The Roland Fantasy Series.

 

Well, as you can see in the book-list column to the right, the second book of the Roland of The High Crags series is out. After a long wait, it finally has seen the light of day. Now--what's interesting to me--is book one of the series has suddenly found an audience. After being out for a few months, suddenly the book has shot up into the rarefied air of Amazon ratings to where it could almost be considered being a fantasy hit.

What I am waiting to see is if there is a kind of tag-team match where the readers who liked the first book bleeds off into the second book and continues to follow the series along. As of yet, that hasn't happened.

Book One is called Evil Arises. 

Book Two is Treacherous Brethren.

(both can be found in the book-list to your right)

Quickly sketching a summation of both books goes like this. For over a millennia, two sentient species have been raging war against each other. One human--one dragon. Humanity came first and established suzerainty over the entire world. The humanoid-shaped Great Dragon came next. And with them came their dark dragon gods who promised they would one day rise up and destroy mankind. And this would be accomplished through the guidance and leadership of five mythical creatures called The Five Princesses,or sometimes referred to as The Five Sisters.

Four of the sisters have come and gone. The Fifth Sister is alive. But is now only a small child. Not until she reaches adulthood will she fulfill the gods ultimate role; that being the destruction of humanity itself. And as a child, she is quite vulnerable to the ravages of both man and dragon.

I am not going to say more about the story line--leaving that up to you to find out for yourself. But I do have a couple of comments left.

I am currently into writing the third book of the series, entitled Desperate Pawns.  And so, here is comment number one; 

Does the child live or die? 

As a child she is just a child. An innocent creature, albeit filled with unbelievable magic she really doesn't know how to control. But still only a child. She does not become evil until she reaches adulthood. Or maybe not. Her Fate is yet undecided.Those who are trying to save her believe neither in Fate, nor her twin-sister, Destiny. So do you take the chance and hope you can guide the child to adulthood and change dragon prophecy of her becoming evil? Or do you remove her from the scene now, and in doing so, remove dragon prophecy altogether.

My second comment is more a statement. I had planned to make this a 10-volume series. Ten books. But maybe not. It's taken almost six years (maybe more!) to get just two volumes in print. And although I believe ten story lines are there for the taking, I'm not too sure there is enough time to get them done.

I mean, come on! I'm a writer. I've got hundreds of characters, with their own stories, popping around in my head and demanding to be written. So, being human, the concept of Time is finite when it comes to living a life. So who do I pick and choose to free?

Yes, it is indeed an interesting conundrum.