I’m often asked, “What kind of novel is Kingdom Come?  Will I like it?  If it’s a fairy tale, is it for children?”

Kingdom Come is officially classified as a new adult, high fantasy novel.  The target audience is men and women in their late teens and twenties and thirties but it can be enjoyed by anyone older as well as a mature teenager.  It contains little profanity, sexual situations or erotica, or violence.  As fairy tales are the inspiration and they can be gory, the violence in the book is as matter-of-fact as one would read in a Grimm story.  I have purposely avoided graphic descriptions.

That said, the themes in the book deal with subject matter that I believe more interesting to adults than children.  While the typical fairy tale themes of virtue, patience, and courage all exist, they are presented in the context of adult situations.  Bereavement, temptation, and death are major themes, and characters deal with them in a way that may puzzle a young reader.

Readers who enjoy fairy tales or high fantasy adventures should like it.  The novel is closest in tone and subject matter to the play Into the Woods and is also inspired from C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and Stephen Donaldson’s first three Thomas Covenant novels.  And if you’re not a fantasy fan, note that there is a healthy dose of skepticism running throughout.

Finally, Kingdom Come is a complete novel.  It doesn’t require you to have read any other novel before it, and it has a resolution at the end.  If you haven’t read a lot of fantasy novels, or have never read fairy tales, you won’t be lost.

If you read it, let me know what you thought at jim.doran.author@gmail.com.