The Magic Root, which introduces the Gelt, Tishla, the Laral family, and a human who may or may not be Luxhomme/Marcus Leitman, is no more.
That’s not to say the story has been dropped from Compact Universe canon, and I’m making like Disney by rewriting fictional history. No, in the process of repackaging the series for Clayborn Press, we decided this most problematic of the books needed a makeover. Editor Stacy Robinson had issues with its shifting viewpoints (to the point of combining it with The Marilynists when this was The First One’s Free). Jonathan Clayborn, my new publisher thought the ultimate product, with the cover you see here, looked too much like a fantasy novel. The landscape wasn’t alien enough, and “magic” implies fantasy, not science fiction.
And this most definitely is science fiction. It’s an odd story, and if I had to do it all over again, it’d be completely from Tishla’s point-of-view. Indeed, the first two chapters of Tishla rewrite the last third of the story from her perspective.
But in addition to giving the first three novellas their own arc, Jonathan decided it needed a more scifi-sounding title. So The Magic Root, a reference to a Gelt child’s tale that closely resembles Jack and the Beanstalk, is now called The Roots of War. And it literally is a root.
Or a tuber, if you want to get technical. (Apparently, technically correct is the best kind of correct.)
Roots will be available for preorder soon. We’ve agreed to keep this one ebook only as it is not very long. A print version would be hard to format and not very profitable. When The Children of Amargosa is running at $12.99 and the current edition of Second Wave at $13.99, it would not make sense to put out what essentially would be a pamphlet. So ebook only it is for now. We may release the entire Seeds of War Arc (Root, The Marilynists, and Gimme Shelter) as a single volume later, possibly with the completed and edited No Marigolds in the Promised Land in the mix. That hasn’t been discussed yet, but it is a possibility.
For now, look for the new Roots of War later this month.