Reader Feedback

As an author, it's always a special moment when a reader writes and tells you that they have enjoyed your work—and I would really like to thank those of you who have commented to this effect on the blog lately. You have no idea how much that encourages an author to "keep going", a theme I discussed here recently.

I have also shared some of the reader feedback emails that I have received through my website—with the permission of the senders—over recent months. (You can find some of those earlier posts under the "Reader Feedback" category in the side bar.) Today I have another excerpt from a reader's email, that John in Australia has agreed to let me share with you here:

"I just wanted to thank you for writing "The Heir of Night". I have just finished reading it and I want to start all over again. It is the best fantasy novel I have read since "The Curse of Chalion, which I can read and re-read because of the wonderful characters, the extraordinarily imaginative world-building, and the skill in unfolding and resolving the plot. You have created a wonderful array of heroic characters, so many and so different, and they feel so close they are almost friends. Your world-building and plot-handling are right up there too, and your "forces of evil" are strongly painted as well, including the shading of relationships among the Derai. (I hope they will learn…)

I am 68 and have been reading fantasy and scifi since I was at primary school. I gave my wife a hardcover copy of Lord of the Rings as my first present before we were engaged and she has become a fantasy lover too.

These days I start many fantasy novels and do not finish them if they do not sufficiently engage my interest, or sometimes I finish them and find the ending disappointing because the author does not resolve the plot issues or leaves the reader depressed by the loss of characters he or she has learned to love.

After these disappointments "The Heir of Night" is a shining star."

I am sure there is no need to tell you all, as I have already told John, that I suspect I enjoyed receiving his email as much as he enjoyed Heir —but it really did 'make my day!'

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And for those of you who follow the Tuesday Poem blog, fellow Tuesday Poet, Harvey Molloy, had a few nice words to say about Thornspell over the weekend, here.