I put the first chapter of Alex Verus #12, Risen, online two weeks ago – now as promised, here’s chapter 2!
This will be the last preview chapter as we’re now only a month away from release. Risen will come out in the UK on December 2nd, and in the US on December 7th.
Thanks, now I just need to wait for the book.
I have enjoyed the series and the author commentaries.
I look forward to your ‘New Series’.
Great chapter!!! Thanks for posting it! While this technically relates to ch 1, I have to say that “The castle was falling” is one hell of an opening line. 🙂 No one will be able to put the book down after reading that!
Also love the interaction between Druss and Alma where they are discussing Richard’s motives… A little of both? Hah! And Alex’s line about shooting Richard twice.
Another compelling chapter, thank you! I’m intrigued with the direction this is going in and as soon as the full book is available I’ll be reading it from cover to cover. Very excited!
It would be great if the form actually saved our info like someone else mentioned, and also if we could edit our posts, at least for a little bit, so I don’t have to stare at my typos and slight misquotes for eternity. 😉
Thank you for Chapter 2. The anticipation of Risen is peaking!
@Celia
Don’t worry about eternity, you are not a jinn, so you will die eventually
*Sorry for the Dark humour, after reading the chapter I couldn’t resist
So good.
A new Verus novel is an excuse to re-read some of the previous ones. This time I started with Burned and read through Forged. They’re as good or better than the first six in the series, and judging from the two chapters posted so far, Risen could be the best.
GregorV, true, valar morghulis. ;). Though I confess I feel bad for the jinn. The Mages were the bad guys in the Jinn war. And now everyone’s just jumping to pile on the jinn again.
Thank you for posting this chapter. That was an excellent way to end it, by the way. I’m really looking forward to the rest of the book.
Have it pre-ordered in Amazon and have scheduled a vacation day on its release date. Now just have to get through 4 more weeks.
@Celia
I still don’t get how the mages prevailed over beings who could literally bend the laws of the universe any way they wanted!
They could literally strip any master mage from their powers and transfer them to a contracted human!
I have no idea why the Marid sultan did not do that, by the way. Steal divination from one mage, fire from another one, space from a third. Boom – invincibility for the carrier.
…all this time and we still don’t really know Richard. Mmmh.
I have a suspicion: Alex is Richard.
@GregorV: Considering Abithriax’s comment that “while your Council has made some advances, in pure magical theory you have a long way to go” it seems likely that the mages back then had greater magical power, perhaps by an order of magnitude. It’d be kind of typical and thus a little disappointing, but it explains a lot, seems realistic enough to me, and is a pretty understandably useful trope narratively. Although I think your point is still valid, cuz it seems like wish magic is at the very top of any power scale you could come up with.