Beginning April 15th, P. C. Hodgell’s Kencyr novels will join Sharon Lee and Steve Miller’s Liaden books as a formerly DRM-restricted series that has now made the transition to DRM-less Baen Webscription offerings. Like Lee and Miller’s, Hodgell’s books were formerly offered through the small ebook publisher Embiid, whose proprietary DRM left its customers high and dry after they went out of business last year.
To those of us who crave more of Hodgell’s far-too-infrequently-published series, this is some of the best of all possible news. Combining the dark and gothic Victorian novel with modern fantasy tropes, the Kencyr series (also called The God Stalker Chronicles by Baen, though this is a recent construction) is a masterpiece of careful worldbuilding that reads a lot like Zelazny with a touch of Lovecraft. A demon called Perimal Darkling has been devouring a chain of worlds, one by one, forcing the Kencyr, inhabitants of the first world eaten, to flee from world to world as each one is devoured beneath their feet. Into this tortured history are born twin children, Torisen and Jamethiel, who may offer the last hope of resisting this demon—if they can survive long enough.
Baen will be offering these ebooks in a similar package to its Liaden bundles; five books (four novels and one short story collection) for $20, beginning April 15th and open for three months; after that, the books go up to $5 each.
