More Gods Than Stars Book 2, In the Court of the Mimic Queen, is now serializing on Patreon! For those who haven't read Book 1, The City That Would Eat the World, the series is a sword and sorcery progression fantasy trilogy following a washed-up mimic exterminator and an eccentric wandering adventurer as they travel across the habitable moon of a gas giant while dealing with toenail priests, a mimic-based ecosystem, prayer futures markets, uncounted millions of gods, carnivorous public transit, and a pseudomedieval megastructure arcology spreading uncontrollably across the landscape.
The trilogy is heavily influenced by China Mieville, Terry Pratchett, and classic sword and sorcery heroes like Conan, Jirel of Joiry, and Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser- writing More Gods Than Stars gave me a great excuse to go back and read a bunch more S&S for, uh, research. Yes. Research. MGTS an unusual progression system based on accumulating hyper-specific boons from gods-- reinforced bones, the ability to manifest flagstones in mid-air, enhanced trajectory prediction, the ability to bring a copper kettle to boil in your left hand before noon, that sort of thing. It's also a progression system that has to be used cautiously-- a strength enhancing boon on its own is liable to rip your tendons or even break your bones, so it's important to enhance both of those first, and so on and so forth.
Book 2 Synopsis:
Thea and Aven have escaped the ever-growing expanse of Cambrias' Wall, leaving chaos in their wake, only to find themselves stranded deep in the Scovan Range-- a colossal, heavily populated mountain range, even with much of it already strip-mined for the Wall's expansion. They're still being hunted, though-- until they deliver the ancient godkilling clay tablet to the West Pole, the pursuit will never end.
With the Wall's elites and a mysterious antlered woman that looks remarkably like Aven on their trail, though, stealth and speed are their best allies. Even so, it's not long before they find themselves embroiled in the century-long war between Cambrias' mercenary armies and the giant mobile Gnostic monasteries that seek to resist the Wall's endless expansion, not to mention the resulting refugee crisis.
Still, it could be worse. At least they're not embroiled in the Twelfth Morphic Crusade, the inevitably doomed attempt to purge the uninhabitable Court of the Mimic Queen of its endless swarms of carnivorous mimics. There's surely nothing that could persuade Thea to get tangled in that mess.
Surely.
For those who haven't read book 1 yet, you can find it here!
In other news, if y'all haven't seen it yet, Mage Errant is relaunching in bookstores through Simon and Schuster! Volume 1, which contains both Into the Labyrinth and Jewel of the Endless Erg, will be out on September 29th! If you're at all interested, please give it a pre-order- stores, especially Barnes and Noble, use pre-orders as the single biggest metric for how many copies to stock on shelves!
