Book four is tentatively titled 'The Skull Throne ,' and book five is 'The Core .' It's kind of hard to talk much about them without giving away things from 'Daylight War,' however.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I think each book sort of finds its own theme as it goes on. 'Warded Man' was fear. 'Desert Spear' was exploration of the other. 'Daylight War' was relationships. Some of this is intentional, and some of it evolves naturally. The series as a whole is obviously something I have given a lot of thought to, but each book is its own animal as well.
'Undertones of War' by Edmund Blunden seems to get less attention than the memoirs of Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves, but it is a great book.
I think of every book as a single entity, and some have later gone on to become a series, often at the request of readers.
I don't know how many good books I still have in me; I hope there are another four or five.
Granted, a long book can be as daunting as a hard one. I nearly reached for 'Game of Thrones' until I saw the bookshelf sagging under the burden of those other volumes.
Each book, intuitively sensed and, in the case of fiction, intuitively worked out, stands on what has gone before, and grows out of it. I feel that at any stage of my literary career it could have been said that the last book contained all the others.
Each book first begins with a little idea.
Being a student of Wuxia literature, I was aware 'Crouching Tiger' was book four in the 'Crane Iron Pentalogy.'
There are two trilogies I admire: Robertson Davies's 'The Deptford Trilogy' and Philip Pullman's 'His Dark Materials.'
I will read four or five books at the same time.