EXPLORING THE DROUGHTLANDS

Pillars of glass and steel lurk among the sweeping red dunes, denoting the buried cities that hold echoes of forgotten magic and fragments of incomprehensible technology.

A little confused about where to start your adventure into the Droughtlands? Don’t worry, that’s the point!

The Droughtlands is a twisting and ever-changing place where there is no perfect path forwards, try as you might to find it. Every venture will garner you new knowledge and preconceived notions that you will not be able to ignore, meaning that every subsequent event you witness will be slightly twisted or ground-breakingly warped by what you may think you already know.

This might make it sound like spoilers are inevitable, but I promise that’s not the case.

I’ve crafted these stories in this convoluted way so that you, the reader, will be forced to experience the hesitation and crumbling certainty alongside the characters as they attempt to make sense of the world around them.

It is their magic, and especially the latent, remaining magic left by those-of-glass, that changes in response to the minds that witness it, and so to will the story as you read it, no matter the order.

Though the series can be read separately, hidden across them is a larger narrative about those-of-glass. Who they were, how they came to their end, and the meaning of what they left behind.

As you begin your journey, know that you can start with the first book from any series, then either progress with its sequel or jump to the first book of another series. This means that the meaning of each hidden plot twist will be experienced in a radically different way for each reader, and it can only be done once, and blindly so.

For example I could suggest you start with Ryza’s adventure in MOLTEN FLUX, as he battles against the brewing mutiny aboard the walking fortress of Revance.

Then read THE HYTHARO REDUX, set thirty years later, to follow Spiric’s story as he comes to terms with being the only Hytharo in the Droughtlands. A thousand years after the extinction of the rest of his people, he hunts for his stolen memories and grapples with how his unique, rain-bringing magic could potentially change the face of the Droughtlands.

Now as you return to Ryza as he stands amidst the devastation left by the events of his first book, you’ll progress though the story of BLAZING FLUX with a distant foreshadowing of The Flux Catastrophe’s aftermath.

Just the same works in the opposite direction, or even if you read each series through separately. You’ll see places, characters and symbols in an entirely different light, and by the time it’s done, you will truly understand the magic of the Droughtlands.