The good news: the paperback editions of all main sequence novels will soon be appearing on the web sites of US books stores such as Barnes and Noble, just like the collected editions and expansion episodes (as previously announced).

This will of course include Whom Gods Shall Fear when it releases later this year.

The bad news is that prices have increased. Paper and printing costs have gone up dramatically, and print services did (to be fair to them) hold back these increases for as long as they could. I too have delayed passing them on since they were passed on to me in June, but now it's got to the silly point of receiving a $0.03 royalty on a sale.

Whether in print or Kindle ebook form, the collected editions remain the most economical way to purchase new Armadaverse books.

If you are not that concerned about having the latest and greatest edition, there are clearance copies on this site's official store. These are surplus copies from stock for direct sales at conventions, and are effectively brand new. They've just been superseded by an edition with a new cover and a cosmetic edit.

Whom Gods Shall Fear is well on the way, with over half the planned word count finished despite the fact that only a third of the chapter spine is filled out. This might actually be the one book where a lot goes in the editing stage! Or it could just end up being double the length, guess we'll find out.

The book is planned to arrive later this year. When it does land it will end the main story of this series, and conclude the Great War of the Shaeld.

In preparation for this release, the People section of the site has been updated. Almost all characters who will be in WGSF are now marked as such on their bio pages. Those where it is uncertain at this stage if they will be written in have been left without the link, as has one character in particular whose appearance is intended to be a sickening surprise.

Those of you who enjoyed the introduction to the crew of the Leo Fortune will be pleased to hear that they will be making an appearance. We may also encounter Hywen, last seen in A Storm to the Savage, and Doctor Berris, who played a small role in I Dream of Damastion.

In fact... many characters who have only had small moments so far will be turning up to watch the galactic bonfire, and some of them will be bringing marshmallows. The theme of 'consequences' may well play a significant role in this finalé...

Rumours of the death of Armada Wars are greatly exaggerated.

I've written previously about the reason for the delays, so I won't labour that here. The delay for Whom Gods Shall Fear is only really valid as a comparison to the release frequency of the previous volumes anyway — it's one seriously dense book, and it MUST be exactly right.

Quite frankly I'm just pleased that I'm still clearly doing better than George R. R. Martin.

There will at least be one book released this year (2022), which is going to be A Storm to the Savage. This volume has turned into one of the most complex to write so far — you'll see why when you read it — which is quite funny seeing as I originally conceived it as a straightforward bit of extra world-building. I'm confident that it will definitely be a rewarding experience if you read it more than once, hint hint.

ASTTS will be the first Armada Wars book to use the new, mandatory Kindle format. It may also be the first book in the series to receive a hardback release! I'm closing on completion, and the provisional August release date may be brought forwards.

So... what you really want to know... when can you expect Whom Gods Shall Fear. As soon as I am done with A Storm to the Savage, all my writing time will be spent on WGSF. I will be aiming for a 2023 release. I am reluctant to say that's written in stone, because... well if you've been following the series for a while you'll know that I tend to be far too optimistic! Sometimes I am a slow learner.

But things are better now than they have been for a long time, so there is some small sliver of hope that I will get it out when I plan to. More hope than our heroes have, anyway...

Thank you, dear readers, for being so patient.

I think it's fair to say nobody really saw the triple-point scoring, game-ending combo of 2020/2021 coming, and the effects are being seen everywhere. Hats off to the people and organisations who have kept their momentum and provided the same service consistently throughout, whether they be creatives, produce providers, emergency services workers... everyone.

For my part it's been a funny old time. As I have mentioned previously there are some ongoing personal issues which were magnified greatly by the isolation of multiple lockdowns, to the degree that they're now obstructive enough that I need to deal with them as my main priority. Hence the ever-expanding delays to my increasingly optimistic release schedule.

I am however determined to get this current series completed — everyone has waited so patiently, which must be difficult given the whopping great cliffhanger of the latest novel.

The next release is going to be A Storm to the Savage, which takes place on Palanda Ire shortly before the joint Fleet-CAGA counter-occupation. This was originally planned as a novella but it's turning out to be layered in an even more complex way than I had planned, with a much more nuanced protagonist. I'm trying to have little to no excess in it, but at the same time I don't want it to be a superdense read that has no resting space for the reader. It will likely end up as a short novel as a result, rather than a sub-40k word novella.

Once ASTTS is released all my attention will be focused on the grand finale of the series: Whom Gods Shall Fear. I'm very conscious of the length of the delay (I think my release schedule for the preceding books had an average separation of less than eighteen months), and I expect by now some people think this series will never be finished. It will.

You don't have long to wait now before the next volume arrives from the Armadaverse: I Dream of Damastion is now available as a Kindle pre-order!

It's been a dry couple of years for Armada Wars fans, and this expansion episode should hopefully slake your thirst prior to the release of the final full novel in the current series.

Set during the events of The Ravening Deep, IDOD takes a sideways step from Caden and the others, and follows a different set of characters as they discover and resist Voice on a smaller and more claustrophobic scale.

The People pages under the Universe category have now been completed for all characters seen or mentioned so far in the Great War of the Shaeld series. At time of writing this literally includes every named character, from civilians seen in passing to each and every member of Tanker Regiment seen in the last book.

[Edit: since this article was first posted, new index pages have also been added for all characters by surname, all the women, and all the men.]

This feels like a great achievement, since there are over 100 named characters, many of them linked to various events throughout the four existing novels and beyond.

The "upcoming characters" page has now been removed, so the new characters who will be arriving in Perseus Aflame will be added to this site when the first book from that series — On Vicious Wing — is actually approaching its release date.

Some characters from the first of the upcoming GWOTS-era novellas, however, do have partial profiles on the site already. These are:
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• Reximillian Bel-Kenita — Protagonist.
• Euelli Berris — Head of developmental research, Kenita-Deng Incorporated.
• Mansour al-Rashid — Captain, ICS Ardent.
• Zana Turei — Chief engineer, ICS Ardent.

That novella is of course I Dream of Damastion, which should be released before the end of the year and may help to tide people over until the much-delayed release of Whom Gods Shall Fear. The protagonist of another upcoming novella — A Storm to the Savage — also now has her own page. Watch this space.

For serious fans of the Armadaverse, it's highly recommended that you take a deep dive into lore by reading the background and insights into your favourite characters!

It's that time! The title of the fifth novel in the current Armada Wars series is now announced as...

Whom Gods Shall Fear.

The title is fitting for the end of the Great War of the Shaeld story, with apocalyptic undertones hinting at the collision of every one of the major themes which have caused so much creeping fear in the preceding books.

There will be no spoilers whatsoever for the next year at least, but one thing is certain: there's going to be trouble.

Some more improvements to the site this week:

• ​A series category has been added to the books section, which may be of interest!
• A page for The Great War of the Shaeld is now under the new series category.
• ​The main characters page has been split in two, with the less-important people being moved to the new secondary characters page.