How are the WIPs going?
This last week, Eden got my main focus somewhat to the exclusion of my Dragon Hunters story. However, I think I did some good work on both. I wasn't quite comfortable with how I had ended the fourth part of Eden, but I was hit with inspiration and wrote two new endings for it that just manage to make the book a bit more depressing than it was before. By God, I pray I can finish this series. This is supposed to be the darkest part in the whole story, and I don't want it to end here. The next book should start to shine a little ray of hope. Maybe I'm just getting carried away by my own writing.
Oh well. I've printed out the second part of Eden—so far, I'm calling it "Stained"—and my red pen is ready for battle. This one, I fear, is the weakest part of the whole collection. It has some good bits in it, but so much of the story is just me setting things up for part three. It's been a while since I've read through it, though, so maybe I'll feel differently this time around.
Regarding my Dragon Hunters, they're still trapped in that overlong chapter that just keeps growing. However, I do think I see light at the end of the tunnel now. Praying I can get through it and start moving the story forward again. I'll probably have to go back and slash a good quarter of what I've written, but I'll let it sit for now; I'll come back when I've finished the first section off and make my decision, God willing.
In other news, I finished The Infinite and the Divine. Good book, though I felt the gravity of the status quo reasserting itself in the epilogue somewhat cheapened the conclusion, though I suppose that's the cyclical nature of the story's underpinning Yin-Yang philosophy. I guess that's what you get in a long running series like this; you can't have these characters really change. Robert Rath plays with the toys and puts them back where he found them, like a good camper leaving nature untouched. Nevertheless, there is something deeply poetic in this mass market paperback; I felt it most in the image of Trazyn going down, layer by layer, into the planet. That Saturnine theme of the inevitability of time infused the whole work and almost had to be told from the alienated perspective of an undead monster like a Necron, someone for whom time and tragedy were sad memories.
I did think it was interesting how this story's ending mirrored the ending to The Scarlet Gospels, which I also read this year. Don't want to give the endings away on either one, but there were some interesting parallels in their climactic battles; even on the points where they differ in their epilogues (Clive Barker actually deals with the major changes his world and characters suffer), they both set up similar possible stories that might follow.
Anyway, it's spooky season now. Tell me your favorite ghost stories. Tell me what you're working on. Are you a Warhammer fan? What other Warhammer books should I read?
