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Profound Human Elements at Stake
Talisman: Nexus follows a man known as the Talisman on a quest to rescue his sons as he faces the consequences of the cosmic bargain he made to bring back his wife. When you finished the first book in this series, did you know the direction you would take with Book 2?
No, because I never really do. As a pantster, I write very organically. Although I have a rough idea of where I’m going, I honestly didn’t have a clue with Talisman. I knew generally what I wanted to accomplish with Talisman: Subterfuge, but with Talisman: Nexus (and Talisman: Halcyon), they were the hardest novels I’ve ever written – I mean that – and they required a lot of extra push, imagination, stretching, and intentionality to get them done. In some ways, I feel like I had nowhere to go with the characters in Talisman: Nexus, given that they were all essentially trapped in The Refuge. The only one who could teleport out of there would be Liam. Ultimately, I did know that I wanted to have some kind of redemption, but I wasn’t sure what shape or tone that would take. I’m content and glad at how it all transpired, however.
Family is clearly the emotional core of the novel. How did Liam’s role as a father shape the way you wrote the stakes of the story?
Well, I’m a daddy of two boys, 10 and 6. If I were separated, or disconnected, or alienated from them, I would be disassembled. They are the title of one of my latest books: You are my whole Earth. They truly are. Where do you go if you don’t have an Earth? You drift. That’s what Liam’s doing…. Drifting, mindlessly and numbly fulfilling this Faustian bargain foisted upon him in the bleak hope that the Aeterium Axis will do what they said and restore his wife to him. It’s not founded on a false premise or fantastical thinking: they’ve proven that they’re mysterious and able to channel Janine’s voice to him. So he does have proof. Nonetheless, it’s pulled him away from his remaining family, his sons; it’s alienated him from his in-laws, his deceased wife’s parents, and it’s made him a vigilante on the run. All of that has taken a great toll on him, and he wants nothing more than to be connected with his boys.
When writing science fiction with dystopian elements, how do you keep the world grounded emotionally?
With humanity at its center. There have to be profound human elements at stake, and those stakes have to be great and weighty. I tried to do that with Nexus. I knew that Carson & Joseph had to be captured by The Zorander. What would happen to them after that, however, was anybody’s guess. I certainly didn’t know. Would I, as the writer of the story, allow them to be killed, plunging the already-vigilante Liam further into darkness and thirst for vendetta? I couldn’t do that because that’s what the Zorander is, and Liam is not the Zorander. He is very much human. I had to keep coming back to that loss, that dread, that pain of losing his wife eternally and now his sons temporarily. The stakes were real and profound, and, again, as a daddy, I would be disassembled if I were alienated from them or if I lost them.
Can you give us a glimpse inside the next book in the Talisman series? Where will it take readers?
Talisman: Halcyon is the most sci-fi of ANY sci-fi books I’ve ever written. It took me to Asimovian levels of creativity. James SA Corey stuff. I have always written in this universe, but suddenly I was hopping the multiverse with sorcerers, magic, intelligent and conversant aliens, superpowers, large ships with thrusters, strange planets and star systems, teleporting across worlds, I mean, I have NEVER written stuff of this gravity before. It truly stretched me as a writer, and I’m so grateful for that. Writers SHOULD be stretched at every turn, and the Talisman series stretched me in ways I never thought possible. You’ll see some crazy stuff happening in Talisman: Halcyon that will directly unite it with my Dissonance series, as well as with my other books, The Slide, The End, and The Phoenix Experiment. It’s truly turned into an Aaronverse, and I think that’s very cool. 😊
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Talisman: Nexus opens in the bleak, icy expanse of Svalbard, where Liam “Foxy” Mayfield – known as The Talisman – stands at the crossroads of personal devastation and cosmic intrigue. His sons, Joseph and Carson, have been abducted by The Zorander, a former Talisman driven by vengeance, forcing Liam into a confrontation that is as much about family as it is about fate.
He is now gutted, having bargained with the alien Aeterium Axis to save one thousand lives in exchange for the resurrection of his wife, Janine… and his mission has become nothing short of a nightmare.
Within The Refuge, a clandestine Svalbard base, Liam’s allies and loved ones gather in anxious anticipation. The group is fractured by blame, particularly toward former President Vance Cardona, whose alliance with President Evelyn Lynch led to Liam’s exposure and vulnerability. Journalist Onyx Sleater, once obsessed with unmasking the vigilante she dubbed the “Dark Ghost,” is now fiercely protective of Liam.
Will Liam be able to save his sons? Will he triumph over The Zorander? What will the relationship dynamic be between Liam and his sons? And will Onyx Sleater have a much greater part to play that binds everyone together in an unexpected nexus?
The shift from personal quest for resurrection to universal battle for liberation approaches.
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From the author of Talisman: Subterfuge comes its stunning sequel, Talisman: Nexus, balancing intimate family drama with escalating cosmic stakes. The pacing moves from tense, character-driven confrontations to high-stakes action and revelation. Aaron Ryan of the Dissonance alien invasion saga, THE END Christian Dystopian saga, Forecast, The Slide and The Phoenix Experiment delivers yet another explosive story in Talisman: Nexus. Read it and prepare for the final reckoning in Talisman: Halcyon!
Talisman: Nexus
Talisman: Nexus is a science fiction thriller with strong superhero and dystopian elements, and it picks up with Liam Mayfield, also known as the Talisman, in a place of raw crisis: his sons have been taken, his uneasy allies are trapped in hiding, and the cosmic bargain that promised him Janine’s return starts to look more poisonous than redemptive. What follows is not just a rescue story. It is a book about grief turning into rage, rage turning into clarity, and an enemy becoming something more complicated than a target. By the time the novel reaches its later revelations, Liam is no longer just fighting the Zorander. He is confronting the possibility that the Aeterium Axis themselves are the real architects of the suffering he has been living under, which shifts the whole series onto a bigger and stranger track.
What stayed with me most was the book’s emotional temperature. Author Aaron Ryan does not write this story at a cool distance. He writes like he wants you right up against the glass, feeling Liam’s panic, shame, fury, and exhaustion in real time. Sometimes that intensity really works. There are scenes that are very emotional, especially when Liam is on the edge of becoming the very thing he hates, or when the story pauses long enough to show how much loss still lives inside these characters. I also liked that the novel keeps circling back to family. Under all the powers, talismans, teleports, and cosmic stakes, this is still a story about a father trying not to lose himself while trying to get back to his children. That grounding matters. It gives the bigger mythology some weight.
I also found the author’s choices interesting in a more mixed way. Ryan leans hard into melodrama, repetition, and blunt emotional declaration. The novel sometimes prefers maximum feeling over subtlety. But I cannot say the book lacks conviction. The dual perspective work, especially with Onyx and Liam, gives the story a restless, personal momentum, and the later twist that forces Liam and the Zorander into a grim, almost tragic alignment is the kind of move that made me sit up and pay attention. That was the moment the book opened wider for me. It stopped being only a vengeance-and-rescue novel and became something more cosmic and morally tangled. Not cleaner. Better.
I’d recommend Talisman: Nexus most to readers who enjoy earnest, emotionally direct speculative fiction, especially people who like sci-fi thrillers that borrow some of the charge of superhero fiction and some of the ache of dystopian drama. If you want a story that is sincere, bruised, big-hearted, and unafraid to go all in on pain, power, faith, and fate, there is a lot here to appreciate. I think readers who already enjoy series-driven worldbuilding and characters who carry their trauma like a live wire will probably get the most out of it.
Pages: 247 | ASIN : B0GH2C6NGQ
