Eye of Kog Archives - William L. Hahn

Utterly Colossal Epic Fantasy

Another Independence Day and another milestone in indie publishing. The once-and-future epic tale is now back in its original form!

Harbingers of Hope now available on Amazon

Once, It Was a Single Story

What I thought to call Judgement’s Tale when I began chronicling in 2007 was a whopping big yarn. That much, I knew. But as I reeled out the story of Solemn, Treaman, Pol, Anteris, Gareth and many more I started to worry a little. How many pages could one book hold? I made the decision to split the tale into two still-hefty novels, published the first half of the story using the title Judgement’s Tale, and then began working on the conclusion.

That of course was The Eye of Kog. Without even trying, I found I had split the baby right down the middle, as each book is just about 200k words.

But it was always a single story. I wasn’t even fully comfortable calling the second book a sequel.

And now I don’t have to.

No Plan Survives Contact… with the Publisher

The utterly unsinkable Katharina Gerlach made me an offer I could hardly understand, much less refuse, back in 2012. She has guided my publication efforts since then and I have zero complaints. She excels in cover design and remarked from the beginning that the orange-toned original covers of JT and EoK were not fully satisfactory. I kind of liked them, but then I love any present I get. And I’ll always suspect that this newest project of hers came about at least partly because she just wanted to create a new cover.

See below- pretty snazzy, huh?

Oh, and a super-cool map as well! My original efforts done on Campaign Cartographer 2 software made me happy, but the full-color design doesn’t show up in print very well, so Kat came up with a painstaking hand-drawn copy in B&W. It was fine too, but lacking maybe a bit of that Tolkienesque style. But now:

THAT is a map of the Lands, I can tell you! And it should be in the current copy when it hits paperback.

This was always THE tale, the one I felt I had to tell. Judgement never let me alone until I finished it, and yes I DO know how that sounds but it’s the truth.

Take a look and I hope you enjoy. Audiobook fans, I’m hard at work recording this summer and will certainly let you know once it’s done. Maybe I’ll do one of those progress tracker deals…

Harbingers of Hope

After two millennia of peace the relentless war between Hope and Despair flares again. With the innocent in peril, can raw unproven heroes resist immortal foes?

Treaman lives for the thrill of adventure. Guiding a group of enterprising companions, he’d put his life on the line for any of them. But when the adventurers become lost in a land tainted by the growing curse of Despair, he fears his leader’s mission is destined to end in failure and death.

Solemn Judgement will never see his homeland again. Brought to unfamiliar shores, Solemn burns any chance of return along with his boat and his father’s body, before setting out to seek his purpose. But the determined young orphan has no idea that acquiring his education could unleash the ultimate evil.

As Treaman and Judgement separately trek to seemingly inevitable doom, a prince seeks to rescue an old alliance, a mysterious fighter in black slays monstrous foes with his bare hands, and a broad cast of characters unwittingly play their part. All are hanging onto a slim sliver of Hope for their future. But even their combined might may not be enough to stop the ruthless march of a powerful necromancer and his tide of undeath …

In a world that only dreams of heroes, can they rise up against oppressive forces and prevent the Lands of Hope from descending into foul darkness?

Harbingers of Hope is an epic fantasy novel that will leave you breathless. If you like expansive worldbuilding, fierce magical battles, and monstrous enemies, then you’ll love William L. Hahn’s sweeping tale.

Read Harbingers of Hope to stand up and fight today!

To celebrate the release of The Eye of Kog, I scribed a few new pages for the online Compendium here on the site. Looking at the Compendium always makes me thoughtful. I confess I started it as something between a lark and a joke: “why not pretend you’re already famous?” But I look over the entries now and think, so much more I could be adding here and there. Tales or more of this, I wonder. All opinions welcome!

Herein you can now find references for:

Despair’s Makine: explaining the penchant for technology displayed by evil races long ago. Those who have read Judgement’s Tale will recall some of the conversations around these dread devices, and they continue in the discussion through the sequel.

The Twin Moons Aral and Unal: In case you’ve been watching these stories so intently you never looked up. Yeah, there are two moons up there. And they’re going the wrong way!

Magic and Miracles: a brief discussion of the different forms of supernatural energy wielded by the Children of Hope, including Linya the Mage, Mhoral a Pious Warrior and of course Solemn Judgement himself.

The City of Oncario: this major scene of the action comes into play during The Eye of Kog; it’s where you meet several new important characters and it’s one focus of the action when the tale comes to its climactic conclusion.

Composing entries for an encyclopedia like this is different from the tales of course. There’s plenty of description, less demand to characterize or filter everything through a particular PoV. The Compendium, more than anything else I’ve done, gives the lie to that whole absurd notion I had for years– that the Lands of Hope were something I could have made up. Simply there, I understand that now. And plenty more to describe as the years of chronicling roll by.