30 KiB
[RT][HF]Forging Divinity
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Author: u/Salaris Dominion Sorcerer*
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/2vt83r/rthfforging_divinity/
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Score: 15
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Created: 2015-02-13T22:03:48
Post:
Hey all,
I've just published my first fantasy novel, and I think it might interest some of the people here.
I think I can fairly say that it falls into the characteristics of rational fiction in the sidebar, although there are some exceptions in terms of character behavior (some characters behave more intelligently than others).
It's a hard magic story, and I get into a lot of detail about the magic system, similar to a Sanderson novel or Mother of Learning.
Here's a quick blurb: Some say that in the city of Orlyn, godhood is on sale to the highest bidder. Thousands flock to the city each year, hoping for a chance at immortality.
Lydia Hastings is a knowledge sorcerer, capable of extracting information from anything she touches. When she travels to Orlyn to validate the claims of the local faith, she discovers a conspiracy that could lead to a war between the world's three greatest powers. At the focal point is a prisoner who bears a striking resemblance to the long-missing leader of the pantheon she worships.
Rescuing the prisoner would require risking her carefully cultivated cover - but his execution could mean the end of everything Lydia holds dear.
You can find the paperback version here and the Kindle version here.
Edit: For those of you who want a preview, click on the Kindle version, then click "Look Inside". You'll be able to read the beginning of the book.
Comments:
u/xamueljones [+8] My arch-enemy is entropy (2 hours later)
If she can extract information from anything she touches, could she potentially extract information about her ability by touching herself? It's the very first thing I thought of when I read the description. Just for that interesting ability alone, I think I'll give it a read.
u/Salaris [+7] Dominion Sorcerer (2 hours later)
Great question. The line in the summary is an over simplification of how her abilities work, but I wanted to have a good hook line that illustrates the type of thing that she does.
She doesn't really have a single "ability" to identify - she's proficient in utilizing the Dominion of Knowledge, and she uses it in a variety of different ways (not all of which are limited to touch) throughout the book.
She absolutely could gather information about herself, or about active spell effects that are on herself, through using specific spells in her repertoire.
Similarly, she could determine the strength of her own connection to specific Dominions, including the Dominion of Knowledge, which might be the closest application to what you've asked.
If you're thinking about this in terms of her attempting to identify the mechanics by which sorcery itself functions, that's explored within this book. Sorcery theory is a big part of my writing.
u/None [+4] (5 hours later)
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u/Salaris [+3] Dominion Sorcerer (7 hours later)
I can see why you'd ask that, but no. =D
She has to actively cast a spell, and when she casts the spell, she specifies a target. It's not that she has a passive info-gathering ability that happens whenever she touches something.
There are certain types of spells that are tailored for gathering different types of information, as well as spells that are designed for use on different types of targets.
If you're wondering how Lydia can target say, a "person", without getting other things (e.g. the bacteria you mentioned) in the process, that gets into deeper magical theory than I probably shouldn't be discussing on a thread like this, since it could involve delving into spoiler territory. Targeting methodologies are discussed within the book and will be elaborated on in future works.
The simple answer is that Lydia does have some level of control over what she's choosing to try to gather information about.
Does that answer your question?
u/None [+3] (19 hours later)
[removed]
u/Salaris [+3] Dominion Sorcerer (a day later)
Yes, if she cast a spell on an invalid target she would be able to use that to narrow down characteristics.
There are several methods by which she could try to determine the numbers on an unscratched lottery ticket. If she had a spell designed to search for a specific number, she could cast it several times to search for each number and record the results. She might have a spell that's designed to scan all text and return the results, which would be more taxing, but it would also give her all of the numbers immediately.
Doing this with something on the scale of a lottery ticket is plausible, but things that are longer would be very unreliable. Gaining "knowledge" from a spell does not guarantee that you can remember it, so it would be the equivalent of seeing a series of numbers once.
Whether or not she can read minds is discussed in the early chapters and has some minor spoilers, so I won't go into that.
Wireless communications do not exist at the technological level of this setting. It's roughly 1600s to early 1900s level technology, varying based on specific locations, and with certain types of technology developing at different rates from the real world because of the presence of sorcery, social and cultural differences, etc. Would it be possible if she was in a modern time period? Yes, but touching probably wouldn't be the appropriate targeting methodology.
Getting the history of an object actually falls more into the territory of the Dominion of Memory. Knowledge is what's called a "Prime Dominion"; they tend to be very conceptually broad in scope. Memory is a "Deep Dominion", and they have narrower, more specific functions.
Even with the Dominion of Memory, spells would not give you the entire history of something all at once; your spell would need to have more specific search parameters.
The broad answer to the "Ship of Theseus" question is that people attempt to specify a target and a result when they cast a spell, and that the scale of the spell determines the cost. To make this a little clearer, I should probably give you a basic overview of the magic system as a whole.
The broad system is called Dominion Sorcery, and practitioners are called sorcerers. Sorcerers cast spells by using a part of themselves to signal a Dominion to create an effect. The type of cost is dependent on the Dominion, and the scale of the cost depends on the intended effect.
To give you a simple example, the cost of casting a Dominion of Flame spell is body heat. So, if a flame sorcerer wants to cast a traditional fireball spell, they're going to need to expend body heat to do it. The amount of body heat expended for the spell is much lower than the amount of heat within the fireball; the Dominion of Flame is what is generating the actual result. More powerful sorcerers are more efficient at using their own bodies to create a connection with the Dominion; thus, a powerful flame sorcerer could throw a fireball for a relatively low cost in body heat, but a newbie sorcerer could drain him or herself to hypothermia with the cost of lighting a candle.
One analogy I sometimes give is that the sorcerer is lighting a match to start the fire of a gas stove; the amount of flame created is much greater than the amount expended.
As a sorcerer uses a particular Dominion, their body adapts to the use, developing a stronger connection - but using too much in a short period can cause permanent damage. Think of it like exercising a muscle. In some cases, overuse of sorcery can be fatal.
"Spells" are a way of reliably reproducing a specific effect. Lydia uses incantations for most of her spells - this is not actually necessary, but it's used as a method of making certain the results are what she is looking for. It's a specific focusing methodology, and different schools of sorcerous training handle that differently. She discusses methodology with another sorcerer within the story.
Once a sorcerer has a spell, different sorcerers have varying levels of ability to modify that spell "on the fly". This is a separate discipline, generally called "Core Sorcery" by scholars. A simple example would be that a spell might make a sphere of fire, but Core Sorcery is necessary to make that sphere move or detonate. A more experienced flame sorcerer might be able to split a sphere of fire into several smaller spheres, or control it to home in on a specific target, etc.
Learning how to conjure a particular type of energy from a Dominion (Dominion Sorcery) and how to control energy that's already been summoned (Core Sorcery) are separate from each other, and also must be learned on a Dominion-by-Dominion basis.
I'd rather not get into too much detail - a lot of this is explained within the book, and probably better than how I'm explaining it here, since you'd have more context.
Lydia could probably make a spell for finding the combination to a safe if given time, but she doesn't have a spell for that specific function that she's already learned, nor would it be easy to modify her existing spells for that exact function. The Dominion of Memory would make this super easy, but you could make a knowledge spell for trying to determine the amount of wear on each of the numbers, for example.
u/gommm [+3] (54 minutes later)
Any epub version I could buy? Sounds interesting
u/Salaris [+3] Dominion Sorcerer (2 hours later)
The only epub version that's currently available is the Kindle version, which you can find here. If you need another format, I'll try to look into options.
u/None [+3] (3 hours later)
Amazon avoids epub like the plague. They have all their stuff in mobi.
u/Salaris [+2] Dominion Sorcerer (4 hours later)
Oh, the actual .epub format. That makes sense. I've considered putting the book up on sites that use other formats, like Smashwords or whatnot, but I need to evaluate if it's worthwhile to take advantage of being exclusive to Kindle first.
u/None [+3] (an hour later)
Very interesting! I'm in the middle of a few projects right now, but it's definitely going on my to-buy-and-read list! Thanks!
u/Salaris [+3] Dominion Sorcerer (2 hours later)
Awesome, thanks for the interest! I'll look forward to hearing what you think.
u/traverseda [+3] With dread but cautious optimism (6 hours later)
Does the kindle version even work with other ereaders? Is it DRM free?
u/Salaris [+5] Dominion Sorcerer (7 hours later)
It's an option to flag it DRM free, so I picked that option.
That said, I'm not actually sure if it works with other e-readers. If it doesn't, I'll definitely consider Smashwords and other platforms more closely after my 90-day exclusive period with Kindle is up.
u/Transfuturist [+2] Carthago delenda est. (21 hours later)
IIRC, it's pretty trivial to break Amazon's ebook DRM.
u/skycomv2 [+2] (4 days later)
You know I wonder if all those up votes means that people have bought the story and are praising it but to lazy to write a review, or they just like the idea that people should bring their paid stories to this reddit.
I was waiting for a while for a review then Monday was off and I had free time to kill so I bought it. Normally I only review fanfiction so bear with me. Some spoilers for the first 3 chapters.
World building seems solid, the book hits the ground running so history and current events are mixed together and dropped in a believable manner.
3 main point of view characters are Taelien, metalbender fresh of the farm/forest hero looking answers to his mysterious past and his mysterious sword of the gods. His storybook hero is only missing a kindly old mentor to set him on the path and then be swiftly killed and some grand evil to face. A pawn that knows he is a pawn which causes some hilarious interactions with 2 players of the game.
Lydia, chessmaster planner schemer, rpg tank, investigator, scientist, spy for one of the 2 major religions in the country/planet? She worships the gods that made Taelien’s sword. Personality tends towards straight laced, harsh but fair.
Jonan, chessmaster planner schemer, rpg Crowd Control, surface persona is a loveable rogue, innards seem to be tired player of the game. Spy for the other major religion on the planet.
So yeah 2 players and only 1 pawn between them. A highlight for me was Lydia and Jonan’s first interaction as the verbally jockey for position to steer the hero down the path most beneficial to their position.
Plot is good though I felt the summery was misleading. I thought I was going into some variant of Sanderson’s Warbreaker. Lydia shows up in some corrupt city to save some splintered shard of her god that the locals are harvesting for power. That’s not what happened and the author didn’t even mention Jonan. I think a better summary could be made in a similar style to Sanderson’s Elantris.
So in the end this is a solid first entrance into the series, or at least it had better be a series since the main arc of 2 of the 3 main characters, the whole what is Taelien’s greater purpose, and why does he have Lydia’s god sword doesn’t go further than speculation and initial investigation, your answers are in another city.
That said the local arc is great, there’s a huge who done it( placing the city into the precarious position of fighting a holy war against Lydia’s religion) in the manor of ch 86 of HPMOR, but stronger since we don’t already know who is behind the current events.
Spoilers:( in case I can’t use spoiler tags properly)
u/Salaris [+2] Dominion Sorcerer (4 days later)
That's a really fantastic review, and I think you caught some of what I was attempting to do perfectly. If you want to do me a huge favor, I'd love it if you could repost that on Amazon and/or Goodreads. You can be honest with whatever number of stars you feel is appropriate, I just think it's a great assessment of the book.
I struggled with what to do with the synopsis. I actually ended up cutting out the other two characters based on feedback, both from friends and from what I was hearing from posting my initial synopsis on /r/fantasywriters. From a /r/rational perspective, I definitely think putting Jonan and more details about the magic system would have been helpful. From a general marketing standpoint, that might have been overkill - I'm honestly not sure. I'm very new at this.
If you're interested in seeing the iterations I went through when trying to figure out my synopsis text, you can see several versions of it here. I tinkered with several styles, some of which you can see are closer to the Elantris style or even the Way of Kings style.
I'm about 33,000 words into the sequel, and the game plan is to expand this into a significantly longer series.
You gave great character summaries - which one(s) did you like? Did you dislike any of them, and if so, what elements did you dislike?
Thanks so much for taking the time to write the review. You've made my day.
u/skycomv2 [+1] (7 days later)
Sorry for the slow reply, I recently started a new job and I am still settling in. I have placed a slightly shorten version of the review on goodreads and amazon.
Looking at your previous versions is interesting, personally I liked versions 3 and 4 best. I will note that Sanderson’s books usually have a 200-300 word blurb, which was what convinced me to buy mistborn, 8 hours later I was back at the book store getting the rest of the trilogy.
Welp here’s where I put up my own summery that I had in mind:
The City of Orlyn is a rising power where divinity once again walks among men. Rumor has it that godhood can even be granted to the worthy.
Taelien Salaris, a swordsman from the forest of blades, seeks the truth about his heritage and answers about his sword the Saeken Taelien, a legendary sword originally belonging to the Tae’os Pantheon.
Lydia Scryer, a court sorcerer of Orlyn and undercover paladin of Tae’os, wants to prevent a holy war between her religion and Orlyn.
Jonan Kestrian, a spy for the order of Vaelien, has orders to investigate the claims of the local divinity and stop their growing influence.
Here the characters are shown in the same order that we get their points of view in the story, along with a small, true, tantalizing portion of their arcs.
I liked all the main characters, my worst issue with them was sometimes Lydia and Jonan sound very similar in their internal monologues which I mostly put off to them both being spies.
I think that the appendix should be placed in the front of the book so readers know that is there and can flip back to it whenever they get confused about the magic system. I know I felt that I should have been taking notes to understand things on my first read through when I didn’t even realize that there was an explanation in the back.
I also have so places of confusion. Location 465:
As a result of these cultural differences, Lydia estimated that the sorcerers in Orlyn numbered in the low hundreds , and the three who sat with her now were among the most influential. By contrast, Velthryn had hundreds of sorcerous students in their academes at any time and thousands of trained sorcerers in the city as a whole.
I thought it was established earlier that the number of Tae’os worshippers in Orlyn was less than 5% of the total pop so there should be no way that there are that many Velthryn sorcerers in Orlyn. Unless you’re talking about the Velthryn country and not Orlyn.
I’ll try to bookmark more spots as I do my second much slower read through.
It’s good to hear that this is going to be a long series, any idea about what you’re going to call it?
u/Salaris [+2] Dominion Sorcerer (8 days later)
No problem! I hope your new job is going well. And thank you so much for reposting the reviews - that means a lot to me. I PMed you a preview chapter as thanks. =)
I like your synopsis, and I think it's the type that would hook me. It's along the lines of what I did for version 3, which is one of the ones you noted that you liked the best. I like that style a lot, too, but the other readers I showed it to thought introducing all of the characters at once was too much.
To some extent, I think the summary comes down to personal preference, although I do think that your suggestion comes across as more representative of the actual story, and I think that's important. I'm definitely going to lean in that direction for future synopsis. Thanks for the advice.
I agree with your criticism that Lydia and Jonan's internal monologues sound very similar. While it's true that they are both spies, as you mentioned, I probably should do more to emphasize some of their personality characteristics. Jonan tends to be more cynical and self-deprecating, for example, and Lydia - while relatively rational as a general rule - leans on her faith more than Jonan does.
I'm iffier about moving the appendix. Using Sanderson as the example, he always puts his at the back of his books, and that's typically what I see for other reference materials (like the glossaries in Michael. J Sullivan's stuff, for example). I'll think about this.
Regarding the # of sorcerers, I think I just phrased those sentences too ambiguously. She's comparing the number of sorcerers in the entire city of Orlyn to the number of sorcerers in the entire city of Velthryn. The second sentence probably should be rephrased to something like, "By contrast, in the city of Velthryn, there were hundreds of sorcerous students in academies and thousands of trained sorcerers in the city as a whole."
Would that make it clearer?
The current series title is "The War of Broken Mirrors".
Thanks for the feedback!
u/skycomv2 [+1] (8 days later)
Oh wow, I am such a newbie with reddit, I didn’t even notice the pm until now, thanks! Boy you sure like to throw your readers into the deep end of the action. I have so many questions, like what happened to Taelien, but I suppose I can wait until the next book is released.
Sanderson can put his magic system at the end of the book because his point of view characters are usually newbies who spent a considerable amount of his very long stories learning the system. You’ve taken the harder and more interesting route of having all three of your main characters as experts in their respective fields of magics, arguably geniuses since they individually have come up with novel applications for their own magic. And all of this before the book even started.
Yes that would make it clearer, though now I have some questions about the state of the world. I originally thought that Velthryn was country like America not just another city state. So after the Tevinter imperium… I mean the Xixian empire was overthrown, did the empire just fragment into city states?
What is the general relationship between humans and the Rethri? I originally thought they were some sort of despised underclass because Jonan thought they were being quietly disappeared to fuel dark rituals. But given that he is following their religion, I am confused.
You mentioned in an earlier post that the tech time frame was between the 16th and the 19th century, but I didn’t notice anything beyond medieval tech. Most obvious is the lack of gunpowder, swords and spells seem to be the mainstay.
Thanks for the quick response.
u/Salaris [+2] Dominion Sorcerer (8 days later)
I'm glad you have questions - that's probably a good sign. =D
You have a good point about the characters in Sanderson's books usually being novices. I've actually written a couple books more like that (within this same setting), I just never ended up publishing them for various reasons. It might be wise for me to publish a prequel or intro story or something at some point to introduce people to the systems in a more traditional, "You're a wizard, Harry," fashion.
Great question. Velthryn is the capitol city of a region (very creatively called the "Velthryn region"), as well as one of the current cultural centers on the continent.
The answer to the Tevinter/Xixian question is basically "yes". There are also some cities that were never part of the Xixian Empire - it didn't quite span the entire continent. Xixis, the capitol city of the empire, was in the north western corner of the continent, and they expanded outward from there. They never got as far as the north east corner, which is where Valeria is located, or the utter south.
There are also relatively new cities, like Aayara. (The fact that this name is the same as a character name is deliberate. Characters in the setting debate if the city was named after her, or if she was named after the city).
This would probably be easier to picture with a map. Unfortunately, the only decent quality map I have is later on in the timeline, and it has some serious spoilers. =/ I'm working on getting a new one made.
The relationship between humans and Rethri varies from region to region. Rethri are fewer in numbers than humans almost everywhere, but they outnumber humans in many parts of the Forest of Blades, which is where both Jonan and Taelien are from. (Jonan grew up in the city, for the most part, whereas Taelien grew up in a small town until he was sent off to a military training facility.)
Vaelien is usually thought of as the "Rethri god" by people from outside of that region, and most Rethri do worship him, but he has plenty of human followers as well. He's just really prominent in a region where Rethri are comparatively common, and he's also described as appearing to be a Rethri himself. The Thornguard worship Vaelien and have both human and Rethri members.
Of the areas in the Forest of Blades, two of the main cities - Liadra and Keldris - are ruled by Rethri monarchs. Selyr has a city council.
Velthryn has a monarchy, but it's largely considered symbolic at this point in history. The Senate has the majority of the real power, and old Rethri families control most of the Senate. This is the source for a great deal of tension, because while Rethri were the majority of the founders of the city, humans outnumber them significantly now.
Rethri are comparatively very rare outside these specific examples, and generally considered second class citizens in many of them. Conversely, humans are considered second class citizens in places like Liadra and Keldris. Very few cities treat them equally.
Most of the technology that puts the story at that tech level is subtler stuff. Medical technology is pretty advanced, because diagnostic sorcery has given insights into how the human body works. This is why Jonan can have several pairs of glasses with different prescriptions, for example.
Construction and metallurgy are also pretty advanced, and some cities are experimenting with ideas for mass production of goods. They're basically progressing toward an industrial revolution.
Sewage and irrigation systems are also pretty advanced. Some rich people even have early "water closets".
Explosive powders do exist, but they're not in broad usage, and there are no guns on the continent yet. This is, in part, a thematic choice. Within the story, the primary reason for this is that flame sorcery is the single most commonly researched dominion, and sufficient mastery of it is generally more useful than having a firearm. Sorcerers define a large part of how battle is traditionally conducted on this continent - things are different elsewhere in the world. =)
u/INeedAUsernameToo [-12] (38 minutes later)
I'm going to need a preview before I drop any money on this. If you post the first half online, I'm willing to give this a chance.
Most writers are shit. You have to prove otherwise. You can't just put a finished project out into the world and expect people to throw money at it.
u/Charlie___ [+15] (55 minutes later)
You catch more book samples with honey than with vinegar. And politeness, at least, doesn't cost a cent.
u/FeepingCreature [+2] GCV Literally The Entire Culture (an hour later)
To be fair, the author is the one who wants us to buy it. It's reasonable to have reservations.
u/None [+15] (an hour later)
It's also reasonable not to be dickish when someone mentions they made a thing and you can buy it if you want. Salaris made no demand, but only offered us an opportunity that at worst we will ignore, costing us nothing but the brief time spent reading this post.
u/FeepingCreature [+1] GCV Literally The Entire Culture (an hour later)
costing us nothing but the brief time spent reading this post.
This argument could be used to justify any spam. (Not to imply this is spam.)
u/xamueljones [+8] My arch-enemy is entropy (2 hours later)
True, but unlike most spam, this post isn't annoyingly pushed in front of us on our computer screens. Instead this is posted on a website explicitly requesting potentially rational stories of this nature.
Also, most writers aren't going to lie about what their story is about to get customers to buy it, you need these people for any future books you might write!
u/INeedAUsernameToo [-2] (2 hours later)
I don't want this subreddit spammed with people hocking their goods. I get enough advertising as it is.
I don't see telling a person they have to prove their worth as rude. ESPECIALLY if I'm being sold something.
u/EliezerYudkowsky [+10] Godric Gryffindor (an hour later)
It's on Kindle Unlimited, if you've got that.
u/Salaris [+5] Dominion Sorcerer (3 hours later)
Yeah, I already have the Look Inside option enabled for the Kindle version, but I have to set it up separately for people to be able to preview the print version. CreateSpace and Kindle Direct do a lot of things differently and some of the disconnects are kind of bizarre.
Edit: And if you were just pointing out that my book is available on Kindle Unlimited, well, I feel a little silly. =D
u/xamueljones [+3] My arch-enemy is entropy (2 hours later)
Do you mind telling us your experience with Kindle Unlimited? I've been asking around for anyone who has it what it's like before deciding whether or not to join up. It seems like a reasonable deal and a third of my wishlist (~30 out of 100 books) can be found on it, but I worry about being pressured to read more books than I have time for to benefit from the money savings.
u/Salaris [+3] Dominion Sorcerer (3 hours later)
I'm working on getting the "Look Inside" function on Amazon set up to allow previews - it should be up within a few days. It won't be half - typically, I believe Amazon previews include a chapter or two.
I'll most likely be publishing some other samples of my writing, such as short stories, for free online in the future. I've also considered doing something in a serial style like Mother of Learning.