Just some quick news about Fortress Draconis. The book, as you know, is done. With the requested edits and adjustments, the book came in just shy 216,000 words. In the trade paperback edition it will be 514 pages long, with a spine roughly an inch and a quarter thick. That's not quite enough to stop a shot from a draconette, but it will sure deflect it. This is the largest book I've ever written and the German edition will likely be published in three parts. As it works out, the book breaks very cleanly in thirds, so that's not a problem.

There have been a lot of questions about the book, so I'll try to deal with some of them here. Fortress Draconis picks up twenty-five years after The Dark Glory War and is told primarily from the viewpoint of three characters:

Will: Will's a street thief who has grown up in the slums of Yslin. As nearly as he knows he's fifteen or sixteen years old, and is on the small side for his age. He's very street smart and talented at his vocation. He dreams of someday having his legendary life be fodder for countless minstrel songs and epic poems.

Alexia, Princess of Okrannel: In The Dark Glory War we last saw Alyx being flown away from a dying Svarskya. In the intervening quarter century she has been raised by the Gyrkyme and trained to be a military genius. The mission she has been given in life is to free Okrannel from Chytrine's clutches. The realities of the Aurolani threat and political maneuvering in the southlands means that mission may well be impossible.

Kerrigan Reese: All of seventeen, Kerrigan is to magick what Mozart was to music. In his short life he has been extensively trained by the wizards of Vilwan, and his talents allow him to control magicks that no human mage has ever mastered. In a tower, given time and tools, there might be no better magicker in the world, but wars are never conducted under laboratory conditions.

Though the story is picking up a quarter century later, there are plenty of characters who carry over from the previous book, Resolute being chief among them. He is joined by a human hero who calls himself Crow, but among the Vorquelves is known as Kedyn's Crow. He carries a curiously styled silverwood bow, and a sword with an opalescent stone set in the forte. Augustus, Scrainwood and the Draconis Baron all play significant roles as well.

As is suggested in The Dark Glory War, the other side has reloaded, too. Chytrine had the raw material for nine new sullanciri at the end of the last book, and picked up one more in the interim. Circumstances drove Bosleigh Norrington to venture north in a tragic attempt to redeem his family's name. Alas, Leigh's psyche was not as strong as his sense of justice. United again with his father, Leigh serves as the tenth of her new Dark Lancers.

I want to digress for a moment and mention some elements of the series as a whole, to correct some impressions and make sure folks are on the same page with me. It is very easy for critics, well-meaning and malignant, to dismiss work in a popular genre as being "derivative." Because of the recent popularization of the work of Joseph Campbell, everyone now speaks about the "Hero Journey" as if it were a) obvious, b) a roadmap, c) all that was necessary to make a story work and d) pretty much the only story that could be told.

This is, of course, nonsense. Back at the turn of the previous century there was a lot of work being done in the analysis of folklore. Folklorists broke stories down into their various elements, which they labeled motifs. For example, the Cinderella story has hundreds of variations around the world, with all of them sharing certain motifs: evil stepmother, evil sisters, distant father, benign spiritual guide (fairy godmother), and so on. J. R. R. Tolkien knew and studied folklore and mythology, and wove all those elements together brilliantly in his work, which is why his work still speaks to us. The use of motifs and myths and themes that are traditional means that the author is using the tools through which we understand stories. Motifs and myths are as vital to storytelling as bats, balls and gloves are to baseball.

The simple fact of the matter is that folks who don't know the above, or don't think about it, suggest that work that has followed something like The Lord of the Rings has to be derivative of it. Why? Because an author may have been introduced to the idea of epic adventure through LOTR, suddenly everything produced after it is fruit of that tree--especially when LOTR is grown out of the rich, epic traditions of mythology and folklore? And if the author goes back and studies folklore, studies motifs, carefully picks and chooses what he wants to use, he's still derivative?

In looking at LOTR and the Wheel of Time, in looking at the work of Stephen Donaldson and Dennis L. McKiernan, I was able to see the sort of play of grand themes and plots that producing an epic fantasy required to a) make it fit that sub-genre and b) make it work as a story. Having recognized those elements, however, I chose to take a different run at them. I wanted enough to be familiar that folks would be comfortable with what was written, and yet be different enough to be memorable.

For example, the motif of the bad guy's henchmen is commmon. Guy of Gisbourne and the Sheriff of Nottingham both function of examples from folklore, and the Nazgul are likely the best going in fantasy. Their position and place in such a story is obvious, but I wanted to do something not so obvious with them. For me, then, the story became one where the heroes of this age are facing the heroes of the last age. Those who were the best and brightest, but failed to destroy the evil one now are her guardians and generals. No only must this generation defeat her, they have to defeat the best of their fathers' generation. Just the dynamics of having villains who once had been comrades of some of the heroes has been a lot of fun to play with.

A lot of times the same folks who will mention a work being derivative will be generous to note that there are a few "original ideas" in the work as well. Thank goodness for small favors, but I don't think such folks realize how much brainsweat goes into those original ideas, or even in adapting much older ones. I'll agree that there is a lot of cookie-cutter, file the serial numbers off fantasy out there where the most original ideas go into variant spellings of interesting names. The value of original material is grossly underestimated, to the detriment of writers' careers and the quality of the books we have to read.

The real key to things is seeing how well the story integrates those elements, and how much those elements change things in the story. In The Dark Glory War, for example, the Oriosan use of masks had to be built up and integrated until, for the reader, concerns about them and what they meant became the natural order of things. Without that being done, the ending of the book wouldn't have worked. I'm hoping and trusting that alot of the other stuff I've worked into the whole series will function as strongly.

I don't want the above remarks to be taken as my suggesting that my work or anyone else's work is above criticism. Far from it, but I've found that it's pretty easy for some folks to dismiss a 140,000 word novel because they hitched at something here or there, without looking at the whole of the experience. This can often be seen in online bookstore reviews of books, where someone who clearly liked a book, rating it as 5 of 5 stars, but feels, in their review of it, that they have to note something negative just to some how shore up their credibility.

[One of the Amazon.com reviews of The Dark Glory War notes, almost as an afterthought, that the temeryces in the book are very similar to the velociraptors from Jurassic Park, save mine have feathers. I recall reading that and asking aloud, "And does he think Crichton invented velociraptors?" I've done the research, I've read the speculation about possible plummage. Does that make temeryces derivative? Nope, it's research. Now, if the text made them seem alive for you, that's storytelling.]

One last note on the practical side: Fortress Draconis will be released in December as a trade paperback (oversized). I don't know, as of this writing, what the price will be, but I'd guess it will be somewhere between $15 and $20. I am aware that some folks might like an autographed copy for a holiday gift, so I'm making arrangements with my friends at the Poisoned Pen bookstore here in Scottsdale to take orders. They have a great store and do a lot of mail-order business, and I can just wander down and sign things as needed. (If there are signings set up for FD I'll post them here. I'm sure I'll run over to San Diego and sign at Mysterious Galaxy, for example. There will be a signing at the Poisoned Pen as well, though details on both are still being worked out.)

In any event, I'll post a link directly to the appropriate place on the Poisoned Pen website when we get things finalized. I think Bantam will be posting an excerpt from the novel in November, and I'll put another chapter or two up here as the pub date draws closer.