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The Throne of Deep Roots: Book 2 of The Command of the Worldhold Series
The Throne of Deep Roots, the second book in Morven T. H. Borthwick’s The Command of the Worldhold series, is a sweeping work of dark epic fantasy built around ancient powers, political betrayal, war, and the consequences of choices made under pressure. The story begins in the shadow of a supernatural disaster, when the Black Sea rose as though answering an unseen will. From there, the novel follows several connected conflicts involving Eron, Belor, Seth, Elia, and the rulers of Dovaryel and Yorthmere. At the center of everything is The Command, a tiny stone with the power to make the sea obey, whose awakening attracts forces far older and more dangerous than the people carrying it fully understand.
One of the book’s strongest qualities is the depth of its world. Dovaryel, Dravarûyn, the Kor lands, and the southern mountains each have their own histories, customs, political tensions, and supernatural traditions. Borthwick doesn’t treat the setting as decoration. The world’s old wars and buried grudges actively shape what the characters believe and how they respond to one another. Titles such as Boundhand, Rootmaker, Vowblade, and Orathë also carry real social and spiritual weight. This gives the story the feeling of a history that began long before the first page. The formal, almost legendary prose suits that approach, especially in scenes involving prophecy, ritual, and ancient beings.
The characters are most compelling when they’re forced to decide what responsibility means. Belor’s Binding Art makes him powerful, but his real strength comes from his understanding that guilt can extend beyond the person who performs an act. His warning that “The blood of the fallen does not name the hand alone, but the will that sent it” captures one of the novel’s central concerns. Commands, bargains, and political decisions leave marks on everyone involved. Seth’s escape from execution, her discovery that she’s carrying Sathor’s son, and her refusal to return to the people who condemned her give her storyline a sharp emotional edge. Elia’s struggle to lead while dealing with fear, pride, and the limits of her gift makes her feel human even when the events around her reach a mythic scale.
The novel’s pacing is deliberate and immersive. Conversations, councils, journeys, and preparations for war receive nearly as much attention as battles, allowing tension to build gradually across the book. When violence arrives, particularly around the Field of Dravarûyn, it feels like the result of decisions that have been accumulating for hundreds of pages. The large cast and extensive terminology ask the reader to pay close attention, but the appendix provides useful support for navigating the Worldhold. The descriptions are often rich and solemn, creating an atmosphere in which forests, rain, stone chambers, and mountain caves seem to remember the events that happened within them.
By the end, The Throne of Deep Roots has expanded from a struggle among rulers into a confrontation with powers that reach back into the foundations of the world. Eron’s bond with The Command, the pursuit of the Thavurwyns, and the revelations beside the Deep Mirror all point toward a threat larger than the characters first imagined. Belor’s observation that “The ancient powers, once awakened, are not easily returned to sleep” works as both a warning and a summary of the book’s direction. This is a substantial, lore-heavy fantasy novel for readers who enjoy layered histories, morally complicated alliances, supernatural dread, and stories in which every victory creates a new burden. Its ending closes the immediate journey while leaving a chilling question hanging over the series: whether Vaelthar’s prison is beginning to fail.
Pages: 402 | ASIN: B0H45RJZR7
What If You Could Start Over?
One Chance follows a middle-aged man haunted by the consequences of his own choices who is offered an unexpected way out through a doorway leading him into a world of giants, witches, and enchanted objects. Where did the idea for this novel come from?
I think it started with the idea that if I could live my life over again, would I do anything differently? I think most people have that thought from time to time, and the main character exemplifies an extreme of that. It’s not just that he would change one thing or another, but that he would change the person he was. From there, the book explores ideas around why people make the decisions they make and ultimately become who they are as people. Finally, can we change and start over, or are we trapped by our place and circumstances? The challenges and obstacles he faces in the story, although pure fantasy, in many ways can be related to the challenges we face in everyday life.
Why did you choose a middle-aged protagonist instead of the younger heroes often found in portal fantasy?
One of the main issues for the character was a life filled with regrets. He had regrets about decisions he had made, possible life paths that he had not taken, and even regrets around the very person he had become. Those character issues fit much better with an older character with a lifetime of mistakes rather than someone younger. As he goes through the portal, he becomes young again, a change that is far better appreciated for an older character. I think the theme of starting over and becoming someone new wouldn’t have made as much sense with a young protagonist.
How long did it take to build the world of Wisteria before you began drafting the novel?
I actually started by developing the characters in the story and an overall theme. After that, I developed the general storyline and the first couple of chapters. The bulk of the world-building happened as I was writing the story. I wrote the storyline I had outlined and essentially built the world around it as I wrote. So I really didn’t start building the world until after I began drafting the novel.
What do you hope readers discover about themselves while following Chance’s journey?
In the story, Chance faces a lot of obstacles to becoming the person he wanted to be. Of course, the outward things included traps, monsters, and villains threatening him, but the greater obstacles came from within himself. He faced selfish temptations, old habits, personal vanity, and good old-fashioned fear. I hope readers would recognize that those same challenges exist in our own world, in different forms, but the greater barriers to growth and success are the ones we create ourselves. He’s only truly able to acknowledge those personal challenges and move forward when he fully lays down his own desires in order to become the person his friends needed him to be.
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What he finds there is a world in crisis, with danger around every corner. He meets two friends who each have a unique power, and together they’re given a quest to save everyone from impending destruction. They will have to overcome monsters and villains as they are pursued by a legendary bounty hunter. Can Charlie and his friends overcome dragons, giants, and magic spells to save mankind? Can he overcome old habits and become the person that he’s always aspired to be?
Creative Journey
An Era in Anddemar is an epic science fantasy in which godlike Guardian Powers watch over nature, love, the entire galactic community, and the mysterious realm of the Dreaming. What was the inspiration for the story?
As happened with Tolkien, the ’tale grew in the telling’ and as such, was a journey of discovery rather than invention. I had to get myself out of the way, so to speak, to receive what was welling up from the depths of the World Soul in the form of a new myth for our time. I became a kind of mediator, or holding vessel for an overwhelmingly powerful creative drive to help birth this myth. What initially triggered the vision of Anddemar was a powerful dream I had decades ago, which featured a Goddess at the heart of a galaxy, where she was protecting and guiding children across a plain of broken glass. From thereon, visions, imagination and inspiration took over as an entire galactic community – and the unique threat they faced – came into clearer focus. It was as if I was eavesdropping and sightseeing, then recording what I saw, felt, tasted, smelled, overheard and touched. My other main source of inspiration was my deep love for the works of classic mythopoeic authors, including E. R. Eddison, Lord Dunsany, Mervyn Peake, C. S. Lewis, David Lindsay, J. R. R. Tolkien and Charles Williams; hence there are homages to all of these in the book.
What makes Sir Jaide the right character to guide readers through such a vast galaxy?
As ’the foremost of Anddemar’s knights’, Sir Jaide is passionate, noble, intense, brave, brooding, impulsive, empathic and kind. As such, he perfectly embodies everything that the bland Grey enemy of Anddemar is not. He represents both Anddemar’s active resistance to the invading Greyness, as well as the creative fire, decency, chivalry, and deep love of beauty, communal solidarity, poetry, and Nature that permeate Anddemar as an interwoven network and advanced cosmic consciousness. He’s also one of the few able to journey into the Dreaming – the deepest realm of Anddemar – and the Ring, which he alone wields, is able to take him instantly anywhere in the galaxy. That makes him the ideal guide, not only to and throughout other worlds, but also into the inner sanctuary of the soul, since he’s also prone to deep reflection in his endless quest for insight and deeper understanding. Above all, it’s Sir Jaide’s passionate love for Anddemar – as a living web of stars and beings – that deeply enfolds him in the galaxy’s beating heart.
How did you balance science fiction, fantasy, mythology, and spirituality without letting one overwhelm the others?
It just naturally panned out that way. As a new mythology, the creative journey leaned toward a merging of vision, science, soul, Nature, and art into a seamless whole that reflected an advanced, holistic consciousness and intricate tapestry of relationships. Myths always unify through the alchemy of imagination, because they arise from the uttermost depths of soul, or what Jung called the ‘collective unconscious’, as a timeless union of spirit and substance, eternal and temporal, fire and ice, lunar subtlety and solar intensity.
What do you hope readers experience emotionally while spending time in Anddemar?
I hope they enjoy immersing themselves in the richly detailed worlds, the vast mythology, the unique human and non-human characters, their relationships and solidarity, their struggles, challenges, journeys, battles and triumphs. I hope they feel a breathless sense of wonder as they explore a galaxy pulsing with music, passion, love and mystery. I hope they awaken to an understanding that evil, in contrast, is something banal, ugly, monotonous, empty, and an enemy of the ‘Great Dance’ of life. I hope they rediscover their own love of beauty, poetry, Nature, community, and their capacity to contribute to all that is authentic, decent, truthful, and life-enhancing. I hope they enjoy an experience of the artistry and beauty of language – of how language can become music of the soul – and a celebration of the rhythmic pulse of life embraced as a grand symphony and vehicle of transcendent Mystery.
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A lifeless Greyness is threatening the living spiral galaxy Anddemar, unsettling Nature, dimming stars, fuelling tyranny, unleashing destruction, and disrupting the Great Dance of the Heavens. In response, a colourful alliance – including an exiled Shapemage, wormholes that channel music and poetry, shamans, the Grail, and a marooned band of Earth scientists – helps to repel this enemy of Anddemar’s enduring marriage of dark and light. And weaving through it all is the exquisite love between the foremost of Anddemar’s knights and the Vidar Quain of the Dreaming. An Era in Anddemar is a groundbreaking, vast mythology for lovers of breathless Romance, epic high stakes, compelling characters, richly detailed worlds, unexpected twists, and the poetic artistry of language.
The Weapons We’re Born With
Brett O’Brien’s The Weapons We’re Born With, the first book in the Currents of War series, is an ambitious epic fantasy about people discovering that the identities assigned to them don’t have to determine the lives they lead. The story unfolds across a world being consumed by imperial conquest, magical warfare, political ambition, and rapid technological change. Its many viewpoint characters initially seem to occupy separate stories: Shara is a street child whose forbidden magical ability forces her into hiding, Marysa is a Resistance fighter struggling with leadership and grief, Callum is an artificer trapped inside the imperial war machine, and EM4022 is a manufactured soldier beginning to develop a conscience. Their paths gradually converge around a conflict involving the Current, an authoritarian order of Nightshades, ancient powers, experimental weapons, and a dragon whose captivity has consequences for the entire world.
The novel’s greatest strength is its cast. O’Brien gives each major character a personal struggle that reflects the book’s larger questions about freedom and responsibility. Shara wants safety and belonging, but her natural connection to the Current makes an ordinary life impossible. Callum has spent years helping the Empire function, and his story asks what resistance looks like when someone realizes that their talent has been serving a cruel system. Marysa is physically formidable, yet her most meaningful battles involve trust, loss, and the pressure of leading others. EM4022’s transformation is especially compelling. Its early chapters use cold designations and tactical calculations, but small acts of compassion gradually break through its conditioning. Watching EM4022 become Ronin turns the familiar artificial-being-seeks-humanity storyline into one of the book’s most emotionally satisfying arcs.
The world is large, colorful, and full of ideas. Different nations, faiths, magical traditions, military ranks, spirits, machines, and political factions give the setting a sense of history beyond the immediate plot. The Current works particularly well because it’s both a source of power and a reflection of character. People draw from it differently, and their abilities often reveal how they understand themselves. O’Brien also combines fantasy and technology with confidence. Swords, spirits, airships, artificial soldiers, fission weapons, and industrial machinery all belong to the same world without feeling randomly assembled. The final sequence beneath Mount Pyra brings these elements together in a chaotic, cinematic climax involving collapsing tunnels, divided loyalties, desperate sacrifices, and the release of a dragon. The action is easy to picture, but it remains grounded in the characters’ choices.
Readers of Brandon Sanderson, particularly those who enjoyed Mistborn, will recognize some appealing similarities. Both stories center on resistance to an oppressive empire, feature carefully structured supernatural powers, and follow characters from very different social positions as they become part of a larger rebellion. O’Brien also shares Sanderson’s fondness for intersecting plots and explosive finales. His approach, though, feels more openly influenced by modern ensemble storytelling. The viewpoint shifts are frequent, and the book sometimes reads like a season of prestige fantasy television, cutting between soldiers, rebels, rulers, scientists, and fugitives as a crisis builds. That scale gives the story energy, though the number of characters and unfamiliar terms can make the early chapters demanding. Once the connections become clearer, the broad structure starts to feel purposeful.
The Weapons We’re Born With is ultimately a story about choosing what to do with power, whether that power comes from magic, knowledge, authority, physical strength, or the ability to create life. Its title becomes more meaningful as the characters confront the difference between what they were made for and what they decide to become. The ending resolves the Mount Pyra conflict while leaving the war, the dragon, and several personal reckonings in motion, so it works as both a climax and a clear beginning to a larger saga. O’Brien has built a crowded but engaging world populated by people worth following, and the novel’s strongest moments come when spectacle gives way to compassion, grief, or quiet defiance. It’s a bold opening volume with the momentum and emotional foundation to support a much bigger story.
Pages: 566 | ASIN : B0H8Y8H18M
An Era in Anddemar
An Era in Anddemar is an expansive science-fantasy epic that treats the cosmos as a living community. Stars feel, think, dream, and form friendships. Knights travel between planets. Godlike Guardian Powers watch over nature, memory, love and the mysterious realm known as the Dreaming. At the centre is Sanphire Jaide Vardrewan, a knight and scholar whose devotion to the Vidar Quain Starwing gives the vast story its emotional anchor. Their relationship carries us through political councils, celestial journeys, ecological disasters, battles against the Grey Powers and, eventually, the birth of a new generation.
Maureen B. Roberts has built Anddemar with remarkable conviction. Its worlds have their own astronomy, histories, spiritual traditions, landscapes and forms of life, but they’re connected by a shared understanding of existence as a Great Dance. That idea gives the novel its distinctive shape. Conflict isn’t simply a contest between rival armies. It’s a struggle between the full range of living experience and a Greyness that drains colour, imagination, freedom and fellow feeling from everything it touches. The threat feels cosmic, yet its consequences are intimate, appearing in dimming stars, frightened communities, wounded creatures and people trying to preserve their inner lives.
The novel’s large cast brings warmth and variety to that vision. Jessiah, the Shapemage fleeing the blighted galaxy of Syngard, gives readers an outsider’s view of Anddemar’s richness. Downian’s curiosity and empathy make the fate of the stars feel immediate and personal. Figures such as Daphen, Olweanne, Enwhyvar, Elverne and the unpredictable Terragian add humour, companionship and texture to the wider struggle. Roberts is especially interested in communities of care. Her characters heal valleys, rescue children, tend the injured, protect animals, share knowledge and form alliances. Courage here includes wielding a sword, but it also includes listening, nurturing and refusing to let suffering turn the heart Grey.
Roberts’s prose is richly visual and openly Romantic, filled with moonlit gardens, crystalline deserts, underwater ruins, stellar storms and dream landscapes. Music, poetry and colour run through nearly every part of the book, giving its worlds a ceremonial atmosphere. The storytelling unfolds at a contemplative pace, inviting the reader to spend time in conversations, relationships and places instead of hurrying from one confrontation to the next. This approach makes the book feel less like a conventional adventure and more like entering a complete mythology, one in which science, Celtic tradition, shamanism, ecological awareness and Grail lore have grown together.
Across its enormous canvas, An Era in Anddemar remains a story about what keeps life alive. Its answer is love in many forms: romantic devotion, friendship, responsibility, compassion, wonder and loyalty to the living world. The closing movement, following Sir Jaide and Starwing through parenthood and their final voyage beyond the horizon, gives the epic a moving sense of completion while allowing their love to pass naturally into legend. Roberts has created a galaxy where beauty is a form of resistance and imagination is a sacred power. An Era in Anddemar turns an entire galaxy into a love song for the wild, radiant soul of life.
Pages: 543 | ASIN : B0H5NGVK1H
Moonstone: The Winter’s Twins Series Book 1
J. W. Murray’s Moonstone, the first book in the Winter’s Twins series, is a sprawling young adult epic fantasy adventure filled with cloudships, floating islands, winged warriors, ancient weapons, political schemes, strange creatures, and a prophecy that pulls a group of young champions into a much larger conflict. The story begins by following several seemingly separate lives, including the street-smart orphan Traiden, the sheltered and fiercely competitive gymnast Cassille, the guarded Queen Elenya, and Marek Jaad, an experienced cloudship captain who can sense disturbances in time. Their paths gradually converge as evidence emerges that an old enemy called the Legion is returning and that a set of mysterious stones may be the key to stopping it.
The world-building is the novel’s biggest attraction. Murray doesn’t treat the cloudships as decorative fantasy vehicles. Their navigation, rigging, weather hazards, crew hierarchy, and customs shape everyday life, giving the book a convincing airborne culture. The Six Kingdoms also feel distinct, with their own rivalries, beliefs, fighting traditions, and social rules. There’s a lot of terminology to absorb, especially early on, but the details reward readers who enjoy getting thoroughly immersed in a new setting. The book’s guiding idea appears in the warning, “Then remember, coincidence does not exist. The Pallomand was always pulling the strings.” That line captures the pleasure of watching scattered characters, relics, dreams, and political maneuvers become parts of the same design.
Traiden and Cassille give this coming-of-age fantasy novel its approachable emotional center. Traiden’s humor, loyalty, and instinct for improvisation make him easy to root for, while Cassille’s pride and hunger for independence give her a sharper edge. Their early friction develops into a believable partnership as they face danger, separation, loss, and the unsettling discovery that their roles may have been chosen long before they understood them. Marek provides a useful counterweight. He’s capable and experienced, but his skepticism about prophecy keeps the story from becoming a simple chosen-one tale. The supporting cast is large, sometimes almost too large to track casually, yet figures such as Dagor, Pattan, L’dai, Harnen, and Morab bring humor and personality to the journey.
Readers who enjoyed Philip Pullman’s The Golden Compass may recognize a similar blend of young protagonists, unusual technology, animal-like allies, competing powers, and a cosmic mystery hidden beneath an adventurous surface. Moonstone is more expansive and nautical in its storytelling, with the cloudship crew functioning much like the company in a traditional seafaring epic. It also spends more time on technical world-building and introduces its central cast through multiple storylines before fully joining them. That measured structure creates anticipation, though the number of names, titles, invented words, and historical references makes this a book best read with attention.
The ideal target audience is teen and adult readers who enjoy steampunk fantasy, airship adventures, magical quests, and ensemble casts. Its violence and political intrigue give it enough weight for older readers, while its young heroes, lively humor, creatures, competitions, and sense of discovery should appeal strongly to teenagers. Moonstone works as both a grand introduction to the world of Winter’s Twins and the opening movement of a longer story. It closes with important relationships transformed and the larger conflict coming into focus, leaving its heroes headed toward an uncertain destination.
Pages: 536 | ASIN : B0GZR2D2KV
The Power of Story
Tidestep: The Water Anchor follows a restless blacksmith’s apprentice whose search for a stolen ancient artifact draws him into a conflict over memory, mortal freedom, and the hidden forces shaping history. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
This story was the convergence of some concepts that had been circling around in my head for a few years. First, I listened to a number of podcasts where they discussed what it would look like if humans were not alone. Would a being who watched intervene, or would they just observe? Second, screenwriting taught me the power of story, and a few other podcasters reinforced it: humans are hardwired to hear and decode stories better than other forms of information. Third, I loved fantasy stories when I was young, and I wanted to try one that tied all this together.
How did you develop the novel’s central idea that knowledge can be preserved, distorted, forgotten, or weaponized?
Mostly through studying history, politics, and religion. It turns out there is no one “history” that is correct. Anyone who’s lived through enough of it sees that what ultimately gets recorded and believed is a subjective view, personalized to the person recording it. Politics is a different but similar example: various major political groups have recorded overlapping histories differently, according to their beliefs, over the last decade. Which one gets passed down is still an open question.
Which member of Zaphiel’s company was the most challenging, or enjoyable, to write?
Every character has enjoyable and challenging moments while writing, but I think Marek was the most fun to write because she does so many things that are unexpected. Rylor was also very enjoyable because there were multiple scenes that turned out much differently than I thought they would when I started writing them. Rylor just decided to do or say something different than what I was planning.
What does the Water Anchor represent beyond its role as an artifact within the story?
I don’t want to give away too much because the role of the Anchor Stones will become clearer over the series. Each Stone represents what our distant ancestors thought were the essence of the world: water, fire, air, soil, spirit. From Zaphiel’s reading of the runes on the stone and the epigraphs on the header pages at the beginning of each of the book’s five parts, a reader can see the stones are clearly thematic. Water signifies service, flow, and reflection. Each of those themes is present in this book. The entire ensemble of Anchor Stones will form a complete picture when the series completes.
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When eighteen-year-old blacksmith’s apprentice Zaphiel is entrusted with delivering a simple message, he expects little more than a journey beyond the only home he has ever known. Instead, he discovers poisoned waters, a stolen ancient artifact, and a deadly corruption spreading across the land.
Joined by an unlikely band of companions, including a mysterious dog who knows more than she should, Zaphiel is drawn into a perilous quest that reaches far beyond the borders of his quiet village.
As buried secrets emerge and powerful enemies close in, they must confront forces that have shaped Arthios for ages and uncover secrets others have killed to protect.
But there’s another voice woven through their quest: a secret journal spanning fifteen thousand years, written by someone who has seen this story play out before, and may even know how it’s supposed to end.
Rich with unforgettable characters, immersive world-building, ancient mysteries, and relentless adventure, Tidestep is an epic fantasy that blends the wonder of classic heroic quests with the depth and intrigue of high-concept fantasy storytelling.
Perfect for readers who love sweeping fantasy series, memorable companions, stories that reward close attention, and heroes who discover that courage is forged one impossible choice at a time.
One quest. One stolen relic. One hidden journal. One unforgettable adventure.
Tidestep – The Water Anchor
F. A. Calder’s Tidestep: The Water Anchor is an expansive epic fantasy built around two intertwined narratives. The central adventure follows Zaphiel, a restless blacksmith’s apprentice whose simple errand leads him into a poisoned settlement, the theft of an ancient Water Anchor, and a widening conflict involving the warlord Kaelor, the Pale Keeper, and forces older than recorded history. Interspersed chapters present an instruction manual addressed to the amnesiac Evelyn, preserving knowledge about immortal Seers, enigmatic Liminals, cosmic Thresholds, and artifacts whose purpose has been obscured across thousands of years. This layered structure gives the novel the immediate momentum of a pursuit while steadily revealing that the pursuit belongs to a much larger struggle over mortal freedom and the shape of history.
The novel’s strongest element is its evolving company of companions. Zaphiel begins with confidence in his strength and practical knowledge, but the journey repeatedly requires him to depend on qualities he doesn’t possess. Verlin’s theatrical bravado conceals pain and considerable ability, Alenya’s guarded intelligence grows from a history of manipulation, Marek communicates through writing and gesture while perceiving possibilities hidden from others, and the Liminal Rylor introduces a form of wisdom that’s playful, evasive, and often incisive. Nara, the mysterious dog who gathers and guides them, provides the group with both emotional warmth and narrative direction. Their conflicting temperaments produce humor without weakening the danger, and their gradual bond gives substance to the book’s recurring idea that burdens become bearable when they’re shared.
Calder’s worldbuilding is concerned with knowledge itself: how it’s recorded, distorted, forgotten, and used to control. Alenya’s observation that “Magic is what people call a thing when they’d rather wonder than learn” captures the book’s preference for inquiry over easy mystification. The Anchor Stones, rune-marked chain fragments, masks, dreams, and historical annotations operate as parts of a coherent cosmology rather than decorative lore. This makes the explanatory passages substantial, sometimes deliberately so, but their cumulative effect is important. By the final chapters, questions of memory and identity have become inseparable from the physical conflict, especially when Zaphiel pays a devastating personal cost for resisting the mask’s influence.
Tidestep is a novel about agency, responsibility, and the consequences of choosing a path without complete knowledge. Its opening instruction, “Make the choice and bear the consequences of the path,” becomes the governing principle of both the adventure and the cosmic history surrounding it. Calder combines quest fantasy, philosophical speculation, encoded mysteries, and an affectionate ensemble story in a novel that rewards close attention. The conclusion resolves the immediate fight while deliberately enlarging the conflict, leaving the companions united by grief, inherited purpose, and an oath that will carry them into the next volume.
Pages: 430 | ASIN: B0H7TBLVL6
