A Kingdom Forgotten - Book 1 (ATOS)

ISBN 978-0-9981177-0-6 iBooks

ISBN 978-0-9981177-1-3 Amazon Kindle

ISBN 978-0-9981177-2-0 Amazon CreateSpace Print

ISBN 978-0-9981177-3-7 All other digital distributions

 

So, in my own words, I'm going to try to articulate all the things going on in this first installment of A Throne of Souls.  First, the overwhelming consensus of this book (from the reviews) has been a 'slow' start with a seemingly 'disjointed' pattern, especially through the first third to first half of the book.  That's the negative consensus.  Fortunately, the overwhelming consensus of the reviews has focussed on the 'exceptional' to 'extraordinary' writing  'unlike anything read before' with a 'radically different storytelling method.'  I can live with those negative comments given the positive feedback and the high 4 and 5-star ratings it's received again and again.

 

So, let me explain what's going on that's causing some of the perceptions of the 'slow' and 'disjointed' start.  First, I'm weaving a story across five different worlds of Humanity.  Second, I'm weaving a story across eons of time.  Third, I'm introducing dozens of powerful, vitally important characters with massive backstories to them.  Finally, I'm telling all this in a truly nonlinear fashion.  So, just given those elements, I doubt the best writer on planet earth could weave those elements in such a way that didn't leave the reader flabbergast and confused.  Combining the multi-perspective scene breaks, world and time jumps, and nonlinearity of the story into a cohesive start was quite the challenge, but I did organize pieces of the story in such a way to stay with a given character/world set for long enough to gain a level of cohesion before moving to the next set whether forward, backward, or present in time.

 

It might 'appear' on the surface that I was just doing it this way because I could.  I assure you that is not the case.  I actually wrote Robert Jordan for writing advice in the mid 90's because of this story's complexity.  He didn't have a silver-bullet answer for me, and I didn't expect one, but in layman's terms, he told me to tell it my way, in my time and in my voice--conventional wisdom be damned.  I didn't go into a lot of detail about the story and it crossing over many genres because I doubt he would have approved, but when you think about it, how could you possibly tell the untold story of Creation without covering worlds on differing levels of technological advancement.  Worlds evolve at different paces and with a different level of guidance.  Unless you're one of those who steadfastly believes that Earth Humans are the only possible instantiations of Humans or Humanoids throughout the universe, in which case this story will make little sense to you.

 

This story—however fantastic—is grounded in science, technology, engineering, and math.  It covers practices in Pagan, Religion, Occult, Physics, Biology, and just about everything else.  The vocabulary and vernacular is both broad and deep.  Technically it reads at a 9.3 US-grade-level (which is equivalent to Tolkien).  However, I didn't use 'big' words just because I could.  If I had a choice between the perfect word which happened to be a collegiate-level word or a 'compatible' word which happened to be at a fifth/sixth-grade-level, guess which word I chose?  Yep, collegiate every single time.  Before editing, it read at a 12th-grade-level so be thankful for editing...  My point in telling you this is that I'm a perfectionist and I'm not going to settle for a word that is less than perfect, especially when I'm trying to describe something very critical.

 

One other topic I'll cover about this book (and all of my books really) is that if I took the time to write it down, it's not superfluous material.  I drop clues literally everywhere.  Sometimes the clues are disinformation in nature and sometimes informational in nature.  Sometimes they're blunt-force and sometimes they're very nuanced.  However, my point is that just because the nature of the gravity of the scene hasn't been made obvious doesn't make it superfluous material.  I don't write filler material so please keep that in mind as you're reading.

 

I said all of the above so that I could tell you this, I wanted to bring something to the market that would 'shake things up.'  I wanted to challenge conventional wisdom because every now and then it's important that someone have the balls to do just that.  I wanted to give intelligent grownups something meaty to sink their teeth into that would make them actually have to think.  Today especially, we're told 'don't write full-length novels' and especially 'don't write complex full-length novels.'  'We're in an attention economy and we have to race to the bottom of the brainstem so we can keep the public's eyeballs on it.'  I was told something like that many, many times as a warning not to deliver this story to you in the way in which I delivered it.  It's not that I don't believe we're in an attention economy because I do.  However, I also know there is no shortage of content providers that are already doing this (racing to the bottom of your brainstem to give you content that confirms your biases).  I'd rather give you something that intentionally shakes your confirmation biases and comes across as thought-provoking.  One of the reviewers said it best when he said, "I was wowed by the writing and the characters, but most importantly, by the author’s ability to unveil the depth of human emotion and consciousness. A Kingdom Forgotten is a story of great magnitude, one to read with focus, a story that will remind readers of their roots."  I couldn't have said it better.

 

A Kingdom Forgotten is the nuanced blueprint of the untold story of Creation and it is specifically designed to make you question EVERYTHING...