It takes a while for a series to get good, to reach a level where you can't wait for the next book. It all varies, of course, depending on who you ask. Discworld doesn't kick off until the third books, Equal Rites,  Dresden Files hits a home run also with the third book (IMHO), Grave Peril.

I'd really enjoyed Benedict Jacka's Inheritance of Magic series, and binged the first three books. Then, I was caught up. But I'd heard nice things about his earlier series, so I've been going through them. The first book was fine, but nothing 'grabby', but then book four! Amazing. Everything took off! 

 To summarize, Alex Verus is a mage in a more kitchen-sink urban fantasy universe rather than the An Inheritance of Magic series. A bit like Star Wars, there are Light mages and Dark mages, and hints of a time when mages ruled the world. The magic system is a bit more fluid, where everyone has an aspect like light, time, earth, water and so forth that they can manipulate for various effects. Alex is a diviner, so can sort through the futures and pick the best one, a bit like what Doctor Strange did at the end of Endgame to pick the best future.

 Alex has a dark past - he was an apprentice of the Dark mage, Richard Drakh. But he left the Dark side, and now acts as a neutral mage, doing side jobs for the Council of Light wizards. One of the great things about a series is that you can see a character develop over time. Alex starts off as a standoffish loner, a bit arrogant and rude to his summoned elemental, and to his only friend, a young woman called Luna that hangs around Alex's magic shop, as she's cursed, lonely and desperate to learn more about the magic world. (Her curse is like Rogue's from X-Men, where she can't touch or get close to people otherwise they die.) 

 Over the first four books, Alex transitions from this loner figure to a mentor to young mages around him. He takes Luna on as his formal apprentice and helps people trapped between good and evil. That he has friends and someone to fight for really makes the fourth book hit home, when an old enemy from Alex’s past wants revenge, endangering all the relationships that Alex has built up across the series.

 This book also digs into Alex’s past with his abusive mentor, Richard, and his relationship with the other apprentices. Like a Sith, there can only be one! Except from Alex’s group, a young woman, Delio, survived and hates Alex for getting away from the lifestyle. Book four ends with Alex in a terrible state: to survive against his enemies, he’s had to sacrifice his friendships. He’s had to promise to redeem Delio, and worse, his old mentor is coming back... This is a great set-up for the rest of the books in the series. And now I’ve got all the rest on order.

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Time for one of those end of year/start of year posts. By way of introduction, or re-introduction, I'm Kell Shaw and I write books and short fiction in the secondary world urban fantasy Vestiges of Magic universe. I'd like to dig more into my fantasy world and creative choices this year in bloggery, so stay tuned for that. This is post is about publishing.

Last year, I released two books in my urban fantasy world! I started in 2022 with my first book, Final Night, which I produced in a COVID writing course. I had no idea what I was doing when I started, and now know a little bit more. In March 2025, I released the third book in the Revenant Records series (which started with Final Night). 

I’m planning another three books to finalize this series up, but will do it down the track, as the third book wraps thins up with a nice  ‘happy ending for now’ conclusion. I wrote Final Night in my COVID writing course, and then published it without dying of anxiety, and then thought, what next? A sequel! And then after that I thought, another book!  This series is about an undead teenager trying to grow up while dealing with the mess of her old mortal life and dealing with supernatural weirdness. It’s also about her friendship with her friend from high school, who’s now twenty years older than she is (as it took twenty years for her to return from the Underworld). I’m going to release an omnibus of this in March, with a nice paperback edition.

I didn't plan the series; each sequel grew organically from the previous one. I had a vague idea of getting Lukie to work for a secret government organisation, but every time I tried to push the story in that direction, it didn't work. But each book ended on a position for a sequel - Final Night ends with Lukie wanting to reconnect with her father, twenty years after her murder. This drives the second book, Feral Night. And then, that book ends with one of the supporting characters, Pavish, having lost a huge chunk of their memory to a supernatural predator. Lukie and Tamlyn agree to drive Pavish home to see if any of their relatives are still alive... of course, the remaining relative lives in a crumbling hotel on the edge of nowhere, and something terrible is about to occur...  Those first three books end on a nice found family/friendship theme, and I'll do a time jump before starting the next three books.

I heard that six books are  a good way to go for a series, so currently I'm planning to write six books per series. Which leads into my new series, the Cambion Chroncles. Set in the same world as the Revenant Records, this one is about two demonic foster sisters, born centuries apart that work as bounty hunters for Hell. I've planned this series a bit more in advance this time.

The first book is out, with Vex, the younger sister in the modern day and the second will be about her mentor/older sister, Thaena,  set in the 1960s. The two story lines will weave together towards the end. Is alternating characters a great idea?

The idea I had was -- you know when a mentor character tells their protege, "It's my old enemy, [Enemy Name]!" And the protege says, "[Enemy Name]? Who is [Enemy Name]?" And that usually triggers a flashback of some sort. But what if the reader knew who [Enemy Name] was before the protege? And went, "Oh shit."  And it's about carthasis and vengeance and making the best of a shitty existence. It's been fun to write and bring together.

After this I’d like to do more of these short series in the Vestiges of Magic world. I've flagged the major creature types in urban fantasy and designed them to fit into the universe: werewolves, wizards (occultists), changelings fae. Really, it all depends on what character I get excited about. (This also ties into the roleplaying game I'd planned to release along side the series, which is about playing these creature types amidst a shadowy world of factions and intrigues). I might be able to release a 'zine' version this year, as I've got a stable verion, although who knows what will change. The poor game has had more core system changes that expected.

So books - are they selling? Am I marketing them? Not really. I’m still at the ‘write more books’ phase, and probably won’t do any paid ads until I complete a series. With a full time day job, I don't have time to learn Tik Tok or video shorts; I'd rather spend that time writing stuff. And there's not much point on doing a big ad campaign for a book 1 in the series if there's no other books available for people to read next.

I’m aslo working on some short story submissions this year to magazines. I got into one anthology last year an dit was great. I'd like to have stuff published by some of the fantastic top SFF magazines. So it's more write, polish, submit, repeat for me in 2026.

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My latest book is out: Reflections Upon the Anniversary of My Descent. This is kicking off a new series, the Cambion Chronicles, but still in the same Vestiges of Magic world as the Revenant Records.

Series pitch: In the shadows of the Vestiges of Magic world, cambions serve as bounty hunters for Hell, ensuring the wicked get the punishment they deserve. It’s a family business—and this foster family is deeply dysfunctional.

The first book introduces Vex: She has it all: the greatest boyfriend in the world, and a golden future as an athlete and top university student. Then it's all ripped away from her in a brutal, senseless attack. As she's dying, a demon makes her an offer: vengeance in exchange for service.

Vex doesn't think twice.

Newly alive and filled to the brim with demonic power, Vex is ready to kill the men who murdered the boy she loved. Pity finding them will mean descending into a world of supernatural cults, predatory monster hunters, dark magic, and fell secrets.

Even worse, the boy she sold her soul to avenge might not be the man she thought she knew…

It's inspired by movies like The Crow and Kill Bill. For tropes, it's got found family. Dark coming of age. Demonic pacts. Deep dives into identity and the price of power. I hope you like it.

You can read the first two chapters here.

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Urban fantasy hard magic

 I couldn’t put this book down! This is the new series from Benedict Jacka, who wrote the Alex Verus series. This book is in a different urban fantasy universe.

 Stephen Oakwood has a book protagonist’s tragic back story - not only did his father vanish two years ago after leaving a cryptic note, but he hasn’t seen his mother since he was a baby. He’s had a variety of temp jobs in London, struggling to make ends meet. And yet his genuine passion is ‘drucraft’, which involves crafting magical items, ‘sigls’ that hold spells. He’s drifting through life, not dedicating himself to anything, except perhaps his cat and a few hours of time in the evening when he works on his magical items.

 Everything changes when a mysterious young woman contacts Stephen, telling him about an entire other world he had no idea existed. There’s a complex hierarchy of noble houses and corporations that control the world of drucrafting, because they hold the raw wells of magical energy that empower sigls. Stephen is a direct blood relative of House Ashford, estranged because of the choices his parents made. And yet, he's eligible to be in Ashford’s line of succession. After his falling out with his contact, Stephen is sucked into the intrigues between feuding house heirs, where he’s horribly outmatched. Stephen’s only choice is to become more powerful at drucrafting, teaching himself with scraps of knowledge, trial and error in a world where the rich have their own tutors and take everything for granted.

 The corporate/family intrigue is the best part of this, as well as the hint of other factions in the world. Jacka is planning a long series, and he’s set up an interesting world with layers of secrets. However, whether or not you’ll like this book depends if you enjoy watching Stephen power-up, which is the middle (and bulk) of the novel. (Did you like all the training sequences in Dragonball or other shonen anime shows? It's like that, but with magical item creation.) Drucrafting is an example of a ‘hard magic system’, so there are explainable, measurable rules about everything works. I bet Jacka has an entire roleplaying system system under the hood, or at least a spreadsheet. (This is hinted at in the appendix, which has a lot more detail about how everything fits together).

 Through trial and error, Stephen figures out the different wells, and what magical sigls he can draw from them. It’s not all Stephen sitting around navel-gazing - he’s pushed to his limits by the forces against him. When his cat is wounded by his enemies (the fiends!) he desperately has to figure out a healing magic, or lose his pet. When he’s beaten up by people with more powerful sigls, he has to figure out how to get as strong as they are.  And the system of finding magical wells (physical locations that can create different magical gems when powered up) reminds me a bit of playing Ingress in the day, as they can be stolen and raided by other groups.

 Perhaps my only caveat is that normal people have only the vaguest idea that drucraft and these noble houses and corporations exist. Maybe there’s a reason for this, but it seems odd that the drucraft world has maintained its secrecy and isn’t written about in the Financial Times!

 Despite that quibble (as it was fun to learn about this other world of rich and deadly magic with Stephen), I had a great time and I’ve already ordered the next book.

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Werewolves meet X-Men

 The Were Chronicles by Alma Alexander is probably one of my favorite books I’ve read recently. It’s actually three books bundled together, the individual ones being Random, Wolf and Shifter. The introduction posits that it’s a work of ‘Hard Fantasy’, in that the shapeshifting is based on science (the author is a molecular biologist). It’s also a lot more grounded than a lot of fantasy as the book explores the impact of werecreatures on culture, society and on science. (I wouldn’t call it soft sci-fi either, as that always reminds me of Doctor Who, where this is more like Ursula LeGuin playing with urban fantasy tropes.)

Each month, the Were people shift into animal form. It’s not a great existence; they don’t remember their transformations, and have to be kept in cages, lest they run off or hurt people. However, their people are still proud of their heritage and live in large clans that support each other. During adolescence, Weres imprint on an animal that they will turn into for about three days (about the length of a full moon) for the rest of their lives. In a world that reminded me a bit of how the X-Men were treated, Weres are regulated by the government. Weres that don’t have anyone to help them during their transformations are imprisoned in horrific institutions, and there are drugs you can take to suppress (but not completely stop) one’s transformation.

The first book in the collection, Random, is the story of Jazz. As her brother desperately tries to trigger his own transformation as a rite of passage, Jazz’s own transformation is triggered - and she shifts into a human male that resembles her older brother! I was expecting an exploration of gender identity, but it’s really a story of immigrant identity. The focus of the book is a character study of Jazz’s older sister, Celia, her death, and the impact on her family. Jazz reads her sister’s journals and privately blogs about her reaction to them in her internet journal. Celia’s story is about fleeing Eastern Europe, as violence against Weres increases, immigrating to America and trying to fit in. Horror elements are subtly explored through the Turning Houses (where shifters are compulsorily imprisoned by the government each full moon) and the tragic bullying that Celia faces at school. I thought Jazz’s story was largely overshadowed by her sister’s, and yet this thread anchors the entire trilogy.

Wolf is the story of Mal, Jay’s brother. During the events of the first book, he ‘cheats’ to trigger his transformation into a wolf, or Lycan. (He’s friends with ‘Chalky’, a mysterious shifter who can turn into any animal, and he can control and keep his human mind during the transformation, unlike the after Weres. And when Chalky bites Mal, he triggers Mal’s transformation into a wolf.) Now Mal is a member of one of the oldest and most mysterious Were clans. The Lycans come for him and indoctrinate him into their society - and they’re all biologists! Mal is taken to the compound and trained in basic labwork. Each month, Mal enters the wolf sanctuary in wolf form. This is probably one of the most original werewolf society studies I’ve read about. It’s a social story about Mal finding a place in the Lycan society and culture when he’s an outsider to such a closed and cliquey group, obsessed with research, family bloodlines and academia. It’s also about a younger generation rising up and challenging the status quo. This was my favourite story in the book.

Shifter is the story of Chalky (alias Saladin) Mal’s friend, who can shift into any shape. He starts off using it for mischief, and then by the end of the book is involved in a full-blown spy plot against the religious authoritarian movement that’s cracking down on Weres.

Overall, I loved the world-building and the character studies. Alexander’s background as a scientist underlies the trilogy, grounding the story in interesting ways. Especially with extracts of academic reports and papers sprinkled through the books. Probably my main caveat is that Alexander spends a chunk of the second book covering the events of the first, and most of the last book covering the events of the second from Chalky’s point of view. It’s fantastic from a character perspective, but by the time we catch up to events, the plot becomes a bit squished, and could have used longer to explore the intrigue that Chalky gets involved in. Anyway, it was a fascinating dive into ‘Hard Fantasy’ and a highly recommended read, particularly if you want to read a book that explores werecreatures in a different light.

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