This is the question I’m getting asked most often at the moment. The obvious answer is, well, obvious. Yes, this is the final book in the Hadrumal Crisis trilogy so it brings this particular story to a conclusion.

Yes but, people persist in asking, is it, y’know the end? Trying to fathom what they mean, I realise that at least some folk have been a bit unnerved by my remarks over the past couple of years about this final book’s cover art. I’ve explained on panels and at conventions how writing this series has set me thinking more deeply than ever before about the way that Einarinn’s elemental wizards actually have an understanding of matter at the sub-molecular level. Which is great for them but a bit tricky for me since I went down the Languages and Humanities path at school rather than doing Science. Thank goodness for those marvellous history of science programmes which the awesome Professor Jim Al-Khalili has been doing for BBC Four.

I have been wondering precisely what Archmage Planir is doing in that final picture ever since I first got Clint Langley’s awesome artwork. Well into the writing of this series, I have honestly had no clue. Is it, I have wondered aloud more than once, something akin to The Manhattan Project? The Hadrumal Project? Will Planir end up quoting Robert Oppenheimer; “Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

Okay, now I realise where some of that nervousness is coming from, especially from people who’ve already read Dangerous Waters and Darkening Skies. Anyone expecting that this trilogy’s middle volume would be mostly focused on getting characters in place for the big battle to come must have got a bit of a shock reading that. As Defiant Peak’s back cover notes, “Archmage Planir and the wizards of Hadrumal have unleashed their devastating magic…”

So I can see that readers could be a bit nervous about the possible consequences for the end of the series if Archmage Planir decides it’s never too late to escalate. Especially since those readers who are familiar with my previous books now have very well-founded suspicions about just who and what Hadrumal’s wizards will be facing. “The Archipelagans are baying for wizard blood, enraged at magic invading their domains…” Yes, and it’s not just the Aldabreshi Planir has to worry about as this series sees everyone – me included – learn a lot more about Hadrumal’s internal rivalries, wizardry in Solura and the different groups perfecting Artifice’s enchantments elsewhere.

Not that everyone asking this question is quite so apprehensive though. A few people have simply asked me because they realise this is my fifteenth novel set in the same world and with a continuous timeline threaded through the different stories told in each of my four epic fantasy series. Haven’t I said everything I’ve got to say with these characters and through this milieu? I have been writing shorter fiction in an increasingly wide range of other worlds and styles lately so isn’t it simply time for a change of scene?

You won’t be surprised to learn that most of those asking this aren’t primarily genre fans. One central aspect of epic fantasy fiction which I have always adored as a reader is the way that these stories generate questions and asides which the main narrative can’t spare the time to focus on. I’ve never felt that those ‘but what if’ and ‘how come’ and ‘but who’ loose threads detract from fantasy tales. They add depth and interest, a sense of a complete world continuing on when that final page is turned, and besides, real life is just as full of tangents and unknowns. Like so many other writers I’ve often found that pondering answers to those questions leads me to a whole new story. This has been a staple of epic fantasy writing ever since reading The Hobbit prompted us to wonder just where Gollum’s magic ring had come from and what it might signify.

So, is this the end? Oh, come on, do you honestly expect me to answer that? Read the book and find out for yourself!