I think the damage is done. Now that Batman (and the Joker) have inspired criminals and vigilantes to step up the game, the Batman is necessary. They won’t stop just because he hangs up the cowl, the precedent is set.

How about this? During the first act, Bruce Wayne should be considering giving up the cowl. Because there’s a good cop (JGL) on the force who seems to be doing what is needed, he starts to shut-down the Bat persona. Crime is down, Gordon has been cleaning up the corruption on the force, and a super-villain hasn’t been sighted for months. During the second act, as the Riddler ratchets it up his hunt for Batman, Bruce retires the Batman. This is the necessary conclusion of the first two Nolan-Batmans, as you stated. But, in the third act, when the Riddler has crossed the line, Bruce begrudgingly un-retires the Batman because it is his duty to handle problems that he has inspired.

While getting into Batman’s head, the Riddler could be mistaken for Batman in the end, and when he goes to Arkham, the world thinks that Batman is gone, leaving Batman available for movie 4.

Harry I’m glad you liked it! Hopefully you’ll enjoy the rest of the series.

I’m glad you liked the book, and doubly glad you took the time to comment. I’d love someday for comments on the work to be passé, but we’re not yet at that point. Right now, they’re precious.

I started working on the sequel before I’d even finished the first book! I think I’ll have the first 5 or 6 chapters in an early draft form soon and though it will be exceedingly rough–far rougher than the admittedly non-final Priest–I feel it’s safe to send it out to readers who made it all the way through the first book and liked it enough to want more. So stay tuned! You’ll be among the first to read the new chapters. Possibly a dubious distinction depending on their quality!

Until I commission some art to help promote the piece, the only way people will find the book is by word of mouth. If you are so inclined, I encourage you to tell your friends, talk about the work on the internets, let people know you liked it. Thus are networks born!

If you don’t mind my asking: how did you discover the book? What or who linked you here?

Thanks again for the positive comments and encouragement!

All in all, I felt that for you to have been able to write this sort of story, you simply connect well with my type of person. Not just the tragic part… but also the insight into the position of an Arrogate, and of our cultural awareness of common distain for organized religion, and yet a strong understanding of ‘the good’… aswell as all the truth about the world being such a miserable place much of the time.

Are you working even now on the sequel?

I’m pretty sure ‘what the hell’ is the right philosophy.

Probably Wordle only sees the front page, which is the last nine chapters. That explains why it has (to me) such a weird idea of which words are important.

Your point about the Wode is one I fretted over for a little while. I have a document called “Fixing the Book” which includes a note that the reader should have a direct experience of how dangerous the Wode is, but in the end I punted on that for a couple of reasons.

First, most of the action is yet to come. And come the end of the book, none of the Beta Readers suggested that the Wode be made more dangerous.

Second, I don’t think the average reader is either reading primarily because he wants to see the forest eat someone, or would put down the book when it doesn’t. So I focused on the characters.

Lastly, while it’s a valid point, there’s an inertia building I have to respect. Earlier in the book, I feel like a reader is more willing to put up with an interlude or two because they want to know more about Heden and what he’s about. Now, however, it’s time to get the plot moving in earnest.

Of course, a better writer would find a way to do it all, and I may yet get there, but it seemed like the kind of thing I’d be safe letting an editor chime in on, before I made any more changes.

P.S. I’m always wary of responding to comments because I feel like some readers might be scared off. Some people like interacting with the author, some people are turned off by it. But I figured: what the hell?

I put the site through wordle and got a very characteristic profile. I’m beginning to think of the thing as an excellent tool.

Yours was HEDEN so big that some of the other words fit inside the D and H. You seem to be flirting with the idea of Heden flirting with Aderyn, and indeed at the time Aderyn was the second biggest word. Brys is winning now, though.

It reinforces my impression that those are the two most significant non-Heden characters. ‘Course, I’m regularly wrong about stuff like this.

Halfway? It seems pretty short, then.

I do have one impression that might be helpful. You built up the Wode a lot, but it just seems like a background to the knights at this point. If this were a game, I would have put the knights off and gone exploring around the Wode. (…after trying to kill the knights at least once.) This is mainly because it seems like you might get magic right. (I like your prayer model.)
Lately it’s been hard for me to find magic that’s doing things that are actually physically impossible. Instead, it just seems like most people write (or program) magic just to be a way to do certain technologies on the cheap. It narrows the difference between SF and fantasy until the difference is whether your wand is made of transition metals or wood.

Other than that, stuff is good. For instance, Geoff really did maximize readability.

(Also, I don’t know how to write short comments.)

Spotted a couple of grammar problems:

“Sir Idris has his hand on his sword.” Verb tense switch.

And I thought that I spotted a “you” in place of a possessive “your” but I can’t seem to find it as I look over it again.