RE: Monarch-Chapter Monarch Update

Only one chapter left in this book. And one last giant, long-suspected revelation to confirm.

In other news, despite my painstaking efforts to bring you a book over the last small eternity, I've accidentally written two. What was originally meant to be Monarch 4 will be split into Monarch 4 & 5. 300k+ words was just a little too long for one book, so we're splitting near the middle, around the point of the first visit to Kholis. What does this mean? Well, if you're here reading on Royal Road, not much. The epilogue will be coming next week, and Patreon will see new chapters of book 6 (!) likely sometime in May, which will likely start filtering back down to Royal Road once I've rebuilt the backlog — probably sometime in June.

They'll be published with a small gap between them.

On rereading that section — and low-key pulling my hair out and kicking myself upon realizing I've had what will effectively be "part 1" done for months now and could have started the publishing process way earlier — the newly abridged book 4 still cuts at a satisfying finale. It also gives the rougher content of book 5 room to breathe, so I think, constraints aside, it was probably the right choice.

This one's special to me. The two of them together. I planned pretty far ahead when I first started Monarch, and this was the last scene I envisioned before I wrote the first chapter.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Obviously this is by no means the end — I have a lot more coming up: new places, new challenges, and big reveals — but the upcoming epilogue marks the end of that first roadmap.

Apologies that it took so long.

I really wanted to get it right.

If you're here, still reading, thank you. Genuinely. It’s humbling that a series I started because it was the sort of story I wanted to read has become something that has stuck in people's minds strongly enough to follow it through the years, and I'm truly grateful for every one of you.

I hope these last few chapters of book five landed for you. They've been swirling around in my head for nearly half a decade, and I tried my best to bring them home.

Stay safe out there. And as always, thanks again for reading.

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On a more selfish note, if you've been reading for free up to this point and want to contribute to Monarch's future, as usual, I'll have a link to the Patreon below. A few extra people subscribing for a month can make a big difference.

Calling more attention to it now because I have some dental issues I've been putting off for a while, and it's finally getting to the point where it's affecting my quality of life.

And as we all know, the dentist is a pricy bastard.

If you can pitch in, great. If you can't, completely understandable. Things are rough right now and a lot of people are struggling. I know I'm not the only one.