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A Mythical Creature Is Real
The Night Rider follows a curious boy whose friendship with a feared and hunted outcast forces both of them to question the legends, prejudices, and loyalties that shape their world. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
That is a really great question. I’ve been working on this series for so long I almost don’t remember. In grade school I was always the kid in the library who would be reading all the books about fairy tales and Greek myths that I could find. I would literally have stacks of books on my desk that I had either read or was going to read, and I remember my teacher being really impressed with that. I was really into the fantasy genre even as a kid, especially Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain Chronicles. I do remember reading Great Expectations back then, and being particularly fond of the scene where Pip meets the escaped prisoner, Abel Magwitch, for the first time. There are several elements in that relationship that parallel the relationship between Marren and Yuriah. I think that was a huge inspiration for me.
How did you develop the friendship between Marren and Yuriah, and did you always know it would become the emotional center of the story?
I did. What’s funny is that it was just a natural progression to where I wanted to take the story. It basically wrote itself. This whole series started when I was in my early twenties or maybe even in my late teens. The first book I wrote, which I never finished, was what will now be the fifth book in the Kingdomfall series called The Crown and the Maiden. That book started with Marren and Yuriah having already known each other for years, and I realized I needed more backstory. What I didn’t know is that I would have four novels worth of backstory before I could ever return to The Crown and the Maiden. Yuriah arriving in Angosia along with the burning ship just seemed like the best place to start the series. It was fun telling the story of how Marren and Yuriah first met.
Marren grows up hearing legends about elowan and other supposedly mythical beings. What interested you about exploring the gap between folklore and the reality behind those stories?
I’ve always been fascinated by the way stories and legends can change over time. A real person, event, or culture can become something almost unrecognizable after being passed down through generations. Details get exaggerated, facts become distorted, and eventually people can begin to dismiss the original story as nothing more than myth.
That idea interested me with the elowan. Marren grows up hearing these stories and believing they belong to the realm of legend, only to discover that the reality is far more complicated. I liked the idea of turning that familiar fantasy trope on its head—not simply having a character discover that a mythical creature is real, but exploring what happens when the truth behind the legend is very different from what people have been told.
I also liked the idea that the legends might not tell the whole story. People tend to be afraid of things they don’t understand, and sometimes those fears become part of the stories we pass down. So as Marren learns more about the elowan, he has to start questioning some of the things he’s always believed.
What is the next book that you are working on, and when will it be available?
The next book I’m working on is The Seventh Mark, which is the third book in the Kingdomfall series. It continues Marren and Yuriah’s story as they try to deal with the curse that has followed Marren. They must figure out how they’re going to stop whatever is coming for him even though it seems impossible. There’s a lot more to the curse than they realize, so that’s going to take them in some interesting directions.
The second book in the series, Warrior-Born, is already finished, and it will be released alongside The Night Rider on October 1st. So readers won’t have to wait to continue the story after the first book. The Seventh Mark is currently planned for release around the middle of 2027, and I’m really looking forward to getting that one out there.
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Marren, an adventurous ten-year-old boy, is thrust into a world of violence and danger when he befriends a mysterious stranger the locals have ominously dubbed “The Night Rider.” Marren soon discovers that his new friend, Yuriah, is not only a lethal swordsman, but also an elowan–a mythical race of people who are both feared and despised all over the world.
When the king of Angosia decrees a bounty on The Night Rider’s head, Yuriah becomes the most hunted man in the kingdom. Marren helps his new friend outwit the many threats that emerge, yet they are not what fills him with dread…
There is someone else hunting Yuriah, a dangerous enemy intent on vengeance, who will never stop chasing Yuriah until one of them is dead. As this enemy draws closer, he leaves a bloody trail of devastation and terror, until soon the people of Angosia can no longer deny something dark and evil and absolutely deadly has invaded their land.
And as an inevitable reckoning draws nigh, Marren realizes he and Yuriah are the only ones who can stop it.
Sophie Moon and the Honeybees
Sophie Moon and the Honeybees is a warm, gently educational children’s book built around Sophie’s visits with her grandfather through spring, summer, fall, and winter. Each season brings another stage in Grandpa’s beekeeping and another small challenge for Sophie, so the book develops on two tracks at once. Readers learn how a hive works, what queens and workers do, how honey is harvested, what bees do in winter, and even why they sometimes gather outside a hive. At the same time, Sophie is learning how to speak in front of her class, make and lose a friend, respect rules, and keep trying when she feels uncertain. The seasonal structure gives the story a pleasing rhythm, while Sophie’s recurring “Doodle Notes” make the bee facts feel like discoveries she’s collecting.
The relationship between Sophie and Grandpa is the heart of the children’s book. Their time together has a lived-in coziness to it, with tea, honey, fires, shopping trips, painting hive boxes, snowy walks, and Grandpa’s familiar scent of coffee, Old Spice, grass, smoke, or sunshine changing slightly with the seasons. Sophie also feels like a child with an actual inner life. She worries that she won’t be good enough during school presentations, wonders whether other children will accept her, breaks a rule even though she knows better, and struggles when Catalina moves away without saying goodbye. The bee colony often becomes a way for Sophie to think through those feelings. The queen’s need to be accepted connects naturally with Sophie’s decision to befriend Catalina, while the idea that bees live and work together helps her make sense of friendship, separation, and loneliness.
There’s also more emotional weight here than the cheerful beekeeping premise might suggest. Catalina’s family troubles, Sophie’s memories of her father’s death, her fear of public speaking, and the consequences of sneaking out at night give the story real stakes. I especially liked that Grandpa usually teaches by asking questions, demonstrating something, or letting Sophie arrive at an answer herself. When she breaks her promise and secretly visits the hives at night, he follows through on the rules and sends her home early, yet their relationship remains loving. Later, Sophie understands those rules as part of caring for one another. That combination of affection, consequences, curiosity, and second chances gives the book a sturdy emotional center.
The illustrations use soft, colorful, storybook-style imagery to make Sophie, Grandpa, Catalina, the cabin, and the hives feel immediately approachable. Some of the strongest pictures are also closely tied to memorable moments, such as Sophie and Grandpa examining the queen, Sophie and Catalina lying among white flowers, the girls sneaking toward the hives under a huge moon, and Sophie and Grandpa building a snow bee. The bright painted hives and warm countryside scenes reinforce Sophie’s love of color and drawing, while the winter images shift into quieter whites and blues without losing that sense of warmth. Together, the illustrations and the hands-on bee facts make Sophie Moon and the Honeybees feel like a children’s book meant to spark curiosity as much as tell a story, with friendship, family, art, and the natural world all buzzing around the same hive.
Pages: 54 | ASIN: B0GXWQGZ26
The Night Rider
S. J. Kelley’s The Night Rider is a dark, old-school fantasy adventure that opens with a terrific piece of scene-setting: a burning ship crashes into a harbor, its murdered crew discovered among the wreckage, and rumors quickly spread about a mysterious white-haired rider on a black stallion. From there, Kelley widens the story into the snowy High Country of Angosia, where the supposed monster becomes far more complicated than the stories told about him. The book moves among several characters, including young Marren, his family, Lorelle Endae, the king and his court, and the soldiers sent to hunt the rider. What begins like a supernatural mystery gradually becomes a story about friendship, persecution, loyalty, and the consequences of judging someone by reputation.
The strongest part of the novel is the relationship between Marren and Yuriah, the feared figure behind the Night Rider legend. Marren starts out fascinated by the stranger because he’s spent his childhood listening to stories about elowan and other supposedly mythical beings, and his curiosity develops into genuine friendship. That gives the book an emotional center beneath all the sword fights, ambushes, mountain chases, political maneuvering, and fantasy lore. Yuriah is especially compelling because Kelley lets his morality change through that friendship. By the end, he can recognize mercy and human worth in ways that would once have been foreign to him. Marren changes too, moving from a boy who wants an adventure into someone who understands that stories about heroes and monsters are much simpler than the people inside them. The final revelation surrounding Marren’s seven-year curse gives that growth a darker edge and leaves the story with a strong sense that its larger consequences are only beginning.
Readers of Christopher Paolini’s Eragon will probably recognize some familiar pleasures here. Like Paolini, Kelley builds his fantasy around a young character discovering that the supposedly distant world of legends, strange races, ancient conflicts, and remarkable weapons is actually right outside his door. Both authors enjoy taking time with invented cultures, history, geography, weapons, religion, and the practical details of traveling through a dangerous landscape. The Night Rider has a rougher frontier quality, though, with isolated cabins, hunters, trading posts, blizzards, taverns, soldiers, and a mysterious rider who sometimes feels as if he rode in from a Western and wandered into an epic fantasy. Kelley also uses several adult perspectives, including rulers, mercenaries, warriors, and ordinary families, so the political and social reaction to Yuriah matters almost as much as Yuriah himself.
I liked the book’s interest in the stories people tell about one another. The Angosians turn the elowan into monsters before most of them have ever seen one, while Yuriah carries his own assumptions about humans, and Kelley spends the novel putting those beliefs under pressure. The action gets appropriately brutal when those assumptions turn into violence, but the friendship between Marren and Yuriah gives the story warmth without making the world feel soft. There’s also a sincere spiritual thread running through Marren’s faith in Yahlo, particularly late in the book, that connects naturally to the novel’s ideas about mercy, sacrifice, and the value of a life. By the final pages, The Night Rider feels less like a tale about hunting a legendary killer and more like the beginning of a much larger story about a boy and an outcast whose friendship may alter both of their futures.
Pages: 395 | ASIN: B0H8CY6QZJ
