Guardian and The Next Leg of Andrew’s Journey
This week I’m going to discuss a bit of traveling, in terms of The Caein Legacy and how it impacts the story in the series’ second book, Guardian.
In Exile, the reader got to experience a few locations in Novania and its northern border with the Corodan lands, as well as a couple spots in the Southlands.
With Guardian, the entire story is set in the Southlands, but there is so much to see there once Andrew leaves the Citadel. The path he takes is dictated by Alexander’s mage trials, with a few detours due to…ah…circumstances related to the events in Exile. The reader will get to see cities, forests (notably the Venom-weavers’ Forest), the western coast, mountains, the Oracle’s Tree, and eventually even the Dragonlands.
Some of the sites of the mage trials are unique, and while the reader doesn’t get to see much beyond the structures themselves (since the book is from Andrew’s perspective), I have written some of them into the related series, The Mage War Chronicles. So if you’ve delved into this world a bit and want to see even more, the related series will be coming in the future (I’m currently writing book 6.)
The travel time in Guardian spans several months (about 4). While there are horses in this world, they are scarce, and usually reserved as pack animals. The brothers have one horse with them as they travel, and her job is to pull the cart carrying their supplies. Most of their travel is done on foot. Andrew does get some flying in too, but not for the purposes of group travel.
For this post, I did some highlighting on the series map so you can see where Andrew traveled in Exile, and where he’ll go in Guardian. The reddish highlights are from Exile and the blue from Guardian. As you can see, you’ll get to experience a lot from the Southlands in the second book.
(Side note: I’ve also added highlights for books 3 and 4 to my master file. I’m not sharing the travel locations in those books yet, but since they’re both written and just pending proofreading at this point in time, I’ll share updated maps to my blog sometime next year as those books near their publication dates.)
I’m excited to share more of this world with all of you, and I hope you enjoy Guardian when it releases on November 28.
For more information about Guardian and preorder details, click here: Guardian, book 2 in The Caein Legacy.