Over the past year or so, I’ve been helping my friend J. Scott Coatsworth promote his epic SF/F saga THE THARASSAS CYCLE. Given my tiny online footprint, that help can only be marginal. However, as an indie / small press author, I can testify that even the most marginal uptick in Being Noticed can feel consequential. So here I am again to help announce the latest volume in this series.
In my post on the previous book I said it was the final volume. Oops! It wasn’t! There’s more! Keep reading after the image for a brief summary of this series.
Okay, here we go. Books in the series are:
0 – Tales From Tharassas
1 – The Dragon Eater
2 – The Gauntlet Runner
3 – The Hencha Queen
4 – The Death Bringer
Here’s the author page at Water Dragon Publishing. All titles are available (the latest after September 19, 2024) wherever e-books are sold.
About the series:
The Tharassas Cycle is a four book sci-fantasy series set on the recently colonized world of Tharassas. When humans first arrived on planet, they thought they were alone until the hencha mind made itself known. But now a new threat has arisen to challenge both humankind and their new allies on this alien world.
About THE DEATH BRINGER:
Aik will never be the same…and neither will his world.
War is coming. Aik has become the Progenitor, and the Seed Mother has released him to transform the world for her alien brood. Silya and Raven, Aik’s former friends, are the only ones who can save him and the world. But what if the cure is worse than the invasion?
As Silya rushes to prepare Gullton for the battle to come, she’s determined to save as many people as she can. But new crises emerge that demand her attention.
Raven has his own hands full, keeping the dragon-like verent in line, while helping Silya to save the world. But what if the only way to do so is to sacrifice Aik, the man that he loves?
It’s the end of the world ... or could it be the start of something new?
THREE KEY THINGS about THE DEATH BRINGER:
You’ll definitely get more out of it if you read it as the conclusion to a series; there’s a ton of world-building, a large cast of characters, and interwoven story threads. If you’ve read the previous books, you’ll be prepared for the shifts in point-of-view and aware of the tangled relationships.
About those relationships: the three main characters of THE THARASSAS CYCLE are Raven (a thief), Aik (a Guard), and Silya (a priestess Queen). Aik & Silya once had a thing. Raven and Aik have started a thing. What with the existential threat looming over them, working through their personal stuff isn’t a high priority. But they are young, so personal stuff is never far out of mind. Additionally, all three are now in symbiotic relationships (in Aik’s case, a non-benign symbiosis) with other creatures or forces.
While this saga is in many ways High Fantasy, it also wraps in spacefaring technology. The world in which we find ourselves had native inhabitants of the type whose sentience is non-apparent to the humans who settled the planet centuries ago. Poor records and intentional secrecy impede our three protagonists in their race to save the world. One of their useful allies is a ship AI who used to be human – I’d love to see that character get a spinoff.
One more key thing:
Gender diversity (and indeed gender fluidity) is a given in this saga. Emotional and physical relationships are pretty much all in the pansexual, panromantic space. The validity of nonhuman intelligence is also a given.
About the conclusion:
Most epic story cycles go through moments of mortal peril, grievous loss, tentative alliance, apparent or real betrayal. Most also involve the expectation of ultimate sacrifice. In THE DEATH BRINGER, what brings all three of the main characters to safety in the end is the willingness to coexist with a truly alien being whose history with their world is profoundly destructive.
If you’ve been wishing for a SF/F epic that delivers a genuinely hopeful ending free of genocide, I recommend this series.