Guest Post: Author Christopher Kellen Talks About His Magic

I'm always interested in how things "work" in fantasy worlds so when author Christopher Kellen offered to do a guest post, I asked him to fill us in on how magic works in his The Elements of Sorcery series. Please welcome Christopher as he fills us in on... 

The Magic of Eisengoth

 The first book I wrote set in the world which would eventually become Eisengoth was ELEGY—my 2008 NaNoWriMo project and the first book in my flagship Arbiter Codex series. I began around a single thought: what if the magic in a fantasy world was toxic to the touch? If that were the case, there would need to be someone who was immune to that danger, and that's how the idea of the Arbiters was born.

Magic in Eisengoth is centered on the life-force known as manna. I named it that because it is the only essence on which my Arbiters subsist. They have no need for food nor drink as long as they have a steady source of manna on hand. In its pure form, when it is flowing properly, manna has a brilliant blue glow. In places where it concentrates, it forms crystals that push their way up through the earth. The problem is that the light from the manna is deadly to anyone that it falls upon, sucking out their soul and turning them into a fel beast—in other words, a monster. This is handled in cities by surrounding these crystal formations—known as manna fonts—with a particular kind of white marble which is not degraded by the radiant energy of the magic.

Manna can also become corrupted, either by the direct will of human beings or by a long-term association with negative actions, or mass deaths. When corruption takes hold, the life-force becomes a hot crimson, and begins sucking the life out of the surrounding area. A place too long infected with corruption becomes arid and cold; plants wither and die, and animals begin transforming into fel beasts at a much faster rate.

Corruption is associated with the actions of the dark gods; even speaking their name is considered to be a dangerous curse that could call them out of their slumber to eat the offender alive. The dark gods' agents are known as daemons; these are intelligent, malevolent, otherworldly creatures whose aim is to manipulate, deceive and destroy humankind. Thankfully, there aren't many of them.

There are two kinds of magic-users in Eisengoth. First are the Arbiters: dangerous warrior-monks trained from childhood to hunt and slay fel beasts and unravel corruption. They are immune to the direct deadly effects of the manna thanks to the enchantments provided by a small artifact known as the heartblade. This also gives them some limited ability to direct manna through themselves and use it for fire-based attacks, as seen in ELEGY. (Due to potential spoilers, for more on the Arbiters and their abilities, you'll have to check out the Arbiter Codex.)

The second type are sorcerers, also known as witches, warlocks, necromancers, or just about any other epithet you can think of to describe them, depending on their particular focus. All of these types utilize sorcery, however, which is a specific method of creating a channel inside the mind which allows them to draw in the deadly manna and re-shape it using a variety of mental tools. Sorcery exists in two subtypes: evocation, which is a direct draw and re-shape of manna through the mind's channel, usually in the form of an elemental result (Eisengoth lore uses the five Chinese elements: wind, water, fire, metal and wood); and enchantment, which is a much more subtle process of creating a set of specific rules that bind the power in a certain way, forcing it to flow through a series of logical statements, which are usually written in a dead language. I like to think of enchantment as magical computer programming—you set up the machine ahead of time and then send the spark of power through. It takes more time to set up, but is much less dangerous than evocation.

A 'true' sorcerer is able to perform both enchantment and evocation, but most would-be practitioners don't survive their first attempt. Creating the mental channel is far from easy, and there aren't a whole lot of practicing sorcerers willing to risk their neophyte apprentice turning into a fel beast and eating off their master's face when they go wrong!

THE ELEMENTS OF SORCERY focuses on the tale of how Edar Moncrief, a maker of love potions and wart remover (and competent sorcerer in his own right) gets tangled up with an Arbiter, and how his life gets irrevocably screwed up from that point forward. It's swords-and-sorcery written with an urban fantasy sensibility—like if Jim Butcher (author of The Dresden Files) wrote stories based on Robert E. Howard's Conan and Solomon Kane. There will be five installments when it's finished; each is novelette to novella-length, ranging between 14,000 and 19,000 words so far, and they've been getting steadily longer.

Enter the giveaway below for a chance to win a set of the first three installments in THE ELEMENTS OF SORCERY, including a pre-release copy of the latest, Sorcerer's Blood, to be delivered at least three days prior to its worldwide launch!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Thanks, Christopher. Very interesting! To find out more about Christopher Kellen and his books, please visit his website, Eye of the Storm.

7 Questions: Author Keith Robinson

Keith Robinson is an independent author whose work I've admired for years.  A transplant from across the pond, he began cranking out quality YA reads almost as soon as he got here. He's currently doing a giveaway of Island of Fog over on his Kindle page so check it out if you want to get a great book at a great price (free!).

Here now, seven questions for Keith Robinson:

Keith Robinson

1) I know you're originally from the UK. Can you tell us a little bit about your background and what brought you to the US?

I spent fourteen years working in an office in England drawing floor plans and organizing office refurbishments and relocations. It was a different life, wearing a suit, carrying a briefcase, driving or flying to offices all around the UK. It was during this time that I met my future wife from America. We were penpals for five years between 1990 and 1995 -- the traditional sort, sending handwritten letters by mail -- and then she decided to come and visit me in England for a short visit. We hit it off and, six months later, I went to visit her in Georgia, USA, and we got engaged. As you do.

She moved to England and we bought a house, and in 1999 (with an eye on the future) I left my job and became a self-employed website designer. I made half the money but was twice as happy. In 2001 we sold the house at profit and moved to America, and I took my website design business with me. Thus, our five-year plan came to fruition!

2) What made you decide to take the plunge and write your first novel?

Looking back, this probably came out of loneliness. I'd left my family and friends back in England, and while I was very happy living in Georgia, in a house with more yard than I ever dreamed of owning, I was pretty isolated as well. I continued building my website design business while my wife went to work, which invariably left me alone, often with very little work to do. So I started writing "seriously," something I'd only done as a hobby from time to time. I decided I'd make a go of selling short stories. That didn't work out at all, because selling short stories is really, really hard... and I found that I preferred writing novels. There were a few projects on the go, but ISLAND OF FOG (or ISLAND OF MIST as it was originally called) came into existence around February 2002.

3) I always like hearing about an author's process. What's involved in taking one of your books from idea to publication?

The first in the FOG series took a long, long time. Six years, to be exact, finally published in April 2009 -- although that was mostly because I still wasn't taking myself seriously as a writer and only writing as a hobby. This particular book went through numerous revisions before I even got to Chapter Nine. Then, once I'd pushed though, I got to Chapter Thirteen and realized it wasn't going where I expected, so I rewrote that last section as well. This was when I started learning that a detailed chapter summary is probably a good thing to have. Subsequently, all my other books have had a detailed chapter summary that allows me to explore and write the novel without actually writing it. It's a no-brainer. The long-term thinking process is the same, only with fewer words. Why write eight full chapters and then realize I'm going wrong when I can write eight paragraphs and come to the same conclusion? So now I always use chapter summaries, and I end up saving a lot of time.

Once the first draft is written, I go through a slow, detailed edit. This is like rewriting everything I've written, one paragraph at a time. Sometimes I think "Gah!" and delete a whole page of pointless drivel. Other times I'll go through half a page without a single correction and think I'm a genius. But mostly I correct and tighten and reword and flesh out and generally do it better.

Then it's time to print it out. I find a lot more typos when reading printed text, and that sweep is well worth doing. After that, I send the manuscript (now Version 3) to a few proofreader types who are willing to not only look for typos but suggest improvements and generally mention anything they feel is worth mentioning. After all those edits are complete, Version 4 is ready. This version is for a bigger selection of ARC readers, those who don't look for typos and just want to breeze through it and enjoy it as a finished book. Sometimes I'll get back some comments that suggest I fix something, and then I'll do some rewrites as necessary.

Finally it's ready, and I'm sick to death of it. I publish it with a sense of pride and excitement, but at the same time I'm SO over it already and moving on to the next project.

4) Who are some of your favorite fantasy/sf authors and what, if anything, about their style has influenced your own writing?

I enjoyed Piers Anthony when I was around 16-20. I read most of his back then. I also read Terry Brooks' first three Shannara books. I soon realized that I hate reading "high fantasy" with the weird made-up names and thousand-year-old back history and traditional medieval (middle-earth) setting. It's all too serious and plodding for me. I love the Game of Thrones HBO series but could never read the books. It's the same with Tolkien. I've actually read very few "famous" fantasy books; I prefer to read the facts about the myths and legends and make up my own versions of them in my own way, and I prefer starting out in a contemporary world with characters we can all identify with who are thrown into fantastically weird settings. So I guess that's Urban Fantasy.

On the flip side, I used to read a lot of hardcore sci-fi from Stephen Baxter and Asimov, and lighter sci-fi from Harry Harrison. In fact, Harry Harrison (creator of the Stainless Steel Rat series) probably sent me to more places than any other author. Stephen Baxter, though, is something of a genius (brilliant physicist, etc) and I'm frequently mind-boggled by his expansive ideas.

And then there's Douglas Adams. Who isn't inspired by him? Of course, I also read Dean Koontz and Stephen King and all those other authors that everybody else reads.

5) On a related note, I know you're a devotee of Enid Blyton. Who was Enid Blyton and why should folks outside the UK know about her?

Ah, yes. I grew up on Enid Blyton books. She died in 1968 after a very long, very successful career. Some of her most popular series were like England's answer to the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and Three Investigators. The difference is that Blyton wrote all her own stories and churned out something like 185 novels in her career, not to mention ten thousand short stories. She's world famous, just strangely absent from America, because although she did have some books here a few decades ago, her stories were in direct competition with the aforementioned Hardy Boys. Oddly enough, despite her fame, the only award she ever got was for MYSTERY ISLAND -- the American edition of THE ISLAND OF ADVENTURE. How ironic!

Was I inspired by her? Yes, but not in terms of genre. I loved playing at "mystery solving" when I was young, as did all my Blyton-reading friends, and I still like the idea of a set of mystery novels beginning with "The Mystery of..." -- but it's been done to death, and besides, I like to inject some weird stuff in my writing. So I grew up on children's mystery and adventure, moved on to light (and some heavy) fantasy, read a lot of hard sci-fi and horror, and ended up writing my own brand of fantasy.

6) You've had a very successful run with your Island of Fog novels. Can you give us a thumbnail of what happens over the course of these books and talk about the challenges of writing a multi-book YA series?

Short answer: kids turn into monsters, kids save the world. The longer answer is that there are a group of children living on a perpetually foggy island with their parents, and now that they're twelve-years-old, they're starting to question what's Out There beyond the fog. Is the rest of the world really "dead" as they've been told? Best friends Hal and Robbie build a raft to sail out to the hidden mainland... but don't quite make it. Things really start to happen when one of the "annoying" girls, Abigail, shows Hal her secret -- that she's growing wings! She says they're all turning into monsters. So the question becomes, "Are we freaks of nature? Or subjects of a sinister experiment?"

The arrival of a stranger -- itself a remarkable thing since there's supposedly nobody left alive in the world outside the island -- sets everything in motion. Now the kids are mad. They're determined to find out the truth no matter how much trouble they get in.

This is all in the first book, and it sets the stage for a 6-book series in which they get to test their shapeshifting abilities against real fantasy creatures and uncover deeper truths about what went wrong with the world. And Hal and Abigail find that they actually like each other a little bit.

Writing for a younger audience is, frankly, not a problem. I firmly believe that writers have a niche, and mine is to write for a young-ish audience but with adults in mind as well. In other words, edgy but clean, dark but not graphic, fun but not childish. I don't talk down to my readers, but I keep it family-oriented.

7) What are you working on these days?

The sixth and final FOG book. Actually, it's the final book for now but not necessarily forever. I'll be starting on a prequel in a few months, plus a series of short stories. In a year or so I might yearn to come back with Book 7.

But aside from that, right now I'm working on a collaboration novel called FRACTURED with author Brian Clopper. Then I have a novel called QUINCY'S WORLD that I want to finish editing and put out for publication. And I have a whole slew of ideas for future projects, which my fingers can't keep up with. If only I was famous and rich so my wife and I could give up work, hire a nanny, cleaner, and gardener.... oh, and pool girl for the pool we'd install. My wife insists on a pool boy, but I vote for a pool girl. A show of hands, please? Roger? Help me out here.

###

Thanks, Keith! Personally, I'd go for a pool robot, but that's how I roll.

If you'd like to learn more about Keith, check out his website, Unearthly Tales, or his Facebook author fan page.

Wassup, King Arthur?

Over at io9, Lauren Davis shares some interesting writing advice in her article, "How to make sure the language in your historical fantasy novel is period-accurate." She references The Jane Austen Word List created by fantasy author Mary Robinette Kowal to help her weed out period-inaccurate words for her novel, Glamour in Glass, set in the same time period as Jane Austen's books. To build the list MRK assembled "all the words that are in the collected works of Jane Austen to use for my spellcheck dictionary."

While I have to admit I didn't go too crazy about this in Dragonfriend, preferring to come down on the side of middle-grade "readability" rather than being overly concerned about historically accurate Old English vocabulary, I did ask my editor, Darren Robinson, to flag any eye-poking anachronisms.

A few of the words Kowal ended up pulling out of her book "because they either didn’t exist in 1815 or that didn’t mean what they mean now" are: "cliquish," "mannequin," "laundry," "titanium white," and "wastepaper basket" (for which she writes, "Weird note. Trashcans, wastepaper baskets, garbage cans… none of these exist even as a concept. Everything got reused, fed to the pigs, or burned in the fire.")

For me, it was more a case of catching myself wanting to put in modern (American) slang words like "okay" and having Darren flag things like "biz," "Father Christmas," and "halfpenny" which he correctly points out, "only dates back some 700 years, long after Arthurian times." 

How about you? Any vocabulary challenges in your own work of historical fiction (fantasy or otherwise)? Or a case of being derailed by anachronistic word choice in a book you were reading? Let us know in the comments.

Book Review: Brood of Bones

An exceptionally cruel dark magic is plaguing the city of Morimound and Enchantress Hiresha must solve the mystery of who has infected the wombs of almost all the women of her beloved town with bony abominations. Simultaneously nearing the end of their nine month pregnancies, Hiresha races to find the culprit - an evil sorcerer, she suspects – and undo his brutal spell before the women of Morimound die horrifyingly painful deaths giving birth to these unchildren, this brood of bones. 

As much an exciting detective story as it is a great fantasy read, Brood of Bones succeeds in both genres. Author A.E. Marling has crafted a complex yet accessible tale rich with plot feints and red herrings that had me guessing until the very end. The real joy, however, is how he’s created a world so unique and detailed that I found myself marveling at his ability to describe and generate the rules of magic for a setting that is both comfortably familiar and completely original. The “dream physics” of Hiresha’s laboratory alone establish Marling’s credentials as an exceptionally skilled creator of never before imagined worlds. 

In short, Brood of Bones is a fantasy masterwork. Highly recommended.

Bye Bye Blog: The Re-post

I posted this a couple of days ago on my other blog, Roger Eschbacher Books, and wanted to see if anyone here had any thoughts or comments. Feedback (especially if it's not related to baseball) appreciated. ;c)

And now, the re-post:

I launched this Roger Eschbacher Books blog a few years back with the intention of having a landing spot specifically for the readers of my books (as opposed to The Novel Project, my blog primarily aimed at other authors).

BUT...

Anyone who's been following Roger Eschbacher Books knows I haven't been very good about updating this blog at all. In fact, I've been terrible! So, unless there are any strenuous objections of the "you moron, here's what you should really do" variety, I'm thinking it might be time to consolidate the platform and put this old and neglected horse out to pasture.

A couple of options I'm considering...

• Renaming "The Novel Project" and calling it "Roger Eschbacher Books." The Novel Project was the name I came up with to chronicle the march toward completion and publication of my first NaNoWriMo project that was to eventually become Dragonfriend. Since that book is completed and published, well...
• Getting a new URL for the "new" blog (to replace http://thenovelproject.blogspot.com/)
• Focusing all of my blogging energies on the revamped site -- retaining The Novel Project's author-centric bent but tossing in some reader focused material, too.
• Retaining the sillyroger url but have it "silently" point to the new and improved blog (or should I just chuck this domain name altogether? For some reason, I'm loathe to dump it but I think that might just be sentimentality at play as I'm not sure its all that good for my current "brand." I've had it for over ten years but came up with sillyroger when my focus was primarily on picture books for the 4-8 year old crowd, not middle-grade fantasy novels).

I know this is all inside baseball stuff of interest (maybe) only to other authors, but I'd love to hear everyone's feedback/suggestions on what I should do as I'm not one hundred percent sure about which path I should take. Thanks!

Fantabulous Indie Book Sale 12/15-12/18

Hey folks! Some iAi author pals of mine are running a special holiday promotion where you can get six great books for one great price ($.99 each!). Click on this link to find out more about each title including where you can go to purchase them as gifts for all of those special someones in your life.

Guest Post: Author Vanna Smythe Talks Revision

Please welcome fantasy author Vanna Smythe as she shares her thoughts on the revision process.

The Revision Part of My Writing Process
By Vanna Smythe

Roger has been kind enough to offer me a guest post spot on his blog today. He asked me to write on the topic of my writing process. Since I just finished the final revision of my second novel Decision Maker (Anniversary of the Veil, Book 2), I thought I’d share with you my revision methods.

First, let me say that I am a seat-of-the-pants writer, meaning I don’t have a great love for outlines and planning before I start writing.  In fact, what I would do with stories and novels before I started writing this one is just jot down a few notes on who my main characters are, what the world is, and what the conflict is, then I’d start writing. And rarely look at the outline again. In other words, I’m very good at sticking to a plotline, not veering off my intended storyline, or characterization.  I’m also very good at writing a complete first draft in a month or less.

I am, however, really bad at revision.

I had my first novel, Protector (Anniversary of the Veil, Book 1) written for over a year, before I finally started revising. It took me another year and a half to get it ready for publication.  But I’m happy to say that Decision Maker only took me 6 months to complete, and here is the revision process I worked through to get there:

1) First I read through the first draft and analyze my worldbuilding, characterization, plotline development, and so on. I note down all the places where more information, or better development is needed, but I don’t fix anything on the manuscript yet.

2) After this, I outline each chapter I want to keep, and also write down all the ones that are still missing.  I try to make this outline as brief and concise as possible, and have it contain fixes for all the problems I uncovered in Step 1.  Character motivation, shocking developments in the story, worldbuilding expansions all go into this outline.

3) Then, based on the outline, I start to rewrite the book chapter by chapter.

4) After the second draft is done, I send it off to my beta readers for feedback.  At the same time, I also read through it again, just noting down all the things I still have to change.  Once I get the reader comments back, I start the final revision. After I finish each chapter, I have my computer voice Alex (I’m on a Mac) read the text back to me.  Having someone, even a computer voice read your book to you is an awesome editing tool. It helps you spot typos, but also shows you, which sentences need to be rewritten for better readability.

5) The final step is another read-through using my computer’s text-to-speech program. During this step, I’m only concentrating on the flow of language, punctuation, word choices,...

So that’s how I revise nowadays.  I hope my process has given you some ideas.

Vanna Smythe

Vanna Smythe - Fantasy Author

Website: www.vannasmythe.com

Twitter: @Vanna_Smythe

Facebook: www.facebook.com/VannaSmytheAuthor

Protector (Anniversary of the Veil, Book 1): http://amzn.to/xLusPP

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Thanks, Vanna! I'm more of an outliner than a "pantser" (allowing myself to deviate from the outline when I make discoveries along the way) but I know a lot of folks do it your way and I appreciate you taking the time to share your revision process with us. 

Have a sure-fire revision tip or technique? I, for one, am always open to learning better ways to do things. Feel free to enlighten us in the comments.

The Next Big Thing: Giantkiller

Author pal Scott Bury, tagged me for The Next Big Thing blog hop and while I must admit I’m not normally a fan of this sort of thing, it sounded like fun (and he can be very persuasive). As Scott puts it:

"The idea behind the Next Big Thing is to answer a set list of questions about your work in progress, then tag five more authors to do the same thing."

I haven't figured out who I'm going to tag yet (hint hint -- if you'd like to do this for your upcoming novel, let me know), but here are some answers about my Next Big Thing:

What is the working title of your book?

Giantkiller: Leonard the Great, Book Two

Where did the idea come from for the book?

Giantkiller is the sequel to Dragonfriend, the first book in what I hope will be a three book series. After I’d finished Dragonfriend, I knew I wanted Leonard’s story to continue so I started thinking about what the next installment would be like. I’d been mulling over possible storylines for several months when it came to me from an unexpected source. In my garden I have a small “sculpture” of a stone cast in the shape of a man’s head. The idea popped into my mind that it “looked like a giant’s head.”  Next, the name “Boulderhead” showed up along with a tidal wave of story ideas.

What genre does your book fall under?

Middle-grade fantasy adventure with an Arthurian twist.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

Hmm, not sure. If pushed, I’d say the young leads would probably be unknowns while the adult roles would probably be played by a lot of the same folks who showed up in the Harry Potter/LOTR/Hobbit films.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

When his beloved is snatched by raiding Giants, Leonard sets off to rescue Maid Glennys before a gruesome fate befalls her.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

Self-published.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

I wrote the first fifty thousand words of Giantkiller as my 2010 NaNoWriMo project. Life events such as the demands of my day job (I’m an animation writer) and no small amount of laziness conspired to keep me from completing the first draft until September of this year. It now weighs in at a hefty eighty-eight thousand words.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

There’s a lot of action in this book and a story that (I hope) moves along nicely without being overly complicated – everyday people behaving heroically, some authentic peril, great monsters, and a bit of humor. That being said, I hope my readers would think Giantkiller compares favorably with Riordan’s Percy Jackson series and Nancy Farmer’s Sea of Trolls books.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

I’ve always been a voracious reader and I think even from a very young age, I knew I was going to be a writer and, hopefully an author, too. Until you actually give it a try, the thought of writing a novel can be very intimidating. I’d think, “I should write a novel,” then get all flummoxed about where and how to start and quickly run away from the idea. Then in 2007 I heard about the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and everything clicked into place. I was still nervous, but found that a deadline (50k words in the month of November) was just the motivation I needed to finally get off my butt and get started. The result of that first effort was Dragonfriend. So, to answer the question, I guess it was the “what” of NaNoWriMo that inspired me.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

It will be reasonably priced.

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Scott Bury’s Bones of the Earth is a gritty and exciting fantasy read. To learn more about it, check out his blog, Written Words.

Dragonfriend: B.R.A.G. Medallion Honoree

This past week I was contacted by the fine folks at the "Book Readers Appreciation Group" and told that Dragonfriend had been selected as an honoree for their B.R.A.G. Medallion. I'd submitted the book for consideration back in July and then promptly forgotten about it (a mental health trick I try to employ as often as possible -- if I forget about these things, then I don't obsess about these things). Imagine my delight when they contacted me to let me know my book had been chosen for their list.

One of the nice things about this group is that it's made up of "a large group of readers, both individuals and members of book clubs, located throughout the United States, Canada, and the European Union" -- in other words, they're an organization of "real" readers. From their website:

"The single most important criterion that we ask our readers to use in judging a book is whether or not they would recommend it to their best friend."

 I very much like the idea that Dragonfriend is considered worthy of such a recommendation. Thanks, B.R.A.G.!

This Time I Am the One Being Interviewed

Author Scott Bury interviews me and fellow iAi member Gary Henry about our writing styles. I call mine "cinematic" while Gary describes his thusly:

"I like to think of my writing style as “snappy” — using active voice and vivid verbs to the best of my ability. I try to vary sentence length and incorporate colorful description."

Wait a minute. I like "snappy," too. Head on over to the Guild of Dreams and check out the full post (and insert "snappy" everywhere I use "cinematic").

Buster Reads Dragonfriend (aka "I Am Reasonably Certain This Was Photoshopped")

Book Review: Flenn's Folly, Graham the Gargoyle 2

Graham's younger sister Flenn feature's prominently in this satisfying sequel to author Brian Clopper's equally excellent "Graham the Gargoyle."

When Blord, the village jerk, catches her using a spell scroll to go to places she shouldn't go, things get sticky for this smart little gargoyle who finds she has to lie to protect herself and her brave older brother from the harsh punishment that would surely come if word of her traveling got back to the village council.

Meanwhile, Graham and Flenn also find themselves fighting both the extinction of a few isolated magical races (including their own!) due to a "lack of belief," and a dark and sinister force lurking in the woods around their village and the village of Graham's best friend, Ot the Troll.

Told with plenty of heart and good humor, Flenn's Folly is a delightful tale that will easily entertain middle grade readers with its exciting action and  fun exploration of the fascinating mythological creatures that people the fantastical world of Cascade. Recommended.