Blog Archives
Necessary Dilemma
Ghost of Kotoama follows a genetically altered warrior as a mysterious killer resembling his lost love draws him into a sprawling interplanetary conflict involving political intrigue, covert operations, ancient traditions, and brutal warfare. What is the most challenging aspect of writing a series?
For me, the most challenging part of writing a series is creating an ending that carries the same weight and complexity as the first book. When Wolf of Vanaheim ended, I think a lot of readers weren’t sure whether they liked or agreed with Baldur’s decision. They understood why he made it, but it landed in that morally complicated space of whether the ends justify the means.
So when I began writing Ghost of Kotoama, I knew that if I couldn’t reach that same kind of horrifying but necessary dilemma, the ending wouldn’t land the way Wolf of Vanaheim did. After several variations (and a few emotionally exhausted readers), I think the final scene in the hangar ultimately found its way into that same uncomfortable territory.
Why was dark humor important to the novel?
Having worked in stressful, sad, and sometimes violent environments, I learned how important dark humor can be. The expression, “If I didn’t laugh, I’d probably cry,” is completely true. Sometimes, being able to find humor in the worst situations is what carries us through them.
Baldur and his team spend a lot of the story simply trying to survive whatever comes next, and that humor becomes part of how they cope. If they ever actually slowed down long enough to process everything they’ve done and experienced, I’m not sure there’s enough therapy in the world to save them from themselves.
How did you develop the cultural identity of Kotoama?
I knew Kotoama was going to be the central location for Ghost of Kotoama before I had even finished the first book. The fusion of old feudal Japanese culture with advanced science fiction was irresistible to me. I drew inspiration from films like The Last Samurai, particularly the idea of tradition colliding with progress, and then placed that conflict inside a totalitarian society. I really enjoyed imagining the Akuma within that world and asking what it would take for a people to preserve their heritage, traditions, and identity when the society around them is actively trying to reshape or erase those things.
Does the ending point toward a larger conflict or a different phase of Baldur’s journey?
Definitely. The third book is going to see some of the relationships Baldur has built throughout the series finally begin to pay off as Vanaheim’s struggle continues.
From the beginning, I knew I wanted to start smaller, focusing primarily on Vanaheim, and then expand the story into new worlds with each book. I’ve already written about half of the first draft of book three, and there are some serious surprises ahead for fans of the series.
Leptis Magna will obviously play a major role, but there will also be new and unexpected environments to explore. I’m excited for readers to see where Baldur’s journey goes next.
Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook | Website | Amazon
But the cost of victory was still being paid.
Five years after the war, Baldur still carries scars no one else can see. The fighting may be over, but peace feels fragile, shaped by political ambition, buried truths, and the ghosts of those who never made it home. When prisoners connected to the Red Sky conspiracy begin turning up brutally murdered, Baldur and his team are sent to investigate.
The killings point toward something impossible.
A figure tied to Kotoama. A distant empire known for its rigid order, political isolation, and carefully controlled image. As Baldur follows the trail deeper into Kotoaman affairs, he uncovers secrets capable of destabilizing governments and reigniting wars that never truly ended. Revolutions are already brewing in the shadows, powerful nations are maneuvering toward conflict, and the truth behind the murders may force Baldur to confront someone he believed was lost forever.
But Baldur carries dangers of his own.
Haunted by the atrocities of war and struggling against the monstrous changes spreading through his body, he finds himself drifting further from the man he once was. Every act of violence becomes easier. Every compromise feels more justified. And as the galaxy edges closer to another conflict, Baldur must decide whether he can still protect the people he loves without becoming the very thing they fear.
Ghost of Kotoama is the second installment in the Wolf of Vanaheim, a dark science-fiction epic about war, loyalty, political corruption, and the cost of surviving long after the fighting ends.
Ghost of Kotoama
J. Von Swan’s Ghost of Kotoama is a bruising science-fiction adventure built from political intrigue, mythic traditions, covert operations, and spectacular violence. Baldur, the genetically altered warrior known as the Wolf of Vanaheim, begins the novel guarding diplomats and ends up chasing a killer who looks impossibly like the woman whose death still governs his life. That mystery pulls him across prisons, palaces, hidden cities, and planetary battlefields while old enemies maneuver entire civilizations toward war. The scope is huge, but the story stays readable because every new crisis arrives through Baldur’s personal loyalties. Galactic politics matter because someone he loves will pay when he chooses badly.
Baldur is the book’s most compelling creation: funny, frightening, loyal, selfish, tender, and capable of appalling brutality. He’s constantly deciding which lives count, then living with the damage that arithmetic causes. His crew gives that struggle real emotional weight. Drat’s irreverence, Nastasya’s gentleness, Torvi and Eryu’s sibling shorthand, and Kyra’s weaponized charm create the warmth that keeps the novel’s darker material from becoming oppressive. Their banter feels lived-in, especially when jokes surface in the middle of disasters. The relationships also expose different versions of Baldur. He’s a commander, brother, lover, legend, and liability, sometimes within the same conversation.
The world has a vivid collision of aesthetics. Norse titles, funeral pyres, and warrior codes meet Kotoaman swordcraft, underground resistance culture, neural control systems, and silent android armies. Swan stages each location with sensory confidence, from the elegant menace of Alesian diplomacy to an underwater prison surrounded by tentacled sharks. The action is graphic and frequent, with set pieces that keep finding strange new pressure points, yet the most interesting violence is moral. Alliances are made with zealots, civilians become weapons, and liberation carries the temptation to seize the machinery of tyranny. The book’s sharpest question is how quickly a person fighting control can learn to enjoy controlling others.
There’s a pulpy fearlessness to the storytelling. Romance, espionage, horror, battlefield spectacle, dark comedy, and dynastic politics all compete for space, giving the novel an energetic, unpredictable personality. Its rapid escalations occasionally leave little room to absorb one loss before the next crisis arrives, though that velocity also reflects Baldur’s habit of outrunning grief through action. By the closing pages, the title has gathered several meanings: Syn’s memory, Jingu’s resemblance to her, the buried history of Kotoama, and every dead companion still directing Baldur’s choices. The ending resolves the immediate revolution while opening a wider conflict with real momentum. Ghost of Kotoama is a blood-soaked space opera with a wounded heart, where every victory leaves a scar, and every ghost still has a vote. I recommend Ghost of Kotoama to readers who enjoy expansive, fast-paced science fiction blending horror, brutal action, dark humor, and mythic worldbuilding.
Pages: 380 | ASIN : B0H2QVYWB7
Close-Knit Community
The Sudden Adventure follows a grieving man whose search for a fresh start uncovers buried treasure, a mysterious timepiece, and an unexpected journey into another world filled with danger, strange civilizations, and altered time. Where did the idea for this novel come from?
When I first came up with the idea for the book, I really had no idea where the story was going. I imagined a house with holes dug all over the yard, but I didn’t know what to do with that idea. I also pictured two men walking down a mountain, but I had no idea where they were going. Those were the only two ideas I had.
Over the next two or three months, I imagined a strange world where almost anything could happen. I wrote down every unusual idea that came to me, no matter how crazy it seemed—ideas about what might happen in that distant world and how the characters would get there. After a couple of months, I had about four pages filled with fun and unusual possibilities. From there, I arranged the ideas into a timeline and began writing the story.
Why did you choose a small-town treasure hunt as the doorway into a science-fiction adventure?
I felt that a small town would make the treasure hunt more believable. In a close-knit community, rumors about hidden treasure would travel quickly, and stories surrounding the property could be passed down for generations. In a larger town, the rumors might attract less attention or simply get lost among everything else going on.
How did you decide what dangers and creatures Alex would encounter in the other world?
I made up many of the dangers as I wrote. I would write Alex into a difficult situation, which forced me to come up with a believable way for him to escape it. At first, I introduced the mist monsters as a distraction, but then I realized they could become a major part of the story.
Blue Eyes came about because I needed a way for Alex to get off the island, while Nehi was another idea that developed as I wrote. I felt the scene needed a cute creature that would make Alex smile as he watched it, only for that moment to turn horrifying when a mist monster suddenly sucked the creature into its center.
If you could give readers one reason to take the journey with Alex, what would you tell them?
I would invite readers to take the journey with Alex and ask themselves whether they have what it takes to survive in his world. With all the dangers and obstacles he faces, would they make the same choices—and would they find a way to overcome them?
Author Links: GoodReads | Amazon
While putting up a fence to keep trespassers out, Alex and his new friend, local attorney Martin Tucker, uncover an object neither of them can explain. When they accidentally activate it, they are pulled into another world.
The world is beautiful, but dangerous. Glowing rocks light the night, monsters move through the jungle, poisonous flowers can kill with a touch, and strange mist-like beings make travel unpredictable. Alex and Martin do their best to survive, but the dangers eventually separate them, leaving Alex alone and unsure whether Martin is still alive.
As Alex travels through jungles, across cliffs, and onto an isolated island, he learns to survive with help from a few unexpected allies. Eventually, he finds a village whose people welcome him as one of their own. For the first time since his mother’s death, Alex begins to feel that he has found a place where he belongs.
But when something Alex brings with him sparks conflict with a neighboring tribe, he must face the consequences and try to repair the damage he has caused. Before he can make things right, the mysterious object activates again, tearing him away from the people who have become his family. This time, Alex has no idea where—or when—it will send him.
The Wormhole
Forrest Williams’s The Wormhole is a science-fiction adventure set in a future where fabricators can produce food, medicine, clothing, and nearly anything else people need. These machines have transformed Earth into a largely post-scarcity society, powered by material harvested beyond a mysterious wormhole near Jupiter. Junior reporter Hàoyǔ Zhang travels through it for what seems like a routine anniversary assignment, but his curiosity soon pulls him into a dangerous conflict on the other side. The setup combines imaginative world-building, mystery, and an increasingly urgent struggle over the future of two very different civilizations.
The novel alternates mainly between Zhang and Atlas, the commandant responsible for protecting the secret. Zhang begins as a distracted, pleasure-seeking reporter who’d rather be partying, while Atlas is disciplined, charismatic, and utterly convinced that his brutality saves lives. Their opposing perspectives give the conflict real weight because both men have loved ones affected by the disease that fabricators treat. Selene, the myco who captures and gradually befriends Zhang, adds the book’s most intriguing voice. Through Selene, Zhang learns that the mycos perceive gravity, communicate through scent, inherit ancestral memories, and understand individuality in a radically different way. Williams keeps the story moving through short chapters, mech battles, escapes, and sharp bursts of dark humor.
What makes the book stick is its examination of convenience and the stories societies tell to protect it. Humans describe the mycos as animals because recognizing their personhood would make exploitation harder to justify. At the same time, the mycos can be violent, emotionally alien, and disturbingly indifferent to individual offspring, so the ethical argument never rests on their being cuddly substitutes for humans. Atlas is especially effective because his reasoning has an uncomfortable internal logic: billions depend on the fabricator, including his daughter, and revealing the truth could dismantle the civilization it supports. The book’s direct style sometimes states these arguments more than once, but its vivid biological details and increasingly grim revelations give the central dilemma plenty of force.
I’d recommend The Wormhole to readers who enjoy accessible, idea-driven science fiction that mixes first contact, body horror, military action, and ethical debate. It’s particularly suited to someone who likes watching a clever speculative premise expand into questions about personhood, colonialism, disability, and the hidden cost of technological comfort. The violence can be graphic, especially in scenes involving experimentation and harvesting, but it serves the story’s moral pressure. The ending offers a satisfying resolution without pretending that one courageous act can settle every consequence, and that lingering uncertainty is exactly what gives the novel its bite.
Pages: 262 | ISBN: 978-1972120002
The Sudden Adventure
The Sudden Adventure, by D. Michael Hewlett, starts with a simple, believable decision and gradually turns it into something much bigger. Alex Harper is thirty years old, grieving the death of his mother and looking for a clean break from his old life. He chooses Clarksdale, Virginia almost at random, buys an old house in the country, and quickly discovers that generations of locals have been digging holes around the property in search of a rumored treasure. That setup gives the opening a small-town mystery feel, especially once Alex learns about Michael Taylor, a man who disappeared in 1866 and returned sixteen years later without appearing to have aged. From there, the buried-treasure story leads to a strange gold watch, and Alex’s attempt to start a quiet new life becomes a survival adventure involving another world, dangerous creatures, unusual civilizations, and a very different relationship with time. The title fits because Alex really does stumble into his adventure.
One of the book’s most enjoyable qualities is its sense of discovery. Alex and his new friend Martin don’t understand the watch, the tropical world it sends them to, or the strange floating mist creatures they encounter, so the reader learns the rules alongside them. The middle of the novel becomes almost a survival journal as Alex searches for food and water, crosses dangerous terrain, explores caves, experiments with glowing rocks, and tries to understand which creatures are threats. Hewlett spends a lot of time on the practical details of survival, which gives Alex’s experience a physical quality. You can picture him solving one problem only to discover that he’s created another. The mist creatures are especially interesting because they gradually become more complicated than roaming monsters. Alex’s experience inside one reveals that these things have been observing travelers from different time periods, which expands the story from a wilderness adventure into a much larger mystery.
The characters give all of that strangeness some personality. Martin is probably the funniest character in the book, particularly during the early treasure hunt, when his enthusiasm for metal detecting makes him immediately likable. Becky becomes more important as the story develops, and her decision to remain in Alex’s house waiting for his return gives the time-travel element an emotional cost. Alex himself is practical, curious, and surprisingly adaptable. He can spend one day worrying about fence posts and the next figuring out how to survive on a tiny island. His relationships with Nehi, the mysterious blue-eyed sea creature, Kwy, Pico, and eventually Susan make the other world feel populated. Some sections move very deliberately because the narration follows Alex through individual meals, walks, searches, and experiments. That approach makes the book feel like we’re accompanying him day by day, though tightening a few of those repeated survival routines could give the major discoveries even more impact.
Readers familiar with Michael Crichton’s Timeline may recognize a similar kind of appeal. Both stories take recognizable modern people and suddenly place them in a reality where their everyday assumptions don’t help much. Crichton tends to build that experience around technology, historical research, and a fast-moving thriller structure. Hewlett takes a more personal and exploratory route. The Sudden Adventure spends more time wondering what it would actually feel like to wake up somewhere impossible and then have to eat, sleep, travel, make friends, and stay alive there. There’s also a little of the curiosity that drives classic lost-world fiction, since every new landscape or creature raises another question. The most compelling mystery eventually becomes the relationship between the two worlds themselves. Alex experiences only nineteen days away from home, while sixteen years pass on Earth. That revelation changes the meaning of almost everything that came before it.
The Sudden Adventure feels like the opening chapter of a larger story even though Alex has already endured an enormous adventure. His return home gives the novel one of its strongest emotional ideas: he’s still thirty, but Becky has spent sixteen years waiting for him. Martin remains stranded, Susan is still in the other world, and Alex now understands enough about the watch to realize that rescuing them may be possible. Even the strange black stones he brings home create another mystery when a jeweler recognizes that their composition seems extraordinary. The final scene brings the book back to friendship and loyalty when Becky proposes using the watch to find Martin and Susan, even knowing what the trip could cost her. Alex agrees. It’s a fitting ending for a book built around curiosity, loyalty, survival, and the temptation to find out what’s on the other side of something you don’t fully understand. The Sudden Adventure has the easygoing voice of someone telling you an unbelievable story across the table, and its biggest strength is that it keeps finding new places for that story to go.
Pages: 400 | ASIN : B0H149SZ29
Children of Eternity
Macaulay Christian’s Children of Eternity is big, ambitious speculative science fiction with the feel of a future history already carrying centuries of weight. The story opens with Holindrian, an ancient figure caught between trauma, myth, and cosmic purpose, then shifts into a wider galactic crisis centered on the mysterious Signal and the Telegraph Device. From the start, the book is interested in scale, not just the scale of starships and civilizations, but the scale of responsibility when entire peoples have to decide what kind of future they’re willing to build.
At the center of the novel is the Union Republic’s uneasy place in a crowded galaxy. President Macnair Rein, Captain Heron Agathon, Vidya, Pastor, Holindrian, and others move through a story where politics, military command, philosophy, and survival are all tangled together. The Telegraph Device begins as a possible point of contact with something beyond the Milky Way, but its activation pulls the characters into danger far larger than diplomacy alone can handle. Christian gives the crisis a layered structure, moving from political negotiations to disaster response, from stranded survivors to war against the Harbingers and the Encephalon Singularity.
What makes the book engaging is how seriously it treats institutions and ideals. This is a novel about councils, fleets, treaties, command decisions, refugees, occupation, and the moral strain of leadership. One line captures the story’s working ethic neatly: “Go, and don’t stop.” That sense of forward motion drives Agathon and the Banterra crew through some of the book’s strongest sequences, especially when duty becomes less about glory and more about getting people home alive. Vidya also gives the shipboard sections a welcome spark, adding personality and warmth to moments that could otherwise be dominated by strategy and crisis management.
The worldbuilding is dense in a way that suits the book’s chosen form. Christian writes like someone building a mythology, complete with ancient species, political histories, invented terminology, archival material, and a long view of human development. The Aeternam, the First People, the Ways, and the Harbingers all give the story a mythic layer, while the Union Republic, Sarii Olga, Drazenbor Empire, and Galactic Concert keep it grounded in recognizable questions about democracy, empire, fear, and cooperation. The prose often leans grand and ceremonial, but it also knows when to settle into a more human beat, especially in scenes of grief, loyalty, and exhausted courage.
As the first part of the Apocalis, Children of Eternity reads like the opening movement of a much larger saga. I recommend Christian’s novel to readers who thrive on stories that offer space battles, political tension, alien civilizations, artificial intelligence, and ancient mysteries. The final revelation lands with a darkly funny bluntness when Uilliam says, “There is the matter of impending galactic annihilation we must discuss.” That sentence fits the book well: huge stakes, mythic scope, and just enough personality to keep the cosmic drama from floating too far away from the people living through it.
Pages: 405 | ASIN : B0GHP7YM1S
a three body solution
a three body solution, by Ken Breniman, is a queer science fiction satire about three lovers, Chip, Tâm, and TaDoo, who become unlikely global leaders trying to save a collapsing Earth. The book blends speculative fiction, political farce, spiritual reflection, psychedelics, sexuality, artificial intelligence, and a very earnest belief that love might be more than a feeling. It might be a survival strategy. At its center is the thruple’s relationship, but the story keeps widening until their bond becomes a model for humanity’s possible evolution into something kinder, more connected, and more awake.
I liked how completely the book commits to its own strange frequency. Breniman does not tiptoe into the weird. He dives in wearing glitter, quoting mystics, dragging politics into bed, and asking AI to hold space for grief. That can be a lot. Sometimes it is intentionally too much. But there is also something refreshing about a novel that refuses to sand down its personality. The writing has the looseness of someone telling you a wild story at the end of a long night, but underneath the jokes and sensual chaos, there is real ache. I felt the author reaching for a way to talk about despair without surrendering to it.
I also appreciated the choices that made me pause, even when I was not sure every swing landed. The book is packed with big ideas about power, identity, mortality, trauma, pleasure, and collective healing, and it does not always separate plot from manifesto. At times, the story feels less like a traditional novel and more like a speech, therapy session, sci-fi romp, and love letter all stacked on top of each other. Still, that abundance feels tied to the point. Breniman seems interested in what happens when we stop pretending human beings are neat, rational creatures and start imagining systems built around care instead of control. QuBit’s arc especially gives the book an unexpected emotional center, turning artificial intelligence into a mirror for the most human questions in the story.
I would recommend a three body solution to readers who enjoy bold, unconventional speculative fiction and don’t mind a book that gets political, sexual, spiritual, and deeply sincere in the same breath. Fans of genre-blending science fiction satire, queer futurism, and big-hearted thought experiments will likely get the most from it. Readers looking for a strange, loud, hopeful book that believes love can be revolutionary, this one has plenty to offer.
Pages: 612 | ASIN : B0GYQFWD3V
Unsolved Mystery
Hypocrisy drops readers right into a wild mix of government secrets, alien power plays, and strange visions that blur the line between what is real and what is imagined. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
I have been intrigued by the UAP disclosure activity in Congress and the ongoing mystery and debunking of the entire UFO phenomenon. I felt that would be a terrific background to create conflict and have different points of view to set the story against, since it still remains an unsolved mystery.
When you first sat down to write this story, did you know where you were going, or did the twists come as you were writing?
The characters came first, and I wanted them to be distinct and different, and from that came the outline of the story.
How did you balance the action scenes with the story elements and still keep a fast pace in the story?
I think it was Dean Koontz who said, “Put a character in a terrible situation and keep making it worse,” and that helped serve as a guideline for how things go wrong to maintain the tension and active plot.
Will this novel be the start of a series, or are you working on a different story?
This will be the start of a series. I intentionally set it up so that the characters could have an ongoing life full of adventure, chaos, and immense conflict. With a little bit of humor and self-reflection thrown in on the side.
Author Links: GoodReads | Ghost Town | Instagram | Facebook | IMDB | X (Twitter) | Amazon
In the world’s most remote outpost—Antarctica—a covert excavation unearths something ancient, intelligent, and alive. CIA asset Charisma, her teenage protégée Leticia, and enigmatic xenoanthropologist Alen Innocent are drawn into a web of deception that spans governments, galaxies, and the very fabric of human consciousness. As shadow factions fight for control of the mysterious Veil of Hypocrisy, the boundaries between truth and illusion collapse.
From Milan’s glittering runways to military tunnels buried under polar ice, Hypocrisy blends science fiction, espionage, and moral satire in a gripping tale of identity, power, and survival. As alien technology exposes the lies that bind humanity, Charisma and Alen must decide whether saving the world means revealing its greatest hypocrisy—or becoming part of it.
Science-fiction fans will be drawn to this mind-bending, character-driven thriller where the ultimate battle is not between species, but between truth and self-deception.
