Here we are again, and here’s the first chapter of The Warrior’s Bond, the fourth Tale of Einarinn. Enjoy.

This was a fun book to write. One of the things I was determined to do in this first series, was to never rewrite the book I’d just written, if that makes sense. I can’t remember if it was one of the editorial team at Orbit who offered that as advice to me as a new writer, or a fellow author, given that was twenty years or so ago. Either way, it made perfect sense, as I recall, then and now, my own disappointment when a much-loved book is followed by far too much of the same.

So when I was looking at the plot ideas stemming from the previous Tales, I searched for the ones which offered me a chance to do something different and challenging. Here this meant writing a novel where all the action happens essentially over five days, in an epic fantasy kingdom’s capital city. There’s no endless trekking over wilderness here. Instead, you’ll learn all about the mean streets of Toremal.

Something else I love about this particular book is the way two different artists illustrated the very same scene from the story in the UK and the US. Comparing them is fascinating, with intriguing hints to the different traditions each artist chose to draw on. That was Geoff Taylor in the UK, and thanks to an online pal with the hardcover edition, I now know the US artist is Matt Stawicki. (He’s not credited in the paperback I have here.)