This week’s reader question comes from ARC reader Filipa R. It’s a good one and well-timed with Seven Days of Mercy for the Apostatic Priest just a few weeks away:

How many books will there be in The Divine Heretic series?

I’ve written a little bit about this series’ episodic structure. As an homage to the classic sword and sorcery adventures that inspired Ruxindra and the world of Hebdomar, I wanted each novel to tell a somewhat self-contained story. 

But The Divine Heretic isn’t just a contemporary sword and sorcery novel. As many advance readers have pointed out, it fits as comfortably on a shelf next to Steven Erikson, George R.R. Martin, and Glen Cook as it does with Robert Howard, Michael Moorcock, and David Gemmell. Sword and sorcery actually predates epic fantasy as a form, but the prevailing genre has grown to consume it. The Divine Heretic needs to appeal to both readerships to succeed.

You can enjoy each Divine Heretic novel individually, but sequential readers will reap some additional narrative rewards. There is a meta-story developing across novels, and character arcs extend beyond the borders of each book–particularly where the central cast is concerned.

I’m currently working against a seven-book outline. Each of those seven books adheres to the episodic format. Book 7 also brings the meta-story incited in Seven Days of Mercy for the Apostatic Priest to a satisfying conclusion. But I have so many more stories to tell in the fallen world of Hebdomar…

I’ll answer Filipa’s question directly: The Divine Heretic series will be as long as you want it to be, but no shorter than seven books. Unless the series is a total flop, Book 7 will serve as an inflection point rather than a punctuation mark.

To plagiarize the late, great Robert Jordan, Book 7 isn’t the end, but it is an ending. Assuming The Divine Heretic series accrues enough of a devoted readership across those first seven books, I’m happy to keep writing them. The early indicators are all positive, so there’s a good chance you’ll be reading novels in this setting for many years to come.

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