As we hurtle towards the Tenth Armadaversary, it's slightly daunting but also extremely satisfying to acknowledge that in a few months' time, this is what the line-up will look like... 

You read that correctly: hardcovers!

With the release of A Storm to the Savage comes a smorgasbord of new hardcover editions. Every single volume in the Armadaverse can now be bought in a weighty, hardback edition with a very nice matte cover! Typesetting is consistent between all the volumes, and they all contain the latest versions of the texts.

​Go to the Books section to get direct links to your most local Amazon region, for your favourite volumes!

The following books are now updated, and you can download the updates for your Kindle immediately:

• Steal from the Devil — Fourth Edition (rev. 4.0),
• List of the Dead — minor updates (rev. 1.2),
• The Ravening Deep — minor updates (rev. 1.2),
• From Shattered Stars — minor updates (rev. 1.2).

You can check which version of each book you have by looking for the revision number on the copyright page. If there is no revision number, your edition pre-dates the adoption of that system.

If you don't have automatic updates turned on, you can push the updated files to your Kindle device/s or app/s using the "Manage My Content and Devices" page in the Kindle area of Amazon's web site. That page is also available in the "Digital content and devices" list, found on the "My Account" page.

Please leave a comment if you have any problems obtaining updates — KDP had some communication issues this week, and I'm eager to ensure everything has gone smoothly.

The Fourth Edition of Steal from the Devil adds some new material, and changes the order of scenes up to the climax in order to make the flow of text far better. The climax is more robust, and key characters have enhanced scenes or background added throughout the book. Grammar and punctuation have received a very comprehensive scrubbing.

In all other books, including SFTD, other tweaks have been made. Fonts have been replaced since their accidental removal, the NCX files which build the "Go To..." menu have been repaired in the omnibus editions, typography has been brought in line with the printed editions, and so on.

Armadaverse Kindle books have always included "publisher fonts", so that you can read the book exactly as it was intended to be presented. These cause the eBooks to mimic the printed editions, both in style and typography. You can turn them on in the display options for your Kindle device or app.

A previous update accidentally omitted the font data, but it has been replaced across the updates above.

Another advantage of including fonts is that it allows stylistic differentiation in the text, such as for the incident in which Bruiser discovers anti-human graffiti in his home town:

As I mentioned previously, refreshed versions of the current novels (volumes 1–4 at time of writing) will be released soon. The plan is to release them all together for both the Kindle and paperback editions.

Books 2–4 will only be getting minor tweaks and corrections — nothing major needs changing. The files for the paperbacks, Kindle individual titles, and Kindle boxed set versions will be getting a hard reset to the "master version" of their respective texts (I've noticed slight discrepancies between the editions, thanks to a sloppy workflow.) The rear covers of the paperbacks will also be tweaked to make them look a bit more professional.

However Steal from the Devil has had a massive overhaul. I consider this the fourth edition, and some of you won't like this but there's... like... more material. I know, I know, I thought I was making tweaks and I guess I just got carried away. What I can say is that the longest new passages have all been character-based additions with the exception of the climax which gets some more action.

I will make sure Amazon KDP pushes the refreshed SFTD as a free update to Kindle customers. For paperback customers, you'll have three options:

1. Buy a new paperback (don't worry, it'll be the same size and cover style as the current one).
2. Ignore the changes — no plot has been altered so nothing that follows on from SFTD is affected.

So what has changed in Steal from the Devil? Here are some examples:

• The entire first chapter (intro to Hammer, Santani, and Caden) has now been restructured to reduce the choppiness of it all.
• Chapters 18 and 19 were swapped for pacing reasons.
• The super-long chapter 20 was split into two, creating Chp. 20 "Hammerfall" and Chp. 21 "Light the Dark".
• The order of scenes in the last three chapters has been rearranged to improve the flow of action and make the pacing far better.
• The climactic confrontation is no longer just a case of finding Morlum, having a quick chat, then shooting something real quick. A lot more is said, the tension is raised considerably, and a lot more actually happens.
• Maber Castigon is fleshed out slightly more, and we get to read a little about the way he sees the world.
• Euryce Eilentes is also fleshed out more, and we learn things which preface her arc in the later books.
• Bruiser has been given a bit more of a role, seeing as we all love him so. 
• Some very sneaky foreshadowing has been made more obvious.
• Mobile Air and Ground Assault has been changed to Conventional Air and Ground Assault (CAGA), as it will now be known across all books and supporting materials.
• "Skinprint" is now written as "skin-print", to aid people whose first language is not English. I mean they deserve some chance, right?
• Significant numbers of tweaks and edits to sentence structure, grammar, etc.
• Improved typography and punctuation has been modernised.

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.

Over the past couple of weeks, the paperback editions have been quietly migrated from Createspace to Kindle Direct Publishing. This means faster and simpler delivery (now fulfilled by normal Amazon means), and full Prime availability. The opportunity was also taken to make some tiny tweaks to the content and covers.

As you might have heard, every Armada Wars novel available on the Kindle platform now has X-Ray content available. But what is it? And where?

Put simply, X-Ray content gives you a compact, dedicated database right alongside a Kindle book. It contains profiles for characters, significant terms, and definitions. It can add depth to the world of the book, provide you with a means of quickly refreshing your memory, and give you quick and simple explanations.

The X-Ray system can show you all the terms or characters on a page, or for the whole book, ordered alphabetically or by relevance. It also generates "notability" scores for some content, and it picks out passages which might be of particular interest.

All in all this is a feature that succeeds in combining functionality with entertainment, and when you're exploring an expansive and subtly detailed world like the Armadaverse it's an invaluable companion. It's available from the tool strip at the top of any Kindle's reading page, or in the book menu on mobile devices.

All the X-Ray content in the Armada Wars novels comes straight from the source, and it is designed to be consistent and spoiler-free. Due to the character limit for X-Ray entries there are of course much more extensive articles on this site: the web site's entry on the Rodori, for example, is vastly more interesting than the abbreviated version found in X-Ray. But the idea is to give you a quick summary of what a Rodori is, right while you're reading.

How to get the latest X-Ray content:

Simply delete the Armada Wars novels from your Kindle reading device/s, and then download them again. That's literally all there is to it!

• You of course do not get charged again, because the book is in your account.
• Even if you've downloaded X-Ray content this week, the latest versions (released 20th Jan 2018) have been improved and refined. It's recommended that you update all books.
• Whom Gods Shall Fear will launch with X-Ray content.

As mentioned yesterday on the Facebook page, there has been a universal update to all of the Armada Wars Kindle eBooks. The purpose of the update was to:

• Make the eBooks totally consistent with each other,
• Make them appear much closer to the paperback editions
• Fix a couple of minor errors.

 
The new editions are a huge improvement over previous versions, and the eBooks have never looked so good. Read on to learn more!

In the run-up to the delayed release of From Shattered Stars, many of you will no doubt be planning to re-read the first three books of the series. If you're reading on Kindle, or using the Kindle app on another device, then before you start you may wish to update to the latest versions.

Steal from the Devil and List of the Dead have only minor changes, however The Ravening Deep has some corrections which put right a very silly mistake that slipped into the battle for Ramm Stallahad.

That sequence has now been fixed, and a number of other minor edits have been made to clarify sentences and paragraphs. All volumes have also had their back matter updated to reflect the delayed release of FSS.

If you are uncertain about how to download the updated eBooks to your device, please refer to the final section of the FAQ page.

All the updates are now available for existing customers. You will know if you have the latest versions by checking the back matter — the release date given for From Shattered Stars will have changed to 2017.