Just a glimpse here of upcoming titles from Alkonost, our French publisher. Finally the complete Légende series will be returning to France -- that's both Blood Sword ("L'Épée de Légende") and Dragon Warriors ("Les Terres de Légende"). More details on my Patreon page -- and it's an open post, so don't be put off if you're not a backer.

These are just mock-ups and may not reflect the final covers or layout, but the important thing is that the books will at last get an accurate translation. I'll give you an example. In The Demon's Claw, the third Blood Sword book, you confront your longtime rival Icon the Ungodly (to give him his proper title, Aiken, Lord of the Singing Mountain) and he replies to your attempted brush-off thus:

"By my honour, this is a call to battle. Do you mean to suggest that I am unable to destroy you? I’ll crush you like the merest ant. Like a thing without bones, you’ll squirm and die under the heel of my boot. For five years I have pursued you, since the days of your callow youth when by stark chance you managed to get the better of me in Krarth. When I arrived in Crescentium at the house of my sister Saiki, I discovered you were also in Outremer. Since then I have remained on your spoor, prepared to hunt you for hate’s sake to the very boundaries of the earth. This petty concern of yours for that magic blade is as nothing. My feud with you is like thunder. My wrath is the spitting of lightning!"

But in the original 1980s translation that became:

"Je vous poursuis depuis cinq années, depuis que vous m'avez ravi la victoire. Ma sœur Saïki m'a averti de votre présence en Outremer. Peu m'importe votre épée magique, je ne veux que votre sang..."

Which is to say:

"I have been pursuing you for the past five years, ever since you robbed me of my victory. My sister Saiki warned me of your presence in Outremer. I don't care about your magic blade, I only want your blood..."

It was a busy time in the 1980s with a lot of gamebooks getting published. Gallimard's translator may have been rushing to meet a deadline, which accounts for why that version was so perfunctory. Alkonost's translation team have taken the extra time and care to make a version that's true to the original text, so for the first time French gamers will get to experience the Blood Sword books as they were written.

Who do you think these two are? I don't speak Japanese, but given that these are the covers of Blood Sword books 3 and 4, I'm going to take a guess that it might be Psyche and her brother Icon. That's Saiki and Aiken to their friends -- or indeed to their dearest enemies.

"Role Playing Game"? That wasn't me. I didn't even know the publishers had sold the rights in Japan till I received these copies.

And while we're chatting about Blood Sword (subtle segue, huh?) have you seen the Kickstarter for book 5: The Walls of Spyte? (In English, that is.) And there's an interview I did with The Story Fix giving some background to that Kickstarter; you can read that here.