Bonds of Hate: The First Twelve Chapters

In the menu to the right you’ll find links to the first twelve chapters of Bonds of Hate, the first book in the Dark Tales of Randamor the Recluse-series. There’s also a link to download the entire book for free.

Am I being generous? Not really. I do believe however that reading a long book, let alone a series, is a serious investment of time. Before you spend that time  — and your money — I want you to be certain that these books are to your liking. Twelve chapters, sixty thousand words, should be ample to decide that. If you don’t like my style of writing, you will have discovered that long before you reach the last sample chapter. Ditto if you don’t like the story, its setting, its characters or whatever. To make extra certain you can download the entire book.

For some people this page will be the landing page, so I’m going to repeat a few things. Bear with me if you’ve all heard it before. These books are set in a medievalish world, but they are not our Middle Ages. Don’t expect everybody to bandy about forsooths and thous and similar parlance. In fact, these stories take place in the far future, after mankind has crawled its way back to a medieval society, after an as yet unnamed apocalyptic disaster. The main place of action, the kingdom of Ximerion, and its Northern Marches, will probably remind you of the Middle Ages in Western Europe. Other places might vaguely bring Ancient Greece to mind.

Although some would classify these books as Historical Fantasy, you won’t meet any magical creatures or dragons, talking or not. The closest we come is to a heraldic one on the coat of arms of the main character. You can see a picture in the masthead of this site.

You need a strong stomach for this story. This is a raw, harsh world and it can’t be judged by the moral standards of our present day society. There is a lot of cruelty, though, I’m sorry to say, nothing takes place in these books that hasn’t taken place at some time, somewhere, in the long and sad history of our kind. What violence there is, isn’t gratuitous. It always serves a purpose. The same goes for the explicit gay sex scenes. There is a rape. There is a very unusual relationship between half brothers to which some might object. In that case these books are not for you. There is also romance, and friendship and loyalty, amidst political intrigue and warfare.

I’ve tried not so much to write a series of books, as to create a world you can live in. A world, I hope, you might want to revisit once in a while. Whether I succeeded is for you to decide.

So, gentle reader, I’ve done my best to warn you. If after having read all this you still want to peruse the sample chapters, the links are to your right.