Live and learn. After all, that's what it was all about.

Da Senlin / Mykill Skogur, Master of Isekai,chapter 2

I've been watching most of the critiques stemming from how book 2 unfolds. And I find them reasonably accurate. That's what I like about the readers: the critique of the bad bits.

The original trilogy: Ancient Bones, Ancient Books, Ancient Bones was intended as a rise of a cult. You can guess who is the divinity of the cult's following. That's partially why the four starts that naive - they're the people ushering without intending to a new worldwide cult and crusade to reconquer the world in Moore's name. And then they find themselves embarked along the ride.

Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, it didn't quite work up. I couldn't get the cult aspect to start to gel in book 2. You do have epigraphs hinting at it (the Wisdom of the Ancients are "popular" book about the cult; the hints of parchments being illegal or the Gomez guide being an underground thing, the reference to the "Zahl chapter", which is an odd name for a branch of a "Talent House") but in terms of the actual following? Failure to establish it. And that's on me, absolutely.

If you're wondering why Georgy North is the driving force behind the Talent House instead of the four ... he was supposed to be the original cult head. His plan of establishing himself as a prophet of the Four would backfire eventually, but not before the cult - encouraged by the very apparition of their divinity, which is still there - took over. And by the time the four realize they're making a machine that doesn't need them, just the willing hands to convert to parchments, it would be too late, or something.

Lots of threads, but not enough canvas. That's a major problem when you're writing the book on the fly. I admire many of the serial writers on RR, and their ability to produce consistently coherent stuff. Not having a real ending probably helps, but I can't write without having an ending in mind, and my problems come when the tug of war between the current flow of events and the end-goal tear apart the plot. And for this one, it did, in spades.

So, what does this mean in practice?

First, there will be a book 2 rewrite before book 3. I could fool myself into saying it is fine, but the readers know better than me. I'm not talking about some edits here and there, but a significant rewrite. I don't know how much will have to change, but the story will have to speed up significantly and go in a different way. Expect things to start to change as early as chapter 2 or 3. Some characters will probably stay, others will be cut, and so on. But mainly, it will not have the character development being artificially arrested for an end goal that is unachievable.

As soon as I have an entire redrafted book 2, the current book 2 will go down, and I will repost the new book 2. This will be a massive dump, probably 2 chapters a day for a month (it is probably still going to be 60 chapters in total) since I'm not doing it until I have a proper complete book 2.

Then, I will start to write book 3. Can't tell you when, and I'm not going to make predictions. It all boils down to how fast I can restructure the plot and finally let some character development occur for book 2.

I am keeping the currently scheduled New Year content, which was intended as a prequel to the prologue of book 3, but I am going to give you an extra bonus content that is more in line with what book 3 should have to apologize for having to write this author's note.

Oh, and if you're wondering about the epigraph, it's from what could probably be my next series after I finish unfucking this one. I'm still undecided, and it's for late in 2023, anyway.

Besides, the System takes over next August, right?