Korea's most celebrated fantasy epic arrives in English, and a self-published finalist worth the detour

The Heart of the Nhaga, the first English translation of Lee Young-do's "The Bird That Drinks Tears," arrived from Harper Voyager this summer, translated by Anton Hur. Lee's original Korean series is frequently described in its home market the way English-language readers describe Tolkien: foundational, genre-defining, the book against which other fantasy writers measure themselves. It has never been available in English until now. The setting alone justifies the read: castles built on the backs of flying mantas, immortal beings who have outlived their own grief, a world running on a genuinely different set of assumptions than the ones most epic fantasy readers have spent years absorbing. For a reader tired of the same handful of source myths recycled under different character names, this is the real thing, not a marketing description of it.

Of Mages and Makers by Rel Carroll is one of ten finalists in this year's Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off, chosen by the blog Fantasy-Faction after two rounds of review.

No agent submitted it. No publisher's marketing budget put it in front of readers. A panel of working reviewers did, because the writing earned it. That is precisely the kind of book this newsletter exists to surface.

For the indie publisher rather than the reader: Six Figure Authors, hosted by Lindsay Buroker, Joseph Lallo, and Andrea Pearson, is worth a subscription. All three are working indie authors, mostly in science fiction and fantasy, who have each crossed six figures in author income at some point in their careers. The show trades in actual numbers: ad spend, page-read income, what a launch strategy returned versus what it cost, discussed by people with nothing to sell you but the show itself.

Have you read Lee Young-do's work yet, or are you picking this up first? Reply and let us know!