Tag: fantasy worldbuilding

The Most Powerful Magic System Is Bureaucracy

Why I wrote a fantasy spy thriller about records, archives, and institutional power. A look at how paperwork, documentation, and official narratives inspired Silent Watcher.

When people hear “fantasy spy novel”, they tend to picture assassins, coded messages, secret meetings, and people passing sealed letters in dark alleyways.

There’s some of that in Silent Watcher.

But the thing that ended up fascinating me most wasn’t any of the spycraft.

It was paperwork.

Reports. Archives. Records. The mundane machinery by which institutions decide what officially happened.

And possibly one of the most frightening.

Think about how much of your understanding of reality depends on records. Who owns a house. Who owes a debt. Who was born. Who died. Whether something happened at all.

Most of us don’t rely on memory for those things. We rely on documentation.

A functioning society more or less depends on that.

You can’t run a country on competing recollections. So we trust the record.

The problem is that whoever controls the record controls something very close to reality itself.

That’s not a fantasy concept. That’s just how institutions work.

The version that gets stamped, filed, and archived almost always beats the version that exists only in someone’s memory.

The report becomes the truth.

Or at least the official version of it.

One of the things that interests me about institutions is that they can produce terrible outcomes without containing a single obviously evil person.

Fantasy often gives us a Dark Lord. Or a tyrant. Or a corrupt noble.

A person we can point at and blame.

Real life is often messier. A witness statement gets revised. A report gets adjusted. A death is recorded as an accident because accident is the category that closes the file.

Each decision seems small. Each decision seems reasonable. Everyone involved can honestly say they’re simply doing their job.

Yet by the end of the process, the official record describes a reality that never actually happened.

That’s what unsettles me.

Not the lie itself.

The fact that nobody involved necessarily thinks of themselves as lying.

That idea eventually became Silent Watcher.

The protagonist, Anselma, belongs to an order whose entire purpose is to observe and record events.

Her reports become the official account.

Her authority depends on documentation being trustworthy.

Which makes her the worst possible person to discover that the records may not be reliable.

She arrives in a quiet town to investigate the death of another Watcher.

The official report says everything is settled.

The evidence suggests otherwise.

Then she discovers reports in her own handwriting, carrying her own signature, authorising actions she has no memory of taking.

At that point, the investigation stops being about a dead colleague.

It becomes a question of whether she can trust anything at all.

Including herself.

One of the things fantasy does particularly well is take an ordinary fear and make it impossible to ignore.

Most of us have experienced that moment when the official version of events doesn’t quite match what we know happened.

Most of us have dealt with a form, a database, or a decision that suddenly feels more real than our own experience.

Fantasy lets you turn that feeling into the central conflict.

It lets you build a world where the record really is stronger than memory.

Where the paperwork can come for you.

Where the truth isn’t hidden.

It’s been replaced.

That’s the idea that sat underneath Silent Watcher from the beginning.

A document.

And the uncomfortable possibility that the document is wrong.

Silent Watcher is a standalone fantasy spy thriller about secrets, deception, and institutional betrayal.

For readers of Seth Dickinson, John le Carré, and K. J. Parker.

Get your copy.

Midway Through Five of Swords & Rediscovering the Ray Bradbury Challenge | July 3, 2026

This week: I reach the midpoint of Five of Swords, continue writing RAF Dragon Corps Book 3, and restart the Ray Bradbury Reading Challenge.

This week I reached the midpoint of Five of Swords as I continue writing the next instalment of The Ravenglass Chronicles.

I’ve also carried on writing RAF Dragon Corps Book 3, returning to the skies over Britain during the Battle of Britain.

Outside of writing, I’ve restarted the Ray Bradbury Reading Challenge. The idea is simple: read one short story, one poem, and one piece of non-fiction every day.

I’d forgotten just how rewarding the habit is. It’s a great way to keep the creative well topped up and discover voices and ideas I might otherwise have missed.

A productive week of writing, reading, and getting back into good creative habits.

What a John le Carré Spy Novel Looks Like in a Fantasy World

What happens when the paranoia, bureaucracy, and moral ambiguity of a John le Carré spy novel collide with epic fantasy? A look at fantasy espionage, institutional corruption, and the ideas behind Silent Watcher.

There’s a moment in a lot of epic fantasy where someone unrolls a map and explains the problem.

An ancient evil is rising. A kingdom is falling. A prophecy must be fulfilled. The lines are clear. The enemy is obvious.

John le Carré spent an entire career writing stories that work in exactly the opposite way.

Nobody unrolls a map because nobody can agree what the map means. The enemy isn’t a dark lord. It’s a department. A committee. A chain of decisions made by people who all believe they’re doing their jobs properly.

The hero isn’t chosen. They’re assigned.

Usually against their will.

And the great fear isn’t that evil will win. It’s that everyone involved has quietly stopped being able to tell the difference between winning and losing.

I’ve been thinking about that a lot while writing Silent Watcher, because fantasy rarely operates on those terms.

Fantasy is full of wars, rebellions, coups, and corrupt rulers.

Yet the genre is surprisingly trusting of institutions.

The rightful king returns. The true heir takes the throne. The wise order of mages was right all along. Even when institutions are corrupt, the corruption usually comes from somewhere else. A traitor. A dark influence. A villain who has infected an otherwise healthy system.

Remove the bad actor and everything works again.

Le Carré’s fiction runs on a different assumption.

The institution is the problem.

Not because a villain corrupted it.

Because the institution itself produces outcomes nobody would choose individually.

Everyone follows procedure.

Everyone acts reasonably.

Everyone passes responsibility to the next desk.

Then something terrible happens and nobody can point to the exact moment it became inevitable.

That’s a very different engine for a story.

One of the great strengths of a spy novel is uncertainty.

The protagonist always knows less than the people they’re investigating.

Every document could be planted.

Every witness could be rehearsed.

Every clue could have been left there deliberately.

The people creating the evidence are often the same people being investigated.

That translates remarkably well into fantasy if you build the institution correctly.

Imagine an order whose authority comes entirely from observation and record-keeping. Their reports become official history. Their archives become accepted truth.

Now imagine those records can be altered.

Reports disappear.

Names change.

Signatures appear on documents that were never signed.

Events are rewritten after they happen.

Suddenly the protagonist loses the one thing investigators normally rely on: certainty about the evidence.

That’s where the paranoia begins.

You don’t need magic to do this. Le Carré managed perfectly well with filing cabinets and classified documents.

Fantasy just gives you sharper tools.

The strongest influence le Carré had on me isn’t really about plot.

It’s about protagonists.

George Smiley isn’t an action hero.

His gift is attention.

He notices the inconsistency. The detail that’s slightly wrong. The explanation that’s a little too neat.

His heroism comes from refusing to look away.

Fantasy has an equivalent archetype, but we don’t use it very often.

The witness.

The observer.

The person whose job is not to fight, but to see.

And that’s where things become interesting.

Because what happens when a person trained to observe injustice realises that observation has become complicity?

What happens when faithfully recording events helps preserve a lie?

What happens when “watching without shaping” becomes an excuse for doing nothing?

Those feel like le Carré questions to me.

They’re also fantasy questions.

We just don’t ask them often enough.

So, why isn’t rthere more fantasy like this?

Part of the reason is that these stories are harder to sell.

The pleasures are quieter.

They’re built from suspicion, investigation, and revelation rather than spectacle.

As fantasy readers, we often expect a restoration at the end. The crown returns. The kingdom is saved.

A le Carré story isn’t usually interested in restoration.

It’s interested in asking whether the system was worth saving in the first place.

That doesn’t mean nobody is working in this space.

Seth Dickinson’s The Traitor Baru Cormorant is probably the clearest modern example. K. J. Parker spends a lot of time examining institutions through the lens of clever people trapped inside them. Robert Jackson Bennett and Daniel Abraham both understand that information and administration can be just as powerful as armies.

None of them are writing le Carré in a fantasy world.

But they’re all mining the same vein.

The one beneath the institution rather than the battlefield.

The one where the real horror isn’t the monster outside the walls.

It’s discovering the walls were built to keep you looking the wrong way.

If that sounds like your kind of fantasy, it’s very much the territory Silent Watcher occupies.

A Watcher arrives in a quiet provincial town to investigate a colleague’s death. The official record doesn’t match the evidence. Witnesses repeat the same stories. Documents vanish. Then she discovers reports carrying her own signature that she has no memory of writing.

It’s a standalone fantasy spy thriller for readers of Seth Dickinson, John le Carré, and K. J. Parker.

Get your copy.

Why I Don’t Think Hard and Soft Magic Are Useful Labels

A fantasy author’s perspective on hard and soft magic, worldbuilding, and why mystery remains one of the genre’s greatest strengths.

 For the past twenty years, fantasy readers and writers have increasingly discussed magic through the language of “hard” and “soft” magic systems.

The distinction comes largely from Brandon Sanderson’s essays on magic, and it has become so widely adopted that many readers now treat it as the default way to think about fantasy.

I understand why.

The framework is useful. It gives people a shared vocabulary. It helps explain why a magic system in a role-playing game, a video game, or a progression fantasy often feels satisfying. Readers enjoy understanding the tools available to characters. They enjoy seeing clever solutions emerge from established rules.

The problem comes when the framework stops being descriptive and starts becoming prescriptive.

Over time, the language of hard and soft magic has created a hierarchy. Magic that operates according to explicit rules is often treated as more sophisticated, more developed, or more believable. Magic that retains mystery is frequently discussed as though it occupies a lower rung on the ladder.

Yet some of the richest magical traditions in fantasy operate according to very different principles.

In Earthsea, magic is tied to true names. In Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, magic emerges from folklore, history, scholarship, and forgotten traditions. In Tolkien’s work, magic carries spiritual and moral significance. In each case, the power of the magic comes from what it means within the world and the story.

These systems possess depth, consistency, and internal logic. They shape cultures, histories, beliefs, and characters. They feel ancient and real.

They simply invite the reader to engage with them differently.

One of the great pleasures of fantasy is encountering something larger than human understanding. Many mythologies, religions, and folk traditions revolve around powers that can be glimpsed but never fully grasped. Their significance lies partly in their mystery.

Fantasy inherits much of that tradition.

When every magical phenomenon is catalogued, measured, quantified, and explained, magic begins to resemble engineering. It becomes a branch of fictional physics. That approach can produce excellent stories, but it represents one tradition among many rather than the destination toward which all fantasy naturally progresses.

As fantasy readers, we often talk about immersion. Yet genuine immersion does not always come from knowing every rule. Sometimes it comes from sensing that there are truths beneath the surface that nobody fully understands.

That is largely how I approach magic in the Ravenglass Universe.

The setting contains rules. Ravenglass behaves in particular ways. Blood can awaken its power. Tears can shape it. The Shadow Realm follows principles of its own. Certain actions carry predictable consequences.

Beneath the stories, there is a coherent system.

The characters, however, only possess fragments of that knowledge.

A Guardian scholar might understand one aspect of ravenglass. An assassin might know another. A wyvern might possess memories stretching back centuries. Ancient records preserve clues. Myths preserve others. Some pieces have been lost. Some have been deliberately hidden. Some are misunderstood.

fAs a result, the people living within the world experience magic in the same way real societies experience history, religion, or science. Knowledge accumulates unevenly. Competing explanations coexist. Certainty remains elusive.

That uncertainty creates wonder.

When Ragnar encounters ravenglass for the first time, he does not receive a rulebook. When Soren learns to forge a blade, he discovers one small corner of a much larger reality. When Adelinde uncovers forbidden histories, she finds evidence of a force beyond human understanding.

The mystery itself becomes part of the setting.

I sometimes wonder whether terms like hard magic and soft magic have outlived their usefulness.

They encourage us to sort magic into categories rather than asking what role it serves within a story. They turn a wide spectrum of approaches into a binary choice. They also carry unintended value judgements that place certain traditions above others.

Fantasy has always been broad enough to contain all of these approaches.

Some stories thrive on clearly defined magical tools. Others thrive on folklore, symbolism, myth, religion, dream logic, or half-forgotten truths. Some combine several traditions at once.

The question is never whether a magic system is hard or soft.

The question is whether it creates the experience the story needs.

For many fantasy readers, part of the appeal of magic lies in the feeling that there is always another layer beneath the one we can see. A forgotten name. A lost story. A secret buried in an old chronicle. A truth that remains just beyond reach.

That sense of mystery has carried fantasy for centuries.

I suspect it will continue to do so long after the current labels have faded from fashion.

How Rome Inspired My Fantasy Writing: Ruins, Empire and Story Fuel

A week in Rome sparked fresh fantasy ideas, from the Colosseum and Vatican power symbols to Ostia Antica’s ruins, sculpture, empire, faith and memory.

I had one of those rare weeks where I didn’t write.

We spent the week in Rome. Not a writing trip. No laptop, no word counts, no “I’ll just make a few notes” that quietly turns into a chapter by accident. But when you write fantasy for a living, you can’t really switch that part of your brain off.

And Rome is ridiculous for story fuel.

Every corner gives you another ruin, statue, inscription, archway, or impossible piece of engineering, and every one of them is whispering something about power, empire, spectacle, faith, or the strange lengths people will go to make themselves permanent.

So yes. I came home with ideas.

The Colosseum is one of those places that feels unreal even while you’re standing in it. I kept trying to imagine sitting there two thousand years ago, packed in with tens of thousands of other people, watching gladiators kill each other for the afternoon’s entertainment.

As a fantasy writer, you can’t help thinking about the machinery behind that spectacle. Not the combat itself — the systems around it. Who pays. Who benefits. Who gets sacrificed. What it does to a culture when public violence becomes the default civic entertainment.

Cheery holiday thoughts, obviously.

The Forum gave me the same feeling. Walking through the bones of power. Temples, law courts, political spaces, monuments — all of it ruined, all of it still heavy with what it used to mean.

I’m always drawn to that gap. The distance between what something once claimed to be and what’s left of it.

The Vatican Museum was a mixed experience. As most of you know, I’m legally blind, and the Sistine Chapel’s lighting did me no favours. I couldn’t make out much of the imagery, and a lot of the detailed paintings were lost on me.

But I got a different kind of useful from it.

The scale. The wealth. The careful performance of sacred authority. The contrast between the Gospels (poverty, humility, washing other people’s feet) and the centuries of accumulated gold, marble, and gilded ceiling above your head. That gap again. What an institution claims to be versus what it actually became.

The Egyptian collection was a highlight, especially a magnificent Anubis statue.

My favourite part of the Vatican Museum wasn’t the Sistine Chapel.

It was the Popemobiles.

I genuinely loved them. There’s a whole section showing papal transport through the ages, from golden carriages to modern vehicles with raised bulletproof platforms. A golden carriage tells you one thing about power. A bulletproof glass box tells you something else entirely. Both are theatre. Both are how a ruler manages the distance between himself and the people watching.

I can already feel that feeding into the Ravenglass Universe somewhere. Not Popemobiles, unfortunately, but the question of how rulers present themselves to the public. What they sit in. What they wear. How high above the crowd they stand. How close they let anyone get. How much danger they’re willing to admit exists.

The kind of detail that makes a fantasy culture feel real.

My favourite place on the whole trip was Ostia Antica, the old Roman port at the mouth of the Tiber.

I’d been to Pompeii before. Astonishing, but heaving. Ostia Antica was quieter. Space to slow down and actually be there. We walked through streets, bathhouses, courtyards, old living spaces. The amphitheatre felt almost modern in its layout, which is a strange thing to say about something two thousand years old, but you could immediately understand how people gathered there.

That’s the thing that gets me. The past feels distant until you’re standing somewhere and realise people haven’t changed as much as we like to think. They still wanted entertainment, comfort, status, food, gossip, religion, beauty. Somewhere to sit. Somewhere to wash. Somewhere to be seen.

The museum at Ostia Antica was wonderful (and well-lit) so I could actually enjoy the exhibits. As some of you know, I studied history of art to PhD level, and worked at the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds for a while, so the focus on sculptures meant I was in my element.

A good sculpture shows you what someone looked like.

A great sculpture shows you who they were.

There were portraits, reliefs, sarcophagi, mythological figures. A statue of Minerva I keep thinking about a week later.

There’s something about sculpture that feels especially useful for fantasy. It carries memory. It turns people into symbols. It can flatter, distort, preserve, threaten, or haunt. Statues in fantasy worlds shouldn’t just stand in courtyards looking decorative. They should tell you what a culture values, what it fears, and what lies it tells about itself.

A rare week off writing, but not really a week off stories. I came home with ideas for scenes, settings, power structures, rituals, public spectacles, imperial symbols, and the ways empires try to make themselves look eternal.

Some of it will end up in the Ravenglass Universe.

That’s one of the great joys of writing fantasy. You look at our own history, with all its beauty and brutality, and ask what happens if you tilt the mirror slightly.

Rome tilted the mirror plenty.

And now, back to the writing.

New Soren Story & Slowing Down for the Holidays | Author Diary – December 19, 2025

This week, I wrote a new Soren short story for Patreon, set in the Guild of Assassins universe, and talk about managing SAD and winding down for the Christmas break.

This week, I wrote a new Soren short story set in the Guild of Assassins universe, exclusively for Patreon supporters.

It’s always great to return to Soren’s world and explore new corners of the guild.

I also talk about struggling with Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), and how I’m starting to wind down for the Christmas break to rest and reset before the new year.

Visit: patreon.com/joncronshawauthor

📦 Boxed Set Launch, Audiobooks & Q&A | Author Diary – September 19, 2025 🎧📚

This week, I launched The Ravenglass Throne boxed set, released Punks Versus Zombies and Trial of Thieves on audiobook, and answered questions about my writing process and worldbuilding.

This week’s been packed with releases and reader questions!

I launched The Ravenglass Throne: Parts 1–4 as a boxed set, available now in ebook and paperback formats.

The Punks Versus Zombies audiobook is now live, as is the Trial of Thieves audiobook (Dawn of Assassins, Book 2)—great news if you’re an audio listener!

I also took time to answer questions from readers about my writing process and worldbuilding techniques.

🌲 Mini-Break, Nautical Fantasy Rewrite & Staying Prolific | Author Diary – August 15, 2025 🐚🚀

This week, I took a mini-break to Chester, enjoying peaceful walks in Delamere Forest, the stunning Chester Cathedral, and strolling the historic city walls—a great way to reset.

Creatively, I’ve been working on Hunters, my wacky Space Western originally written as a Patreon side project. I’m now rewriting it as a nautical fantasy set in the Ravenglass Universe, and it’s been a fun challenge adapting the tone and setting while keeping the spirit of the original.

I also reflect on my prolific writing strategy—following my energy and excitement rather than rigid plans, which keeps things creatively fulfilling.

Elsewhere, Trial of Thieves has now been submitted to ACX, so the Audible edition should be available soon.

And my interview with the British Fantasy Society just went live—check it out at https://britishfantasysociety.org/meet-jon-cronshaw/

Project Tracker

Upcoming launches

Punks Versus Zombies trilogy – all three books go live on August 31 (paperbacks are already available, audiobooks in production).
Dark Gambit (The Ravenglass Throne: Part Six) – launches September 1 on Amazon.
The Ravenglass Throne (Parts One to Four boxset) – goes live September 15 (paperback available, audiobook in production).

Post-edit, final checks

The Ravenglass Throne: Part Seven – need to schedule the final three chapters for Patreon.

Drafts completed, with editor

The Ravenglass Throne Parts Eight to Twelve.
Dragon Squadron (RAF Dragon Corps, book 1).

Final edits before sending to editor

Ravenglass Legends book 4 – 70% complete, chapters posting on Patreon.
The Silent Watcher (Ravenglass Guardians).

Current focus

Hunters – rewrite from space opera to nautical fantasy, 50% complete.

Open projects

Sentinel’s Mercy (Ravenglass Guardians) – 40% through first draft.
Scoundrels – 25% first draft (last worked on March 2025).
Mark, The Chosen One – 70% first draft (last worked on April 2025).
Dawn of Assassins 4 – last worked on July 2024.
Guild of Assassins 4 – last worked on January 2025.
Lord Sidebottom novel – 25% first draft (last worked on April 2025).
Churchill’s Dragons (RAF Dragon Corps, book 2) – 10% (last worked on March 2025).
Pen name sci-fi book 2 – 20% (last worked on June 2025).

Planned / outlined

Ravenglass Guardians – Seekers.
Ravenglass Guardians – Keepers.
Ravenglass Guardians – Apothecaries.
Ravenglass Guardians – Inquisitors.
Ravenglass Guardians – Shadows.

👑 New Series Begins: Ravenglass Guardians | Author Diary, July 11, 2025 📚✨

This week, I began work on my new seven-book nobledark fantasy series about the Guardians in the Ravenglass Universe, reaching 25% of Book 1. Plus, I share why I’m focusing on shorter, 60k-word novels.

This week, I’ve dived into my new series set in the Ravenglass Universe, focusing on the Guardians—a seven-novel, nobledark fantasy exploring the different paths within the order. I’ve written the first six chapters of Book 1, putting me at 25% of the draft already.

I also reflect on my shift toward writing more 60,000-word novels, similar in length to the Guild of Assassins books. This feels like the sweet spot for the kinds of focused, intense stories I want to tell going forward. Exciting times ahead!

What Happens When an Empire Takes Everything? Resistance in The Fall of Wolfsbane

In The Fall of Wolfsbane, Ragnar and Maja Wolfsbane face cultural erasure under an empire determined to reshape them. Discover how this epic fantasy novel explores identity, resistance, and survival when everything familiar is lost.

One of the central themes in The Fall of Wolfsbane is the question of identity.

What happens when everything that defines you — your home, your language, your customs — is taken away?

Who do you become when your world is conquered?

This is the struggle that shapes both Ragnar and Maja Wolfsbane in The Fall of Wolfsbane.

Their story is about more than war. It is about survival in a world designed to erase them.

Empire Always Demands More Than Land

When I created the Ostreich Empire, I wanted it to reflect a truth found in history.

Empires do not only conquer land. They conquer culture. They rename cities. They rewrite history. They teach the conquered that their way is the only way.

This is the process of cultural assimilation.

It is not always done with swords and soldiers. Often, it is done with schools, religion, and ceremony. It is done with laws and language. It is done slowly—until people forget what they lost.

Ragnar Wolfsbane: Adaptation Without Surrender

Ragnar’s story is shaped by this pressure to assimilate.

As a hostage in the Empire, he is forced to learn their ways. He must speak their language. He must fight with their weapons. He must survive within their rules. But Ragnar never fully becomes one of them.

He learns to adapt without surrendering who he is. He keeps his father’s name. He remembers the songs and stories of his people. Even when he earns a title in the Empire, he carries his past like a hidden blade.

For Ragnar, survival does not mean forgetting.

It means waiting. It means learning. It means biding his time.

Maja Wolfsbane: Resistance Through Identity

Maja faces a different challenge. She is taken to the Empire’s capital as a living trophy.

Her captors want to civilise her — to cut her hair, change her clothes, and teach her how to walk, speak, and dance like them.

But Maja resists in every way she can. She learns their lessons, but only to use them against them. She speaks their words, but dreams in her own tongue. She is clever enough to survive their court, but never lets herself become what they want her to be.

Maja’s resistance is quiet.

It is the resistance of memory. It is the refusal to forget who you are, no matter how isolated or powerless you feel.

For Maja, identity is a weapon. It keeps her alive. It keeps her strong.

Cultural Erasure in Fantasy Reflects Real History

I believe fantasy is at its most powerful when it reflects the struggles of the real world.

Throughout history, countless cultures have faced erasure at the hands of empire.

Languages have been banned. Traditions have been outlawed. Stories have been lost.

But there is always resistance. There are always people who remember. There are always voices that survive.

In The Fall of Wolfsbane, this is the heart of the story.

Ragnar and Maja are not just fighting for their lives. They are fighting for their culture. For their names. For their future.

Who Are You When You Lose Everything?

That is the question I want readers to carry with them. Who are you when your home is taken? When your language is forbidden? When your stories are silenced?

For Ragnar and Maja, the answer is simple. You survive. You remember. You resist.

Even in the heart of the Empire, they carry the spirit of Meerand.

They are Wolfsbanes. And that will never be forgotten.