The latest addition to the Spellster Series

So, I’ve mentioned Extinguishing the Sun a few times without actually getting into what this newer addition to the spellster series lineup actually is.

It’s been brewing in the back of my head for a while now, ever since a snippet I’d written for To Target the Heart introduced me to His Ethereal Highness, Rami the Betrayer, and Hamish asked the question of why being known as “The Betrayer” is considered good, especially when the good done was in killing a certain person.

It also helped me flesh out Stamekia, where Extinguishing the Sun will take place. The map for the spellster series world is vast and, at the moment only a few places have been mentioned throughout In Pain and Blood. Plus, it furthers my goal to eventually have a story set in every land of the spellster series world…

So far, there’s:

In Pain and Blood, set in Demarn (its novella, An Unexpected Gift, is in Dvärghem, but the placing doesn’t matter much because they don’t leave the house), so is And the World Crumbled.

To Target the Heart starts in Tirglas, but moves on to the Udynea Empire about two-thirds of the way through, where Spectre of the Golden Voice, Through Smoke and Fire, Rock-a-bye & Willow (albeit in the distant past) are also set in their entirety… It’s a big place.

Burning Beneath the Sun is set in Niholia.

Down the Path of Shadows takes place in Obuzan.

Mapmaker might be planned to start in Stamekia, but it won’t linger there and what’s shown is only a small piece of ruins in a desert.

For a long time, Stamekia was largely a blank slate like Cezhory.

Enter Rami.

Extinguishing the Sun is not a light tale. And even though the main characters are teenagers and there’ll be no sex (in fact, I think Rami might fall somewhere within the ace spectrum), it won’t be sauntering its way into the young adult category.

It begins with Prince Rami the Forgotten who, at seventeen-years-old, is the outcast son of the God-Emperor, Sharik the Lightgiver (and perhaps the most powerful spellster character in all the stories). Rami’s spent much of his life with his mother, who refused to let him near the courts because of his father, but she’s dead now and his father beckons him to the palace. That’s where Rami learns pretty quickly that daddy is not the man he imagined.

The people believe Sharik to be the embodiment of the sun and he has very much deluded himself to the point that he believes he is a god and above reproach. Also, that the sunlight will vanish completely without him… He kind of makes me sick to think about, actually. The first thing I wrote on this was the some of the viler stuff that happens in this story, then the ending.

Part of that is due to Tahu, who’ll also share the pov. At sixteen-years-old, he’s spent several years as one of the God-Emperor’s Collection of Dolls because of his different-coloured eyes (one green, one black). He wants his freedom back. Having Rami as the emperor would mean freedom for not only him but all the Dolls, because there’s not really anyone to stop Sharik from doing whatever he damn well pleases…