The Years of Apocalypse - A Time Loop Progression Fantasy (Book 1 stubbed!)

Retrospective

The Years of Apocalypse is now complete. I’m still amazed by how many people have read it, and very thankful for all the incredibly kind words people have said about it. Your support is what made it possible, so again, thank you.

I’ve done a lot of reflection on the story. Broadly, there’s three categories I’ve thought about: one is “ways the story could have gone differently,” two is “ways this version of the story could be improved,” and three is “things I think landed well.”

If you’re interested in my thoughts as an author, here they are. It’s a bit of a ramble. In no way is reading this necessary for enjoying or understanding the series. However, if for some reason you haven’t read the series, uh, don’t read the retrospective first! SPOILERS! Go read the series! Then come back.

1. Big Changes

The first thing that got a lot of people mad was the inclusion of other time travelers. There’s two places where dozens of 0.5 ratings hang out on my RR stats, and that’s in the first 6 or so chapters, and clustered around chapter 82 where Troytin starts using Specter to attack Mirian.

There’s a version of the story where Mirian is alone in the time loop, but as should now be apparent, it’s a very, very different story. That kind of story is being explored conceptually with Mecanimus’s The 108, so I’m looking forward to how that goes. Without the other time travelers, though, Mirian’s journey in book 2 would be radically different, and I think I would have had to change how she developed in power significantly to keep books 3 and 4 interesting. Probably, there wouldn’t have been a book 5. The themes would have been altered. It’s just a totally different series.

Another way the story could have gone differently is making it a much slower affair. I always knew that TYOA would be a ‘points on the map’ story like Wheel of Time. Troytin and Mirian’s little time skirmish could have easily been two full books. More time could have been spent with people in Cairnmouth and Palendurio; we got to know Lecne, but I could have gone more in-depth with Ravatha the syndicate criminal, Decian, one of the conspirators, Lancel, the bishop, Kathera, the embassy worker, and Betella, the mercenary. Exploring those stories would deepen our knowledge of the daily lives of people and the intricacies of the conspiracy, as well as the politics and economics of Baracuel. However, when writing, I found myself eager to keep moving to the other points on the map. The slow pace like that would have totally changed the climax of book 2. If the story kept that kind of pacing and explored Alkazaria, Urubandar, Mahatan, Vadriach, Uxalak, and Benansuo at that kind of pace, it could have easily been a 10-12 book series.

Again, it would be a totally different story, though, one more focused on solving a sociological puzzle, and one where Mirian would need to have her power curtailed so that she would need to engage more in-depth with those things. As it was, I found myself eager to move on to the next stages in her power and how that changed how she interacted with the world. I also wanted to be able to keep things fresh, not just repeat the same kinds of events in different places. Managing characters also is a challenge when only one of them remembers things. The slow version of the story wouldn’t be as fundamentally altered as the ‘no other travelers’ version, but it would still be quite different. For my next story, I’m slowing down the advancement of the MC and letting him explore, but he also gets to have companions who make that experience more dynamic and interesting.

Another way the story could have gone differently is to keep Mirian in the loops a lot longer. She’s in there for over a century as it is, but we could have done more. Below when I talk about book 4, I talk about some things that could have made this much longer journey interesting. That could also be combined with what I mentioned above with a slower journey. There’s a direction the story takes where Mirian’s disconnection from humanity turns into outright madness and alienation. Interesting, but I’m satisfied by how much the story explores that currently.

What I think is coolest about these missed possibilities is that other authors can go write them. That’s basically how this story came about: As I was reading Mother of Learning, different ideas kept popping into my head about how the story could have gone differently, and how it would be cool if it explored this thing or that thing. However, MoL is what MoL intends to be. It does its own story, and it does it well. To explore those ideas, I had to write this.

Which is to say, anyone who would love to see a story go in those different, above directions, please go write it! Time loops as a sub-genre have just so many cool and fun things they can explore.

2. Smaller Improvements

One common complaint I’ve seen is how slow the story starts with the initial loops. I’m quite impressed by Sarah Lin’s The Throne of Time as a way to quickly introduce the loops, then back off and slow down to better explore the world, magic, and academy. It’s a very cool way of showing the story in microcosm before doing that same kind of story on a larger scale. However, it’s a fundamentally different experience for a character who knows she’s in a time loop, and I really wanted to be able to show a ‘normal’ day first. For some readers, having a little spy thriller going on in the background was enough to keep things interesting; for others, those first chapters were apparently an exercise in grinding agony. Probably, there’s a way to keep the experience Mirian had but condense it. However, I didn’t do extensive rewrites, only trimming, when it was time to publish the book on Kindle, because I’d already packed those early chapters with load-bearing stuff, and a rewrite to the extent I needed to do both would have fundamentally altered book 2, and also caused hundreds of edits to be needed throughout the books 2, 3, and 4 due to the, well, butterfly effect of changing the earlier story. I think as I gain more experience as an author, I’ll probably get better at that sort of thing, but revisions feel extra hard when something like this is released serially because the story is already out there. I’ve never really been much of a reviser, so this is also just me struggling with something I find difficult.

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It’s also unclear to me if writing it differently would have improved the story. Cradle often gets crap for books 1 and 2; without spoiling much, the main character is forced to bow to a lot of assholes, is constantly struggling with forces so much more powerful than himself it’s absurd, and his agency takes a hit because of that. But I think the later books hit difference because we’ve seen how far he’s come. I think that’s broadly true of TYOA as well.

Another complaint is book 4. Book 4 is a weird one. I certainly have complaints about it. I wanted primarily to explore the dehumanization of the time travelers, archetypes of power, and the question of ‘what comes next.’ I’ll be honest, I don’t know if I pulled it off in the best way. I’m quite satisfied with books 1-3, but book 4 has an odd sort of anti-climax. In my notes, I had lots of different ways things could go. I initially had even more time travelers, and I could have had them start to war with each other across the loops. Those extra time travelers, though, would have really only existed to be knocked off, which felt silly. To make a time war interesting, we have to go back to lowering Mirian’s power relative to them, which means either upping the power of actors like Liuan or Gabriel, or slowing her gains. That sort of goes against the archetypes I wanted to have, where each traveler symbolically represented a different kind of power. I also wanted to keep book 5 in a way that I got to hit the climaxes. As a writer, I actually tend to start with the climactic, final showdown, and then work my way backwards to how that happens. On one hand, that leads me to be able to foreshadow stuff that happens in book 5 in book 1, chapter 1. It means the story doesn’t meander, and events are always building on each other towards that climax.

But it also means book 4 sort of got its shape bent to better serve book 5, which meant book 4 was a bit weaker. Can I fix it? I don’t know if I can. Once I’ve written events in a certain way in a story, I have a very hard time mentally changing how they should go after that. And again, all I can see when I think of changes is how they would mess up other parts of the story that it’s important to me to not change.

So there’s a time skip. Would it have been better to spend more time with the prophets as they apparently bond and work together? Not all that much would actually be happening, and it didn’t feel like expanding that part would deepen the themes or characters. It felt like the story would have to tread water for a bit, and any time it feels like I’d just be adding stuff without purpose, I skip that stuff. I like a good streamlined story. I loved Wheel of Time growing up, and the books have obviously influenced my writing, but I also never want to do the thing where it feels like the story is just meandering on for several books. There’s a time to open new plot threads, and there’s a time to close them.

I think I’ll tinker with the ending before book 4 gets its wider release, but I don’t know how much it will change.

3. Stuff that Landed

The Battle of Torrviol feels like it hit as I intended. Books 2-3 feel very solid to me. It was awesome when readers started to pick up on the hints in book 1 and 2 of how book 3 would end. Book 2 I’m very satisfied in how it both ends with a solid I’m still reflecting on book 5’s climax, but I think I hit it pretty well. Bringing so many different plot threads and characters together like that is tough, though. It’s tough to juggle all that, plus keep the pacing the way I want.

I love moments of revelation, and it feels like the story landed the big ones I wanted.

When I’m reading a litrpg and the character hasn’t stopped fighting for a month straight, it makes me want to put the book down. It’s just tiring. So I made sure Mirian got her moments of rest. Grandpa Irabi wasn’t planned as a particularly influential character, but he emerged as one that needed more of a spotlight, and I was happy to give it to him. I wrote this book for the climaxes, but some of my favorite chapters are the ones of rest.

I also like how the soul ascensions landed. I think it’s a cool way to pair up the characters internal growth and power growth, and it’s something I want to return to in other worlds and stories too.

Clearly, a lot of other stuff landed too, or you all wouldn’t be here reading. For that, I’m eternally grateful, because when I set out to write this, I was just writing a story I wanted to read and hoping other people would too. So again (again, again), thanks for the support, and thanks for reading.

What’s Next

For now, I’m setting time loops aside. I still have some ideas for time loops (and time travel), but those ideas aren’t fully realized yet and need more time on the back burner of my brain. They’re also tough to write, for obvious reasons. So my next story isn’t a time loop.

However, my plan is still to try to strike the same balance TYOA did with regard to characters, themes, and also fun progression. There’s aspects of litrpg I like, but if it’s too shallow a world, or the power fantasy is too blatant, I find myself getting bored. I like to mix some epic fantasy in my progression; there’s gotta be complexity, and there’s got to be a purpose for power. Modern epic fantasy has come a long way from when I was reading it as a kid, and there’s exploration of so many interesting themes and worlds. That’s the kind of thing I want to keep writing. But I also love having a character who can grow in power and agency and start to really change things. That’s also what I want to keep writing.

My current new story is Arcane Juggernaut, and it’s about my other favorite archetype. I love ultra-powerful mages who dip into necromancy, but I also love the armored magic warrior who refuses to yield, both in battle and in his principles. This is a story about that kind of dude. However, like Mirian, he’s not a meathead, though he’s certainly going to have to learn and grow a lot before he figures out how to solve his problems. Magic enhancements and cool armor will help, but they won’t be enough alone!

It’s also going to mix around bits of portal break, isekai, and sysapoc elements. I’m calling it a ‘portal apocalypse,’ though I don’t know if that’s the best term or if that’s already used for other things yet.

If you enjoyed The Years of Apocalypse, even if a male mc litrpg isn’t your usual style, I hope you’ll give it a shot!

After that, I have three candidates for my third project, which I plan to put the first five chapters up on my patreon to vote on in the coming month or two. I don’t have a newsletter or a real website; RR and patreon are how I communicate, so please vote in the poll below on your opinion of using the very back of TYOA to let you know about other things I’m doing.

And that’s all for now. Take care!