Fantasy Author Alexander Lohmann

Last week I posted an article about the fantasy/cover artist Jesse van Dijk whose amazing work includes some cover arts created for the books of German fantasy author Alexander Lohmann. This post inevitably generated some discussions about Alexander Lohmann's books. As I stated in the original post, my German linguistic skills are quasi non-existent, therefore I haven't been lucky enough to read his books, the reviews or the blurbs correctly. And I certainly didn't have the information whether we will ever see them in English or not.

However Internet is a wonderful thing that makes communication so much easier and faster. The ball started rolling when I contacted Mr. Lohmann's publisher. Then Mr. Lohmann kindly stopped by and gave a very detailed information about his books. I'm copying his comments (that you can see in the original post) below:

To add my share to the speculation (after I was informed of Yagiz' query by my publisher) ;-)

"The Day of the Daggers" (as I would put it if I were to translate the book) is not quite tolkienesque. The Prequel was ("Fellowship of Twilight" - a story about a group of heroes, dispatched by the Dark Lord to regain his priceless artefact. They have to fight against a bunch of good guys determined to destroy the very same precious - and instead they mostly fight against themselves, as creatures of darkness are not known for their teamwork). That should account for the blurbs.

The "Daggers" take place a few years after the "Twilight" and depict a more modern setting - I would call it a "revolutionary fantasy novel". The "Fellowship of Twilight" was a mixture of high fantasy and parodistic reflection of the LotR, the "Daggers" in contrary tell a bleak story: In the aftermath of the events described in the first book, there is a revolution in the "Realm of Evil", and the Dark Lord and his minions are overthrown by the least of their followers, the gnomes, who establish a reign of terror in the Lands of Darkness. I used the setting of this book to contrast the traditional fantasy "Evilness" with the evil we can get out of our own history. And I thought it might be interesting to imagine what might have been if some sort of "French revolution" hadn't been conducted by humans but by and against goblins, trolls, wraiths and other not-so-friendly creatures.

The "Lightbearer", the third of the books, will be published in may and take place another 1.000 years after the gnome rebellion. The scenery will be even more modern and describe a world full of magic and technology alike. In this setting, the dark elve Frafa - whose youth during the revolution is described in the second book and who is an old and powerful sorceress by now - discovers that the Dark Lord is still alive an pulling his strings in the background, leading the whole civilisation into the abyss, as it depends on the very same resource that slowly destroys it from the inside. As the Dark Lord tries to keep his secrets, Frafa is compelled to flee and to defeat this ancient evil simultaneously and to this end even to ally with the old enemies of her race.

I hope I have all the questions about the books answered ;-) I don't know if they will ever be available in English. Time will tell ...

And, yes - I like the covers of my books, too :-) But I fear they will not be the same in foreign editions. But I was very pleased to see the approval the covers find even outside the intended market.

Thanks for your interest,

Alexander Lohmann

The author is currently working on the "Lightbearer". The book itself is completed and it is in the process of being edited. It will be the final installment of the "Peoples of the Dark Side" series and what follows next is still to be decided. As he puts it himself "I might bring forward another, more epic project".

If you have read Mr. Lohmann's books I'd love to hear about your thoughts. And if you speak German, go and get your copies so that you can tell me about them later.