This year, 2023, marks the tenth anniversary of the publication of my first fantasy novels, the four books that make up Donzalo’s Destiny. The first half (approximately) of the first book, ‘The Song of the Sword,’ was written as a more-or-less standalone novella and I followed that template for the rest of the continuing story though, admittedly, some of the sections stand on their own better than others.
This was not my first novel. I had previously turned out the mainstream Young Adult title, ‘The Middle of Nowhere.’ I still consider it a decent effort but I made more compromises than I preferred, and kept it rather conventional on the advice of publishing professionals. It was also the only book I wrote in longhand, before the advent of computers!
The Donzalo books are a bit self-consciously ‘literary.’ I’ve tamed that a tad in the work that has followed. There’s a fair amount of what is termed ‘free indirect style’ and shifts in tense as we go in and out of characters’ thoughts. I stand by all that and still use such devices, though perhaps with a little more circumspection now. I could say I got it out of my system; that may or may not be true, nor does it particularly matter.
Donzalo’s Destiny could be seen as one epic novel of over 200,000 words but I chose to publish in four shorter books. The tale revolves around young Donzalo Rosam, who remains a relatively static figure and certainly less interesting than some of the other characters. This is not to say he doesn’t grow, but he is a more down-to-earth sort, providing a stable center for the narrative. That narrative takes place in a world resembling, more than aught else, Central Europe of the Late Renaissance (the 16th Century). The last thing I wanted to do was write another pseudo-medieval fantasy! So we have muskets and canons and wheel-lock pistols, and the incipient capitalism and nationalism of that era, the growth of centralized power and the weakening of the feudal system and economy.
Yes, I touch on these things in the story, though I don’t lecture on them. They add a certain reality. But the novels aren’t about that sort of thing. World building is only a means to an end, after all, and that end is to write a story that both entertains and makes one think. Think in the broad sense; I have no agendas to which I write, only questions that take my interest.
And I will point out that there is no ‘big bad’ villain, no world-threatening power. My primary antagonist (unless one counts the evil god who gives him the occasional assist) is a powerful but deluded—we might say mad—sorcerer who operates on a relatively small stage. I am far more interested in him as a character than as a danger (though he is certainly a danger to Donzalo).
The four Donzalo’s Destiny stories are, in order, ‘The Song of the Sword,’ ‘The Shadow of Asak,’ ‘The Sign of the Arrow,’ and ‘The Hand of the Sorcerer.’ All four are available in print from Arachis Press in newly typeset editions and distributed to most online booksellers (though it can sometimes take a while for the new print editions to show up everywhere). The ebooks are also at the Arachis Press site as free downloads in both EPUB and PDF formats.
I have written quite a few novels in the decade since they first appeared, some fantasy and some not. Among the most recent of these is ‘The Plain of Silver,’ the first book of Destiny’s Daughter, a sequel to the Donzalo epic. It too is out in a brand new edition.
Stephen Brooke 