IT IS DONE!!!
What? Time for some SOCRATIC DIALOGUE!
RAQ: (Rhetorically asked questions)
Q. What is The City and the Dungeon?
A 70k word young adult, coming-of-age novel in a world of monsters, treasures, and magic. And an impossible romance…
The City and the Dungeon is also my loving tribute to the dungeon crawling games of my youth, the sort that had no plot, graphics, or anything unnecessary to going into a dungeon, killing things, and coming back out with loot, then repeating this process. I’ve wondered what such a world would be like for real, and so I wrote this.
Q. TELL ME TEH DETAILS!
(That’s an imperative. But fine.)
The City is a source of wonders. Born to support brave souls venturing beneath, the City has since become a vast metropolis, the most glorious and powerful place on Earth.
The Dungeon is a vast world of unknown depth, containing incredible treasures guarded by terrible monsters. Among are the only magic items in the world, potions to improve one’s strength, beauty or even intelligence, and magical stones that give instant mastery in skills from painting to business.
But only those who touch the Cornerstone in the City dare to enter the Dungeon, for doing so they become a delver. A delver is quasi-immortal, bearing a heartstone inside that can be used to bring them back with the proper spell. Yet this comes at a price–for once a human being has a heartstone, they must consume crystal from the depths of the Dungeon or die.
Many become delvers, nonetheless, for every reason. Some seek power, others talent, magics, and healing, others simply to survive. Some to rescue those who had been lost in the Dungeon before them. Some seek the unknown bottom, for fame, knowledge, or in worship. Still others live above, supporting the brave by running shops or offer services. A few turn from the Law and lurk inside the Dungeon, slaying other humans.
Alex Kenderman, our hero, comes to the City for the sake of his family. But soon enough, he finds himself doing it for another reason.
A reason, perhaps, impossible: love.
Q. What age group is this for? Content warnings?
Junior High and up! I’d say it’s for even younger than Prince Anak the Immortal.
While the book is clean of (real) swearing and sex, it contains significant violence. The heroes are, after all, roaming a Dungeon and killing (non-sapient) monsters, and sometimes (temporarily) killed in return. The heroes also use magic as well, but it not in any way occult, only power invoked by seemingly arbitrary hand movements. Even “dark” magic is simply an element in the Dungeon, as one character points out.
Q. What does the scouter say about its papistry level?
The book contains trace of amounts of popery, as well as much Crypto-Catholicism. Nonetheless, this is not explicitly Catholic fiction.
I have taken care that the elements of RPGs one might find religiously offensive (as did my much younger self when I was young) aren’t. There’s no altars to worship at in the Dungeon to get power from false gods. There are powerful god-like human beings (very much like in Fred Saberhagen’s fantasy books), as well as truly devoted worshippers, of many things. Whether the character of the Creator one heroine worships is that of the Trinity is for the reader to contemplate.
Q. What game(s) inspired The City and the Dungeon?
Mordor: the Depths of Dejenol (primarily), roguelikes (including NetHack, Angband, ADOM, Ragnarok and Dwarf Fortress), Bravely Default (and Final Fantasy in general), and pretty much every other RPG I’ve played. Also, I listened to a ton of Sonic CD’s OST while writing.
Q. Non-videogame influences, plz. This is a book, not a videogame!
The Sword Art Online influence is obvious. Others include, Tower of God, Order of the Stick, the Face of Apollo, the Epic series (book), Ezekiel, and, of course life.
Q. What is an unlikely real-world word that occurs in the text?
Baltaquin.
Q. When is it coming out? GIMME GIMME!!
Details will be forthcoming. I hope to have more news within the month. Watch this space!
The Taste for Realism
I have seen, and admittedly indulged in that fan activity I will call the Fact Checking Game. It goes like this: First, you take some work of fiction, particularly a popular one, and you find some fascinating idea or claim it has. Then you deconstruct it with real world logic, checking all the facts and invariably coming up with an unrealistic or at least implausible conclusion. At this point, bemoaning that the creator did not think of this may commence. As a sequel, you can find some plausible counterpoint, and argue with the proponents of the former conclusion until the cows come home.
This is not, in itself, a bad thing.
Philosophical Diversity in Fiction
No, this is not a post about the culture war. Chill.
This post is about writing other cultures such that they are believable–not as middle-class Westerners wearing funny hats, but as fundamentally different worlds.
On Gratuitous Rape
This is not a happy-go-lucky post. If this subject matter disturbs you, I suggest reading something else, or perhaps waiting a few days–I plan to blog more frequently in the future.
The taste of the modern public has been, as of late, for dark and “gritty” fiction. Whether or not said fiction actually is is a subject for someone else’s post, but consider: The Hunger Games. Game of Thrones. The Malazan Book of the Fallen. The Witcher. Actually, I could rattle off a whole list of popular, dark, fiction, and invariably most of them are going to contain rape.
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