After beavering away for the last two months, I can now proudly announce that The Reality War is rewritten, polished, repainted, and now sports the words ‘2nd Edition’ on the copyright pages.

For those who don’t know (and I wouldn’t blame you) the two novels in The Reality War were the first novels of mine to be published, back in 2011. Although they are set in the Human Legion Universe, they are a different style to later books, such as Marine Cadet.

Consequently, I didn’t speak of them much, worrying that readers who enjoyed the Human Legion might not take to the earlier books.

That, I decided, was unfair on The Reality War. It’s been bothering me for years, because I know they’re good books but I’ve acted as if I’m embarrassed by them. So I reworked them so they are more in line with my other novels and put the same style of text on covers that still proudly sport Andy Bigwood’s marvelous artwork.

The Reality War is foremost a time travel adventure story. The Slough of Despond is the opening book, and that’s a slightly more psychological and philosophical book than any of my other novels. The next one, The City of Destruction, is a deliberate change of style, on more familiar ground with a dystopian future to fight, freezing in the waters of the North Sea, and being chased by aliens around a spaceship.

The Reality War is also a science fictional re-imagining of John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress. Some people wow to that, some don’t see it, but it’s a thing that developed as I wrote the books and gives them their thematic backbone. With the rewrite, I’ve made that theme both stronger and more subtle. I’ve written two million words of published fiction since the first edition, and I like to think I’ve put that extra experience to good use in the second editions.

You can get the second editions now to buy in Kindle and paperback. It’s also available in Kindle Unlimited.

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