In Soltiude's Shadow: Extended Edition Cover Reveal

In Solitude's Shadow: Extended Edition

Back in 2020, I wrote a book called In Solitude’s Shadow for a publisher after seeing a call for ‘dark fantasy novellas’.

I’d been writing short stories and the like for a little while, and thought I’d give it a go – fantasy was in my blood from birth, and the reason I started writing in the first place was to tell my own fantasy stories.

In Solitude’s Shadow came out in 2021. People enjoyed it, and my publisher wanted a second… which quickly became them wanting a series.

A good thing too, as I wrote In Solitude’s Shadow with sequels in mind and never as a standalone. The problem was, another novella was never going to cut it with the story I had in mind, and, after a year or so away from the series – and a couple of books in my urban fantasy series under my belt – I kept looking at In Solitude’s Shadow with a certain longing.

You see, I wasn’t ashamed of it, and people certainly liked it – among its indie award nominations it won ‘Best Novel 2021’ at The Magic Book Corner – but I had so much more I wanted to do with that story. I’d become more experienced as a writer, and as I wrote its sequel, 2022’s Path Of War, I kept thinking that the jump in storytelling between the two books was quite large.

And it seems I might have been right in thinking that.

Path Of War, Beyond Sundered Seas, and At Eternity’s Gates followed the first book to finish off the series, and all were nominated for Best Fantasy Novel at the British Fantasy Awards in 2023 and 2024 (I, for reasons that still mystify me, wrote and released books 3 and 4 in the same year and they are chonks). Readers loved them, and most mentioned an improvement over the first book in their reviews.

But, and this is the main thing, all three are much larger than In Solitude’s Shadow. Both in scope, which is to be expected, and in word count. Simply, book one looked like a prequel to a larger series, which was never the intention.

So, here we are in 2025. Happily, the rights to the Empire Of Series returned to me at the end of 2024, and I decided not only to release them all with lovely new covers by the amazing Liz Delton, but to rewrite and expand In Solitude’s Shadow while I had the chance.

And I did.

The new book one of the Empire Of Ruin Saga doesn’t just have a few new chapters – it has been rewritten and expanded line-by-line. It still tells the same story with the same characters, but done in a way that makes it feel more like a novel at the start of an epic fantasy series than a novella prequel to a larger set of books. I’m delighted with how it has turned out, and, as a writer, it’s been wonderful to go back to where it all started and give the beginning a well-deserved facelift.

So, all four books are out again on February 1st 2025. With a whole new book one I’m excited for you all to read.

And if you’ve never read them before, I hope you enjoy the journey. But if you have, I hope the beginning is better than ever.

Find the series here: https://mybook.to/empireofruin