A Cloak of Blades by Isaac Sher: a book review ★★★★★

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Disclaimers: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

★★★★★

A Cloak of Blades by Isaac Sher

Five stars! This great story delivered something I've never seen before.

★★★★★

Diverse, inclusive, and compelling.

Fusing the far-flung feel of a space western with fantasy races, A Cloak of Blades is an all-out symphony of science fantasy.

Exciting, funny, action-packed and heartfelt in turns, the story galavants through star systems and back-alley shootouts, and the graphic sex scenes feed into the plot without being gratuitous.

If you love the Dune saga and wish The Hobbit had more swashbuckling, this book is for you.

A delightful adventure!

- D.N.Frost, author of Tales of the Known World ★★★★★

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★★★★★

A Cloak of Blades by Isaac Sher is the first book in an ongoing series of Tales from Arcane Space, with at least one sequel planned and likely more.

This book was independently published in June of 2021, and I first connected with Isaac Sher on Twitter when we arranged to review each other's novels.

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A Cloak of Blades fuses the far-flung feel of a space western like Firefly with the classic races of epic fantasy. In a distant future where a scientific understanding of Arcane energy has replaced the magical superstitions of antiquity, elves and goblins live alongside humans and orcs, as well as Arcane Intelligences (A.I.), draconians, and other diverse races such as the mantis-like tientang and the furry sasqet.

Sher further combines futuristic combat with sigils for battle magic, enhancing swords and lasers alike with Arcane properties, and evoking ancient traditions of martial arts in an all-out symphony of science fantasy fusion.

This expansive universe is vibrant, alive with progressive cultures and rich with tragic history. Most colonies still bear the marks of a centuries-dead Hegemony bent on genocide, and gnomes have become sadistic reavers butchering their way through the galaxy. A pantheon of gods and their priesthoods add a very real magic to this tech-savvy world, making for diverse characters with a stunning array of powers and skills.

Action-packed and heartfelt in turns, A Cloak of Blades follows a crew of goodhearted mercenaries as they hunt down a hidden mystery and try to dodge trouble along the way. The graphic sex scenes feed into the plot, building tension and character dynamics without being gratiutous, and the characters' casual attitudes towards concepts like sexuality, interracial relations, and polygamy establish a groundwork for inclusion that would make the most progressive Trekkie proud.

Exciting, funny, and compelling, this delightful adventure galavants through star systems and ancient sects, back-alley shootouts and starship fire-fights, all while delivering a diverse cast from advanced cultures where unity does not undermine individuality. If you love the Dune saga and wish The Hobbit had more swashbuckling, this book is for you!

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Recap in Sequels: inspiration & spark

This post is part of a series to augment the Author's Manifesto available for free download.

This and other inspirations of mine are gathered in the Spark Directory for you to explore.

Find my published stories and guides in the Books Directory.

As I moved deeper into my Tales of the Known World saga, I ran into some troubling issues regarding recap in my sequels. As you may know from my Workshops on Writing, I'm not a big fan of exposition. I feel like it's the death of a story, and over-explaining stuff is where readers lose interest and put a book down.

For a long time, I was mired in revising the very first chapters of my second novel, Broken, though I'd finished drafting it months earlier. I just didn't seem able to get much revision done. At last, I realized the issue was that I still wasn't sure exactly what I should be doing, in terms of explaining what happened in Book 1.

Here's the rub: I hate it when a series over-explains what happened in the last book. But how much exposition is necessary for a sequel? Should I re-describe the characters in Book 2, or trust that you remember what they look like from Book 1? Should I re-set the scene by painting the picture of each place as it's visited, or leave it up to you to remember what the areas look like?

As a serial reader, I tend to read a whole series back to back. When I have to wait for the next book to come out, I often read the previous book in the weeks before the book launch to refresh myself. That or I just rely on my reading retention, coupled with most authors' tendencies to recap a lot of their earlier story in each new release.

Check out this Author's Manifesto for more of my inspirations!

This extensive recap in sequels has always pissed me off. I swore never to include such tedium in my own works, and yet... I was trying to find a balance between necessary exposition and boring rehash. As I started exploring this balance, a few insights became clear.

Even with a sequel, a new reader should be able to pick up the book, start reading the first chapter, and get hooked on the story. This can't happen if the new reader is too confused to follow what's going on. Ideally, the new reader decides to get Book 1 and read the story in order, but in the real world, if they're stuck on a plane and need a good read, there should at least be enough exposition to follow along.

I also realised there's no reason to retell the story of Book 1 in a sequel. When you're rafting down a river, you aren't expected to go all the way to the very first stream that feeds the river. You just enter where you are and end up further downstream of where you started.

Stories are the same way - they never end, and they never start. Authors just pick the most interesting place to begin, and leave off when plot resolution is achieved. By that metric, even the story of Book 1 started mid-stream, and it was easy to include enough explanation there to let readers plunge in and follow the stream.

In Book 1, I explained the plot elements and character motivations that occurred before the story took place. I didn't require you to read an encyclopedia of information about the world and its history before joining the adventure. So, I thought, in Book 2, I should be able to do the same thing.

I decided to approach the story as its own unit of a much-larger story, including the explanations required to follow along, but without over-explaining things, which I tend to avoid anyway. And by approaching my sequel like a standalone book, I could easily apply my revising philosophy from Book 1.

Overall, ironing out my approach to a sequel has been really helpful. I feel more clarity about the direction of my revisions, and I am more confident about producing a great story. Serial readers should be undeterred by the sprinkling of exposition to orient new readers, and I can strike a balance between not recapping anything and retelling the whole story.


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A Note on Unpassed Prophesy: a prophetic resource

This post is Part 3 of a series to augment the Codex of the Known World available for free download. Start with Part 1 here.

This and other worldbuilding resources are gathered in my Codex Directory for you to explore.

Find more prophetic poetry in my Portents Directory.

In Part 1 of this series, I discuss the cultural reasons why I always use an /s/ to spell the word prophesy. The elusive merfolk publish their prophetic verses into books of epic poetry, known as story books.

The story book Portents of Mother's Gate should be considered a contemporary publication of the merfolk, released after the events of Book 2 in the saga, but prior to the events of Book 3. Therefore, the portents sequenced early in the story book have already reached fruition, and their events have already occurred.

Conversely, the portents listed later in the story book have not yet come to pass, and foretold events coincide with novels that have not yet been published in the Tales of the Known World saga. While these portents are certainly riddles, they do by nature contain spoilers. You have been warned.

Check out the Codex of the Known World for more resources!

For the prophetic merfolk, portents that have not yet come to pass are considered unpassed prophesy. While they have been tattered and interpreted, the events they predict have not yet occurred.

However, unpassed prophesy is still fully understood, and in many cases, scholars have determined the precise dates these events will come to pass. But these future dates are traditionally withheld from the public, to protect the sanctity of the timeflow.

In prior eras, the merfolk discovered that sharing the precise dates of future events tempted certain people to try to change those events. All of these attempts have been unsuccessful, and ironically many of them were crucial to the actual fruition of the events they were trying to subvert.

Regardless, scholars now avoid the entire issue by simply withholding the exact dates of unpassed prophesy from their story books. Within a story book, these portents are still arranged in correct story order, using the precise dates that scholars have deduced after their intensive process of tattering and analysis.

But instead of providing an exact date for each tatter’s fruition, the annotation VA is used. This VA note is read Vyanni Ari, short for vyehvyannilu songyoari, which means Approximate Day of Seeing.

For a thorough explanation of prophesy dates and approximations, see Appendix IV in the Prophesy Appendix below.

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The merfolk culture is built on the prophetic Gift. Nearly all men produce a portent every twenty days, and they devote their lives to interpretation. For more about the role and inner workings of prophesy, check out the Prophesy Appendix above.

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The use of VA is very common when tattering prophesy, especially in the early stages when interpreters are focused on dividing their latest portents, called raw prophesy, into disparate tatters.

Once divided, these tatters are then sequenced relative to each other, and the open-ended VA annotations are assigned approximate dates, which are adjusted as interpretation ensues.

When interpretation is completed, the approximated fruition date is converted into a verified dateline, and the tatter’s position in correct story order is finalized.

Portents then graduate from raw prophesy to unpassed prophesy. They are considered ready to publish into a story book, though their official dates are withheld from publication.

For a thorough explanation of prophesy tattering and annotation, see Appendix V in the Prophesy Appendix above.


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A Note on Languages and Dialects: a linguistic resource

This post is Part 1 of a series to augment the Codex of the Known World available for free download.

This and other linguistic resources are gathered in my Language Directory for you to explore.

Find more worldbuilding content in my Codex Directory.

In the Known World of my Tales of the Known World saga, most people speak Allanic. But every region has its own dialect, influenced by the heritage language of that area.

Some cultures retain their native tongues, using them for a variety of purposes from traditional rituals to personal identity. Other cultures have lost their heritage language completely, and only the unique quirks of their Allanic dialect remain.

Check out the Codex of the Known World for more resources!

Regardless of what language they speak, each culture sculpts their language over generations, reflecting their unique ideologies in their usage of words. Each language in turn shapes the way its speakers parse the world into ideas, informing cultural perceptions for new generations.

In this Language Directory, you can browse the regional languages from each set of novels. Find out how your favorite characters speak!

Every culture has common phrases and slang terms, as well as sayings that make no literal sense. These sayings rely on stories, myths, and folktales for their meaning instead.

Along with the cultural impact of these unique sayings, each language makes further impact through subtleties in the grammar and words themselves. Check out the linguistic companion to the saga, the Language Codex of the Known World, for more.

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Most people of the Known World speak Allanic. But the world is rife with different dialects and the cultural heritage languages that influence them. For more about the role and inner workings of language, check out the Language Appendix above.

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Many concepts intrinsic to a culture are captured by the way its words and names are built. The foreign dialogue in the novels can be broken down into its root words and syllables, revealing the hidden meaning behind them.

For a comprehensive list of names and terms, as well as a guide to the many titles and estates in the Known World, see the Language Appendix available above.

This free download translates all the foreign dialogue from the Chronicles of Mother's Gate set of novels, and it explains how special meanings combine to form words, names, and sentences.

It also explains the slang and unique sayings from the saga, introducing the traditions, myths, and folklore that each culture has enshrined into common turns of phrase.


That's it for this post! Up Next: The pronunciation guide for proper names...

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A Note on Proper Names and Pronunciations: a language resource

This post is Part 2 of a series to augment the Codex of the Known World available for free download. Start with Part 1 here.

This and other linguistic resources are gathered in my Language Directory for you to explore.

Find more worldbuilding content in my Codex Directory.

In Part 1 of this series, I outlined the many dialects and languages of the Known World. Due to the many books and stories in my Tales of the Known World saga, I opted against creating a unique glossary for every publication.

However, these various publications often contain the names of people and places, and I still needed a way to provide my readers with a guide to the pronunciations of those names. So instead of a multitude of separate glossaries, I've created a single master glossary in the Language Appendix available below.

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Download the Language Appendix:

Most people of the Known World speak Allanic. But the world is rife with different dialects and the cultural heritage languages that influence them. For more about the role and inner workings of language, check out the Language Appendix above.

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The reference books for the saga, such as the Magic Codex of the Known World, and the book of epic poetry, Portents of Mother's Gate, contain no glossary at all. Similarly, the bookends and other short stories for the saga do not contain a glossary.

However, I did make a unique glossary for each full-length novel in the saga. Due to the evolving nature of some characters and their roles in the story, it made more sense to avoid spoilers by separating their glossary entries on a book-by-book basis.

In the Language Appendix available above, only the most recent glossary entry is provided, meaning that some spoilers are contained therein. To avoid encountering these revelations prematurely, please be sure to read the saga before exploring too deeply. You have been warned.

Of course, being a huge language nerd myself, I completely understand if you want to dive right in! To avoid spoilers, try to steer clear of the roles and definitions provided in Appendix I: Name Pronunciation Guide and Appendix V: Master Glossary until you've caught up on the story.


That's it for this post! Up Next: The linguistics behind how I spell prophesy...

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