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A Gray Line
The Quest for Freedom follows a human slave whose escape ignites a rebellion that transforms a scattered people into an army and forces a world built on slavery to fear the humans it once chained. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
There wasn’t really one thing that inspired Conquest. I love fantasy, and LOTR and The Inheritance Cycle are some of my favorite books, but I only took small bits from them as motivation. The actual story of Conquest just popped into my head, and I’ve been building up the world of Affer ever since I started writing the first book.
Fletcher is driven by both justice and revenge. How did you approach writing a hero who is inspiring but also frighteningly ruthless?
In order to write Fletcher and how I created him in the first place, I first asked myself what a great leader is. To me, that’s someone who can rally his people but also strike fear into his enemies. A great leader needs to understand when to step back, when to attack, when to show mercy, and that he needs to stand strong even against impossible odds. Another defining part of Fletcher is that I don’t really think of him as the hero. He most certainly isn’t the villain, but at the same time, he’s willing to do whatever it takes to achieve his species’ freedom. Which sometimes teeters on a gray line of right and wrong.
Ji, Crystal, Tor, and Leon each bring a different energy to Fletcher’s rebellion. Which character surprised you most while writing?
Easily Ji. In the beginning, I didn’t even intend for Ji to come with Fletcher, and then it quickly hit me how big a mistake that would be.
Unlike Fletcher, Ji hasn’t been training to be a leader. He’s great with a sword and learns faster than Fletcher, but where he differs from the main character is that you see him grow and become stronger. Fletcher’s already resilient and hellbent on doing whatever it takes to achieve freedom, and rightfully so; he’s dedicated his life to the goal. However, Ji is a much different story. While Ji isn’t weak, he didn’t dedicate over half his life to changing the course of history like Fletcher.
As the first book in The Conquest Trilogy, how much of the larger war did you already have planned before writing this opening installment?
When I started writing Conquest, I didn’t have anything planned. I just wrote what came to mind, but that changed very quickly, and by the time the first book was done, I had basically planned out every bit of the story. Now, I’m just putting pen to paper, or words to a blank document, and changing up bits as I see fit.
The story of Conquest has just begun, and the scale of the world and battle grows much larger.
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From slave, to soldier, to king…that is Fletcher Rush. The man who craves more than just his freedom; he wants to see the cities of his enemies stained in blood. It won’t be enough until every last human is free, and those who shackled them in chains have been brought to their knees.
For centuries, humans have been enslaved, and hope has long since vanished. But that all changes. The fire that has lain dormant is rekindled, and humans quickly rally behind Fletcher. Finding a purpose greater than their lives, no battle is impossible. Humans will reclaim their former glory, and the planet Affer shall once again fear them.
Fear can keep a species enslaved…but it can also bring a planet to its knees.
The Quest for Freedom
The Quest for Freedom is a fierce fantasy rebellion story built around Fletcher Rush, a human slave who has spent eleven years preparing for the day he’ll escape and begin freeing his people. From the opening pages, the book makes its mission clear: this is about resistance, revenge, loyalty, and the terrible cost of trying to break a world that has accepted slavery as normal. Fletcher’s line, “No one sane is going to change the world,” captures the spirit of the novel perfectly. He’s driven, brutal, strategic, and often frighteningly single-minded, but he’s also the spark that turns private suffering into open war.
The world of Affer gives the story a big, game-board feel, with humans, demons, elves, angels, hybrids, and the dammed all locked into a long history of conquest and resentment. The book spends a lot of time moving through cities, maps, tunnels, castles, ruins, and battle plans, which gives Fletcher’s uprising a clear sense of geography and momentum. Admont, IItu, Ronann, and Lilthral all feel like stages in a growing campaign rather than random stops, and that structure makes the rebellion feel bigger with each victory.
What gives the book its personality, though, is the group forming around Fletcher. Ji brings humor and warmth to the bloodshed, Crystal adds skill and emotional restraint, Tor brings raw force, and Leon adds a rough, volatile energy to the expanding army. Their banter keeps the story from becoming only a sequence of battles. Fletcher and Ji especially have an easy rhythm together, and their friendship gives the violence a human center. You can feel that these people are learning how to live as free humans at the same time they’re learning how to fight as soldiers.
The action is relentless and often graphic, with battles that emphasize exhaustion, injury, improvisation, and numbers as much as heroics. Fletcher’s victories rarely feel clean. He wins through planning, endurance, and a willingness to pay in blood. One of the book’s strongest ideas comes when Fletcher admits, “The price for freedom is the blood of others,” and that line sits over the whole story. The rebellion is inspiring, but it also asks its characters to become harder, crueler, and more dangerous than they once were.
As the first book in The Conquest Trilogy, The Quest for Freedom works as the launch of a large-scale fantasy war. It’s about a slave becoming a conqueror, a scattered people becoming an army, and a world beginning to fear the species it once chained. The ending expands the conflict beyond the elven kingdom and points toward even bigger clashes ahead, especially through Miller’s path and the growing threat of the hybrids. Readers who enjoy military fantasy, revenge-driven heroes, brutal combat, and stories about uprisings will find a lot to follow here.
Pages: 379 | ASIN: B0FWSNHPJ8
