What are the books about?

The Path of Pain and Ruin begins as a straight-up revenge story. Thematically the book is about fate and predestination, and about how trauma and our past informs the way we respond to new traumas in the present.

Paths to Empires' Ends is about love and desperation. With a broader cast than The Path of Pain and Ruin it is free to explore a wide array of motivations for protagonists, from their desire to be lauded or accepted by their families, to desires to redress past wrongs, to venal self-interest, to just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

What sort of fantasy are we talking, here?

In my definition of fantasy archetypes I claim that low fantasy is "Fuck, a dragon." This is low fantasy, through that lens, gods and magic turned to dark purposes, pandemic and plague, rack and ruin. The Empires referred to in Empires' Ends are definitely historically inspired by the duelling Roman Imperial periods of East and West, with hints of Mongol raiders on grassy steppes beyond and a Grecian archipelago of islands that disappears out into the blue beyond.

Let's call it bronzepunk.

What is the connection between the two books?

The Path of Pain and Ruin picks up in the wake of "The Last War", which has seen a pandemic sweep the Empires pretty much clear of human life. Its MC is one of the Hundred, a Congregation of holy warriors who prosecuted the war.

Paths to Empires' Ends tells the story of that war.

Tell me about the writing style!

It's epic.

Ok, self praise being no praise - The Path of Pain and Ruin is told in a blend of forward facing action, springing from when a stranger bursts into the MC's home at night, mixed with nightmare racked flashbacks and reverie about the MC's unfortunate past.

By contrast Paths to Empires' Ends is a series of short stories told in different perspectives that knit and shudder towards the climactic act. Characters bob in and out of the stories, from their origins alonf the Paths that their seer God has laid out for them.