Captives in Obscurity (Sons of the Starfarers, Book 5) is a character-driven military space opera about survival under captivity, moral courage under pressure, and the terrifying intimacy of minds that can’t fully hide from each other. It delivers a tense, emotionally charged “trapped behind enemy lines” experience—part escape thriller, part relationship-and-conscience drama, with big series-arc implications kept mostly in the background.
What Kind of Reader Will Love Captives in Obscurity?
If you love …
military sci-fi / space opera that puts characters first and treats survival as a moral problem, not just an action set piece
captivity, escape, and resistance stories where hope is stubborn and hard-won
high-stakes relationship tension shaped by trust, betrayal, and incompatible cultures
psychological sci-fi elements (telepathy / shared consciousness) that intensify both danger and intimacy
stories that wrestle honestly with hard topics instead of sanding them down
…then Captives in Obscurity is probably your kind of story.
What You’ll Find Inside
Captives in Obscurity follows Isaac—isolated, exhausted, and stripped of control—while he and Reva navigate life as prisoners aboard a pirate ship ruled by a charismatic, terrifying captain. As escape becomes less a single decision and more a long grind of endurance and strategy, the story digs into trauma, agency, guilt, and the cost of survival—especially when a strange telepathic connection (and something bigger behind it) makes privacy, consent, and trust painfully complicated. The result is a tense, gritty, emotional installment that feels intimate even when the stakes are cosmic.
What Makes Captives in Obscurity Different
Fans of loyalty-and-duty military SF will recognize the chain-of-command pressure and the “hold the line” mindset—but this book pushes the conflict inward, into the places where survival and conscience collide. Where many space opera captivity arcs focus mainly on tactics and jailbreak mechanics, Captives in Obscurity leans into the psychological and relational consequences: what it does to a person to be used, controlled, and forced to keep going anyway. And the telepathic / collective-consciousness element doesn’t just add cool sci-fi flavor—it turns trust into a battlefield and makes “escape” as emotional as it is physical.
What You Won’t Find
This isn’t a light, quippy adventure, and it doesn’t treat trauma like set dressing. Content note: the book includes fallout from a prior sexual assault between major characters and engages directly with themes of consent and coercion (including the author’s note discussing why that was essential to the story). If you want space opera that stays far away from those topics, this one may not be a good fit.
Why I Think You Might Love Captives in Obscurity
This was one of the hardest books in the series for me to write—not because the plot wouldn’t cooperate, but because the emotional consequences had to be faced honestly. I wanted to tell a story where survival doesn’t erase harm, where “good guys vs. bad guys” isn’t always clean, and where people from radically different cultures can hurt each other even without intending to be monsters. If you like science fiction that uses its big ideas to put human conscience under a microscope—and still fights to earn hope on the other side—I think this book will stick with you.
Now that we’re in a good daily routine again, I’ve been making steady progress in Captive of the Falconstar. I’m a little more than halfway done with the AI draft, and around 15% done with the human draft.
So far, there have been no major creative blocks, which is a good sign. The middle is always super messy, but I think I nailed the outline, because the AI draft has no major issues so far—and with a solid AI draft to guide the human writing, I’m consistently hitting 2500 WPH and higher.
In practice, that means that I should have a final polished draft of this book by the end of March. If I had more time to work on it each day, I’d have it done even sooner—perhaps even as soon as this month. But right now, all I can manage is about half an hour (if that) in the early morning, an hour in the evening, and sometimes as much as three or four hours on Saturday.
Not as much as I would like, but better than nothing. And without the way I use AI to generate a first draft, I probably wouldn’t be finished with this book until September or October, and it would be the only full-length novel I’d manage to publish all year. (Though realistically at that point, I’d probably have to go on indefinite hiatus and stop publishing altogether, until the kids grew up and left the house).
After Captive of the Falconstar is done, I plan to work on the human draft of The Soulbond and the Sling and the AI draft of The Soulbond and the Lady, until the first book is finished and ready to publish. But I won’t actually publish it until I have the first three books ready to go, since that way I’ll be able to rapid release the first trilogy.
Depending on how things go, I will probably put Captive of the Falconstar up for pre-order by the end of the month. I don’t usually do assetless pre-orders, but if I’m reasonably certain I can have the writing finished by the end of March, then I don’t see any reason not to give it a launch date and set things up to go. It will probably be available to read sometime in May or June.
I don’t know when I’ll have the third book of the trilogy finished, but if things go well with The Soulbound King series, there’s a chance it will be finished by the end of the year. I’ll probably finish writing The Unknown Sea before I move on to Lord of the Falconstar, just because I want to write and publish another Sea Mage Cycle book before the end of the year, but depending on how things go with Captive of the Falconstar, I might move the sequel up in the queue. Otherwise, it will probably come out sometime in early 2027.
What heals a person when the universe won’t stop moving—when home is gone, language is чужой, and every port feels temporary? Star Wanderers is a character-driven science fiction novel built around a simple, stubborn hope: that the healing power of love isn’t just something you feel, but something you build—and that it can stitch a fractured life back together into belonging.
Where the Idea Came From
The seed of this theme came from two places. First, I wanted to take the love-story core of an old western (Jeremiah Johnson) and translate it into frontier science fiction—into a world where survival is hard, communities are fragile, and intimacy carries real risk.
Second, the story grew alongside my own life. I began writing the original novellas as a single young man during the Great Recession, pouring real loneliness into Jeremiah’s wandering. Years later, I finished the novel married and on the verge of fatherhood. That personal journey reshaped the book’s central idea: that love has the power to heal isolation—not by removing hardship, but by giving hardship meaning.
How the Healing Power of Love Shapes the Story
In Star Wanderers, the central conflict isn’t just pirates, frontier scarcity, or outworld politics—it’s the ache beneath all of that: the fear that drifting will hollow you out. Jeremiah begins the story as a lone starship pilot shaped by motion and isolation, surviving by staying unattached. But when Noemi enters his life, love becomes the force that redefines what “survival” even means. Commitment pulls him out of mere wandering and into responsibility: protecting someone else, learning someone else’s world, and choosing a future that requires roots instead of constant escape.
That healing love ripples outward through the story. Other characters see the difference it makes—because love creates an anchor in chaos. It becomes the standard by which temptation, loyalty, and trust are measured. Again and again, the story asks: what happens when you risk the one thing that’s keeping you whole? That’s why moments of fear, sacrifice, and moral choice matter so much here—not as plot mechanics, but as stress tests that reveal whether love is strong enough to carry a life.
What the Healing Power of Love Says About Us
This theme is hopeful, but it’s not naïve. It suggests that loneliness isn’t only a circumstance—it’s a wound—and that healing usually comes through commitment rather than convenience. Real love costs something: pride, independence, comfort, the illusion that you can keep yourself safe by staying separate. But it also gives back something many of us are quietly starving for: a place to belong, even when the world remains uncertain and unfinished.
Why This Theme Matters to Me
I keep returning to this theme because I’ve seen how easy it is to drift—emotionally, spiritually, socially—especially when life feels hostile or unstable. Star Wanderers is the most personal thing I’ve written in that sense: it begins in loneliness and ends in family. I wanted to capture that truth as honestly as I could—that love doesn’t magically remove hardship, but it can transform hardship into a life worth living, and an adventure you’re grateful to stay for.
Star Wanderers is a character-driven frontier space opera and science fiction adventure about loneliness, love, and the search for home on the far edges of human civilization. It delivers a quiet, emotional adventure centered on wandering starship pilots and fragile outworld communities—less about conquering the stars and more about what it costs to keep moving when you don’t know where you belong.
What Kind of Reader Will Love Star Wanderers?
If you love…
frontier space opera with a lone-trader or wandering starship feel
character-driven science fiction focused on relationships, marriage, and family under pressure
stories where faith, conscience, and moral choice shape the action
found family science fiction set against danger, exile, and cultural collision
quieter, thoughtful adventures that balance tension with hope
…then Star Wanderers is probably your kind of story.
What You’ll Find Inside
Star Wanderers follows Jeremiah, an independent starship pilot drifting from port to port, whose life changes when he rescues a young woman from a dying frontier station and becomes entangled with her people, her faith, and her future. As pirates, famine, and outworld politics close in, the story explores loneliness, commitment, belief, and the cost of choosing to belong. The pacing blends reflective, intimate moments with sharp spikes of danger, resulting in a hopeful but hard-earned journey.
What Makes Star Wanderers Different
Rather than focusing on galaxy-spanning wars or elite soldiers, Star Wanderers centers on ordinary people trying to do the right thing in an unforgiving frontier. Romance, marriage, and faith aren’t side plots—they’re core engines of the story, shaping every major decision. The book treats technology and heroism pragmatically, favoring ingenuity, sacrifice, and cooperation over brute force or spectacle.
What You Won’t Find
This is not grimdark science fiction, nor is it nonstop military action. You won’t find cynical nihilism, endless explosions, or characters who survive purely on luck. Instead, the tension grows from moral choices, relationships under strain, and the consequences of standing your ground when running would be easier.
Why I Think You Might Love Star Wanderers
I put more of myself into Star Wanderers than almost anything else I’ve written. I began the story as a single young writer wrestling with loneliness and finished it while married and preparing for parenthood, and that journey shaped its heart. If you’re drawn to science fiction that treats love, faith, and responsibility as real forces—capable of both wounding and saving—I think this story will resonate with you.
Last week, Brandon Sanderson posted a video from a conference where he gave a talk titled “The Hidden Cost of AI Art.” In it, he argues that writers who use AI are not true artists, because the act of creating true art is something that changes the artist. This is true even if AI becomes good enough to write books that are technically better than human-written books. Therefore, aspiring authors should not use AI, because it’s not going to turn them into true artists. Journey before destination. You are the art.
Obviously, I disagree very strongly with Brandon on this point. For the past several years, I’ve been reworking my creative process from the ground up, in an effort to figure out how best to use AI to not only write faster, but to write better books. I’ve experimented with a lot of different things, some of which have worked, most of which haven’t. And I’ve published several AI-assisted books, many of which have a higher star rating than most of my human-written books. So I think it’s safe to say that I have some experience on this subject, at least as much as Brandon himself, if not more.
Brandon compares the rise of generative AI with the story of John Henry and the steam-powered rock drill, where John Henry beat the machine but died from overexertion. So he showed that man can still beat the machine, but the machine still went on to change the world.
But I don’t think that’s the right story when it comes to AI. It’s far too simplistic, pitting the AI against the artist. Instead, I think it’s better to look at how AI has changed the world of chess. For a long time, people thought that a computer would never be able to beat a human at chess. Then, in the 80s, an artificial intelligence dubbed “Deep Blue” beat Garry Kasparov at chess, proving that computers can beat even the best humans at the game. So now, all of our chess tournaments are played by AI, and humans don’t play chess at all. Right?
Of course not. Because here’s the thing: even though a strong AI can always beat a human at chess, a human who uses AI can consistently beat even the strongest AI chess engines. In fact, there are tournaments where teams of humans and AIs play against each other. They aren’t as popular as the human-only tournaments, since we prefer to watch humans play other humans, and the best human chess players prefer to play the game traditionally. But when they train, all of the top grandmasters rely on AI to hone their craft and sharpen their skills.
Chess is a great example of a field that has incorporated AI. And even though AI can play chess better than a human, AI chess players have not and never will replace human chess players. Because ultimately, asking whether humans or AI are better at chess is the wrong way of looking at it. AI is better at some things, and humans are better at other things. The best results happen when humans use AI as a tool, either in training or in actual play. And because of how they’ve incorporated AI, the game of chess is more popular now than ever.
Brandon spends a lot of time angsting about whether AI writing can be considered art. Perhaps when I’m also the #1 writer in my genre, and have amassed enough wealth through my book sales that I never have to work another day in my life, I can also spend my days philosophizing about what is and is not art. But right now, I prefer a more practical approach. I’m much less concerned about what art is than I am about what it does. And the best art, in my opinion, should point us to the good, the true, and the beautiful.
Can AI do that? Can it point us to the good, the true, and the beautiful? Yes, it can, just like a photograph or a video game can—both examples of counterpoints that Brandon brings up. But as with the game of chess, a human + AI can create better art than a pure AI left to its own devices. I suspect this will remain true, even if we reach the point where AI art surpasses pure human-made art. Because at the end of the day, AI is just a tool.
But what about Brandon’s point that “we are the art”? Isn’t it “cheating” to write a book with AI? Doesn’t that demean both the artist and the creative act?
It can, if all you do is ask ChatGPT to write you a fantasy story. Just like duct-taping a banana to a wall and calling it “art” is pretty demeaning (though you’ll still get plenty of armchair philosophers debating about whether or not it counts, highlighting again how useless the question is). But if you spend enough time with AI to really dig into what it can do, you’ll find that it’s no less “cheating” than pointing a camera and pushing a button.
One of the first AI-written fantasy stories I generated was a story about a half-orc. I wrote it using ChatGPT while my wife was in labor with our second child. We were both at the hospital, and I had a lot of down time before the action really began, so I used those few hours to write a 15k word novelette. It was fun, but the story itself was pretty generic, which is why I’ve never published it.
Basically, it read like an average D&D fanfic—which is exactly what every AI-generated fantasy story turns into if you don’t give it the proper constraints. If all you do is ask ChatGPT to tell you a story, it will give you a very average-feeling story. Every fantasy turns into a Tolkien clone or a D&D fanfic. Every science fiction turns into Star Trek. It may be fun, but it’s not very good. Just average.
My first AI novel was The Riches of Xulthar, and I wrote it quite differently. Instead of just running with whatever the AI gave me, I picked and chose what I wanted to keep, discarding the stuff that didn’t work very well. But I still didn’t constrain the AI very much, so it went off in some pretty wild directions, which made it a challenge to decide what was good. As a result, it went in some very different directions than I would have taken it, but the end result was something that I could still feel good about putting my name on. And of course, after generating the AI draft, I rewrote the whole book to make sure it was in my own words. That also helped to smooth out the story and make it my own.
Since writing The Riches of Xulthar, I’ve written (or attempted to write) some two dozen AI written novels and novellas. Most of them are unfinished. Some of them are spectacular failures. I’ve published another half-dozen of them, most in the Sea Mage Cycle.
It was while I was working on the latest Sea Mage Cycle book, Bloodfire Legacy, that I finally felt I was getting a handle on how to write something really great with AI. The key is constraints. AI does best when you give it constraints that are clear and specific. The more you constrain it, the more likely you are to get something that rises above the average and approaches something great.
But to do that, you have to have a very clear and specific idea of what you want your story to look like. Which means you have to have a solid outline (or at least some really solid prewriting), and a deep understanding of story structure.
I think the real reason Brandon is so opposed to AI writing is that it negates his competitive advantage—the thing that has made him the #1 fantasy writer. Without AI, the biggest bottleneck for new and established writers is putting words on a page. Brandon made a name for himself with his ability to write a lot of words relatively quickly. Where other fantasy writers like Martin and Rothfuss have utterly failed to finish what they start, Brandon finishes everything that he starts, and he starts more series than most other writers finish. This is why he’s known as Brandon Sanderson, and not just “the guy who finished Wheel of Time.”
But generative AI removes this bottleneck. Suddenly, putting words on the page is quite easy. They might not be good words, but they might be as good as Brandon Sanderson’s words. After all, his prose isn’t exactly the most brilliant of our time. Deep down, I think Brandon feels this, which is why he sees AI as such a threat.
Will writing with AI make you lose some of your writing skills? Probably. I suspect it’s much like how using AI to code will make you weaker at coding, at least on a line-by-line level. But coding with AI will make you a much better programming architect and designer, since it frees you up to focus on the higher-level stuff.
In a similar way, I expect that the new bottleneck for writing will have to do with the higher level stuff: things like story structure and archetypes. The writers who will stand out in an AI-dominated writing field will be the ones with a deep and intuitive understanding of story structure, who can use that understanding to get the AI to produce something truly great. Because if you understand story structure, you can write better constraints for the AI. Pair that with a good sense of taste, and you’ve got an artist who can make some really great stuff with AI.
This is why I think Brandon’s views on AI art are not only misguided, but actually toxic. Love it or hate it, AI is just a tool. Using it doesn’t make you any less of an artist, just like using a camera vs. using a paintbrush doesn’t make you any less of an artist.
Leadership stories often celebrate the moment someone takes command—but they rarely linger on what command actually costs. Friends in Command, a military science fiction novel and a later entry in the Sons of the Starfarers space opera series, is built around a harder question: What happens when you’re responsible for other people’s lives—and every available choice is expensive? In this book, leadership isn’t a badge. It’s a burden you carry while everything around you is breaking.
Where the Idea Came From
Friends in Command is a “bridge story”—the kind of middle book in a military science fiction series that has to pay off enough to feel satisfying, but not so much that it steals thunder from what’s coming next. I was especially inspired by The Empire Strikes Back as a model: a story that stands on its own, deepens the characters, and ends at a low point that changes them. While drafting, real life was also turbulent—moving, a painful breakup, and the mental fatigue that comes from trying to “power through” when you’re not at your best. In the end, I delayed publication and rebuilt parts of the book to make it stronger, including adding a missing viewpoint character—because sometimes the responsible choice is the slower one. Looking back, that process mirrored the book’s central theme: leadership isn’t about moving fast or looking strong—it’s about carrying responsibility well, even when that means slowing down and rebuilding.
How the Burden of Leadership Shapes the Story
In Friends in Command, leadership pressure doesn’t sit in the background—it drives the conflicts. As the interstellar war escalates across the Sons of the Starfarers series, this book zeroes in on what command looks like when systems are fraying and no choice is clean. The war has moved into a new phase, command structures are strained, and the people in charge keep getting handed problems that aren’t fair and aren’t clean. That’s where Mara’s story hits hardest. She’s competent, disciplined, and loyal, but she keeps being forced into situations where “doing your duty” isn’t a simple rule—it’s a living weight. She can’t make everyone happy. She can’t protect everyone. And she can’t escape the fact that her decisions ripple outward into other people’s futures.
The book also sharpens the theme by putting different kinds of leaders side by side. Some characters lead by instinct, some by procedure, some by sheer force of will—but all of them are faced with the same truth: command means owning consequences you didn’t ask for. Sometimes leadership looks like restraint—holding the line when chasing something personal would cost other people their lives. Sometimes it looks like bending rules because the “field” has changed and waiting for permission will get people killed. And sometimes it looks like choosing which loss you can live with, because the story refuses to pretend that victory comes without debt.
What the Burden of Leadership Says About Us
We live in a world where responsibility often arrives before we feel ready—parenting, marriage, work leadership, caregiving, community duty, even the quiet obligation to keep going when people depend on us. Stories like Friends in Command remind us that leadership isn’t proven by confidence or charisma; it’s proven by endurance, moral courage, and the willingness to carry weight without being applauded for it—even in the middle of a war that won’t pause for our doubts. The people we trust most aren’t always the ones who want power—they’re the ones who feel the cost, and lead anyway.
Why This Theme Matters to Me
I care about this theme because I don’t believe leadership is mainly about authority—I think it’s about love expressed as responsibility. The older I get, the more I notice that the “right” choice is often the one that costs you something: time, pride, comfort, certainty. Writing Friends in Command taught me that you can’t always fix a situation, but you can choose to carry it honestly—and that kind of burden, carried with integrity, is one of the most human things we do.
Friends in Command is a character-driven military science fiction novel and space opera series installment about leadership, loyalty, and the quiet terror of being responsible for other people’s lives. Set during an escalating interstellar war, it follows a small starship crew forced to grow up fast—personally, morally, and professionally—when command stops being theoretical and starts being real.
This is the fourth book in the Sons of the Starfarers military science fiction series and builds directly on the events, relationships, and character arcs established in the earlier novels.
What Kind of Reader Will Love Friends in Command?
If you love…
military science fiction that focuses on people, leadership, and consequences, not just tactics
character-driven space opera about friends becoming leaders under pressure
stories where command is a burden, not a reward
long-running series with deepening relationships and evolving roles across multiple books
emotional arcs about loyalty, responsibility, and hard-earned maturity in wartime
…then Friends in Command is probably your kind of story.
What You’ll Find Inside
The story centers on a young crew—many of them longtime comrades—now thrust into positions of real authority aboard a frontline warship in a character-driven military space opera. As the war grows more complex and dangerous, friendships are tested, mistakes carry higher costs, and leadership becomes a daily moral trial. The tone is thoughtful and tense, balancing moments of action with introspective, character-focused scenes, and the pacing reflects the pressure of command: urgent when it must be, deliberate when it matters most.
What Makes Friends in Command Different
Unlike many military SF novels that focus on ascension and glory, Friends in Command is about the awkward, painful middle stage of leadership—when characters are no longer protected by inexperience but not yet confident masters of their roles. It functions as a bridge book within the series, deepening character arcs and setting the emotional stakes for what comes next. Readers who enjoy ensemble casts and long-form character growth—rather than clean standalone victories—will find this installment especially rewarding.
What You Won’t Find
This is not a standalone novel, and it’s not designed for readers who want a reset with each book. You also won’t find nihilism or shock-for-shock’s-sake violence; while the story is intense and serious, it remains grounded in loyalty, conscience, and earned hope rather than cynicism.
Why I Think You Might Love It
I think Friends in Command resonates because it captures a moment many stories skip over: when people are promoted before they feel ready, and the cost of getting things wrong suddenly includes the people they care about most—a moment many readers recognize from real life as much as from fiction. This book mattered to me because it let the characters stop reacting and start choosing—sometimes badly, sometimes bravely—and those choices ripple forward through the rest of the series.
