Book 4's End

So Sunday turned out to be the lucky day for Book 4. It took well over 12 hours of off and on writing throughout the entire day but I managed to fly through the climax. I finished the epilogue today.

 

A slight chuckle at the beginning of the climax

 

I had a pretty decent outline to help me get through the entire chapter without missing vital points while also tying up all the major, and minor, plots I had floating around. I hit nearly all of them and that's quite an accomplishment for such a complicated story.

 Azira Raptoreye takes on Roan

The whole gist of this story was having all the mysteries and questions throughout the book pulled together at the end in a dramatic reveal. This meant that, unlike the past books, this book had nearly a dozen plots all coming together and forming one cohesive idea.

Basically, it consisted of these plots...

1) Why Roan has the powers he was given
2) Why did Arobin decide to bring Roan home to his ranch?
3) Tuck has unpredictable power that needs to be tamed
4) What is the connection between the break ins at all the plants on the east coast?
5) Why are the enemy plants suddenly increasing production of a volatile drug?
6) Why did Dugger try to assassinate Roan?
7) Is there a reason Arobin arranged for Zeus to join the ranch?
8) Will Roan learn to finally accept the results of a war by coming to terms with the deaths of his friends?
9) Why is Roan having dreams again?

Etc, Etc. This is as much as I can reveal without it giving away too much of the plot.

Try revealing all those plots to the reader in the final 30 or so pages of a book.

But back to the climax. It had a few really good parts where I'm impressed with the writing. It's different than what I'm used to putting on paper. It's getting far more serious as the war in the book progresses and pushes the characters to darken.

 

 Roan realizes he will never win over the entire public

The epilogue really reflected this. Book 1 lacked an epilogue while Book 2's was pretty optimistic in atmosphere. Book 3 still had an optimistic atmosphere but it also had tinges of regret and sadness in it as Roan came to terms with what happened with his foster family. Book 4 is a lot darker than the others. The events in the climax have forced Roan to set aside his child-like hopefulness and instead see the world around him as the harsh, dangerous place it is.

It didn't leave me with the warm, happy fuzzies the other endings did and for that reason I'm a little sad this book is over. I had the greatest time writing this book. I looked forward to it for years and it was just as I had imagined but now that it's over it seems rather surreal.

This is where editing comes in handy as I get to spend a couple weeks working out the kinks while slowly introducing myself to Book 5 and its plot. Hopefully, things lighten up soon enough. I already have a fun beginning in mind for it!

The final few sentences