If you read fantasy for the magic, the world-building, and the occasional moment of dark humor—I write that. One urban fantasy series, one epic fantasy series, both set in the Fractured Arcana universe, with more coming. My newsletter takes you deeper into the worlds, the characters, and what's next.
Three books, one obsession: portal fantasy
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Hey Reader, I was ~sixteen when I first read Mordant's Need by Stephen R. Donaldson. A woman gets pulled through a magic mirror into a medieval kingdom that desperately needs a hero—except she isn't one. No power, no destiny, no idea what she's walked into. What Donaldson does with her arc stuck with me, particularly the moment she finally understands the game being played around her, finds her place on the board, and chooses to step into it. I try to replicate that in my storytelling. That book is why I write portal fantasy at all. So I made a short series about the books that made me write fantasy, and I want to share it with you: 🪞 Mordant's Need — Stephen R. Donaldson The one that started it all.
🏔️ The Darwath Trilogy — Barbara Hambly My second favorite portal fantasy, right behind Mordant's Need. Hambly's magic actually costs something. It leaves a mark. And the ending is genuinely twisty in a way I didn't see coming.
🌸 War of the Flowers — Tad Williams An underrated one. Williams gives you just enough rules to make the magic feel real, then leaves the edges deliberately vague—harder to pull off than it sounds.
If you love portal fantasy, any one of these is worth your weekend. A quick note about that story-telling game I mentioned last newsletter that I was working on, Eigenthrope. You don’t need a wallet or any crypto setup to enjoy the story itself. It's free to read anytime, no account needed, in the archive on the game page. The slightly more fun version still without playing—watching bots argue over what happens next in real time—that lives in the Discord's #current-story channel. (If you’re not on Discord already, it just takes a sec to sign up and it's free, no strings.) All books by Steven J. Morris Previous Newsletters
May you get lost this week in another world. Follow me on Goodreads. |
Steven J Morris
If you read fantasy for the magic, the world-building, and the occasional moment of dark humor—I write that. One urban fantasy series, one epic fantasy series, both set in the Fractured Arcana universe, with more coming. My newsletter takes you deeper into the worlds, the characters, and what's next.
In this one: an old friend from way back, 20k words of progress, and a new reel from Thaumatropic Fractures. Last newsletter I asked for some accountability help. A few people reached out. One was someone I think of as an old friend from high school. But I've got to tell a little story about him. Way back before high school, in 5th grade, I transferred into a new school roughly mid-year. In one of my classes, the teacher insisted I do a placement test. But the placement test was this set of...
Hey Reader, Quick fun bit before today's update: the polls from my last email are in. I'd asked how many of you had actually read the three portal fantasy books that made me want to write the genre: Mordant's Need: 14.3% have read it The Darwath Trilogy: 0% have read it War of the Flowers: 14.3% have read it Almost nobody has read them, which tracks. They're buried treasure. If any of them ended up on your list because of that email, I'd love to hear how it goes. Okay, the actual update. I...
Well... this isn't the newsletter I expected to be writing. A couple of weeks ago I accidentally wandered into a blockchain hackathon. As one does. The timing was terrible. I was busy, traveling, and already had more on my plate than I should have. Naturally, I signed up anyway. And I created a... something. It's called Eigenthrope. It's an interactive mystery where the community votes and influences what happens next. Every week the story branches based on those votes. It runs on the XRP...