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CORROSIVE KNIGHTS FAQ
I've been asked about the CORROSIVE KNIGHTS series and here are some of my thoughts/answers regarding this work.
Imagine if you will director Steven Spielberg, early in his career, releases JAWS, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, and RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK one after another and in that order (I offer this only as a comparison and make no claims that my works are as good as Mr. Spielberg's!).
The three films I mentioned, on the surface, have nothing to do with each other and feature different settings, characters, and stories.
Now imagine if Mr. Spielberg followed up these three films with a fourth movie that tied the previous works together? Can you imagine how people would have reacted to the fact that they were not just watching three separate films, but films that were part of a movie series?! This, in essence, is what I wanted to accomplished with the CORROSIVE KNIGHTS series.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
There's something magical -and maddening- about writing a novel series.
On the one hand, if your subject matter strikes a nerve with readers (think HARRY POTTER), then more books are certainly good, both for the writer (monetary profits which in turn lead to being able to write full time which in turn allows you the freedom to explore the worlds you create) as well as for readers (the joy of reading the extended adventures of your favorite characters)
On the other hand, there is a risk in writing a series. Story elements may become repetitious and story lines may grow stale. If your series features action and adventure, it becomes harder and harder for the author to create "fresh" and logical situations where your characters face dangers and just barely survive.
As an author, you may also become "locked in" to your characters. Going back to HARRY POTTER, let's say author J. K. Rowling originally envisioned a gigantic "twist" in the middle of that particular series and wanted to shock readers by killing Harry Potter and revealing Character X was the hero of the series all along. This alternate world J. K. Rowling would face considerable opposition to going through with this twist by her publishers (how dare you kill the goose that lays the golden egg!) and fans, who would likely have formed a mob and hunted her down.
Shades of MISERY, no?
When I realized I embarked in the creation of my own novel series, I already had the first two books well plotted out. These books, MECHANIC and THE LAST FLIGHT OF THE ARGUS, were meant to be tangentially related as they took place in the same universe but centuries apart from each other. When I started plotting CHAMELEON, the proverbial creative thunderbolt hit and I realized there was enough material here to create a very interesting, and very different, series.
Because of the late nature of this realization, the first three books in the CORROSIVE KNIGHTS series, MECHANIC, THE LAST FLIGHT OF THE ARGUS, and CHAMELEON, are books which can be read in any order. But when you get to the fourth book in this series, NOX, it becomes necessary to read those first three books to understand the larger story being told.
The beauty of this concept was that it allowed me to create a series that avoided -at least I hope!- the pitfalls I mentioned above.
Here then are the seven CORROSIVE KNIGHTS books released to date and the order in which they were released:
Now, if I were to present the books in chronological order, ie the order in which the main story of each novel occurs and on a "normal" time line, this would be the order of the tales:
Your eyes do not deceive you. If you were to take these seven books and ignore any smaller moments taking place within them in the past or via flashbacks and focus on the central story being told, this is the chronological way the seven books in the series play out.
So the big question: Why not present the series in this order to begin with? That's partly answered by what I wrote above. I wanted this work to be different. I wanted it to surprise you. However, now that I've revealed the chronological order the stories take place in, what's to stop people from reading it that way?
Nothing at all.
It's a free world and if you want to read the CORROSIVE KNIGHTS series in chronological order, have at it. Just understand that I'm presenting this series in this different way because it works better that way. Despite the odd chronological shifts, the story makes more sense when read as it was released.
So while FOUNDRY OF THE GODS takes place some two hundred years before the events of THE LAST FLIGHT OF THE ARGUS, GHOST OF THE ARGUS, and LEGACY OF THE ARGUS, if you read that novel before reading those other two you will miss out on some great -and hopefully very surprising!- story revelations.
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So anyway, there you have it. With the release of LEGACY OF THE ARGUS, the CORROSIVE KNIGHT'S first major story line comes to a close.
But it isn't the ending.
BOOK #8 of the series, TERMINUS ISLAND, has as of this writing on 9/23/2020, just been released and it offers another glimpse into the CORROSIVE KNIGHTS universe... and hopefully a damn good read as well!
There's plenty of surprises yet to come and I hope you're around for the ride!
E. R. Torre
9/14/2019 and 9/23/2020