FROM THE #1 BESTSELLING AUTHOR ‘Deadly conspiracies, bone-crunching action and a tormented hero with a heart . . . packs a real punch’ Andy McDermott

It doesn't take a legendary sword to make a legendary swordsman, but it certainly helps.Keras Selyrian is already well on the way to cutting his name into the annals of legend. He's fought false divinities, thieving sorcerers, and corrupt demigods - and left them defeated in his wake. But he's a long way from home, and Kaldwyn offers a different brand of danger than he's used to.He's already got a sword of unfathomable power, but it's damaged and leaking world-annihilating mana, so he's in the market for a new one.Possibly six. The more the better, really.The Six Sacred Swords are Kaldwyn's most famous artifacts, forged as the only means to defeat the god beasts. Each sword must be earned by a worthy champion, and no single person has ever managed to collect them all.Not yet, at least.Keras is just getting started.Additional Info: Six Sacred Swords is a light-hearted fantasy adventure inspired by Japanese game series like The Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy, and Fire Emblem. It takes place in the same universe as the Arcane Ascension novels, but years earlier and with a different protagonist. While the books are interconnected, they can be read on their own in any order

‘We are warriors, Painda. The Khalsa does not think of war as entertainment; death is not a joke, killing men is no festival,’ said Gobind. A boy grows up, suddenly, into adulthood when he is brought the severed head of his father. He is born to rule but never acts like a monarch. Invincible as a warrior, he has the soul of a mystic. Poetry fills his heart. Few men before or after him have used a bow as he does, few men mastered their sword like him. Guru Gobind Singh turned villagers into warriors, sent shivers up the spine of the army of Aurangzeb and set the foundation stone of the great Sikh empire. The Sacred Sword is a historical fiction based on his life and legend.

In 1071 Muslim Turks crushed the Byzantine Emperor's Anatolian army at Manzikert. The Crusades, the West's response to this catastrophe, are well known as are the names of the European nobles who fought in them. The names and deeds of many of the Crusaders' opponents in the Holy Land are often unfamiliar to Western readers.

Creating Japan’s Ground Self-Defense Force, 1945–2015 is a timely contribution to postwar Japan security studies. It is the first comprehensive account of Japan’s post-1945 army, including a comprehensive institutional history, together with the evolution of roles and missions and the adoption of successive professional identities. The organizational history is embedded within a thorough examination of Japan’s own defense policy, as well as of America’s policy of alliance with Japan. The book examines and challenges assumptions about the drafting and adoption of the War Renunciation clause of Japan’s postwar Peace Constitution, Article 9, which uniquely not only renounces war, but the arms to wage war. Thus Japan’s army is not called an army, but the Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF). The work also examines the place of an army and soldiers in the formation of Japan’s national identity after its last devastating war, and explores the impact of constitutional, legal and policy restrictions, as well as the power of the legacy of the still-largely vilified Imperial Japanese Army on GSDF members who seek to serve because “there are people we want to protect.” The study is rounded by an examination of the place of soldiers in Japan’s popular culture, focused on movies, manga and anime, assessing the impact on the GSDF of a public imagination that most often ignores or villainizes soldiers, though ending with a note that some positive images of soldiers and of the GSDF members themselves have started to appear in the last few years. The book’s author, a retired U.S. Army soldier who spent more than twenty years working, studying and training with the GSDF, offers a broad-ranging exploration of a unique organization. This work is extensively researched, using English and Japanese sources, and will appeal to anyone interested in Japanese security studies, alliance studies, and military imagery in Japanese pop culture, as well as to students of military history, international security, international relations, and cultural identity.

Originally published as Sword of Ages issues #1-5.

“Any attempt at peace must be attended by a knowledge of self,” discovers writer and photographer Mikkel Aaland, who grew up with a bomb shelter for a bedroom, in terror of nuclear war. At the height of the Cold War, Aaland finds himself drawn into a mysterious Shinto priest’s plan to save the world. Traveling from Norway to the Philippines, Iceland to South Africa, he places pieces of a sacred Shinto sword in key power spots around the world. Along the way, he comes face to face with his deepest childhood fears of war and destruction, encounters the compelling and mysterious Shinto religion, struggles with the uncertainties of love, and learns to face life with an open heart. The Sword of Heaven tells the extraordinary true story of a journey in which all boundaries are pushed—geographical, cultural, and personal—and in which the healing of the world and the healing of one man appear to be inextricably linked.