Heretic Spellblade 2: Extra Details
I’ve made a number of comments and corrections about the world and content of Heretic Spellblade over the last week in a few places. I figured I’d collate them in one place. There’s also one new major concern I wanted to address, that I only recently spotted.
This post will contain SPOILERS for both books in Heretic Spellblade. Read at your own risk.
1: Yes, Vera will be exclusive to the MC.
The fact this is in question concerns me. Vera’s an obvious harem candidate and will be in greater focus in future books, as established later in Book 2. She’s not going to end up with other men in any situation. Her focus has been on the MC, and all of the women in the harem will be exclusive as per genre norms.
I can kind of understand why this was brought up. The context is that she wants to become a Bastion, and the MC accepted her as his apprentice late in Book 2. At some point that means she needs to get Champions, and those are usually the opposite gender. Keyword: usually. Vera’s potential future Champions aren’t brought up, which was a mistake as I should have addressed them in the book and stopped this from being raised. Particularly as I knew that Vera is a polarizing character.
Normally I’d let this lie, but there’s people who throw a lot of shit over the slightest whiff (real or not) of non-exclusivity in the harem. So consider the record set straight. I may update the book itself once I’ve had some time to sit on it.
2: The world isn’t a VRMMO
It’s a real world. The timeline shenanigans are more infinite worlds theory and string theory than programmers and hackers in the Matrix or a VRMMO. This may disappoint you or excite you. I’m bringing it up because I’m not sure there’s a great way to directly address it in-character, and there’ll be months before I attempt to do so properly.
3: Garnets are mixed strength-durability enhancement gems
I didn’t explain what garnets did, as nobody uses them in combat and didn’t want to infodump about a gem nobody important uses. They’re basically a jack-of-all-trades physical gem.
4: The beings between worlds are Lovecraftian in nature
This got cut during editing, as the infodumps about timelines and predetermination already looked a bit too heavy for my liking. But Kadria was initially supposed to supposed to make some Lovecraftian references about her ‘boss’.
5: Book 3 will be out later this year
I’m still working on a proper schedule update, as the success of Book 2 gives me some freedom to reorganize IRL stuff. There’ll only be two books between now and its release. The series length will depend on the overall popularity of the series. It was originally 4 books, but I’m tentatively extending it to 5 books based on the initial success of book 2 (tentatively, as it’s still early days).
Finally, thank you to everybody who has reviewed the book or shared it around and I hope you’ve enjoyed it. If you’ve read Heretic Spellblade 2 and haven’t reviewed it, I’d definitely appreciate it if you did. I was worried when I pushed the publish button for Book 2 that I’d overcooked the plot or character details for something in the harem genre. The book has done better than I feared it might, particularly after I delayed it (a few times…).
I plan to post a map of Doumahr within the next day or two. It should have already been posted, but I’ve been distracted and haven’t made the finishing touches. Once done, it will be added to the front of the books.
