Ian Lewis's Blog: Ian Lewis Fiction - Posts Tagged "the-reeve-series"
New release: Villains
I’m really excited to announce the release of book two in the Reeve series: Villains. Clocking in around 99,000 words, Villains continues the Gothic Western saga which imagines an alternate, post-alchemy version of North America as seen in From Legend, the first installment released in 2019.
This story came together faster than I anticipated, which plays into my desire to remain prolific. Ideas consume me for a limited amount of time before I become bored with them, and so getting a project over the finish line is freeing in a way—it gives one a sense of accomplishment as well as kindles a desire to tackle something new.
I was reading Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy at the outset of the writing process, and it really invigorated my efforts from a style perspective. Specifically, I leaned more toward a relaxed-but-not-quite-stream-of-consciousness approach along with the use of polysyndeton. McCarthy has such a way of painting a picture that’s very much unrestrained by convention or even punctuation. While I didn’t abandon convention to the extent he does, I let my thoughts widen a bit and paid less attention to trying to explicitly define what was in my mind’s eye. Instead, I wanted to let the reader get carried away by their own imagination by what I hope is evocative prose.
If you’ve read From Legend, you’ll know it left things in a bit of a lurch. The primary protagonist—Logan Hale—made a very unexpected decision at a pivotal moment in the story. Villains picks up immediately after that, leaving no uncertainty as to where Logan’s head is at or what’s become of his once fervent desire to protect his city. The Batman mythos runs strong in his character, maybe too strong, but that’s how he lives in my mind, and so that’s how he’s portrayed. And it’s that obsessive, brooding nature that continues to dog him as he tries to overcome his failures.
The book features a Batman-esque rogues' gallery of ne’er do wells as well, many of which feature in their own POV chapters. I don’t often enjoy writing from the antagonists’ perspective, but in this case, it was an interesting exercise because it forced me to consider what makes people evil, or rather why people make evil choices. The question of whether objective moral values and duties exist is an important idea in the book as it pertains to the philosophical underpinnings that will feature throughout the series: the exploration of whether a greatest conceivable being exists—what the book refers to as the Absolute, or what we would colloquially call God.
This is really my enterprise here, the examination of four philosophical arguments in each of the subsequent books. Villains focuses on the Moral Argument for the existence of God, and I went back and forth regarding how prominently to feature it. I didn’t know whether to bury it in symbolism or surface it in dialogue. I ended up mostly opting for the latter since I don’t think I’m skilled enough to do the former.
And I don’t know if it works. I don’t know if it’s too on the nose. I don’t know if it comes off as too intellectually snooty. Too dry, perhaps. I waffle about my opinion of it, and I don’t know if that’s a good thing. The book could be brilliant, or it could be the work of a hack (who most certainly relied on greater thinkers than himself in any case). It could be a muddled mess in between—but it’s what I wrote, and it’s time to let it out into the world. My limited abilities will only permit so much polish before it’s as good as it’s going to get.
The following quote from J.R.R. Tolkien captures my cautiously optimistic sentiment knowing that my endeavors, however noble I want them to be, are imperfect:
“We have come from God, and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, will also reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God.”
I hope you enjoy Villains; I truly enjoyed writing it. The narrative is dark but ultimately doesn’t leave you hopeless. And I think that’s the takeaway—that despite every horrific reason one might have to view life as something of unavoidable despair, there is a glimmer still, meaning to be found, something that enables one to endure the long, hard road ahead.
This story came together faster than I anticipated, which plays into my desire to remain prolific. Ideas consume me for a limited amount of time before I become bored with them, and so getting a project over the finish line is freeing in a way—it gives one a sense of accomplishment as well as kindles a desire to tackle something new.
I was reading Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy at the outset of the writing process, and it really invigorated my efforts from a style perspective. Specifically, I leaned more toward a relaxed-but-not-quite-stream-of-consciousness approach along with the use of polysyndeton. McCarthy has such a way of painting a picture that’s very much unrestrained by convention or even punctuation. While I didn’t abandon convention to the extent he does, I let my thoughts widen a bit and paid less attention to trying to explicitly define what was in my mind’s eye. Instead, I wanted to let the reader get carried away by their own imagination by what I hope is evocative prose.
If you’ve read From Legend, you’ll know it left things in a bit of a lurch. The primary protagonist—Logan Hale—made a very unexpected decision at a pivotal moment in the story. Villains picks up immediately after that, leaving no uncertainty as to where Logan’s head is at or what’s become of his once fervent desire to protect his city. The Batman mythos runs strong in his character, maybe too strong, but that’s how he lives in my mind, and so that’s how he’s portrayed. And it’s that obsessive, brooding nature that continues to dog him as he tries to overcome his failures.
The book features a Batman-esque rogues' gallery of ne’er do wells as well, many of which feature in their own POV chapters. I don’t often enjoy writing from the antagonists’ perspective, but in this case, it was an interesting exercise because it forced me to consider what makes people evil, or rather why people make evil choices. The question of whether objective moral values and duties exist is an important idea in the book as it pertains to the philosophical underpinnings that will feature throughout the series: the exploration of whether a greatest conceivable being exists—what the book refers to as the Absolute, or what we would colloquially call God.
This is really my enterprise here, the examination of four philosophical arguments in each of the subsequent books. Villains focuses on the Moral Argument for the existence of God, and I went back and forth regarding how prominently to feature it. I didn’t know whether to bury it in symbolism or surface it in dialogue. I ended up mostly opting for the latter since I don’t think I’m skilled enough to do the former.
And I don’t know if it works. I don’t know if it’s too on the nose. I don’t know if it comes off as too intellectually snooty. Too dry, perhaps. I waffle about my opinion of it, and I don’t know if that’s a good thing. The book could be brilliant, or it could be the work of a hack (who most certainly relied on greater thinkers than himself in any case). It could be a muddled mess in between—but it’s what I wrote, and it’s time to let it out into the world. My limited abilities will only permit so much polish before it’s as good as it’s going to get.
The following quote from J.R.R. Tolkien captures my cautiously optimistic sentiment knowing that my endeavors, however noble I want them to be, are imperfect:
“We have come from God, and inevitably the myths woven by us, though they contain error, will also reflect a splintered fragment of the true light, the eternal truth that is with God.”
I hope you enjoy Villains; I truly enjoyed writing it. The narrative is dark but ultimately doesn’t leave you hopeless. And I think that’s the takeaway—that despite every horrific reason one might have to view life as something of unavoidable despair, there is a glimmer still, meaning to be found, something that enables one to endure the long, hard road ahead.
