James Clemens

James Clemens is the epic fantasy pen name of James Rollins (himself a pen name for James Czajkowski), used to keep secondary-world fantasy writing editorially separate from the Sigma Force thrillers that made Rollins's name. Writing as Clemens, he published the five-book Banned and the Banished series before beginning a second fantasy project, the Godslayer Chronicles, set in an entirely different world called Myrillia. That series opens with Shadowfall (2005), in which an assassin sent to kill a goddess instead becomes her hunted, transformed disciple, and continues with Hinterland (2006) as the conflict widens across Myrillia. The Godslayer Chronicles was reportedly conceived as a longer story, but no installment beyond Hinterland has appeared, leaving it a two-book duology in practice rather than the trilogy once discussed. It shares no characters or setting with Banned and the Banished, and nothing at all with Rollins's Sigma Force novels, making it a distinct, shorter fantasy project carried entirely under the Clemens name. Rollins's veterinary-science background and appetite for large-scale, high-concept plotting carry over into the Clemens novels, though the tone and genre trappings are pure secondary-world fantasy rather than contemporary thriller. Readers who enjoy Rollins's Sigma Force books for their scale and pacing, rather than their real-world science and history hooks, are the most likely audience for the Clemens fantasy work. New readers to the Godslayer Chronicles should start with Shadowfall; there is no film or television adaptation of either James Clemens series to date.