New concept art: Ilisark

Hello readers! I can’t believe I haven’t shared any character doodles since last November… Things have been moving a bit slowly on the creative front, it must be said. However, I am set on releasing the new edition of Sylvre by the end of the year, in paperback as well as electronic form. And in the run-up to that release, you can expect a few more character doodles and Lego models than usual!

Who is Ilisark, then?

It’s a classic high-fantasy trope for the first book in a series to be set somewhere relatively self-contained, usually with a northern-European feel, and for the second book to expand the world, taking our characters on a journey through more foreign-feeling climates. I’m afraid my books fit very snugly within this trope (it’s nice to have familiar structures sometimes, alright?). Highmoor is set exclusively in a land of windswept moors (who would have guessed) and rainy forests, and although I have the protagonists meet travellers and hear stories from other parts of the world, it is not until Sylvre that they get to visit these far-flung environments.

(As a side note, I find this trope very interesting from a narrative perspective. I might explore it in more depth another time.)

So, Ilisark – as you might have guessed – is a character that we meet hundreds of miles from Highmoor. He’s the third son of the emperor of the largest nation in the world, and he is given a leading role in reclaiming the Sylvre Kingdom (hey, there’s the name of the book) from the eastern elves. The elves invaded two decades earlier, killing the royal family and displacing the human population – and since then, they have let the kingdom’s cities and infrastructure fall into ruin. So, when the heir to the Sylvre throne suddenly reappears, the emperor leaps at the chance to take the kingdom back – and he places Ilisark right at the centre of his scheme.

If any of this piques your interest…

You can pick up the Highmoor series for free until the end of today! Currently, all of my books are free on Amazon. You can find them here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/C-W-Clayton/e/B09YZXSQ3D.

However, I would recommend that you wait until I launch the new edition of Sylvre later this year. I’m tidying up a handful of spelling and grammar errors that escaped my notice, which were kindly pointed out by other readers. If you want to read the “beta” version now, for free, go ahead – but a new-and-improved edition is on the way!

Happy reading, and have a lovely week!

Links:

C. W. Clayton books on Amazon: https://www.amazon.co.uk/C-W-Clayton/e/B09YZXSQ3D

My Amazon author page: https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/C.-W.-Clayton/author/B09YZXSQ3D (please follow me on Amazon if you can)

Highmoor Series Maps

Highmoor Series Art