Hello everyone! Welcome to another Instalment of Indie Recommends Indie. Today I have author Jon Auerbach with me. You might remember him from how to create a secret magical organization and on launching a fiction Kickstarter campaign. He is back today with 5 indie book recommendations. Some very beautiful covers are awaiting your eyes. But first, let’s learn a bit about him.
Jon, thank you for joining me for this series! It is a pleasure to host you again. I know you but some of my readers might not if they are visiting Armed with A Book for the first time. Tell us a bit about yourself. 🙂
Thanks for having me! I’m a father of three young kids from New York City who writes epic urban fantasy in my limited spare time. I started writing fiction for the first time about eight years ago after stumbling across a flash fiction prompt. The genesis of my series actually came from a piece of flash fiction I wrote in response to the following prompt: what if there was a section on Craigslist called “Quests”?
Do you primarily read indie books or big publishers books as well?
I’d say it’s about a 50/50 mix. I have a backlog of a few trad-pubbed series I want to read, but I try to focus my other reading on indie books. With so many great indie books being released every month it seems, it’s hard to keep up!
Jon’s Indie Recommendations
Fortune’s Fool by Angela Boord
Epic fantasy inspired by Renaissance Europe
Published 2019
Eterean Empire #1
A secret affair. A disfiguring punishment. A burning need for revenge.
Kyrra d’Aliente has a bad reputation and an arm made of metal.
Cast out of the safe and luxurious world of silk to which she was born, played as a pawn in a game of feuding Houses, Kyrra navigates a dangerous world of mercenaries, spies, and smugglers while disguising herself as a man.
War destroyed her family and the man she loved.
Vengeance is within her grasp.
But is she willing to pay its price?
Find it on Goodreads and IndieStoryGeek.
Why this book is loved:
With its Renaissance-inspired setting, large cast of characters and feuding Houses, and a slow-burning romance that builds over two separate timelines, Fortune’s Fool is in a class of its own when it comes to fantasy books. The book clocks in at just over 700 pages, but its length doesn’t detract from its compelling plot buoyed by two intersecting storylines.
We follow Kyrra in the present as she seeks out revenge against those who wronged her and also in the not-so-distant past, where we follow a young Kyrra before her epic fall and the loss of her arm. These past sections are written in past tense while the present sections are written in present tense, so it’s never hard to follow where, when, and what is going. And Boord does a masterful job crafting these storylines in a way where both stories could serve as their own complete books but when weaved together, it creates something that is more than the sum of its parts.
Balam, Spring by Travis M. Riddle
Slice-of-life Fantasy
Published 2018
Ustlian Tales #1
Balam is a sleepy town on the eastern coast of Atlua, surrounded by forest and sea. It’s a village where nothing happens and everybody knows each other. But now, people are dying.
School is out for the spring, and schoolteacher Theodore Saen is ready to spend the next few months relaxing with his family. But when the town’s resident white mage falls ill and several townspeople begin to show similar symptoms, they must call on a new mage. Aava has freshly graduated from the nearby mage academy when she is swiftly hired to deduce the cause of the unknown illness and craft a cure before the entire town is afflicted. Aiding her is an ex-mercenary named Ryckert who keeps to himself but has grown bored with retirement and is itching for a new investigation when a suspicious young man appears in the local pub the same night the sickness begins to spread.
On top of it all, whatever is causing the sickness seems to be attracting strange insectoid creatures from the surrounding woods, desecrating the bodies of the victims and tearing through anyone unlucky enough to cross their path. Theo, Aava, and Ryckert must come together to discover the cause of the illness and put a stop to it before there is nobody left alive in Balam.
Find it on Goodreads and IndieStoryGeek.
Why Jon recommends this book:
Balam, Spring wears its Final Fantasy-inspiration on its sleeve and that’s not a bad thing. Despite its ubiquity, I think this is one of the first fantasy novels I’ve read that pays homage to the game series, particularly Final Fantasy IX. Riddle does a great job subtlety weaving in those elements without hitting you over the head with them. You have magic spells and mage classes that you may be familiar with, but Riddle has built an entire world from the ground up that feels lived in and one that you will want to see more of in future books.
Here, the story centers around a mystery in the coastal town of Balam, which is gorgeously depicted on the cover. Our three main characters must discover what is killing the townspeople (and the town’s previous white mage) before everyone succumbs to a deadly illness. I appreciated that each viewpoint character brought a different perspective on both the town and why they want to help save it. The book has been called a “slice-of-life” fantasy and the pacing moves along at a slower clip than other fantasy books, but it all works together to immerse you in the town and the lives of these characters as they unravel what is transpiring.
Hero Forged by Josh Erikson
Urban fantasy
Published 2018
Ethereal Earth #1
Gabe thought he had covered all the angles, but it’s tough to plan a contingency for accidentally trapping an evil god in your brain.
Gabriel Delling might call himself a professional con artist, but when walking superstitions start trying to bite his face off, his charm is shockingly unhelpful. It turns out living nightmares almost never appreciate a good joke.
Together with a succubus who insists on constantly saving his life, Gabe desperately tries to survive a new reality that suddenly features demons, legends, and a giant locust named Dale—all of whom pretty much hate his guts. And when an ancient horror comes hunting for the spirit locked in his head, Gabe finds himself faced with the excruciating choice between death… or becoming some kind of freaking hero.
Hero Forged is the first book in the new series, Ethereal Earth, a modern fantasy adventure that challenges the natures of myth, humanity, and what it means to be the good guy.
Find it on Goodreads and IndieStoryGeek.
Why Jon recommends this book:
Hero Forged is a study in contrasts. It’s urban fantasy that’s set in Nebraska. It features the panoply of creatures you expect from the genre but with trappings of an epic fantasy. And it’s got a great mixture of heart and humor that makes for a great series starter.
Erikson throws us into the deep end right at the start, with an ominous and bloody prologue that is equal parts terrifying and intriguing. We then are introduced to conman Gabe as he takes a seemingly simple job that leads him directly into the hidden underworld of myth and mayhem.
Gabe is a complex hero, struggling to be a “good guy” while running cons and dealing with the weight of his past.
As an aside, each chapter is fronted by epigraphs from Gabe’s work-in-progress book CONscience about his life as a conman, and as a member of #TeamEpigraph, I am all on board.
With hints of a wider world to explore, I’m looking forward to the next instalments in this series.
Banebringer by Carol A. Park
Epic fantasy
Published 2018
The Heretic Gods #1
Banebringers. Source of the bloodbane who stalk the land. Cause of a thousand wrongs. Despised. Cast out. Hunted.
Vaughn never asked for the powers of a long-forgotten moon goddess. But rarely do the gods give humans a choice when using them in their machinations. Now Vaughn is a Banebringer, loathed by all who discover his true identity—even his father, a man obsessed with his own power and bent on destroying Vaughn’s miserable life.
Vaughn is desperate to end his father before the madman ends him. But to do so he’ll need the skills of Ivana, a vindictive assassin with her own scores to settle. The only question is whether Vaughn can keep himself from becoming another of her targets long enough to see his father eliminated.
Find it on Goodreads and IndieStoryGeek.
Why Jon recommends this book:
Banebringer has one of the more unique magic systems I’ve come across outside of a Sanderson novel. And like Sanderson, Park does a great job weaving in the hard magic system she’s developed with an intriguing plot and interesting characters, with a dash of romance, and a smattering of language translation and scientific experiments. But unlike Sanderson in Mistborn Era 1, Park’s magic system, while featuring loads of cool powers based on a pantheon of deities, is grounded by a horrific cost of overuse.
Our leads Vaughn and Ivana each carry with them traumas from their pasts that quickly intersect after the two survive a vicious bloodbane (think scary monster from another dimension) attack. The relationship and romance that develops between them is deep and complex, and is one of the highlights of the book. A host of secondary characters round out a well-imagined world that still leaves much to explore in the sequel Cursebreaker.
Age of Legend by Michael J. Sullivan
Epic fantasy
Published 2019
The Legends of the First Empire #4
Each culture has its own myths and legends, but only one is shared, and it is feared by all.
With Age of Myth, Age of Swords, and New York Times bestselling Age of War, fantasy master Michael J. Sullivan riveted readers with a tale of unlikely heroes locked in a desperate battle to save mankind. After years of warfare, humanity has gained the upper hand and has pushed the Fhrey to the edge of their homeland but no farther. Now comes the pivotal moment. Persephone’s plan to use the stalemate to seek peace is destroyed by an unexpected betrayal that threatens to hand victory to the Fhrey and leaves a loved one in peril. Humanity’s only hope lies in the legend of a witch, a forgotten song, and a simple garden door.
Find it on Goodreads and IndieStoryGeek.
Why Jon recommends this book:
Age of Legend marks the beginning of the second half of the Legends of the First Empire series and deals with the aftermath of the humans’ victory against the elves in the previous book while setting up the endgame conflict for the remaining volumes. This book and the two that follow read more like one giant story split into three parts, rather than three separate story arcs, and it makes for a truly epic tale. Despite the large cast of characters, Sullivan takes his time to give each their own arc so you feel like any of them could be the main character.
This series has a unique publishing history in that the first three books were published by Del Rey, an imprint of the Big Five, but because the audio rights for the series had already been separately sold, Del Rey wouldn’t buy the back half of the series, and so Michael J. Sullivan and his wife Robin put the book on Kickstarter, where it raised over $100K! The next volumes raised even more, and Sullivan recently launched his new series, which takes place hundreds of years after the Legends series, on Kickstarter earlier this year.
Jon’s Book Spotlight
After all these fabulous recommendations, here is Jon’s book that she wanted to highlight.
Guild of Tokens
Epic Urban Fantasy
Published 2019, 2021 (Special Edition)
Book 1 of Guild of Tokens series
The quests are real, the rewards are real, and the dangers are unimaginable.
All Jen Jacobs has achieved in life is loneliness. So when she stumbles across a real-life game of epic quests on the streets of New York, she jumps at the chance for some excitement and gold tokens. Little does she know that the items she strives to collect hold a darker purpose…
After a particularly harrowing quest pairs her up with Beatrice Taylor, a no-nonsense and ambitious mentor, Jen hopes she’s on the path to becoming a big-time player. But as she dives deeper into the game’s hidden agenda, she realizes Beatrice has her sights set on the Guild, the centuries-old organization that runs the Questing game. And the quests Jen loves are about to put both of them in grave danger.
Will Jen survive the game before powerful forces cut her real life short?
Readers who enjoyed the secret world of London Below in Neverwhere, the Americana, myth, and history in American Gods, and who wish they could go on Dungeons & Dragons-style Quests in real life will find something to like in Guild of Tokens.
The special edition (print and ebook), which was successfully funded on Kickstarter earlier this year, is available to purchase directly from his online shop and comes with an art swag pack. The ebook, audiobook, and paperback are also available on Amazon.
Connect with Jon on his website, Twitter and Instagram. You can sign up for Jon’s monthly author newsletter here and he recently began serializing Guild of Tokens and its sequel, Guild of Magic, on Substack.
Did you add any to your TBR today? Tell us in the comments!
Thank you so much for hanging out with Jon and me today as part of the eigthteenth Indie Recommends Indie Series. I hope you are enjoying the series so far and are looking forward to future posts. I am going to be checking out all of these books!
If you are an indie or small press author who is an avid reader and wants to be featured, sign up using the form on the Indie Recommends Indie home page. This is a fantastic way to bring attention to fellow indie authors as well as your own book. 🙂
Banner Photo of library by Alfons Morales on Unsplash
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