BOOK OF DUST 3, Hugos shortlist and new Sanderson novels

Fantasy Novel News

In this newsletter:

1. Fantasy Novel News

2. Free and discounted fantasy ebooks

3. New reviews of SOTJ1

4. What I’ve been working on

5. In other news

6. Latest episode of ongoing fantasy serial SAGA OF THE JEWELS

7. What we’ve been reading / listening to

1. Fantasy Novel News

-Philip Pullman has finished the final volume of THE BOOK OF DUST, which will be called THE ROSE FIELD and be published in October.

I have mixed feelings about this because HIS DARK MATERIALS is one of my favourite fantasy series ever, but I didn’t get on very well with the previous entry in THE BOOK OF DUST. We’ll have to see!

-The shortlist for the Hugo Awards is out. Fantasy nominees for best novel include:

SOMEONE YOU CAN BUILD A NEST IN by John Wiswell

A SORCERESS COMES TO CALL by T. Kingfisher

THE TAINTED CUP by Robert Jackson Bennet

-Brandon Sanderson fans rejoice. He has announced two new books coming this year, secret project ISLES OF THE EMBERDARK and short story collection TAILORED REALITIES.

-A data scientist called Cassidy Beeve-Morris created an algorithm to discover the ‘best’ SFF books and series since 1970 based on numerous prestigious SFF awards. Some interesting appearances in there—not what you might guess!

-Here’s a list of SFF books publishing in May 2025 complied by a redditor. I was very pleased to see that FIRE AND LIGHTNING is top of the list! Because…

-SAGA OF THE JEWELS BOOK ONE: FIRE AND LIGHTNING, a heavily edited version of the first season of the serial that appears in this very newsletter, is published in paperback and ebook today! I will also email out tomorrow (Friday) when the ebook goes FREE on Amazon for five days, so look out for that!

2. Your free and discounted fantasy ebooks sales for this month

Click the banners below for free and cheap fantasy ebook goodness!

3. New reviews of SOTJ 1

Still considering whether or not to pick up your free copy of SOTJ1?

Here are some new early reader reviews that came in for it on Amazon and Goodreads over the last month:

Thanks, mizp75!

Thanks, S Button!

Thanks, Lorraine!

Thanks, Reader!

Thanks, Sarah! (Click the pic to read her full review.)

Thanks, Anne!

Thanks, Kat!

Thanks, Jessica! (Click the pic to read her full review). I’d be much obliged if you could please leave an honest star rating too, Jessica!

Thanks, Jennifer! My favourite review of the month. “all the nerdy things rolled into one book” might need to go in my next blurb XD

Thanks, Terry!

And my favourite bad review of the month, an email from a reader who DNF’d their free review copy:

Ah, damn. Can’t win em all I guess. Next time I’ll have to make the ‘narrative’ better.

From tomorrow it will also be possible to review SOTJ1 on Amazon with a ‘verified purchase’ badge. Please await instructions in your emails!

4. What I’ve Been Working On

To be honest a lot of this month’s spare energy has been taken up with final proofing and getting the launch of SOTJ1 (this Friday) ready, but buoyed up by those reviews I did start writing the first words of SOTJ4! I also edited up the first 10,000 words of another project and sent it off to a competition. The latest draft of the cover of SOTJ2 came in from Miblart too, which is looking nifty but still needs some fine-tuning:

5. In Other News

In this place called ‘real life’, last month Jo and I went on holiday with the kids to Cornwall, which for American readers is like England’s version of California, only worse. A particular highlight for me was visiting the ruins of Tintagel, a castle literarily linked to King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Here’s me and the 2yo geeking out in ‘Merlin’s Cave’, a rock formation just below Tintagel!

6. Latest episode of ongoing fantasy serial SAGA OF THE JEWELS

Author’s Note: Podcast version coming very soon! I’ve got the last three months’ podcasts episodes ready and queued up. What I think I will do is stagger them and release one a week in May, so keep an ear out for them…

Previously on Saga of the Jewels…

The life of seventeen-year-old RYN, bookish son of a wealthy landowner, changes forever when his hometown is destroyed by the EMPIRE and everyone he has ever known is killed. Ryn discovers that the Empire are seeking TWELVE PRIMEVAL JEWELS which grant the power to manipulate different elements, and that his father had been hiding the FIRE RUBY. He sets out to take revenge on the Imperial General who killed his family and retrieve the Fire Ruby, and along the way meets NUTHEA the lightning-slinging princess, SAGAR the swaggering skypirate, ELRANN the tomboy engineer, CID the wizened old healer, and VISH the poppy-seed-addicted bounty hunter. Together the companions decide to find all of the Jewels in order to stop the EMPEROR from finding them first and taking over the world. They have thus far succeeded in retrieving the Fire Ruby, borne by Ryn, and the Lightning Crystal, borne by Nuthea. They have now come to the land of FARR where they intend to compete in a hand-to-hand fighting tournament in order to attempt to win its grand prize, the EARTH EMERALD…

SEASON TWO, EPISODE THIRTY-FOUR: THE NIGHT I MAKE IT WITH A WOMAN

One night before the tournament.

Sagar shoved the door of the public drinking house open and let Elrann go in first.

“What a gentleman,” she quipped as she walked past him.

“I’m a pirate second, gentleman first,” Sagar lied, grinning. Need to be on my best behaviour tonight, he thought as he followed her in. Tonight is going to be the first night that I make it with a woman. No rudeness. No brawling. No showing myself up. I need to impress her.

It was dim and cosy inside the pub, the only light coming from the orange flickers of a log-fire in the hearth. At this evening hour it was almost full, mostly of Farrians, but also some travellers from other lands–a big burly Aibarian, a smattering of Rikalian traders in colourful ponchos, and even a Morekemian, from the looks of her long braid, though thankfully not an Imperial–she must be an exile or a runaway. In one corner a lute player sat shrouded in shadows underneath a hooded cloak, picking the strings of his instrument with his fingers and softly singing the words to some sky-shanty. Perfect. Just the right mood. I chose well. Well done me.

They found a table with two seats, not too far from the bar, and took them.

In spite of himself, Sagar’s mouth was dry. This was going to be the night that he first made it with a woman, but he wasn’t quite sure where to start–or at least he had forgotten where he was meant to start. If he had ever known.

Elrann regarded him cooly with her purple eyes.

“Aren’t you going to offer to buy me a drink?”

“What? Yes! Of course! I mean, of course I am. I was just waiting for you to tell me what you wanted. What do you want, woman?”

“What I want is for you to stop calling me that.” She likes it really. “But in the meantime, since you’re offering, pirate-man, I’ll take a rice-wine.”

“Rice-wine?” Sagar said. “What in the hells is that? Don’t you want a good ale?”

“You won’t get one here,” said Elrann. “Farrian ale tastes like chocobo-piss. It’s famous for it. They’re very good at their rice-wine, though. Try one. You’ll see.”

Sagar grunted, then went and ordered their first two rice-wines from the bar. While the Farrian bartender fetched them for him, he reviewed his plan of attack.

Alright. I know she’s interested in me ’cause she agreed to come to the pub with me in the first place. And we’ve made it here–it wasn’t some sort of trick. Trouble is, I don’t know what I’m supposed to say to make things progress. So instead, I’ll just get really, really, really drunk. That’ll do it. A genius plan. It was a good thing he had swiped lots of coin from Cid for this evening.

He took their drinks back to the table and clinked glasses with Elrann.

The rice-wine tasted like…liquid fermented rice. But it was strong. That was good.

Elrann sighed contentedly and wiped her mouth.

Sagar’s face stretched in astonishment. Where he had only taken a sip, the woman had downed the whole of her glass in one gulp.

I forgot she can hold her drink like a lionbear.

He became aware that he should probably be saying something. What?

Complement her on her drinking ability. That was the sort of thing he had talked about with his crew, when they had still been alive.

He opened his mouth to do so.

“Shut up,” said the woman, holding up a hand. “Whatever you’re about to say, pirate-man, shut up. I’ve got something I need to talk to ya about. I’ve been putting it off for a while, trying to find the courage, ’specially cause if I’ve misjudged things then this is going to be mighty embarrassing for me, but I can’t wait any longer, and this seems to be my opportunity.” She looked around for a moment, as if checking that nobody else they knew was in this pub. They weren’t.

Wow, that was easy, thought Sagar. That only took one drink! I must just be that irresistible. He was aware that he was being uncharacteristically un-talkative. But that seemed to be working for him at the moment. Maybe he had been playing this all wrong. Maybe the best tactic was just to sit back, keep hit mouth shut and let her come to him. It had worked so far…

The woman was looking at him. Apparently he needed to say something.

“Yeah?” he said in as nonchalant a manner as he could muster. “What is it, then?”

“Pirate-man…” said Elrann. She looked him in the eyes again. “Sagar… As you know, I’ve been fascinated by airships for a long time. And as you’ve probably worked out by now, I have a bit of a fascination with airship pirates and captains as well.”

Hope was truly stirring in Sagar’s chest now, and in his loins, but he kept his cool and kept up his relaxed skypirate-captain exterior. He wore it as easily as he wore his awesome leather Captain’s Coat that he had inherited from his father. He was a professional at this, the best around.

“Yeah?” he said nonchalantly.

“Yeah, I do…” said Elrann. She sighed, looked over at the bar, caught the barman’s eye, held up two fingers and pointed at their table, then gave him a thumb-up when he had acknowledged what she wanted. How does she do that? She turned back to Sagar. “And…well, what I’m trying to say is that there’s a reason I do.”

“I’m sure there is,” said Sagar, grinning. He leaned back a little in his chair, getting comfortable, and folded his arms. Play it cool. Don’t overcommit. You’re doing everything right, you dark cochobo.

Elrann frowned slightly at him. “Yeah, there is. And the reason is…the reason is that my Mum… my Mum once told me about who my father was. Ya see, my mother was a rice-farmer from Zerlan who lived with her parents until I came along, and apparently my Dad…my Dad was a famous pirate skycaptain who slept with her once when he put into port in Zerlan.”

Sagar frowned a little at that. He hadn’t been expecting this. It threw him a little. Okay, so she likes me ’cause of her Daddy issues. That’s a bit weird, but I can get on board with it. Whatever launches her skyship. I’ve got my own Daddy issues too, most people do, though they don’t affect me in quite the same way… She was looking at him. He needed to say something again. “Yeah?” he said, a touch less nonchalantly than before.

The barman arrived with two more drinks and set them down on the table before shuffling off again.

“Pirate-man…” said Elrann, grasping her second drink, “don’t you see what I’m trying to tell you?”

A vision of taking her back to her room at their lodgings flashed through Sagar’s mind. He grinned. “I think I might be starting to catch on…” He lifted his first glass of rice-wine to his mouth for another sip.

“Sagar…what I’m trying to tell you is that I think I might be your half-sister.”

The rice-wine sprayed out of Sagar’s mouth in a shower. Most of it went on his trousers. Some went on the table. Some went on Elrann.

A pause.

“What?!” he said.

A pause.

“WHAT?!!” he exclaimed.

A pause.

“WHAT?!!!” he shouted.

The background chatter of the pub stopped, and the other drinkers all turned in their seats to look at him. Even the lutist stopped his playing and singing for a moment.

“Nothing to see here folks!” Elrann said to the room. “Just a little revelation about a long-lost sibling!”

The drinkers went back to their drinks, the lutist to his lute, in apparent acceptance of this.

Sagar, meanwhile, had frozen.

His mind had gone slow.

Sister.

Half-sister.

Pirate-skycaptain.

Airships.

Fascination.

“Whaaaaaaaat?” he said one more time, much more quietly but very high-pitched, to the woman.

“Think about it,” Elrann said to him, leaning in and keeping her voice low. “My father was a famous pirate skycaptain. My Mum never told me his name, and I’m not even sure that she ever knew his name, but she did tell me that he was the captain of a pirate airship, and that he wore a ponytail and a long leather coat, among other things. That’s why I’ve always had a fascination with airships and skypirates–because of hearing about my Dad. When I put two and two together was when pops said that your father was a pirate skycaptain. Ya never mentioned that yaself. I reckon that your Dad, the one who travelled around with pops for a while, must be the same as my Dad.”

Sagar stared at nothing at all. He was struggling to process this. Fragments of words and images danced around in his mind. Memories of his father, in his long coat and ponytail, boasting about his amorous conquests to the men. The times he had flown into or over Zerlan as part of his Dad’s crew. Had he even been on the voyage when this had happened, too young to remember it, or to naïve to be aware of it? Had Elrann really been conceived by the same person, under similar circumstances that he had? But then…urgh! Why had he been attracted to this woman if he was partly related to her? He couldn’t have been!

“No,” he said eventually. “This is crazy. You’re crazy. There’s no way that we could be related!”

Elrann cocked her head. “Did your father have a long ponytail, like you?

“Well, yeah, but–”

“And did he own a long brown leather coat?”

“Well, yeah. This one, actually. He gave it to me when he handed the Wanderlust over to me. But that doesn’t mean anything! There must be plenty of pirate skycaptains that have ponytails and long leather coats!”

Elrann raised a single purple eyebrow at him.

Sagar took another drink from his glass, and this time downed what was left of it. The wine stung the back of his throat, but he didn’t care.

“I don’t believe it…” he said. “I won’t believe it…”

“Yeah,” said Elrann, “I’m not exactly thrilled about it either…” She looked him up and down. “But there’s just too many coincidences. I suppose we don’t know for sure, but until we find out for certain there’s a chance that we are related. There’s only one way to do that, though…”

“What do you mean?” said Sagar, genuinely puzzled. The wine was starting to settle him into a fuzzy haze, but now he only felt depressed in it.

Elrann hesitated. “What I mean is…if we could find your father, we could find out for sure if he’s…if he’s my father too. You said you inherited your coat from him, and you’ve hinted before that you flew with him…if you know where he is, we could go and find him and ask him ourselves?”

“Ah,” said Sagar. “That’s what you mean. Well, sorry, woman, but I don’t know where he is.”

Elrann’s face fell. “How come?”

“You’re right, I did fly with him for a long time. I was raised on his ship, in fact–on board the Wanderlust, by his crew. I never knew my Mum. Apparently whoever he fathered me on didn’t want me, so she just dumped me on him instead. I didn’t even know that he was my father till I came of age. I thought I was just some orphan they’d picked up somewhere to work as a cabin boy. Then one day he told me he was my father, that he was retiring from piracy, along with most of his crew, and that he was giving me his ship to inherit, along with some coin to recruit a new crew with and make a start in piracy myself. Then we set down in Imfis, he bought a light craft, and buggered off into the horizon. That was the last I ever saw of him.”

“Oh,” said Elrann, now staring off at nothing, just like Sagar had been while he had been telling his story. “Well…” she said after a moment, “that’s a shame… I’d hoped that you would help me be able to find him…”

The two of them fell silent, looking into their drinks, and the chatter of the other drinkers and the playing of the lutist in the corner swept over them.

Sagar took another drink. Well, some evening this has turned out to be. I’m hoping to bed the woman, and it turns out we might be related! Course, it’s only a ‘might’ but….urgh! I can’t sleep with someone who even might be my half-sister! Can I?

His train of thought paused for a moment.

No!

He took another drink to drive him further into his rice-wine haze and away from his misery.

The musician in the corner picked up the volume a bit, picking the strings more loudly and starting to sing a sad, lilting song. The wistful tones reflected his mood pretty well.

What do I do now? I guess it’s back to the drawing board. I’ll have to try with the princess again. But that seems like a closed door right now. Rrrr… He looked around at the other drinkers in the pub. I wonder if there’s anyone in here who would—

All of a sudden Elrann sat up straight, raising her head, and twitched, like a wolf that had been alerted to something.

“Hey!” she said.

“What is it?” Sagar said, putting a hand to one of his cutlasses.

“Did you hear that?”

Sagar strained his ears. All he could hear was the other customers chatting, and the lutist singing his song.

“The singer!” Elrann said. “He’s singing about those magical Jewel-thingamys that we’re trying to find on our quest!”

“He is?” said Sagar.

“Yeah! Listen!”

They listened as the lutist came back round to the chorus of his song, singing in a clear, lilting voice:

Ruby is Fire,

Lost, not forever

Sapphire is Water,

Umbar’s true treasure

Crystal is Lightning

Manolia’s joy

Diamond is Light

The Maker’s great ploy

Onyx is Darkness

In depths of a pit

Shell seals the wind

If you can catch it

Em’rald is Earthen

You’ll find it in Farr

Moon is a pearl

Borrow’d from a star

Meteor is Metal

Found in fixed fortress

Carnelian’s Spirit

A summoning sorc’ress

Stone is in the Nature

That so silently grows

And Void is a secret

That not nobody knows

Twelve Peoples of Mid

And Twelve Jewels there are

To rescue her

In her most desp’rate hour

When gathered together

The Twelve Jewels from afar

The Maker will make known

The truth of his power

As the lutist finished the long chorus, leaving only the notes of the strings he continued to pluck, Sagar and Elrann looked at each other.

“By all the gods I don’t believe in, you’re right!” Sagar said.

He stood up.

Elrann grabbed his arm immediately. “What are you doing?!” she said.

Sagar frowned at her. His vision had taken a short moment to catch up with him when he had stood up. “What do you think I’m doing? We need to go and talk to him about how he knows about the Jewels!”

“Sit down,” Elrann hissed at him through gritted teeth, and yanked him back into his chair. Damn, but she was strong.

“Hey, what gives, woman?” Sagar said. His vision had taken a moment to catch up with him when he sat down as well.

Elrann looked over each of her shoulders. “Don’t you see?” she said to him quietly. “Nobody else has noticed that he’s singing about the Primeval-Jewel-Thingamies, or at least nobody else cares. Only we recognised it. And princess-girl’s mission…our mission…is top secret and super important and stuff, isn’t it? We don’t want to attract attention to it or to ourselves by making a big fuss out of it and going right up to that guy straight away, do we?”

Slowly this clicked into place in Sagar’s mind. “Oh. Right. Yeah, well, I wasn’t going to talk to him straight away, was I? I was…I was getting up to go to the privy.”

Elrann snorted. “Yeah, right. You’ve barely had two drinks. I can see that you can’t hold your liquor, but your bladder can’t be as weak as that.”

“Hey, look here, woman–”

“Shut up,” said the woman with a wave of her hand. “Listen. You’re right, we need to talk to that guy.” She glanced over at the hooded lutist, who had finished his Jewel song and was starting a new one, singing more quietly than he had before. “But we need to wait until he’s finished playing. Then we go over to him all casual like, alright, and say that we really enjoyed his music, we chat with him a bit, and then we ask him about where he learned that song about the Jewel-thingamies. Got it?”

Sagar’s head swam. He didn’t like how this evening had unfolded so far. But somewhere he supposed that what the woman was suggesting was sensible.

“Alright,” he said. “But what do we do in the meantime?”

“What else?” said Elrann. “We stay here and we keep drinking.”

She gestured to the barman.

-

Enjoyed the episode? Buy book 1 at mybook.to/sotj1 or support the monthly creation of the saga at patreon.com/Faenon

7. What we’ve been reading / listening to

What I’ve been reading

Last month I read THE CURSE OF CHALION by Lois McMaster Bujold. The hype is real! I’m only sad that it took me so long to discover this. While not quite as theologically profound as I’d hoped, there is still some awesome theological stuff in this novel, and it’s wrapped up in a cracking story with hyperoriginal worldbuilding, exquisite writing and deep characters. Wow! 5 stars; highly recommended!

What I’ve been listening to

Last month I also listened to ORCSLAYER by Nathan Long, the first of the GOTREK AND FELIX Warhammer novels not written by William King. I can confirm that sadly Long is not as good as The King. He doesn’t spend forever and forever in indirect thought, which is a plus, but he’s just not as compelling a writer. Also, this book should be called DWARFWALKER instead of Orcslayer because it’s really about dwarfs. I am committed to these characters and this series now (and Jonathan Keeble’s narration, which is still outstanding) so I will keep going, but hopefully MANSLAYER and ELFSLAYER we will be better than this one!

What Jo’s been reading

Jo went on to the second in Jen Williams’ Winnowing Flame trilogy, THE BITTER TWINS, last month. I don’t knowe details as I may read them one day but she has repeatedly said to me over the last month ‘It’s good’, ‘You should read this’ and ‘This lady clearly plays videogames’! Recommended!

What we’ve been listening to together

Bonus! In the car in Cornwall we put on Benedict Flynn’s summary of the KING ARTHUR AND THE KNIGHTS OF THE ROUND TABLE stories (sadly not available on audible, but it can be bought 2nd hand on CD) read by none other than Sean Bean (Boromir)! This was FRICKIN AWESOME! Some details and lesser known versions of stories that I hadn’t come across before and, let me say it again, read by Boromir! Highly recommended!

That’s all for this month! See you next time!

-Faenon / Thomas Tarasios / Luke