the main star and Laura the supportive sister is intentional. Laura is Maura’s wingman. The reason I’m flat out saying it here is that given the comments I receive about them, I don’t feel the execution has succeeded.

This also goes for other stuff the Twins do. They constantly needle Nathan about becoming an evil overlord, then swoop in and take their opportunity right when the moment is available with Tharban. They project their own awful past onto Fei, because they like the catgirl and feel a connection to her, but it turns out Fei’s past isn’t as dramatic.

As I’m not a super pro writer or anything, it’s difficult to work out where/why these things go wrong. Maybe it’s a genre thing. Maybe the Twins are just too silly and obnoxious to have subtler elements to them. Maybe I need to point them out or question them so that the audience realizes these are intentional. I dunno.

Character Polarization

We’re moving onto more “authorly” topics now. If you’re uninterested in stuff that is closer to the writing process, this is your time to bail.

One of the more notable elements of the beta feedback (and post-release feedback from people who contact me) was how differently many characters are received. While Kadria and Vera were always polarizing characters, they’ve been joined by most new characters.

Nurevia was polarizing in Book 3. I got some mixed opinions on Reine, I think in part because she was an unpredictable Spymaster and because she’s another “beastgirl wants to mate” trope. The Twins annoy some people as mentioned above.

Fyre doesn’t count, as I intentionally wrote her to be offputting in Book 3 and wanted to bring her back this book. She was less polarizing than I expected, based on initial feedback.

The way I do character development is also polarizing. I like forward-facing character arcs and development over time. There’s also the harem rotation. It is what it is, but I will say that as a long-time reader of this stuff, I’m not so keen on the traditional arc of “introduce character, explain tragic backstory, resolve story hook and resolve character arc.”

Character backstories are interesting, but I feel that they can be a crutch for writers and readers to get a feel for a character in place of their actions and dialogue. I want to both improve my writing and my characters, and I feel falling back on such a cheap trick would be going backward. To some extent, I fell back on that with Seraph this book, and even though it was contextualized with her behaviors throughout the series, I felt far less satisfied with how I wrote her this book compared to last book.

Vera (and what happened)

Alright, the tough topic. Why did the Book 1 cover girl end up being basically ignored?

Part of this is history. Heretic Spellblade had a cover created for a different series back in 2019. This is part of the reason for the slightly awkward name. While I ported Vera over, her role changed. She was the primary love interest in the original series, but a secondary one here.

In the original draft of Book 1, Vera was going to join the harem right before the assault on Castle Forselburg. You know the chapter where Fei and Sen sneak in to Nathan’s tent and drink with him? That was going to be Vera talking with Nathan about what nearly happened and then sleeping with him. I put it off in favor of the Fei/Sen scene, but planned on doing the Vera scene in the second-last chapter. Then I put that off, too.

In Book 2, I put her off again. It’s been a year now so I’m not entirely certain, but I believe she was a victim of the massive rewrite. Seraph ended up taking the focus from her – ironically, Seraph also had a sex scene cut from Book 2, just like Vera. I noticed slow burn was becoming popular and slowed down the harem acquisition.

However, plans went awry there. My plan for Book 3 completely changed early in the process. Originally, the Spires book would minimal Aleich politicking. This would leave plenty of time to do the Vera stuff. But when I added in Fyre and all the Aleich stuff, I cut other things. Vera was a major victim once again.

I did still have a scene in early Act 3 planned for her. Originally, she was going to become a Bastion and join the harem, right before the civil war broke out.

Looking back, I should have written that. It might have been a bit abrupt and rough, but it was probably the best opportunity. As you saw from all the unfinished scenes above, Book 4 had a billion things it needed to cover. Putting Vera off for a book reduced her chances of joining the harem drastically.

It’s hard to say what I’ll do with her. I don’t want to just have her join the harem in a random sex scene. There is a specific role for her in a future book, that I was eying when I made her a Bastion. With some of the set-up in Book 4, I can fulfill the apprentice-mentor role in the harem with other characters, so Vera’s not as important there. Despite being a cover girl, she may end up not in the harem. Or maybe I’ll find a way to make it work in a later book – I have a couple of ideas.

Length and Future Books

Quite a few people have commented on the length of the book. It even grew 10% in length between opening the pre-order and final release (that actually happened – the pre-order was based on the beta copy). While part of the length is just due to the sheer amount of content, plot details, and characters involved, I suspect the real suspect is the plot structure.

I normally divide my books into three acts: Act 1 (re)introduces everything, establishes the basic plot and objective, and ends with an event that kicks the plot forward. Act 2 has a culmination of the initially established objective, ensures the reader understands what needs to be achieved by the end of the book, and ends on a major victory that sets up the climax. Act 3 opens with a slow period, then has a climax that resolves the plot and objective of the book, ending with the denouement that resolves lingering questions and establishes why you should return for the next book.

I’m explaining this because Book 4 is a little hard to divide into neat acts. If you’ve watched The Dark Knight, you might recognize it as a movie that feels like it has two endings. I saw it when it first came out, and it was the most common thing anyone talked about if they said anything negative about it.

In the case of Spellblade 4, you could easily lop off everything after the Battle for Aleich, add in some ending scenes and turn the Vala PoV scene into a sort of stinger/cliffhanger ending like I do in Demon’s Throne. Boom, book done, with a couple hundred pages to spare.

I remember thinking that when I was writing the book. It ate away at me as I was struggling to meet my own deadline for the Christmas release (and delayed the book for Jan). Should I split the book in two? But then I’d need more covers etc. Plus the book would have been shorter than the previous ones in the series.

More importantly, it would have been a very predictable and straightforward book. A big build-up to Aleich, Leopold dies, none of the Maylis stuff goes anywhere, and it ends on the Charlotte reveal. None of the big answers are given. Sure, I could have shuffled some of the reveals around to fix those problems, but it would have still felt rough.

So I committed to the Dark Knight-esque structure, where the book feels like it has hit its natural end, then keeps going.

However, I can’t do this again. For several reasons.

One, writing books this long is fucking hard. They take longer, require longer writing sprints, exhaust me more, and then require huge editing sessions on top of that. With the increasing complexity as the series grows longer, that makes the likelihood of mistakes increase and makes it harder to maintain quality.

It also means I find myself cutting stuff for pacing or time reasons. Before this book, I planned on 6 books. But looking at what I had to cut from my original vision, I can only imagine how vicious I’ll need to be if I try to make Book 5 that way.

Fortunately, Heretic Spellblade is doing well enough that I feel safe stretching it out to 7 books. It feels like the series gets longer every time I think about it. An eighth book is possible, but that’s a problem to consider when I get close to it.

This doesn’t mean my books will get super short or anything, but I imagine that I’ll be keeping them around the 500 page mark. Then again, I’ve imagined many things in the past. Like schedules.

As a hint, the next book will involve Trafaumh heavily. That’s why there was so much of it in this book, as a way of establishing more about the nation before it takes center stage.

Pulling the Book Together

The final topic, and a fun one to end on.

Spellblade 4 was a project a long time in the planning. Kadria’s usurpation of Omria’s power; Leopold’s death; Omria’s appearance; Charlotte; the return of Torneus; Nathan rising to an effective Emperor level; the entire civil war; showing off the Enclave; Fyre. Lots of stuff that I planned for in previous books and finally got to write.

One of the fun things about writing series is that there is a sense of delayed gratification. When I get ideas for scenes or twists that can’t take place for several books, because so many things need to take place first, I need to work my way to them. On that journey, I go on lots of little tangents and come up with new ideas and plans, some of which also need to happen in the future (like Fyre and the prophet business). These all get worked together to become an interesting and fascinating story.

As a side note, I really like the game Factorio. It gives me a similar feeling to this, but over the course of days, instead of 15 months.

This is why I said this book is my greatest achievement as a writer. Maybe sales will disagree by the end of the month. Maybe a bunch of people don’t like certain parts of the book and are complaining.

But I wrote something I really like, had a ton of fun doing it, and it’s been part of a long-term, growing plan over the last 15 months. And I’ve built up enough more plans for the next 3 books, some of which have been around since Book 1 as well.

So I hope you enjoyed the book as well, and enjoy the series for what it is.

Let me know if you have any questions about the book, or comments on my commentary. I hope this was enjoyable or insightful.