Control: Dread Lord Icon Free…

I, Dalton Lewis, published a novel, The Dread Lord Icon, and it’s free for about five days. I hope that all of you will check it out. It’s exciting, tense, and full of all the fantasy action that you can expect from an epic fantasy tale — while also showing a harrowing, personal look at a college experience.

Icon, the protagonist, has just finished necromancer’s school at eighteen and is ready to go out into the world and have adventures in the realm of Duskgarden. His first assignment — solve a triple murder along with Allele Ilandros, a beautiful swashbuckler with a heart of gold. She and Icon fight through the capitol and solve the case — but anger the neighboring country of Daysreach in the process. Daysreach swears vengeance, and the situation escalates towards war.

As this happens every night Icon goes to college at the University of Iowa every day. He takes classes in religion and learns from the wise Professor Ahmed — who wants peace between every religion. Unfortunately, that peace is very hard to accomplish in the fantasy reality because of the increasing tensions from the violence there.

I wanted a complicated, tense relationship between Icon and the lead suspect, Devane, his roommate. Devane drinks, smokes pot, and dates the beautiful and eloquent Annette de los Santos, a beautiful woman whom he takes home to their dorm room every night. He wants to make it in business and be a world leader. In the fantasy reality he has killed one thousand enemies, many of them undead — the very undead that Icon raises. This conflict erupts into violence and misunderstandings, and Ahmed begs the two of them to learn how to get along. They can’t.

I created a trio of football players that have vastly different personalities. Selis Knightsbane is brilliant, hardworking, arrogant, great physically, and absolutely certain that he is the greatest and most important person ever. Vielle is an angry, cynical young slave who is convinced that everything will always go bad. Siphus is a three hundred pound lineman who drinks, sleeps around, and beats and kills people without any passion or remorse. Each of them has an arc in the story.

College is an important part of the story. I wanted to show people growing up — having their own responsibilities without parents. This is a dynamic which many — almost all — people face eventually, and I wanted to write about it.

I also wanted to add interesting characters and lore to the story. There’s a gay dark elf painter, several undead dragons, all manner of undead beings, orcs, and huge armies clashing. Vampires attack a city in Daysreach. There are interesting lore elements added to the story. All in all I worked really hard on a book which is now free. You, dear reader, should read it and review it.

Thanks, and take care, friends.