Today, all, is the day of days. A long-awaited moment has arrived- John Birmingham’s follow-up to his alternate-history Axis of Time series has hit over on the Beast. If you’ve anticipated this event like me, you’ll smash the link above and score your copy posthaste.

What a journey this has been, following JB along on his Patreon site as this monster worked its way into a real, breathing thing.

The story starts much earlier for me, 2011, to be precise. Back when the only writing I did was this:

In those days, deep in a dive bar stuck in the Hindu Kush, I only wrote operations orders and the occasional letter home. My Valley Series wasn’t on the radar, and the real Valley lay before me, a crummy, darkness-shrouded place tucked between the snow-capped mountains.

I carried JB’s original Axis of Time novels into combat, and my faithful Sony eReader was KIA on a shitty hill in late September 2011. After that, I was out of luck, at least in terms of reading. However, before then I had read his novels so often that I nearly had them memorized and I could just zone out while eating a delicious MRE burger, slathered in GI BBQ sauce and squish-tube jalapeno cheese, lost in my head in his universe. Between drags on my Pakistani L&M and swigs of water, I fought the Japanese Army like my grandfather, except in my internal dialogue, I was born in the seventies, just like his books.

Powerful stuff.

Later, when I wrote my own book, I stumbled across JB’s website and shot him an email on the general freq. He was cool enough to respond (this rarely happens), and we came into contact. With time, I joined his beta reader crew and did some odd jobs for him. He talked about revisiting the AoT universe, and I was excited, along with legions of his other regulars.

Work progressed, and was delayed by various factors, which are discussed in depth on his sites. I won’t go into detail. If you are interested, there’s a lot about this at his free site.

But now, the moment has arrived, and his newest baby is on the shelves.

If you are as big of a fan as I am, you’ll smash the “buy”button so hard you fear that a trip to the Apple Store may be in your future.

I can’t wait to read this! What’s even better is that there are two more in the pipeline- this is like Black Friday in Walmart! Very exciting.

Seriously.

Thought to share this.