The Last Hunter: Collected Edition (Antarktos Saga #1-5)

The story draws from a lot of different source materials—the Bible, ancient mythology and modern conspiracy theories to name a few. What led to this strange amalgamation?

It’s not as strange as one might think. It was merely a process of connecting the dots. If we assume the Nephilim are real (which many people do) then we have to consider what they are. Not only are they described as giants, but they also sometimes have animal traits. This very quickly brings to mind humanity’s most ancient myths, where demigods—strange creatures and gods who mate with human women—are common. All of mankind’s ancient myths are very easily explained if the Nephilim are real, all the way back to the ancient Sumerians, who have their own Nephilim legends. Taking the description of the Nephilim and looking at cultures around the world, two things became apparent. There are recorded encounters with giants in nearly every culture on Earth. Similarly, those cultures also have global flood myths, which very nearly wiped the Nephilim out. But, as the Bible records, “there were Nephilim on the Earth in those days, and also afterward.”

Now we move to the modern day, and if we ignore Bigfoot sightings, what kind of Nephilim presence could there be? To answer that question, we have to consider what the Nephilim of history were doing. Primarily, they were screwing around with genetics, creating twisted variants of humans and animals through the supernatural manipulation of our genes. Who else does that? Greys. The so called “aliens” that kidnap people in the night and take samples for genetic manipulation. They might not be described as giants, but a species can change a lot over several thousands of years, and as I propose in The Antarktos Saga, it’s possible that there are simply different classes with different specialties—something that we also saw in The Man of Steel, the most recent incarnation of Superman. Story concepts, for me, are all about connecting dots no one even knew existed. If you have an open mind, it’s possible to find connections between what, on the surface, feel like very disparate topics.



Question from Mike Pastore: How difficult was it to seam the adventures together, like mentioning something briefly in Antarktos Rising, then going into great description of the event in The Last Hunter?

I was terrified when I began The Last Hunter – Descent that I would totally space out on the details and screw up the continuity of both books. But I don’t think that happened once, not even in a minor way. Antarktos Rising has always been one of my favorite books (of mine), and the story and characters were still very much alive in my head when writing the Saga. The general rule of thumb was that nothing in the Saga could contradict Antarktos Rising, since AR was already published. But there was also a lot in Antarktos Rising that was unseen, including most of the Nephilim subterranean world. Also, until the end of Book 3, when the stories converge, there wasn’t too much to worry about. But the end of Book 3 and the beginning of Book 4 were the trickiest parts. In some ways, I think the stories were always meant to be together. When I started Descent, I had no idea that the crustal displacement in Antarktos Rising would be caused by Solomon’s powers, but when I started writing that scene, it was like it had always been there. Really, it all just fell into place. Let’s just call it divine inspiration... Man, I really want to put a smiley face after that, but this isn’t Facebook!



Question from Jim Cobb: When you were writing AR, did you already have the longer saga in mind or did that develop later?

I wrote Antarktos Rising in 2005, and I didn’t write the first Antarktos Saga book until 2010, so there was a five year gap between the writing. During that time, I had no idea I would be expanding the Antarktos world. Really, it kind of just came to me one day—this intense feeling that I would really like to explore the subterranean realm of Antarktos. It started with me daydreaming what the underworld would look like, and what would live there. But it was the realization that my son, Solomon, with his kind heart, heroic ways and gnarly long hair would fit right into the Antarktos world that really pushed me to write the Saga. Happily, Antarktos Rising was already set up to be continued, so once I finished the first two books of the Saga, they zippered together nicely.



Question from Connor James: Can we please get more books set in the Antarktos Universe?

While I haven’t completely dismissed this idea, I’m not yet planning on it either. That said, it’s entirely possible that we could either get more books about Solomon, as King of Antarktos, rooting out the remaining Nephilim around the world. Or we could introduce more characters. But if you really need a little more Solomon, check out my novella, I am Cowboy, which is a spinoff of my novel, SecondWorld. There’s a little something extra in the book that is making The Last Hunter fans very happy.