John Bierce is an American author of epic and progression fantasy, admired for building magic systems with the rigour of a natural scientist.
He came to writing sideways: after some seven years of undergraduate study across English, history and geology - and no degree at the end of it - he dropped out to write, carrying an earth-scientist's instincts into his fiction, which he insists must be 'not only internally consistent, but ecologically and geologically plausible'. An independent author and sometime digital nomad, he has built his whole output within a single connected fantasy universe, the Aetheriad.
Its centrepiece is Mage Errant, a seven-book coming-of-age saga in which Hugh of Emblin, convinced he is the worst student at the great sky-borne academy of Skyhold, is taken as an unlikely apprentice and slowly grows into his power through a magic that runs on real, discoverable rules. Very different in shape is The Wrack, a standalone 'epidemiological fantasy' that tracks a plague across a civilisation, its true protagonist the disease itself.
Self-deprecating and rock-obsessed - he cheerfully admits to licking them - he writes thoughtful, character-first fantasy, now reaching print through a traditional publisher alongside its indie roots.
