Benedict Jacka

Although it hasn’t been finalised as yet, my publishers got in touch with me this week to tell me that the Broken Binding should be doing a signed hardback edition of A Judgement of Powers, as they did with Inheritance of Magic #1 and #2.  They should go on sale around the beginning of November.  I’ll let you know as/when that’s confirmed!

I’m into the final section of Inheritance of Magic #4.  Should be just a couple more chapters to go.  It’s looking like I won’t make the end-of-September deadline that I’d been aiming for, but it’ll definitely be done before the release of A Judgement of Powers.

Here’s Chapter 1 of Book #3 in the Inheritance of Magic series, A Judgement of Powers!

Chapter 2 will release four weeks from now, on October 10th.

Just finishing off Chapter 16 of Inheritance of Magic #4.  Once that’s done there’s a final section of 3 chapters or so, and then we’ll be done.

This book’s been quite a struggle to get through.  Part of it might be that I’m starting off a new arc of the larger story, so I’ve had to work out a lot of things from scratch.  Part of it might be that my personal life is busier these days and I don’t have quite as much time to spend on writing (though I still spend a LOT).  And part might be that Inheritance of Magic is just turning out to be a very complicated story, with a lot more moving pieces to keep track of than Alex Verus.  Hard to say which it is.

Still, we’re finally in the home stretch!  This section should be done in a few days, after which I’ll aiming to finish the last one by the end of September.  If all goes to plan, by the end of next month, the first draft of the book will finally be completed.  Fingers crossed!

As those of you who’ve read An Instruction in Shadow will know, towards the end of the book Stephen gets hold of a mysterious coded letter.  I didn’t include the decoded version since it wasn’t necessary for the story (chronologically, the reader is going to find out the important bits of the letter immediately at the start of book #3).  I did think some readers would find it an interesting puzzle, though, so I left the coded version of the letter in the book to see how long it would take people to figure out.

It took them about 24 hours.  Never underestimate the collective time and energy of Internet fans.

But not everyone was able to track down that decoded version, so for those people, as well as for those who’d be interested in how Stephen ended up decoding the letter, here’s a decoded version, with Stephen’s comments/annotations.

NB:  this little extract assumes you’ve read An Instruction in Shadow and will make absolutely no sense otherwise, so be warned.  It’s also not particularly reader-friendly since it’s a direct transcription of Stephen’s notes;  since it’s written for his eyes, he doesn’t go out of his way to explain anything.  This extract is also included in Book #3, so readers who don’t follow this blog won’t be missing anything.

Chapter 1 will be following next month.

Okay, having taken a look at the responses from last week, I think I’ll go with chronological order for the extracts.  So:  decoded letter first (since Stephen does that first), followed by Chapter 1, then Chapter 2.

I’ll post the decoded letter with Stephen’s annotations next week on August 22nd, then Chapter 1 in September and Chapter 2 in October.

By the way, since a couple of people mentioned it, the decoded letter with annotations is going to be included in book #3 as an appendix.  (It’s obviously going to be much more accessible to print/ebook readers than those who are getting the audiobook, but it’s really not necessary to understand the content of the novel, so you don’t need to worry too much if you’re getting the audio edition.)

We’re now getting into the run-up to the release of Inheritance of Magic #3, A Judgement of Powers, and I’m at the stage of deciding what I’ll be releasing on the blog.  As usual I’ll be releasing the first couple of chapters around 1-3 months prior to the book’s publication, but one additional thing I’ve been thinking of doing this time round is posting up a piece of bonus material:  the letter from Book #2, decoded and with Stephen’s annotations.  Let me know if you’d be interested, and if so, whether you’d prefer me to release it before chapters 1 and 2 of A Judgement of Powers, or after.  (I’m kind of undecided on which, since it relates to some of the content of Chapter 1.)  Tell me what you think in the comments!

For this week, I thought I’d do something a little different.  For a while now the Czech publisher Fantom Print has been putting out translations of the Alex Verus series.  They’re currently up to book 6, so here are the covers!

I’m actually pretty impressed by them – they obviously paid attention to the events of the books, to the point where I can not only figure out which cover matches to which book, but can also pretty much name the scene/location that they’re using for a reference for most of them.  Very different style from my English covers!

Inheritance of Magic #4 has just crossed the 60,000 words line, which is about the 2/3rds mark for my manuscripts (they tend to come in at about 90,000, give or take).  Around 6 more chapters and we should be done.

Planning to finish the current 3-chapter section this coming week, after which I’ll start work on a new set of Beginner’s Guide to Drucraft articles.  Possibilities include Life essentia, country affinities, or something different.

Here’s the UK cover of the third book in the Inheritance of Magic series, A Judgement of Powers!  Release date is unchanged:  November 4th, 2025.