epic fantasy – One Thousand And One Parsecs

update post

This is my current writing setup. The top of the filing cabinet already needs to be decluttered, but the rest is actually working out pretty well. The nice thing is that the computer can be raised into a standing desk, which works out really great for writing, since I tend to write better when I’m standing or pacing.

I am almost finished with the AI draft of The Soulbond and the Sling. It looks like it’s going to be about 140k words total, which is on the short end for an epic fantasy novel, but longer than anything else I’ve written (except for the first novel I ever finished, which shall never see the light of day).

The human draft will likely be longer than that, though. I’m going to add more details as I humanize it, which is easier to do just by writing it yourself than it is to get an AI to write it. Though parts of it will likely be shorter, since I’m sure there are places where I let the AI overwrite. Most of the skill in AI-assisted writing consists of knowing what to cut out, since generating words is the easy part.

I have also finished the outline for The Soulbond and the Lady, the second book in the Soulbound King series. It should clock in at about 20 chapters, 100 scenes, and 165k words. The next step is to fill out all the prompts and generate a rough AI draft, but because of how Sudowrite works, I don’t want to do that until the AI draft of The Soulbond and the Sling is complete (since it would require tweaking a bunch of the worldbuilding and character prompts). So that will probably wait until the end of the month.

In general, I have found that I tend to work best when I have two current WIPs: one human and one AI. This is because the two different kinds of writing exercise different parts of my brain, and I can rest the one part while I’m using the other. However, it only really works if both WIPs are in the same series. If I have to mentally switch from one universe to another, that adds friction that makes things difficult.

So the key is to pair up different WIPs together, such that I’ve always got both a human WIP and an AI WIP in the same series. With The Soulbound King, that’s not so difficult, because the AI draft of The Soulbond and the Sling is complete enough for me to start the human draft. And once the AI draft is complete, I can move on to the AI draft of book 2 while I finish up the human draft of book 1. It might become a problem if I finish one of the drafts well before the other, but that won’t be a problem for a while.

With the Falconstar Trilogy, that’s also not a huge problem. I will probably human-write a reader magnet while I work on the AI draft of Captive of the Falconstar, then humanize Captive while I work on the AI draft of Lord of the Falconstar.

With Return of the Starborn Son, the last science fiction novel I plan to write for a while, it’s going to be more tricky because that is the last book in the trilogy, and I still haven’t generated the AI draft. What I’ll probably do is start work on the human draft after I’m about 15% done with the AI draft, and see if I can’t work on both simultaneously. That hasn’t worked as well for me in the past, since I actually prefer to write the human draft out of order, but if it starts to break down I’ll just hold off on the human draft until the AI draft is more complete.

With the Sea Mage Cycle, I’ve currently just got one WIP in that series (The Unknown Sea), and it’s in the AI drafting stage. But it’s short enough that I can probably finish it in just a couple of weeks. At that point, I’ll take my wife out to dinner and have her pick out the next one I’ll write, then work on the AI draft for that one while I’m humanizing The Unknown Sea.

Which brings me to my J.M. Wight pen name. After a lot of thought and some careful deliberation, I’ve decided to put The Road to New Jerusalem on the back burner for now. I was going to try to finish that one in time for the Ark Press contest in October, but I don’t think this is the right time to work on that particular WIP. In the first place, it probably won’t win, and even if it did, that might actually be more of a liability, since it’s a near-future post-apocalyptice novel, and I’m currently trying to establish myself as a writer of epic fantasy.

From now until 2030, I plan to write epic fantasy almost exclusively. The only exceptions for that are the two sci-fi series (The Falconstar Trilogy and the Outworld Trilogy) that I haven’t yet finished. Also, I will probably write some zany space adventure-type stuff under my J.M. Wight pen name, more in the vein of my Gunslinger books (which I have republished under J.M. Wight). But aside from that, I plan to focus on writing fantasy—specifically, epic fantasy.

In my blog series Fantasy from A to Z, I wrote about how epic fantasy has fallen into decline in recent years, due to reader fatigue with big name authors like George R.R. Martin and Patrick Rothfuss failing to finish their series, and how this has put newer authors in a conundrum, because epic fantasy novels are way too big to rapid release, but most readers aren’t willing to start a new series until after it’s already been finished. I hope that my new AI-assisted writing method will help me to crack that particular nut, writing and releasing epic fantasy books fast enough to satisfy readers. Because even though there haven’t been a ton of new epic fantasy authors in recent years, I don’t think the reader demand for epic fantasy has gone down at all. There may still be an opportunity there for writers who can deliver.

That’s what I’m hoping, at least. So I’ll keep plugging away at The Soulbound King, and hopefully release the first all three books of the first trilogy around this time next year.

Fantasy from A to Z: Z is for Zeitgeist

What is the future of fantasy literature? Where is the genre headed, based on current cultural trends?

For a long time, epic fantasy was basically Tolkien-light. There were exceptions, of course, but most readers wanted something that felt a lot like Lord of the Rings, and the most successful writers were the ones who gave it to them. There was a little bit of innovation, probably culminating in Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series, but if you picked up a random epic fantasy off the shelf, you could have a pretty good idea of what you were getting into.

Then, in the 90s and 00s, fantasy started to get dark and gritty, with writers like Joe Abercrombie and George R.R. Martin setting the tone. This new subgenre or flavor of fantasy, called grimdark, really came to dominate during this time, to the point where some were calling Martin an “American Tolkien” (though all that talk more or less died with the terrible finale of the show). Grimdark is still quite dominant, though an increasing number of readers are turning to “cozy” fantasy or slice-of-life in subgenres like litRPG. And of course, romantasy is taking off like crazy, though as we’ve already discussed, most romantasy is basically just porn.

So where are we going from here?

Our culture tends to pass through a cycle of seasonal turnings, where each season is the length of a generation, and the cycle itself is the length of a long human life. Reduced to its simplest form, the cycle follows a pattern like this:

Strong men create good times (first turning).

Good times create weak men (second turning).

Weak men create hard times (third turning).

Hard times create strong men (fourth turning).

We are currently living in a fourth turning, which is the period when all of the major wars and catastrophes tend to happen. In other words, the fourth turning is basically a grimdark world—or rather, when the full consequences of a grimdark world become manifest. But the grimdark subgenre really took off in the third turning, when dark and grim fantasy worlds resonated with the “hard times” that we all were starting to live through. This is also why dystopian YA became so popular in the 90s and 00s.

(As a side note, I have to say that I find it both perplexing and hilarious how so many zoomers think of the 90s as a simple and wholesome time, to the point where they think they experience nostalgia for it. Those of us who lived through the 90s remember it very differently, as an era of school shootings, political scandals, collapsing churches, teenage pregnancies, and ever-escalating culture wars. There’s a reason why Smells Like Teen Spirit was the decade’s anthem. Though in all fairness, I suppose that if someone from the middle ages were to visit our own time, they would find the nostalgic yearning on which the whole fantasy genre is based to be just as perplexing and hilarious.)

I believe we are on the cusp of a major cultural wave that is going to change everything, to the point of making our world almost unrecognizable to those who lived through the 90s and 00s. And just as the grimdark authors like Martin and Abercrombie rose to prominence by riding the wave in their part of the generational cycle, there are a lot of noblebright authors who stand to benefit from riding this next wave, which is only now beginning to break.

After all, there is another way to formulate the generational cycles. It looks something like this:

Complacent men create a spiritually dead culture (first turning).

A spiritually dead culture creates awakened men (second turning).

Awakened men create a spiritually vibrant culture (third turning).

A spiritually vibrant culture creates complacent men (fourth turning).

In the summer of 2024, I think we passed through a critical fork in the current timeline. If the generational cycle had followed its usual course, then our current crisis period would have ended with a period of unification under a new order, based upon the spiritual foundations that were laid during the 60s and 70s. In other words, the woke left would have won, and we’d be living under the sort of regime that would enforce woke values. Dissent would not be tolerated, because dissent is never tolerated in a first-turning world.

The second most likely outcome would have been a complete shattering of the generational cycles. In other words, we would have fallen into some sort of national divorce or hot civil war, with the United States splitting apart and the Western world completing its cultural suicide, which has been ongoing for several decades now. There has never been a time when such a major cultural rift has been accomplished by peaceful means. It is always accompanied by a terrible, bloody war.

But when President Trump survived the assassin’s bullet at the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, that’s the point where I think our timeline diverged—and it followed the least likely path, which has only ever happened once in the history of modern generational cycles. We skipped from a fourth-turning straight into a second-turning, skipping straight from crisis to revival.

The last time this happened was with the US civil war. Usually, after a culture survives an existential crisis, you get a period of national unity, which often results in a brief golden age (or at least, an age that is remembered as such, often by those who did not live through it). But after the civil war, there was no national unity. Instead, we skipped right to the second turning, which is typically characterized by a major spiritual awakening.

Whatever your opinions of President Trump, the fact that he survived the assassination attempt in Pennsylvania and went on to win the 2024 election in a landslide means that we have (for the moment) avoided the first two scenarios. At this point, it’s difficult to imagine the woke left taking back the culture and leading us into a first-turning world in their own image. And though the US may yet fall into a hot civil war, from where I’m standing in flyover country that no longer seems quite so imminent.

Don’t get me wrong, though. We are not about to enter a period of national unity anytime soon. Certainly not a period of national unity whose foundations were laid by the previous spiritual awakening, which is what the generational cycle requires. At the same time, because President Trump survived the Butler assassination attempt (thank God), I think we avoided a hot civil war.

Because of all this, I think that we are about to experience a major cultural upheaval, the likes of which have never been seen in living memory. We will not get a period of unification. We will not experience a golden age period of material prosperity (though there may be a few years of plenty before the years of famine begin in earnest). But we will experience a cultural and spiritual revival that will burn through our culture until it has utterly demolished the woke worldview and values laid down during the 60s and 70s, and built something entirely new in its place.

What will that look like? And how will it affect the trajectory of fantasy literature?

Culturally, it will be a period of incredible dynamism. We will see an explosion of creative expression in every field, including in literature. Books and movies and games that are cultural mainstays now will be totally forgotten within a couple of decades, and everything that is popular now will feel dated and out of touch in the space of just a few years.

The authors and artists who will do the most to shape this new culture are today almost completely unknown, but they will become household names in surprisingly short order. Others will take decades to become known, but they will write their most important works in just the next few years.

The country will hold together. There will be no civil war, though there may be a global one. And there will almost certainly be an economic collapse, like the Great Depression, except much deeper and much longer. But all of this will only serve to fuel the spiritual revival, and the revival in turn will fuel the cultural dynamism, until the country and ultimately the world have been entirely transformed.

In more practical terms, I think we are going to see a lot of publishing houses fold, and a lot of popular authors fall out of favor. Many of them will keep their core group of fans, but they won’t be nearly as culturally relevant moving forward. New authors will rise from unexpected places to replace them, especially as the old institutions (publishers, conventions, magazines, review sites) collapse.

Romantasy will ultimately be recognized as the pornography that it is, though not until after it’s done great damage to the fantasy genre as a whole. The damage will be healed by a return to the genre’s spiritual roots. Grimdark will fade, and noblebright will rise, though it will ultimately take a different name and be recognized for other characteristics. It all depends on which of the thousand blooming flowers get picked.

LitRPG will mature into a long-term stable subgenre, and capture most of the innovation in the field. It may spin off into multiple long-term stable subgenres. Meanwhile, epic fantasy will return to its roots and grow as the spiritual revival takes hold. But instead of getting Tolkien clones, we’re going to see a lot of original and innovative work.

That’s the zeitgeist as I see it. The next few years are going to be a wild ride. Are you up for it? I hope that I am.

Fantasy from A to Z: All Posts

Fantasy from A to Z: Y is for Yearning

What kind of fantasy books do you hope to see more of in the next few years? What direction do you hope the genre goes next?

Personally, I would like to see the genre return to its roots. But that probably isn’t a surprise, if you’ve read the other blog posts in this series. I’ve invoked Robert E. Howard and J.R.R. Tolkien in almost all of them. Those two men are the grandfathers of modern fantasy: Howard from the sword & sorcery side, and Tolkien from the epic fantasy side. Until just the last few years, most fantasy authors stood on the shoulders of those great authors.

I’m not opposed to rules-based magic on principle. I do think that it can be done quite well, such as with Brandon Sanderson’s earlier work. But I would like to see a revival of more traditional fantasy magic systems, which aren’t really “systems” at all, but mysterious forces of nature rooted in folklore and mythology. With its overemphasis on game-like dynamics and quirky rules-based magic systems, much of modern fantasy seems to have lost sight of the ancient archetypes that gave the works of Tolkien and Howard their staying power.

As the modern world drifts further from its roots, forgetting all the stories that were handed down to us from countless generations past, so too has our fantasy lost sight of its roots, thinning out to the point where it’s little more than an aesthetic—a bundle of tropes and caricatures that evoke a nostalgia not of our pre-modern past, but of other popular fantasy stories. Thus, with each new work in this vein, the genre is diluted just a little bit more, becoming a pale shadow of what it once was.

That is why I would like to see fantasy return to its roots. I would like to see more fantasy that draws deeply from the well of history and mythology, not just to create an aesthetic, but to embed those themes and archetypes deeply into the story itself. I don’t care whether that mythology is European or not (though as a pan-European mutt, that is the culture that resonates most with me), but I do want to read books that do more than file the serial numbers off of another culture and wear it like a skin suit.

It’s not so much that I’m worried about “cultural appropriation”—hell, as the son of medieval vikings, cultural appropriation is my culture—but if that’s what you’re going to do, you should damn right do it well. There’s a reason why we all got sick and tired of all the Tolkien clones. If we’re going to take fantasy back to its roots, we’ve got to do more than copy all the greats who came before us. We’ve got to understand, in a deep and visceral way, just what exactly they were trying to build, and then build upon it with something new.

Fantasy and science fiction are all about evoking that sense of wonder. Science fiction evokes that wonder by looking to the future; fantasy evokes that wonder by looking to the past. Our modern world has forgotten far too much of its cultural heritage. I want to see more fantasy that brings it back.

Going full-tilt on The Soulbound King

I’ve decided to put The Road to New Jerusalem on the back burner and focus instead on my epic fantasy series, The Rise of the Soulbound King Trilogy. If I push, I think I can finish the AI draft of book 1 in the next two weeks. I’ve also nearly finished the outline for book 2, and will probably have a rough AI draft for that one by the end of September.

I would really like to publish this series in 2026, but I don’t want to launch it until I’m ready to rapid release the first three books. And since these books are all epic fantasy, it’s going to take a lot of time and effort to write them. Without AI, it would probably take me something like two or three years for each book. I’m not a very fast writer, and I tend to get stuck in the middle, even when I have a solid outline. With AI, I think I can shorten that to 6-8 months.

These books are probably going to range between 150k and 200k words, so not super long for epic fantasy (for comparison, Mistborn: The Final Empire is about 214k words, and The Way of Kings is about 384k words). That’s much longer than most genre books, though, including most of the books I’ve written until now. And writing difficulty doesn’t scale linearly with book length; it scales logarithmically. So while it may take only 1-2 months to write a Sea Mage Cycle book, those are only about 1/3rd the length of a Soulbound King book.

My long-term goal, though, is to pivot to epic fantasy, to the point where that’s mostly what I write. And if you read my science fiction novels, you’ll find that they’re much more like epic fantasy, with multiple viewpoints, grand galactic empires, wars and political machinations, and a universe that has its own character arc. So while this may superficially seem like a huge pivot, it’s actually not.

There are three science fiction books that I need to write before I can pivot entirely to writing fantasy: Captive of the Falconstar, Lord of the Falconstar, and The Return of the Starborn Son. Those are the only outstanding science fiction series that need finishing (and I will finish them, I promise—I’m not going to pull a GRRM). I also need to finish the Twelfth Sword Trilogy, the epic fantasy series I started in the 2010s while I was still mostly writing science fiction.

Realistically, the only ones of those books that are going to be finished between now and the end of next year are the Falconstar books, since I need to juggle all of these with the Soulbound King epic fantasy books that I’m also writing. But I think I can finish the Falconstar books, and also write and publish a Sea Mage Cycle book or two within the next year. I’ve found that it often helps to take week-long breaks to work on other projects, which allows me to approach a larger and more challenging WIP like The Soulbond and the Sling with new eyes. So I will probably alternate between working on the Soulbound King books and working on Falconstar and Sea Mage Cycle for the forseeable future.

But my goal for the next two weeks is to go full steam ahead on The Soulbond and the Sling, until it is finished. And with luck, I will also have a few excerpts to share with you soon!

Fantasy from A to Z: X is for eXpectations

What sort of books are fantasy readers looking for today? What are the expectations that readers have for the genre?

Overall, the fantasy genre is growing. Sales are up, both in traditional and indie publishing, and the big names in the field (like Brandon Sanderson) are doing quite well. It’s clear that the fantasy genre as a whole is robust and healthy.

When you break it down by publishers and subgenres, however, things start to look a little different. Romantasy is dominating the traditional publishing world, but most of it is little more than pornography for women, dressed up with fantasy trappings. And because of how traditional publishing now relies on a few big blockbusters to make most of their earnings, romantasy is sucking all of the oxygen out of the room, making it much more difficult for debut and midlist authors in the other fantasy subgenres.

In the world of indie publishing, litRPG has begun to demonstrate some staying power. It was the new hot thing back in the early 2020s, but it’s attracted enough attention and developed enough of a following that it has become a major subgenre that is likely to endure for some time. I could be wrong about that, but from what I see, that’s where most of the innovative authors and whale readers (ie >1 book per week) are focusing their attention these days.

But because of the way that the algorithms tend to govern the indie publishing cycle (and the way that indie publishing has unfortunately turned into a zero-sum, pay-to-play game with online advertising), the rise of litRPG in the indie publishing world may very well be sucking all of the oxygen out of the room in the same way that romantasy is sucking it out of the traditional publishing world.

Both subgenres are also very gender-biased, with women gravitating toward romantasy and men gravitating toward litRPG. This reflects the broader social and political trend of men and women going separate ways, across a whole host of different metrics. So as the gender divide continues to widen in society generally, that will probably reinforce the divide between romantasy and litRPG, creating a positive feedback loop (or death spiral, depending on how you look at it).

Sword and sorcery continues to do okay, and has probably been given a boost by the recent release of Conan the Barbarian into the public domain. But most of sword and sorcery got siphoned off into grimdark back in the 00s—in fact, you could say that sword and sorcery reinvented itself as grimdark. And while grimdark has resisted the feminization of literature, standing as one of the few remaining bastions where male readers continue to feel at home, I think grimdark has already passed its peak. In a post-pandemic, post-Trump world, I think most readers are hungry for books that are less nihilistic and more uplifting.

Which brings us to epic fantasy. While Brandon Sanderson continues to dominate this subgenre, with his massive kickstarters and huge book releases, it’s debatable whether his readers are hungry for more epic fantasy, or just for more Brandon Sanderson. He’s kind of a subgenre all to himself. Recent streaming adaptations like Wheel of Time and Rings of Power have failed miserably, and Game of Thrones has fallen almost totally out of cultural significance, with George R.R. Martin’s failure to finish the last book (and Patrick Rothfuss’s failure to finish his own series) becoming something of a meme.

In fact, the failure of these two big-name authors to finish writing their books may have struck epic fantasy a mortal wound. Because of how they have been burned, a large number of epic fantasy readers are now unwilling to commit to a series until after it is complete. But very few authors can afford to write a truly epic series and release the whole thing at once. It takes several years to write a series like that—and what are authors supposed to do if the first one flops?

In other words, debut epic fantasy authors are damned if they do, and damned if they don’t. If they release the first book by itself, it will probably sink into obscurity before they can write and release the next book. And if by some measure of hard work and tenacity they manage to write a whole series and hold back from publishing until they’re ready to release it all at once, if the first book still fails to sell, they’re SOL and all that hard work was for nothing.

This is also why traditional publishers are so unwilling to publish a new epic fantasy series from a debut or a midlist author. A bestseller like Larry Correia might be able to dip his feet in that pond (and do quite well—I highly recommend his Sons of the Black Sword series), they won’t do that for anyone else. Which is fine, except that indie publishing epic fantasy is just as hard—arguably more so.

For these reasons, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that Patrick Rothfuss and George R.R. Martin have done more to kill epic fantasy than they have to grow it.

But this may actually have created an opportunity for those authors who are willing to drive into the smoke. After all, there’s much less competition if you can manage to break in and build a decent following. But how much hunger is there for epic fantasy, compared to other fantasy subgenres? And how can a newer/midlist author reach them, without a big push from a publisher or the algorithms?

Fantasy from A to Z: All Posts

Epic Fantasy vs. LitRPG: 20 more principles that set them apart from other genres

So building on yesterday’s blog post, after asking ChatGPT to contrast litRPG against epic fantasy, I asked the AI to come up with twenty more principles that show how litRPG and epic fantasy are more similar to each other, by contrasting them against other genres. In other words, I asked for another twenty principles that either 1) hold true for both litRPG and epic fantasy, but not other genres, or 2) do not hold true for litRPG or epic fantasy, but do hold true for other genres. This was what the AI came up with.

What do you think? Do you agree with the list, or do you think the AI doesn’t know what it’s talking about? I mean, of course the AI doesn’t know what it’s talking about—it’s a pattern-matching stochastic parrot incapable of actual thought—but does the list itself hold true, or not? I’m interested to hear what you think!

✅ Ten Principles That Work in Both Epic Fantasy and LitRPG (but not as well elsewhere)

1. The Long Form Is an Asset

Epic Fantasy: Readers expect doorstoppers; sprawling stories add gravitas.
LitRPG: Readers binge long series to follow progression.
Other genres: Overly long novels (romance, thrillers) often feel padded or indulgent.

2. Worldbuilding as a Core Pleasure

Epic Fantasy: Intricate maps, languages, and histories enrich immersion.
LitRPG: Detailed mechanics, systems, and economies are part of the appeal.
Other genres: Too much worldbuilding bogs down the story (e.g., in mystery or romance).

3. Reader Dedication Is Assumed

Epic Fantasy: Readers accept investment to reap the mythic payoff.
LitRPG: Readers accept grindy arcs to enjoy progression.
Other genres: Casual readers often want quick satisfaction.

4. Hero’s Journey as Central Skeleton

Epic Fantasy: Growth from obscurity to legend is the core arc.
LitRPG: Growth from level 1 to overpowered is the core arc.
Other genres: Often resist the monomyth (slice-of-life, literary realism, etc.).

5. Community/Ensemble Casts

Epic Fantasy: Multiple POVs enrich the tapestry.
LitRPG: Party dynamics (tank, healer, mage) reflect RPG roots.
Other genres: Large casts risk confusing readers who want intimacy.

6. Spectacle as Payoff

Epic Fantasy: Climactic battles or magical revelations awe readers.
LitRPG: Dungeon raids and boss fights provide thrill.
Other genres: Spectacle without intimacy or brevity (like in romance) falls flat.

7. Maps and Charts Enhance the Experience

Epic Fantasy: Maps show kingdoms, trade routes, and lost ruins.
LitRPG: Stat sheets, skill trees, and quest logs scratch the gamer itch.
Other genres: Appendices and diagrams often feel extraneous.

8. Bingeability

Epic Fantasy: Readers want to sink in for weeks.
LitRPG: Readers tear through serialized arcs like binge-gaming sessions.
Other genres: Shorter, self-contained experiences dominate (rom-coms, thrillers).

9. Immersion Requires Internal Consistency

Epic Fantasy: Magic systems, politics, and cultures must feel internally real.
LitRPG: Mechanics and progression must follow consistent rules.
Other genres: Small cheats or contrivances are forgiven more easily.

10. The Fantasy of Escape Into Another Life

Epic Fantasy: Readers escape into a mythic, larger-than-life destiny.
LitRPG: Readers escape into a game avatar, empowered and free.
Other genres: Escapism is more muted—characters often mirror real-world constraints.

❌ Ten Principles That Work in Other Genres But Not in Epic Fantasy or LitRPG

11. Economy of Length

Epic Fantasy: Truncated stories feel shallow.
LitRPG: Short books cut off progression.
Other genres: Brevity (novellas, short novels) often thrives in romance, literary fiction, thrillers.

12. Standalone Closure

Epic Fantasy: Readers expect series and arcs across volumes.
LitRPG: Readers expect sequels and continuous leveling.
Other genres: Standalone novels dominate many markets (romance, crime).

13. Minimal World Detail

Epic Fantasy: Sparse settings break immersion.
LitRPG: Thin systems or game mechanics disappoint.
Other genres: Often better to focus tightly on character or conflict.

14. Immediate, High-Speed Pacing

Epic Fantasy: Readers accept gradual build-up.
LitRPG: Readers accept grind loops before climax.
Other genres: Quick, relentless pacing (thrillers) is a selling point.

15. Subtlety Over Spectacle

Epic Fantasy: Readers want grandeur, not quiet minimalism.
LitRPG: Readers want flashy abilities, loot drops, boss fights.
Other genres: Subtle slice-of-life or understated literary fiction works well.

16. Ambiguous Endings

Epic Fantasy: Readers want resolution—wars won, empires reshaped.
LitRPG: Readers want progression arcs to complete.
Other genres: Literary realism thrives on ambiguity.

17. Everyday Banality

Epic Fantasy: Mundane routine (work, school, dishes) feels like filler.
LitRPG: Grinding without purpose or progress feels like padding.
Other genres: Slice-of-life, contemporary drama thrive on the ordinary.

18. Romance as the Core Engine

Epic Fantasy: Love enriches but rarely drives the whole tapestry.
LitRPG: Love plots are secondary to leveling and quests.
Other genres: Romance is often the primary driver.

19. Prose Minimalism

Epic Fantasy: Readers want at least some richness, tone, and weight.
LitRPG: Readers want clarity and detail in mechanics, not Hemingway sparsity.
Other genres: Minimalist prose shines in lit fic or thrillers.

20. Compressed Timelines

Epic Fantasy: Readers want generations, years, or at least a long journey.
LitRPG: Readers want long campaigns and layered arcs.
Other genres: Stories that span a weekend or a single evening work beautifully in mystery, romance, lit fic.

⚖️ Big Takeaway

Shared Strengths (1–10): Both genres embrace immersion, scope, detail, and reader investment. They reward readers who want to live in another world for a long time.
Shared Weaknesses (11–20): Neither does well with brevity, minimalism, ambiguity, or everyday mundanity. Those principles thrive in other fiction but undermine the immersive, long-game experience of epic fantasy and LitRPG.

Epic Fantasy vs. LitRPG: 20 principles that work in one but not the other

So I was doing some genre research using ChatGPT, comparing epic fantasy (which I write) to litRPG (which I do not write—at least, not yet). After going back and forth for a while, I had ChatGPT list a bunch of principles that set each subgenre apart from each other. In other words, each of these principles holds true only for the one subgenre and not for the other.

It’s an interesting list. But being AI-generated, I’m not sure how much I can trust it, so I’d be interested to get your feedback. How true do you think these principles holds? Is it a pretty solid list, or are any areas where the AI got it wrong?

✅ Works in Epic Fantasy but Not LitRPG

1. Slow, Majestic Pacing

Epic Fantasy: Readers savor patience, waiting hundreds of pages for payoffs.
LitRPG: Readers expect regular “level-ups” or stat reveals—slow burns feel like stalling.

2. World as a Living, Breathing Character

Epic Fantasy: Setting is alive, with cultures, histories, and myth shaping events.
LitRPG: Worlds are often coded, constructed systems; too much “world-agency” risks breaking the conceit of “game mechanics.”

3. Archetypal Myth and Destiny

Epic Fantasy: Readers love prophecy, ancient bloodlines, and cosmic fate.
LitRPG: Players expect agency and control; prophecy undercuts the appeal of player choice.

4. Elevated, Poetic Language

Epic Fantasy: Slightly archaic or grand prose enhances the mythic atmosphere.
LitRPG: Readers expect clear, modern, accessible prose—too much ornament feels like “lag.”

5. Moral and Philosophical Depth

Epic Fantasy: Readers enjoy wrestling with justice, faith, and power.
LitRPG: Too much moral philosophizing slows down what should feel like gameplay and strategy.

6. Earned Heroism Through Suffering

Epic Fantasy: Heroes rise through sacrifice, scars, and loss.
LitRPG: Heroes rise by optimizing builds and winning battles. Too much suffering without progression feels like poor game balance.

7. History as Weight

Epic Fantasy: Ancient wars, dynasties, ruins, and forgotten myths enrich immersion.
LitRPG: History matters less than mechanics; world “backstory” is often secondary to the system’s function.

8. Layered Political Intrigue

Epic Fantasy: Kingdoms, councils, conspiracies—slow, strategic plotting excites readers.
LitRPG: Readers may skip political detail to get back to quests, loot, or progression.

9. Villains as Ideologies

Epic Fantasy: Antagonists often embody philosophies or cosmic balances.
LitRPG: Readers want enemies to be challenges, bosses, or rival players—not treatises on ideology.

10. The Reader Must Feel Small

Epic Fantasy: The awe of mountains, empires, or gods dwarfs the individual.
LitRPG: Readers want to feel powerful, not humbled—progression fantasy is about growth and mastery.

✅ Works in LitRPG but Not Epic Fantasy

11. Constant Tangible Progress

LitRPG: Frequent “dings,” new skills, and stat boosts scratch the gamer itch.
Epic Fantasy: Constant visible gains feel artificial—growth should be slow, hard-won, and often invisible.

12. Game-Like Structure

LitRPG: Clear quests, dungeons, XP, and loot tables create satisfying loops.
Epic Fantasy: Too much structure breaks the illusion of a living world—life doesn’t hand out quests so neatly.

13. Crunchy Mechanics

LitRPG: Readers relish stat blocks, skill trees, and optimization discussions.
Epic Fantasy: Overly mechanical explanations kill immersion—magic should feel mysterious, not like a spreadsheet.

14. Frequent Combat Encounters

LitRPG: Battles are core gameplay; readers expect frequent fights.
Epic Fantasy: Endless combat risks exhausting readers who want battles to feel rare, costly, and decisive.

15. Player Agency Above All

LitRPG: The protagonist must feel like a player making choices.
Epic Fantasy: Fate, prophecy, or the “burden of destiny” often guide characters beyond their control.

16. Meta Awareness

LitRPG: Characters can reference game mechanics, genre tropes, or player logic.
Epic Fantasy: Meta jokes break immersion—characters can’t wink at the audience about being in a story.

17. Loot and Rewards as Story Fuel

LitRPG: New gear and loot drops are story progression.
Epic Fantasy: Magical swords and treasures matter, but they’re rare, symbolic, and usually secondary to inner growth.

18. Episodic, “Grindable” Arcs

LitRPG: Dungeon runs, quests, and side missions can be modular and satisfying.
Epic Fantasy: Too episodic undermines the long-arc gravitas; the story must feel like a single tapestry.

19. Power Fantasy at the Forefront

LitRPG: Readers want to imagine themselves growing invincible.
Epic Fantasy: Too much power fantasy feels hollow—readers want awe and cost, not invincibility.

20. Immersion Through Familiar Systems

LitRPG: RPG tropes are comforting—readers enjoy seeing familiar mechanics at play.
Epic Fantasy: Familiar mechanics feel derivative—immersion comes from originality, history, and myth.

⚖️ The Big Picture

Epic Fantasy: Offers immersion in a mythic, awe-inspiring legend, with patience, gravitas, and weight. It humbles and uplifts.
LitRPG: Offers immersion in a game you can read, with momentum, mechanics, and constant progression. It empowers and energizes.

They share world immersion as a value—but diverge in what kind of immersion the audience craves: awe vs. agency, myth vs. mechanics, destiny vs. progress.

Fantasy from A to Z: S is for Sanderson

Brandon Sanderson is, without a doubt, the most popular fantasy writer currently living and writing today. He is also one of the classiest and most gracious authors you will ever meet, in any genre. I’ve also got a personal connection to him, from taking his writing class at BYU.

Brandon decided to become a writer when he was very young. The way he explains it, the bug really bit him when he read Dragonsbane by Barbara Hambly. Depression runs in his family, and growing up, he always felt emotionally monotone and distant—until he read that book. From then on, he became obsessed with fantasy, both with reading and with writing it.

The way I heard Brandon explain it, that emotional monotone has been both a personal struggle and a great asset. It’s part of the reason he’s able to write so much, since where other writers tend to have huge emotional swings that affect their ability to write, Brandon is able to just sit down and do the work, day after day after day. It’s also part of what gives him an even keel that makes him such a gracious and generous person. Where other writers tend to get worked up on social media or join outrage mobs, Brandon avoids all of that. I don’t think I’ve ever seen or heard of him becoming outraged about anything.

Brandon was one of the last major authors to break into book publishing before the indie revolution began turning everything upside down. He broke in by researching agents and editors, attending all the important conferences, and networking with everyone who’s anyone in the genre. He also wrote a lot of really good books—as well as a lot of crappy ones. I believe that Elantris, his debut novel, was actually the sixth novel he wrote, and Mistborn: The Final Empire was something like the 13th. He landed his agent, Joshua Bilmes, from attending World Fantasy, and his agent eventually got him his publisher, Moshe, at Tor.

Elantris and Mistborn were good, but not immediate bestsellers. In fact, Brandon was on track to be an average mid-list fantasy author with a relatively unremarkable career, until Robert Jordan died, leaving the Wheel of Time unfinished. By that point, a lot of readers felt frustrated with the series and used his death as an opportunity to write scathing screeds about how it had gone off of the rails and grown far too bloated and large. But Brandon was much more classy and gracious than that, and wrote a tribute to the man instead, praising his work and the impact it had had on his life. When Robert Jordan’s widow read Brandon’s post, she decided that he was the one who should finish the Wheel of Time.

Personally, I’m not a huge Wheel of Time fan. I read the first three books and enjoyed them, but I got lost midway through the fourth book. My wife read them all and feels like the series is overrated, and I generally trust her judgment. But I can appreciate how a lot of people really love the series—and really, there is a lot to love. Just because it isn’t to my personal taste doesn’t mean that it isn’t good.

My friends who are Wheel of Time fans tell me that Brandon not only finished the series—he rescued it. Apparently, the last three books rejuvenated the series, wrapping things up in an incredibly satisfying way. Of course, Brandon would defer and say that it wasn’t his genius that turned the series around, but Robert Jordan’s original vision and the detailed notes and outlines that Brandon followed. But there’s no denying that Brandon really stuck the landing.

It was around this point in the story that I met Brandon. I was a student at BYU at the time, and I had an opportunity to take his writing class. From the time when I was eight, I had wanted to be a writer, but I didn’t think I would ever turn it into a career. Brandon’s writing class changed all that, and helped me to see that I could pursue writing as a career. He also taught me the nuts and bolts of writing fiction, vastly improving my writing skills. I had started several novels in high school, but never finished anything until I took his class. And while my first finished novel was a disaster that I promptly locked in the trunk, my second novel attempt (which I started writing in Brandon’s class) ultimately became my debut, Genesis Earth.

(As a side note, my wife was also in that ‘08 class with Brandon Sanderson, though we didn’t actually meet each other until almost a decade later when we matched on Mutual. She also started a writing group with her college roommate, who won the Writers of the Future and married into Brandon Sanderson’s writing group. Our writing group has also got one of Brandon’s college roommates.)

Brandon’s success with Wheel of Time was what catapulted Brandon from a midlist author to a bestselling phenomenon. But even then, if he wrote at the same slow pace as most other fantasy authors, he would have forever been known as “the guy who finished Wheel of Time.” Instead, he became famous for writing and publishing massive +300k word doorstopper tomes at an unprecedented rate, leading fans to joke about his writing super powers. Then the pandemic happened, and he wrote four “secret” novels with all of the extra time he had from not traveling anywhere. The fans went crazy, and his kickstarter blew everything out of the water.

I haven’t read all of Brandon’s books. I really loved the Mistborn era I books, and the first Stormlight Archive book was good, but my favorite is Emperor’s Soul, because I think that Brandon is at his best when he writes shorter novels rather than the massive +300k word doorstopper tomes. In my experience, Brandon is a 3-star author who writes 5-star endings. His writing tends to meander, especially in the early middle, but around the 3/4ths mark there’s usually a twist that brings things together, and the conflict escalates consistently until it builds into a really satisfying ending.

Brandon is also known for his hard magic systems, which have become a signature trait of his books. Some readers feel that clearly explaining the rules of magic defeats the sense of wonder that a fantasy novel should have, but that’s not been my experience with his books. When I read a Brandon Sanderson novel, I feel almost like I’m reading a video game. Knowing the ins and outs of the magic helps me to see the possibilities for the characters to use it, and Brandon is usually really good at adding an unexpected twist, exploiting the rules of magic in a surprising yet inevitable way. This creates its own sense of wonder that really adds to his books.

Brandon also is known for how all of his books are tied together into the same transdimensional “cosmere” multiverse, though I actually think this is the least remarkable thing that makes his books so distinctive. For one thing, he’s not the first one to do it—David Gemmell also discretely linked all of his books, which blew my mind when I discovered that particular easter egg. For another thing, Brandon has turned his cosmere from a delightfully hidden easter egg and nod to the fans to the grand key that you must possess in order to understand and appreciate his later books. As a result, the cosmere is becoming an obstacle to new readers, even as his most ardent fans all swoon over the cosmere connections.

I think Brandon’s ultimate goal is to turn his books into a massive cinematic universe, kind of like the MCU. From what I understand, he was really close to signing a Hollywood deal, but it fell through at the last minute, leaving him back at square one (I don’t know all the details, though Jon Del Arroz did some interesting reporting on that). This is also probably why his books have become more woke in recent years.

I’ve already written at length about that subject, so I won’t belabor the point here. But I really do feel that this represents a betrayal of his more conservative fans, many of whom turned to Brandon precisely because his books tend to be free of all of the gratuitous language and sexual content of most modern fantasy. Also, one of Brandon’s really great strengths during the gamergate and puppygate fannish controversies of the 2010s was his strict neutrality. While the culture wars were raging all around them, he continued to be his classy and gracious self, refraining from picking sides or wading into the mudfest. With the LGBTQ romantic subplot in Wind and Truth, that appears to have changed.

I hope he turns away from all of that. What the world really needs right now are books that transcend the whole woke vs. anti-woke divide, bringing us together and healing the artificial (and in many cases subversive) divisions that pit us against each other. Maybe Brandon will surprise me, and accomplish exactly that, just from the left side of the aisle. But as of Wind and Truth, I can’t help but wonder if we’ve reached peak Sanderson. Only time will tell.

Regardless, I will always be grateful to Brandon Sanderson for the things he taught me, and for all of his graciousness and generosity that he showed in his writing class. Without that experience, I probably would have pursued a different career, and not written nearly so many books. I also probably would not have married my wife, since one of the big things that drew her to me was my love and dedication to my writing craft.

Fantasy from A to Z: N is for Noblebright

In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war.

While the quote comes from Warhammer 40k, a science fiction franchise, it very soon became applied to the “darker and edgier” fantasy that started coming out in the 80s and 90s. Indeed, the quote itself spawned the term “grimdark” for a fantasy subgenre that became very popular in the 00s, with the rise of George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire and subsequent Game of Thrones TV series.

Grimdark combines the scope and feel of epic fantasy with the savagery and moral greyness of sword & sorcery, ramping up the violence and savagery to levels that would have made even Robert E. Howard blush. It often features twists that subvert the old fantasy tropes, such as killing off the “chosen one” hero who would typically be the protagonist, or presenting a horrifying dystopia of a world that is the utter antithesis of an escapist fantasy.

In part, I think the grimdark phenomenon was a reaction to the Tolkien formula that dominated fantasy for so long. After J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings became wildly popular, his publishers tried to replicate that success by explicitly creating a formula that they wanted their writers to follow. This resulted in a bunch of Tolkien clones, such as Terry Brooks’s Shannara series and David Edding’s Belgariad series. For a couple of decades, these dominated the fantasy shelves, until writers began to revolt, and their books began to take off. After all, Game of Thrones was originally published in 1996.

But while there’s some truth to that theory, I don’t think it’s sufficient to explain the rise of grimdark. After all, Stephen R. Donaldson was rebelling against the Tolkien formula back in the 70s, and while his Thomas Covenant books were quite successful, they didn’t spawn a new subgenre (though arguably, they paved the way for later writers like Martin and Abercrombie). Instead, I think there’s something generational about the grimdark subgenre—that it’s the sort of thing that only could have arisen in the 90s and 00s, because of how the generational cycle works.

I wrote a lengthy blog post about this, which remains one of my more popular posts. My basic thesis is that the fantasy genre goes through generational cycles just like history goes through generational cycles. In its simplest form, the cycle looks something like this:

Hard times create strong men.
Strong men create good times.
Good times create weak men.
Weak men create hard times.

During the hard times, we tend to resonate more with stories that feature grim characters and dark fantasy worlds—hence, the rise of grimdark. But during the good times, we tend to resonate more with noble characters and bright fantasy worlds.

(It’s a little more complicated than that, of course. The fantasy cycle is offset just a little, since we tend to resonate less with darker stories as we become exhausted from living in a darker world. Indeed, the yearning for the next phase of the cycle drives us to tell more hopeful stories, which in turn drive us to build a more hopeful world. But to read the full analysis, go check out my original post.)

So what is noblebright fantasy, then? It’s basically the antithesis of grimdark—a backlash against the backlash. And while it hasn’t yet manifested as a distinct subgenre, with a George R.R. Martin or a Joe Abercrombie to champion it, I think it’s only a matter of time before we see an author who rides this cultural wave to massive literary success. And as soon as that happens, I think we’ll have a much better idea of what “noblebright” actually is.

In other words, noblebright fantasy is currently in the process of being born—and after it has emerged fully formed into the world, it will probably take a different name. Indeed, “noblebright” as a term is itself merely a knee-jerk reaction to “grimdark.” To subvert the original Warhammer 40k quote:

In the Noble Brightness of the far future, there is only HIGH ADVENTURE!”

Currently, there are only a handful of writers who are explicitly labeling their books as “noblebright fantasy.” I am not one of them, though I suspect that my books (and my readers) have a lot of overlap. As it exists right now, noblebright is characterized by heroic quests and the triumph of good over evil, with an emphasis on hope, virtue, and making a positive difference in the world. It’s also very common for these authors to include Christian themes, though from what I can tell, the books aren’t explicitly religious.

While I haven’t yet joined the pioneers of this budding new subgenre, I expect that I will in the not-too-distant future. I’m currently working on an epic fantasy trilogy based loosely on the life of King David, which features many of these noblebright tropes and themes. But it’s going to be a while before I release the first book, since I want to publish the books of the first trilogy all within a month of each other. Since these books are going to fall in the 150k to 200k word range, a lot of things can change between now and then. Perhaps the term “noblebright” will have been abandoned, with people looking down on it as a passing fad of the early 20s.

But I don’t think the broader trend toward brighter, more hopeful fantasy is going to reverse course anytime soon. In fact, I think it’s generational. Whether or not it takes the name “noblebright,” I think that we’re going to see a new subgenre of fantasy emerge very soon. It’s starting right now as a backlash to grimdark, but as the wave crests and it begins to gain some staying power, I expect that it will stop defining itself by the thing it opposes and start to define itself in a more independent way.

I’m really hoping to catch this wave, and I think that my Soulbound King series has some real potential to do so. But whether or not I catch it, I know that this is the kind of stuff I like to write, and I hope to be able to write it for a long time to come.

Fantasy from A to Z: E is for Epic

What is the ideal length of a fantasy novel? Of a fantasy series?

Fantasy, as a genre, is known for being big. Big stakes, big emotions, big battles—and big books. It isn’t unusual for a single fantasy novel to run well over 200,000 words. Authors like Brandon Sanderson regularly turn in doorstoppers, with Words of Radiance clocking in at over 400,000 words, longer than the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy combined. And of course, there’s J.R.R. Tolkien himself, whose influence looms large over the genre. The Lord of the Rings helped establish the idea that a fantasy story needs room to breathe—and to expand.

Series length is no different. Some of the most beloved and influential fantasy series are also some of the longest. Steven Erikson’s Malazan Book of the Fallen spans ten main volumes and several more side novels. Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time ran for fourteen massive books (fifteen, if you count the prequel). These stories require commitment, but for many readers, that’s part of the appeal. Once they find a world they love, they want to spend as much time there as possible.

But not all fantasy needs to be long.

Robert E. Howard, one of the foundational voices in the genre, wrote mostly short stories. His Conan tales, often published in pulp magazines like Weird Tales, rarely ran longer than a few thousand words. Yet they endure. David G. Hartwell, in “The Making of the American Fantasy Genre,” points out that Howard and Tolkien were arguably the two most successful fantasy authors of the twentieth century. Before The Lord of the Rings took off in the 1970s, most fantasy readers thought of the short story as the natural format for the genre. That pulp tradition carried strong into the mid-century, where fantasy shared shelf space with science fiction in magazines and anthologies.

That clearly isn’t the case anymore. In today’s market, a 90,000-word fantasy novel is often considered short. Readers are more than happy to put up with a bit of filler or extra padding if it means they get to linger in the world a little longer. And to be fair, there is something immersive about a book that takes its time. When done well, it can feel less like reading a story and more like living inside another world.

That said, I still believe in the value of economy of words. Economy of words doesn’t mean writing short—it means writing lean. It means using only as many words as the story needs. Louis L’Amour is a great example of this. His prose is tight, clear, and evocative. Most of his novels are quick reads, but they pack a punch. He could sketch a character in half a page and make you care about them. That’s not to say all of his books were short—The Walking Drum is a long and sprawling novel—but even there, his style is efficient. Every scene does something. Every word earns its place.

So why does epic fantasy run so long? Does it always have to be padded with extra filler? Not when it’s done well. One of the defining features of epic fantasy is that the world itself becomes a character. Tolkien mastered this. Middle-earth isn’t just a setting; it has a history, a culture, and an arc. The long travelogues, the deep lore, the songs and genealogies—they help build a sense of depth that makes the final conflict in The Return of the King resonate on a mythic level. You’re not just watching Frodo destroy a ring; you’re watching the curtain fall on an entire age.

And when the world has that kind of weight—when it grows, transforms, and carries the burden of history—it’s no surprise that a single book often isn’t enough. That’s one of the reasons epic fantasy so often stretches into multi-volume series. If the world is a character, it needs space for its own arc to unfold. A hero might only need three acts to complete their journey, but a world? That can take a bit longer.

Still, there’s more than one way to structure a series. Take Louis L’Amour again. He wrote mostly short standalone novels, but many of them followed the same families—like the Sacketts or the Chantrys—so that readers who wanted more could get it. You didn’t have to read them in order. You could pick up whichever one you found first and still get a complete story. That’s a far cry from most modern fantasy series, where the series itself is a single, complete work that must be read in order. After all, try starting The Wheel of Time at book five or A Song of Ice and Fire at book three, and you’ll be utterly lost.

My copy of The Lord of the Rings is a single-volume edition, the way Tolkien originally intended it. The main reason it was split into multiple books was to save on printing costs (Tolkien himself split the book into six parts, but the publisher turned it into a trilogy). Frankly, I think it works better that way. When a series beings to sprawl, the middle books often sag, and readers can definitely feel that. Just look at Crossroads of Twilight (Book 10 of The Wheel of Time) and how much the fans hate that book. I also remember when A Dance with Dragons first came out, with a 2.9-star average on Amazon that held for several years. (That rating has since improved, but I suspect that a large part of it is due to review farming by the publisher.)

Another risk inherent in writing a long, sprawling series is that the author will never finish it. George R.R. Martin is the most infamous example here—fans have been waiting for The Winds of Winter for over a decade, with no firm release date in sight. Patrick Rothfuss has faced similar criticism, with readers growing increasingly frustrated over the long delay between The Wise Man’s Fear and the long-promised third book in the Kingkiller Chronicle. And Orson Scott Card has yet to finish his Alvin Maker series. Seventh Son was published when I was just four years old, and though I enjoyed the first two books in that series, I refuse to read the rest of it until Card finishes the damned series.

I’m not alone. Many readers, burned one too many times, now refuse to even begin a new fantasy series until it’s complete. I can’t blame readers for feeling this way, but it does create a real challenge for new and midlist authors trying to break into the genre. Without the benefit of an established readership, it’s hard to convince readers to invest in book one of a planned trilogy or longer series. And if readers don’t start the first book, the rest may never see publication.

Right now, I’m writing an epic fantasy series based loosely on the life of King David. According to my outline, it’s a seven book series, but I’ve decided instead to split it into two trilogies (each with a complete arc) and a bridge novel (kind of like what Frank Herbert intended for the Dune books, though he died before he could finish the final book of the second trilogy). My plan is to wait until the first trilogy is totally written, publish the first three books within a month of each other, and promote that trilogy while I write the bridge novel and sequel trilogy.

In the meantime, I’ve been having a blast writing short fantasy novels in the Sea Mage Cycle, in-between drafts of my larger books. With The Sea Mage Cycle, I’m following a series structure that’s much closer to what Louis L’Amour did with his Chantry and Sackett books. Each book is a standalone, and the books can be read in any order, but they all tie together with recurring characters/families. As with all epic fantasy, the world itself is something of a character, but each book is more like a single thread in the tapestry of that wider story.

Not every epic needs to be long. Not every story benefits from being part of a massive, sprawling series. But when done well—when every word pulls its weight, when the world itself becomes a living character, when the structure supports the arc instead of smothering it—epic fantasy becomes something truly special.

It becomes epic, in every sense of the word.

Fantasy from A to Z: All Posts