Adam, over at The Wertzone, has some news on what Paul Kearney’s up to after having finished The Ten Thousand:
Paul Kearney, author of The Sea-Beggars series and last year’s excellent The Ten Thousand (my 2008 book of the year), has signed a deal with Solaris for two more books set in the world of the Macht. Early working titles are Corvus and Kings of Morning. Congratulations to Paul, and I’m already looking forward to the new books.
This is in addition to the reprints of Kearney’s excellent Monarchies of God saga, a five-volume epic fantasy which is to be reissued as two omnibuses entitled Hawkwood and the Kings and Century of the Soldier. Release dates have to be finalised for those, but will hopefully be for later this year.
As one of the few critics of The Ten Thousand, I’m curious to see how Kearney tackles these next novels. I’d love to have a more in depth look at the world of the Macht, but I was also hoping to see another standalone from Kearney (he mentioned a project called Fury on his message board several months ago). I suppose it’s a good sign that The Ten Thousand succeeded if Solaris is interested in publishing two more novels in the universe.
In regards to Fury, he says:
I’ve decided to try and write ‘fatter’ as it were, and really pad out the characters, the milieu and all the stuff fat fantasy thrives on.
It will be interesting to see if this philosophy holds true to the new Macht novels. Kearney has hinted at times that The Ten Thousand (and the world of the Macht, more specifically), if you want to get technical, is actually a work of Science Fiction, not Fantasy, and I’d love to see Kearney expand on this and the origin of the races in the follow-ups to The Ten Thousand.
