​Stoneheart is a redemptive dark fantasy novel-length adventure book for adults, published by Vulgaris Media in July 2024. It is not grimdark, though it contains many dark and gritty events. It is ultimately hopeful and has a happy ending. It is not overtly religious, though the authors are Christians. Its prose is poetic and registers at a literary level, but its storytelling is traditional and standard, with a beginning, middle, and end - not subversive, not plotless.

​

Stoneheart has two authors: Abby D. Jones, a pastor's wife, and Alana K. Asby, a classical poet.

 

​Stoneheart's target audience is made of readers with sophisticated literary taste who nevertheless prefer the exciting, action-heavy storytelling conventions of genre and crossover fiction to the bland and introspective conventions of literary fiction. The target reader also leans conservative, and may belong to a broad swath of Christian or other religious traditions. The target reader may be weary of grimdark, depressing, and nihilistic stories; or may be weary of Christian fiction that is overly whitewashed, sparkling clean, and easy. Stoneheart strikes a balance between gritty and dark on the one hand, and cozy and redemptive on the other.​

 

After perusing much of Stoneheart, Claude commented that it could almost be labeled "theological fantasy" but probably deserves the label "dark fantasy" or "redemptive dark fantasy" as well. It is implicitly, but not explicitly, Christian. Like The Lord of the Rings, Stoneheart's story takes place in a fantasy world where there is no explicit religious observance, but theological realities pulse through the world's mythos, reality structure, and events.​

 

Stoneheart can be described as "mostly clean". It has a few cuss-words, but no f-bombs. It has no on-screen sex. The main, sympathetic characters do not have sex before marriage, although the main female character is sexually assaulted before the book begins. However, it does depict plentiful violence in the setting of classic good vs. evil struggles.​ Stoneheart is smut-free.

 

Stoneheart has a male main character, named George "Sul" Sullivan, and a female main character, named Psyche Kyteler. Stoneheart is written for both men and women. Each main character has their own satisfying character arc. There is also an important child character, Rune, who is Psyche's daughter; and a morally gray/ultimately redeemed side-character named Zehra who is the villain's companion and helper in evil deeds, but eventually turns on her, saving a girl's life.​

 

Stoneheart is gripping from its first moments, our readers tell us. Psyche, the female main character, begins in mortal peril. She has been gang-raped (not explicit, not "on-screen") and staked out, left to die on an abandoned ranch in the middle of nowhere. Sul, the male main character, is also in danger. He is riding a motorcycle on a bounty-hunting errand through Tankwaste, a desert area destroyed in the late war, and has run out of fuel for his bike. Fate brings them together when Sul discovers the abandoned ranch where Psyche is staked out.​

 

The title "Stoneheart" derives from the central conflict experienced by the male main character, Sul. In order to escape trauma from the war and the whole experience of emotion, he has "taken the stoneheart", becoming a Stoneheart bounty-hunter with a runed, magical rock in his chest instead of a flesh heart. This makes him ruthless and efficient.​

 

Nevertheless, confronted with the sight of Psyche staked out, wounded, and dying on the ground in front of him, Sul makes the choice to save her life and share the trauma-distancing effects of the stoneheart with her, a choice that is merciful without being emotional, and that reverberates throughout the succeeding events of the story.​

 

Readers who like the trope of the emotionally distant man softened by the love of a good woman will enjoy Stoneheart. However, this story also mitigates against some of the more objectionable aspects of this trope. Sul is not emotionally distant by nature. He has a sensitive conscience and feels too much. Instead, he is temporarily alienated from his emotions by magic, as a way of escaping trauma and guilt.​This aspect of the story may also appeal to military, police, and other violent professions where people deal with emotional fallout from their jobs. One of the two authors of Stoneheart, Abby D. Jones, has many family members in the military as well as friends in the police, and she also reads a lot of contemporary, boots-on-the-ground military history. Part of Sul's story was also inspired by the real-life military experience of Alana K. Asby's grandfather.​

 

Stoneheart was written entirely without help from AI or LLMs. It is 100% human in its ideas and execution.​

 

Stoneheart in its print form has 433 pages, and about 144,000 words.

 

​Psyche is a gunmaker, and her primary conflict throughout the story is her trauma-informed inability to pull the trigger of a gun to protect herself and her daughter.​

 

The mythology of Stoneheart centers around The Song, a symbol of divine providence emanating from The King in the Mountain, a mysterious figure identified with the white stag of legend. Rune, Psyche's daughter, also makes friends with a flesh-and-blood white stag who eventually makes the ultimate sacrifice to save her when Sul, like the huntsman in Snow White, must slay a beast to save Rune's life, because he is under contract to bring her heart and liver to a dark runemistress. This event is the emotional and theological heart of the story, since it leads to the cracking of Sul's stoneheart and starts the process by which he eventually recieves his flesh heart back and undergoes the healing he needs to relate to Psyche and Rune properly.​

 

When Sul shares his stoneheart with Psyche as he cares for her in the wake of her assault, the Song emerges from the stoneheart. In that moment, Psyche is conceiving her daughter, the result of her assault the previous day. As a result, the child is conceived with an extra "parent" or "heart" - the Song itself, with Sul as her proxy "heartfather" because the stoneheart was his.

 

After Psyche heals somewhat, Sul helps her make a gun that they will use to battle the griefers who assaulted her, who are circling back, and from whom Sul plans to take fuel for him and Psyche to escape Tankwaste. Psyche and Sul battle griefers successfully and ride out of Tankwaste together. Then he leaves the stoneheart with her as resumes his work. She goes back to gunmaking, in a cottage in a small community, where she takes Sul's last name, gives birth to Rune, and raises her. The middle part of the novel deals with Psyche painfully learning to trust again and forming relationships, with Rune's help, in the small community where she lives. This process peaks when a griefer from Stoneheart returns, looking for revenge, and Psyche is unable to shoot him. A friend from the village is able to take the griefer down, however, and Psyche realizes she must confront her trauma.

 

​Meanwhile, Volo Pine, a dark runemistress and the primary villain of the novel, is hunting the three-hearted child, whom prophecy foretells can give her eternal youth and beauty if she eats her heart and liver. Other disadvantaged girls she cannibalizes give her temporary boosts in the meantime. Much of the conflict in this part of the story arises from Volo's relationship with her companion, Zehra, who hates helping her kill and eventually turns on her. Zehra's magic, subversive of Volo's intentions, gives the girls a ghostly afterlife in a magic mirror that turns out to be the portal to a magical prison.​The third part of the novel commences when Sul, sick of his life without being able to feel the sickness, decides to take one last job, and agrees to hunt the three-hearted child for Volo, without knowing that she is Psyche's daughter and his heartdaughter. Later, when he finds Rune in the snowy woods and all is made clear, he makes the choice to kill her pet white stag, Guard, instead of her, and take the deer's heart and liver to Volo. At this point, Sul and Psyche reunite. The cracks in Sul's stoneheart means he is beginning to feel again, and it becomes clear that the two of them have a long-delayed romance to finish.​

 

When Volo eats Guard's organs, she turns into a monstrous hag and, enraged, goes on the hunt for the three-hearted child herself. Sul and Rune are encased in ice caskets through Volo's magic, and enter the world of the stoneheart, where Sul begins his journey back to life and full feeling. Meanwhile, a magic apple orchard, haunted by the voices of the cannibalized girls, grows up in the night around Psyche's cottage. She and her friends hunt Volo through the orchard. Eventually, Psyche must pull the trigger, firing a magic bullet, and Volo is turned into an apple tree.

 

​Rune returns from her coma in the ice casket that night, but she and Psyche watch over Sul's inert body through the winter and into spring as he journeys through the underworld to get back to them. Eventually Psyche, who has been learning rune magic, reunites him with his flesh heart and, at Rune's urging, wakes him with a kiss. The book ends with Psyche and Sul's wedding.

 

​Stoneheart may be welcomed by readers of the Inklings, especially Till We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis, adult readers of The Girl who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhard, readers of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke, The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden, Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver, The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro, and Gilead by Marilynne Robinson.