Almost every fantasy series right now makes the same mistake. The main character gets transported somewhere brutal and just wants to live in a shack to avoid people. Maybe forage mushrooms and be a tree hermit. X chapters later…he’s married with kids!
Collectors know this template. They’re exhausted by it.
Brotherhood of the Wolf is set in 15th-century Balkans. Four Ottoman warriors, some of whom were Christian boys taken through the devshirme blood tax, converted to Islam, conditioned so completely they didn’t revolt against the Sultan. They got paid. Their identity is inseparable from their deen , their unit, and their master. These are not men with millennial personalities selves wrestling modern guilt. The magic system runs on Islamic mysticism (yes, there’s’ jinn). The final antagonist of the series will be the historical Vlad (not Bram Stoker’s drawing room vampire).
In Issue #4, Munir needs Zarko to find a crate labeled “fire” in Arabic : mid-combat, 400-pound bombard primed, the monster healing outside. But Zarko is a Serbian peasant boy. He’s never seen Arabic script. So Munir describes the letters by shape: a hook, a shallow bowl, a dot on top. One exchange with zero exposition. The entire cultural gulf of the blood tax in ~ 12 words.
Issue #3 is done from colors, letters are next. Issue #4 is being drawn right now.
If you need your Janissaries dreaming of freedom like they were cast in The Patriot , this ain’t your series.
The Collector’s Bundle ( Issue #1-2 plus The False List novella ) is live now. Two for one.
Forward this to exactly one person who finished Kingdom Come Deliverance and said the writing still wasn’t brutal enough.