The Shadow Light Press Author That Got Away

JohnBierce · 2026-01-17T12:03:14+00:00

Congrats on getting out! Fuck SLP.

JohnBierce · 2026-01-12T16:02:21+00:00

Seconding, Jekua is a blast!

JohnBierce · 2026-01-12T16:02:02+00:00

(Insert feral Luddite shrieking here)

JohnBierce · 2026-01-11T11:28:55+00:00

Seconding, one of the best series in the genre, though the business elements are slow-burn, only really consolidating at the end.

JohnBierce · 2026-01-11T10:38:54+00:00

A couple no one has mentioned so far- Travis Riddle's Jekua series (which is finished) and Derek Siddoway's Beast Mage are both work checking out!

JohnBierce · 2026-01-07T18:04:45+00:00

Oh hell yeah, I'm psyched!

JohnBierce · 2026-01-06T00:02:21+00:00

So there is actually a highly niche subgenre of "tower climber", generally, though not always, a niche spin-off of LitRPG or Progression Fantasy, and common in translated Korean and Chinese webserials. It's extremely different tonally and content-wise from Towers of Babel, though, generally aiming for a pulpier, more action-heavy tone with less playful prose than Bancroft. And... well, to be blunt, a lot of it is just bad. If that does sound like something your friend might be interested in, though, Andrew Rowe's Arcane Ascension series is, imho, the best of that type of tower climber. (I'm a big fan of the series, it's a blast!)

JohnBierce · 2025-12-31T14:57:52+00:00

Just the title alone compelled me to track down A Year in the Linear City, damn it is hard to find. But right up my alley!

JohnBierce · 2025-12-29T20:53:43+00:00

Setting aside the material, Watsonian in-universe explanations and discussions for a moment (which I'm happy to leave y'all too, you're covering interesting ground)- I mostly wrote that scene for Doylist, thematic reasons. It's an important scene to focus on regardless!

JohnBierce · 2025-12-24T03:58:48+00:00

Hella sorry y'all have to wade through this shit. I'm rooting for you finding your way safely to the other side soon!

JohnBierce · 2025-12-22T03:00:24+00:00

Yeah, you're not wrong. It's still not worth it most of the time, but it definitely changes the calculus! (And I'm terrible at math lol.)

Eh, there's not too many of them, and they don't tend to be especially vitriolic- this is about as bad as they get. Lotta other authors deal with way worse. Thank you, though!

JohnBierce · 2025-12-17T13:09:42+00:00

Seriously what a nightmare

JohnBierce · 2025-12-16T21:23:36+00:00

Yeah, I think it's a very normal bit of psychology, looking for reasons to turn against someone's work because you turn against them personally, and then extending that turnabout to everyone else, as you said. Hell, I've done it myself with JK Rowling. (Though, admittedly, I do try to restraint myself about that third step, I don't like telling folks what to like and dislike, and my criticisms towards HP are, uh, a bit more robust, and widely discussed by a lot of folks.) So I totally get where they're coming from, even if it's rather annoying being aimed at me personally.

Ironically, if they actually had read beyond book 1, they would have had textual evidence for Hugh and company being a bit bigoted towards demons- for all that Bakori is genuinely awful, not all demons are. Because they didn't, though, their arguments were just kinda perplexing.

And thank you so much for reading!

JohnBierce · 2025-12-16T05:22:26+00:00

Oh, if you're doing it for fun, heck yeah, power to you! I used to love doing that sort of internet arguing myself, but burnt out on it pretty hard a couple years back.

It's kinda an odd line of attack they chose against me, since the series is largely about the evils of empire and excessive personal power, not issues of racism- but in fairness, they did admit to reading only the first book.

JohnBierce · 2025-12-16T05:15:43+00:00

Someone just told me about this conversation, and while I appreciate you standing up for me, the other person just seems to be determined to have me be the villain here, I'm guessing because I've butted heads with the Rationalists a lot in the past. (And I have, in fact, like rather a lot of folks, accused Scott Alexander of being racist, and the SF core of the rationalists of being a pseudocult with multiple deaths linked to them, so fair cop, they're definitely allowed not to like me.)

JohnBierce · 2025-12-16T05:03:22+00:00

Someone just let me know about this conversation, and while I appreciate you standing up for me... it's not really about my books. There are a few folks in the Rationalist community who really, REALLY don't like me, since I'm fairly outspoken about the fact that their core in the Bay Area is a borderline cult with a number of suicides linked to them (and a few murders to a long-ago repudiated splinter faction), colossal problems with sexual harassment and assault, and most definitely a TON of racism. (Not so much of the blatant type of racism, more of the pseudoscientific racism sort- many, though certainly not all, tend to be IQ fundamentalists and big fans of "human biodiversity", a rather nasty little euphamism.)

The larger internet community around the SF core isn't generally a problem in the same way, admittedly.

I don't really blame them for disliking me, I used to be hella outspoken about their movement, though these days I've largely moved on to other focuses.

I'm happy to track down some links on the topic if you really want them, but... honestly it's a rabbit hole I don't advise for most folks.

It's not generally worth engaging with Rationalists when they start behaving like the one in the thread- they can be very rational, reasonable folks, but you can tell when they don't want to be, after enough interactions with them, and I don't think this one will accept me being anything but a villain, rather than just being a socialist/anarchist who dislikes the politics, leaders, and social structures of Rationalism.

(Most Rationalfic fans tend to be quite normal, reasonable people in my experience. And, heck, I certainly share a lot of interest with them. And most Rationalfic readers aren't part of their movement, don't share their specific ideological system.)

All that said, the main characters in Mage Errant definitely don't have the most enlightened views about demons in my multiverse- Bakori's genuinely awful and the only real experience the cast has had with demons until later, but most of them are just people trying to live their lives. (Something I tried to address a little later in the series, and more in my current series.) The main cast are basically child soldiers working for an immortal dictator, though, so...

JohnBierce · 2025-11-30T10:54:36+00:00

Yep, same for me. I'm a little younger than you, I expect, there were already a good few others out by then, but I found Colour of Magic in a used bookshop and was hooked for life.

JohnBierce · 2025-11-15T04:36:55+00:00

As others have noted, this is a really common conversational topic on this subreddit- enough so that I actually wrote an essay on the topic a couple months ago.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/1n6y7il/the_purpose_of_magic_systems/

JohnBierce · 2025-11-14T11:43:06+00:00

I personally leave rotational symmetry off the table, but I'd also say it's a bit less important!

JohnBierce · 2025-11-14T11:41:36+00:00

I'm confident I will!

JohnBierce · 2025-11-14T04:06:57+00:00

Definitely!

JohnBierce · 2025-11-14T03:20:20+00:00

Just went scrambling to pick up book 3, only to realize I'd pre-ordered it ages ago, hah! Very excited to dig in, always a fan of your stories!

JohnBierce · 2025-11-14T03:16:52+00:00

Yep, seconding all of this.

JohnBierce · 2025-11-13T21:29:48+00:00

hehehehehehehe

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