New Release: Demon’s Alliance

It’s here! Demon’s Alliance, book three of The Demon’s Series, is now available! \o/ If you haven't already, you can also get book one, Demon's Lure, and book two, Angel's Sigil.

One thing that frustrates me about releasing a new book in a series is that the blurb for the new book generally contains spoilers for earlier books in the series. The blurb for Golden Coils gives away major plot points for Silver Scales. Likewise, the blurb for The Sun Etherium gives away one of the twists of The Moon Etherium.

When I’m promoting a new book in a series, I want to reach two audiences: existing readers who need to know the new book is available, and new readers who don’t know about the series but would be interested in it. It’s great to reach the latter! But it feels off to reach them with “also, here’s some big revelations on the resolution of those books you didn’t read yet.”

To address this, I have written DECOY BOOK BLURBS, to conceal the spoilers of the actual book blurb! Anyone who remembers the first two books will recognize the real book blurb because it’ll be the one consistent with prior books*. But the decoys will serve to disguise it from potential new readers who want to avoid spoilers! (New readers start here: Demon's Lure)

*Or you can click through to the “buy” page linked above. I didn’t put the decoy book blurbs there.

~

For millennia, the demon Bright fed on the suffering of humans, torturing them to sate its endless hunger. Then it discovered a lure: a person whose joy could extinguish its hunger entirely.

Of course, a demon can’t keep a person happy. In the end, Bright killed its first lure, Tsadi.

Still, it craved the satisfaction only a lure could provide. So it found another lure: Sunrise.

And then killed her too.

Look, change is hard, okay? Also, humans are irritatingly fragile.

But it must have learned from its mistakes now. Bright is determined to make an ally of its third lure, Badger.

But can any human survive a demon’s capricious, sinister nature?

~

The Anesh Archipelago has always been plagued by demons: irredeemable creatures of pure evil. That was the unquestioned truth — until the angels granted a demon hunter's sigil to a demon: Bright. But when Guild White accepted Bright as a hunter-in-training, that didn't settle the question.

Instead, it opened a rift that set hunter against hunter. At the center of the conflict is not just Bright, but those closest to it: Sunrise, the first demon hunter to befriend it, as well as her own friends.

The division leads to violence, spreading far beyond the halls of Guild White, threatening to destroy the guild system itself. That outcome would benefit no one: not Bright, nor its allies, nor the demon hunters who oppose it—

—no one, that is, except for every other demon in Anesh.

~

After seasons of being stalked and threatened by the demon Bright, Sunrise turned the tables on it at last, luring it into a trap not even a god-demon could escape. Her long ordeal over, all she wants is to return to her safe, ordinary life in Oak-by-the-Water.

But now that she has shown her true power, the remaining demons of the Anesh Archipelago regard her as an existential threat. Can even the demon hunters’ guild protect Sunrise from this Demon’s Alliance?

~

In an effort to reform, the god-demon Bright sought the aid of Sunrise, a girl whose demon hunter’s sigil could end its otherwise insatiable hunger for human suffering. For a time, it looked as though this plan would work.

But the demon hunters’ guild does not believe in the possibility of reform for demons.

And to demons, a reformed god-demon poses an existential threat: one they have formed an alliance to stop.

Now Sunrise and Bright must evade hunters and demons alike, and nowhere in the Anesh Archipelago is safe for them. Their only hope is to escape to another archipelago: a perilous journey that no human from Anesh has made in recorded history.

~

With the help of the hunting team Determination White, Sunrise escaped from Bright, the immortal demon who’d been alternately tormenting and protecting her for seasons. Now cleared of the charge of colluding with a demon, Sunrise has joined Determination White with one goal in mind:

Capture Bright and ensure it can never hurt anyone else, ever again.

But Bright is ancient and immortal. It had once hoped to ally with humans to end its hunger. But if that’s not an option—

—well, it has formed an alliance with demons to conquer an archipelago before.

And with everything it has learned from its prior experiences, this time will go even better.