How many of you would read this?

I just realized I haven’t plugged my book in my own blog so I will remedy this now: My debut novel is going to be published by Realmwalker Publishing Group.

Here is the info from the official press release:

The Coin of Liberius, is a dark epic fantasy in the tradition of George R R Martin and R. Scott Bakker, dealing with the collapse of the fictional Lagharian Empire and the consequences of power, corruption, and betrayal, as well as the nature of salvation. Unlike the majority of epic fantasy, the novels are set within a Near-Eastern culture, rooted in the political and cultural elements of the medieval Byzantine, Seljuk and Persian Empires, Turkic-Mongolian shamanism, and the folklore of the Near East. This gives it a unique perspective very different from the more Western European cultural perspective of most epic fantasy, while providing an interesting new twist to the highly popular tropes of political intrigue and conflict central found within epic fantasy.

I wrote a blog post and gave a glimpse of the research I have been doing for this book, you can see it here.

I have been doing world building and research for this series for years and showing only a fraction of this in the first book. But both my editor and my beta readers loved the original world. It’s quite alien but also a lot like our own world in some ways and the people who have studied Near Eastern history will recognize some elements.

It’s a gritty setting, it doesn’t start out that grim but becomes grittier and creepier as you go. It’s a multiple point of view story with a number of main characters as point of view, similar to Asoiaf in that regard.

Magic exists as a part of the reality, just like the weather phenomena such as the thunderstorms and the rainbows -and the northern lights for the occasional bang. It’s there but not all over the place. There is no set magic system, it’s different from what you read in most fantasy out there but quite similar to the real world magic, as in shamanic practices and the eastern occult.

My magic is not that of a D&D player and fantasy reader, but rather the magic of an occult practitioner in the eastern tradition. I have been an occult practitioner for a number of years, mainly the Golden Dawn and the Rosicrucian traditions, though I prefer the way of the shamans, without all the elaborate tools, implements and formality.

I have original non-human races and one human race with a twist (in addition to the humans.) There’s no good versus evil, no big bad villain. I have a bunch of antiheroes with ambiguous morals who grow and change for the better or the worse. I have a genuine good guy who is mysterious and intriguing (according to my beta readers, most of whom are total strangers.)
No chosen ones, no big prophecies, no poor orphans saving the world, no damsels in distress. There’s the journey, though. Some characters go on journeys and face strange things along the way.

There’s a bit of philosophy in the story. There’s also plenty of Greek tragedy without butchering my characters en masse. Not saying I am not killing anyone, but I kill sparingly.
I also have no romance in book 1 unless you count bromance.

This is the long and short of it. Now, would you read that kind of book?