Waterstone Media

Stories Matter

The Sword of Kaigen

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I believe this is an excellent book.

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I opened this story. I picked it up based solely on the recommendations of a number of trusted friends, and I didn’t even so much as read the product description before tearing through the pages.

In my mind, the book is hard to classify. It has an incredible battle sequence within, but the book doesn’t feel like an action or adventure story. It has an incredible amount of drama, but it feels like more than just a drama.

The Sword of Kaigen resisted my expectations and frequently surprised me, and both are great compliments. It’s a family drama, a war story, a truly unique fantasy world, and an emotional roller coaster.

I really enjoyed the story, and hope to see more from this particular world.

Midnight Tides (Malazan #5)

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2019 is nearing to a close, and I’ve made it half-way through Malazan’s original ten books. I’d planned to read the whole series this year, but I think I’m glad I decided to slow down and read the books whenever the spirit moves me. In my mind, these are books to be savored.

Midnight Tides is an enormous tome that reads like a much smaller novel. Steven Erikson continues to amaze and delight. For as long as this book is, I feel like I powered through it quickly, always eager to learn what was on the next page. Even though this book has much of the typical Malazan complexity, it feels more straightforward than other entries in the series.

If you’ve gotten to this point in the series, you already know what to expect: tremendous world building, a large cast of memorable characters, and a pervading darkness throughout the story. All are present here. Bugg and Tehol, in particular, are two characters that made me laugh more than any other book I’ve read recently.

Midnight Tides didn’t make me quite as emotional as some of the previous works in the world, but that isn’t a slight in the least. This is an excellent book, and I remain eager to dive deeper into the series.

Their Spirit Unbroken

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It’s been a long journey, but we’ve finally arrived at the destination. As of this morning, Their Spirit Unbroken is out in the wild, ready to read.

Maybe it’s weird for an author to fall in love with a world of their creation. But the world of Relentless is one that I’ve become enamored with. Today, I’ve ended the journey that’s taken me over a year to write. I started wanting to write a magic system that was in part inspired by some of my favorite anime shows of my youth.

I quickly became obsessed with this question: what happens when a magic system changes?

How does the world react?

I’ll leave it at that for now 🙂

Thank you to everyone who picks up these books. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I’ve enjoyed writing them.

To celebrate the end of the journey, every book in the Relentless world is on sale for 99 cents until the 27th of November. You can check them all out below:

Relentless Souls (Book 1)

Heart of Defiance (Book 2)

Their Spirit Unbroken (Book 3)

Interview with RG Long

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For a couple of weeks now I’ve been running a podcast called the Storied Lives Podcast. I’ll talk more about it later, but for now the important piece to know is that every other week I sit down with a creator to talk about the power of story.

This week I had the opportunity to sit down with RG Long. He’s a husband, a father, a pastor, and the author of a deep fantasy series. This has been one of my favorite interviews to date.

If I had to choose one highlight from my interview, it’s about Ronald’s favorite childhood story. I won’t spoil anything here, but when he talks about what appealed to him about the story, he speaks about loving a story where the ending isn’t determined by a character’s physical strength or special magic, but by their willingness to sacrifice for others.

In a media landscape where so many of our blockbusters boil down to who can punch harder, I found Ronald’s insights to be truly fantastic. I hope you enjoy!

5 – RG Long

Power

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There is no truer gauge of a man’s character than the way in which he employs his strength, his power.

Storm Front

Power, like money, magnifies. 

Give a saint power and she will change the world for the better. Give it to a demon and watch the world burn.

It has been said many times in many ways, but to understand a person, pay attention to their actions. Words and intent aren’t without value, but true character is revealed in the actions one takes, day in and day out.

New beliefs

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You’ll always have morons like that, swallowing belief patterns whole so they don’t have to think for themselves.

Altered Carbon

One of the crazy problems of our rapidly advancing technology is going to be sorting out reality from imagination. Thanks to advances in editing, it is now possible to make videos and sound clips that look and sound almost exactly like people who are well-known, like celebrities and politicians.

One of the unfortunate rallying cries of our age is that of “fake news.” But what we really seem to be calling out is bias and a twisting of the facts to suit a narrative.

Already, as an educated adult, it can be difficult to separate the facts of the news from the opinion and analysis surrounding it.

But we will soon live in a world where it will be possible to make convincing fakes of whatever people want. How then do we determine what we believe and what we don’t?

I don’t have the answers yet, but I firmly believe one of the most important skills we can develop is to critically question any information that fits a belief we already hold.