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Dreamwalking
Price of Vengeance follows a traumatized soldier on a besieged alien world who must choose between revenge and redemption as war, political betrayal, and a telepathic enemy force him to confront the true cost of vengeance. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
No matter how enviable another person’s life seems to be from the outside, on the inside, we all have demons we have to confront. For many people, these demons begin early in childhood. Liam became an orphan at two when giant insects called “Chitin” murdered his family. After witnessing his parents’ deaths at such a young age, a prominent family brought him up. Even though he was raised by people who loved him, including an older foster brother who swore to protect him, nightmares plagued Liam.
When cut off from the city, Liam learns that an alien intelligence controls the insects. More devastating is that a person who was a political rival to his foster father arranged his parents’ deaths. When he returns to the city and learns of his foster mother and father’s deaths, many of the old wounds reopen.
For personal inspiration, there are science fiction books that use ESP (Extra Sensory Perception), though I put my unique twist on it. Few military science fiction books explore a person’s consciousness being used outside the body, which is called “Dreamwalking.” While Dreamwalking a person often has to fight enemy Dreamwalkers. I also drew inspiration from video games such as Halo, in particular with weapons and tactics in space combat.
What drew you to tell this story through a young, emotionally wounded protagonist rather than a seasoned commander?
It should be pointed out that at the beginning of Price of Vengeance, Liam holds the rank of sergeant, and sergeants are not green recruits. The Neo-Etruscan Self-Defense Force draws its officers from the ranks rather than using specialized officer training programs. Liam is 22 at the beginning of the story and began serving at 18. He has fought Chitin before. However, until the events of this book, he had never had to kill a sentient being.
Most combat soldiers acquire wounds, both visible and invisible, as they serve. Like Liam, they must learn to face down their demons. The Dreamscape Warriors Series often depicts how the warriors cope with the traumas they have faced. Kergan, the antagonist in the next three books, was orphaned when alliance warships bombed his family’s home. Having watched his parents and sisters incinerated, he grew into a ruthless Rebel Commander, while still being considered an effective leader by both sides.
In contrast, Liam’s own children, who are featured in the next books in the series, the triplets Deirdre, Aisling, and Bayvin, with their younger brother Aidan, grew up with both parents, loving their mother and looking up to their father. One doesn’t need to be emotionally wounded in their youth to be a hero or villain.
The book never lets revenge feel free or clean. How did you approach writing violence with consequence?
Revenge, especially revenge carried out in rage, is never clean. Liam’s foster parents brought him up with the belief that revenge is wrong—a belief many religions preach. The traitor, Licinious, had his birth parents and foster parents murdered. One cannot dispute that Liam had a right to be angry. However, he chose to feed his rage.
Once Liam exacted his revenge on Licinious, his religious upbringing reasserted itself. The shock was terrible. Liam realized that what he had done was wrong and could not be undone. Once safely back at the building he was using as a base, he needed to do some soul-searching.
Jarek, who has been mentoring Liam through the Dreamscape, cannot offer comfort, only perspective. Liam must learn to live with what he has done. Jarek offers some hope that because Liam feels this way, it means he still knows right from wrong and knows he must find a way to atone.
Is this the first book in the series? If so, when is the next book coming out, and what can your fans expect in the next story?
There are currently three books in the series, with a fourth planned for late summer of 2026. Legacy of Valor takes place on the world of Treespo, where Liam must help retake the moon. Promise of Mercy features Liam’s children as they try to rescue their parents and prevent the launch of a weapon with the potential of destroying civilization.
The importance of family carries over to the fourth book, Addiction of Power. Liam is older. His daughters are middle-aged. His son, Aidan, is a veteran fighter pilot. Liam and his wife Celinia conceived a fourth child in Promise of Mercy. In the fourth book, Tetia is in her teens and planning to follow her mother’s path as a priestess and healer.
In Addiction of Power, Aidan agrees to deliver information to Finnian Intelligence while on a trip with his great aunt, Máire, and sister, Tetia, when Kergan attacks their ship. Aidan escapes with his family and is befriended by a war criminal and her daughter, whom we meet in Promise of Mercy. This starts them on a journey to end a 700-year interstellar civil war. Factions on both sides of the conflict must wrestle with the implications of peace: an end to the bloodshed versus losing power. It also plants the seeds for threats from beyond our galaxy.
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Price of Vengeance
Price of Vengeance is a military science fiction novel with a strong young adult feel, laced with paranormal dreamwalking, telepathic creatures, and a slow-burning romance. On the besieged planet Etrusci, Liam grows up as the adopted son of a city leader after chitin insectoids slaughter his farmstead family. As an adult soldier, he is still haunted by that night, volunteering for lonely border outposts and hiding from festivals and crowds. A massive, engineered attack, political betrayal from Councilor Licinious, and the ruthless alien mastermind Azurius rip the last safety nets out from under him. Liam is blown clear of a doomed outpost, teams up with a telepathic “bear lizard” named Swift Hunter, uncovers sabotage and assassination plots, and fights his way back toward his brother Randolf, the empathic high priestess Celinia, and a city under siege. The book builds toward a brutal final confrontation with Azurius and a hard-earned, quietly hopeful ending where family, faith, and love survive the wreckage.
What I enjoyed most was Liam himself and how author Kurt Springs lets his trauma bleed into everything he does. Liam is never just a badass sniper. Even when he is holding the line at Taho and choosing to destroy the portal rather than let the enemy into New Olympia, you can feel how much the little boy who survived the farm massacre is still inside the lieutenant. His guilt over Jorge’s death, his parents’ murder back in the city, and the way he replayed choices in his head felt painfully human. I liked that the military science-fiction side isn’t all shiny tactics and tech. The battles are loud and messy and sometimes unfair, and people die because of sabotage or politics, not just because the chitin are scary. The book’s title pays off: every step toward vengeance costs someone something, and Springs does not let Liam or Randolf look away from that.
The author’s choices around the “dreamscape” and spiritual elements surprised me in a good way. Celinia helping Liam reshape his nightmares instead of just banishing them was one of my favorite sequences, because it made healing feel active rather than magical. Their relationship grows out of that inner work, plus shared danger, instead of insta-love. The telepathic bond with Swift Hunter adds another emotional layer. Those campfire conversations about family, hatchlings, and the “Maker” gave the story a warm, almost mythic texture in the middle of all the plasma fire. I also appreciated that Azurius is not just a cackling villain. He quotes Shakespeare, respects skill, and genuinely tempts Liam with a chance to save lives if he will just compromise himself. When he dies, quoting Romeo and Juliet back and forth with Randolf, it comes across as sad and eerie rather than just “finally, the monster is dead.”
The writing itself is straightforward and clean, which fits the tone. Action scenes are easy to follow, with clear stakes and geography. The big set pieces – the fall of the Taho outposts, Liam stumbling injured across abandoned sectors, the sewer interception of Licinious’s assassins, the last stand around the Temple – all have that tense, cinematic feel. At the same time, there are quiet moments the book lets breathe: Randolf comforting a terrified toddler in a crib, Liam becoming “Uncle Liam” to Jorge’s twins, the wedding scene where the dead briefly appear at the altar. A few conversations explain ideas a bit more directly than they need to, but I’d rather have a science fiction novel wear its heart on its sleeve than try to be cool and detached when it is clearly about grief, faith, and choosing who you become after loss.
Price of Vengeance feels like a solid fit for readers who enjoy character-driven military science fiction that leans into emotion and spiritual questions as much as tactics. If you like the idea of a YA-flavored story where a small, scarred sniper wrestles with survivor’s guilt, bonds with a telepathic predator, falls in love with a dreamwalking priestess, and has to decide what kind of warrior he wants to be, this is worth your time. If you want an action-heavy, hopeful story about family, faith, and the real cost of revenge, Price of Vengeance delivers.
Pages: 309 | ASIN : B0CQ5QH3D6
