Sunday, November 26, 2017

Reading Order for the Shadow Detachment

A reader recently asked, "What's the correct reading order for the books that came before Spectral Ops?"


An excellent question...



Originally starting out as Stone Soldiers, the first few books soon sparked a series of prequel short stories revealing the background of the unit and some of its characters. As time passed, a spin off, twice-a-year series as envisioned: Shadow Raiders, where the team would take the fight to evil's doorstep off-world. Then the first 12-part story arc in Stone Soldiers wrapped up, and instead of going with Stone Soldiers #13, the decision was made to rename the series Spectral Ops to reflect the new enemies for the next 12 part story arc. 


It's all just too confusing, and 2017 was filled with chaos for the author and very little writing's been done. 

To make things easier for the reader, everything's going to be relaunched: into one series, numbered sequentially for easy reference:

#1 Shadow Detachment
#2 Dark Invaders
#3 Stone Soldier
#4 Spellbreaker
#5 Blood Traitor
#6 Red Magik
#7 Infernal Machine
#8 Dark Powder
#9 X-Ponent
#10 Devil’s Network
#11 Magician of Interest
#12 Paranormal Insurgency
#13 Stone Soldiers
#14 Sea of Monsters
#15 Mythical
#16 Brothers in Stone
#17 Blood and Stone
#18 Shades of War
#19 Black Knight Down
#20 Armageddon Z
#21 Seven Deadly Sons
#22 Terrorcota
#23 Pale Horseman
#24 A Lucky Day to Die
#25 One Dark Step
#26 Shadow Raiders
#27 Winters’ Fury
#28 Spectral Ops
#29 Ghostwalker
     #30 Island of the Damned

The sharp-eyed might notice that the list above has new titles in it. Some of those were planned prequel shorts for early 2018, while others are retitled versions of older stories previously released. 

And then there's the author name change...

In the coming weeks, you'll start seeing the name Martin Stryker. This nom de plume reflects the revised, re-edited versions of the Shadow Detachment stories, and possibly the inclusion of some collaborative work with a ghost writer or two. 

Do you need to read the new versions? That's up to you, but these aren't going to be major changes--just tweaks, with extraneous stuff removed, and maybe a tiny bit added in here and there.

As always, thank you for reading!