«Far from here and everywhere, waiting for immortality, through The Priest of the Dead the voice of Kúrugor, He Who Changes His Shape, is revealed.»

— Codex Draconis, Kúr. 1, 1-2.

Ten years seems like a reasonable time to look back. But it is also an opportunity to look forward. My first novel THE LAST KING, which also opened the CODEX DRACONIS fantasy saga, was published in late 2012, but, while for most writers the idea that has haunted their minds usually dies when the word goes to print, that has not been the case for me when it regards this novel. It never left me completely. I never really felt it finished. Surviving in my heart were scenes, dialogues and situations that kept dancing before my eyes, whispering in my ear, demanding that I pay attention to them. And, when you are a writer, if a thought bursts in that way and with that force, the only thing you can do is to write it down.

But interleaving pages in a previously published book is no easy task. You must be coherent and faithful to the text, which has already passed through the reader’s scrutiny. It must seem to be the same book despite the additions. The new lecture must maintain the rhythm, and at the same time generate new spaces that make it slower, so that the old reader feels that he or she is traveling through new territories, yes, but always within the same world. Experiencing the return home, but only to an unexplored room.

I don’t know if this anniversary edition will achieve that goal, but I’ve been working on it for the last few years. I have divided THE LAST KING into two books, kept the title in the first half and given a new one to the second, and subdivided the chapters, which were lengthened accordingly, into shorter segments. I have also changed the order of certain scenes and added narrative lines, delving into the life or thoughts of new characters or some old ones treated only superficially in the first edition. I am still considering whether, in keeping with my original vision, to add verse numbering to this definitive edition.

THE LAST KING will be on the run again in an, and I hope, improved version. But while it is sure to have new readers, I wanted to keep the spirit of the original novel with the old ones in mind, those who even after a decade still have fond memories of reading it and who, from time to time, still enthusiastically ask for its sequel. After all, they have been the ones who have sustained this server to continue writing this saga.

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LEO OF MONTE CRISTO

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