The Black River Chronicles: The Ursvaal Exchange (Black River Academy) - Softcover

It's out!  The second of the Black River Chronicles, The Ursvaal Exchange, is available to buy in print and e-book as of the end of last week.  If you enjoyed Level One, I genuinely think you'll love this one; it builds in so many fun ways on the groundwork Mike and I laid there, and develops the gang and the world they inhabit in some directions that I for one find really interesting.  And if you're new to the series, I'm confident that this second book stands well on its own - though it would probably make more sense to just grab them both and begin from the beginning!

We've all been there.
You're still high from the adrenaline rush of having competed in your first role-playing campaign, having taken your Character from a set of dice rolls on a piece of paper through to them becoming a fully-rounded person in their own right. You're buzzing from having slain the dragon / the wizard / the extra-planar entity and stolen your foe's treasure, experience points have been dished out like Halloween candy, and then you level up...and promptly fall at the first hurdle.
Your sword skills aren't what you thought they were, those spells you learned when you were starting out really won't cut the mustard anymore, and you feel like more of a noob than you did when you set out on your first adventure.Welcome to Level Two.
This is the situation the heroes of The Black River Chronicles find themselves in within the opening chapter of this, the second book in the series. David Tallerman reintroduces us to Arein the dwarfish wizard, Hule the barbarian fighter, Tia the dun-elf rogue, and Durren Flintrand the ranger-in-training and the party's would-be leader-not forgetting the adorable Pootle-with all the skill of a consummate master storyteller.
We've all been all of them, at one time or another. The wizard afraid of her own abilities, unwilling to give in to her burgeoning powers lest she lose control. The taciturn warrior, whose reticence other people mistake for ignorance. The prickly rogue, impatient of others and with her own secret agenda. And the ranger, the victim of the high expectations placed upon him, none more so than by himself-under so much pressure to succeed, not wanting to let the mask of composed discipline slip for a second.
Through these disparate individuals, Tallerman takes us inside the world of the Black River Academy of Swordcraft and Spellcraft, but we don't remain there for long. The shadow of the events related in the first volume looms large over those in this second tale, and just as we and the gang are settling back into the old routine, Durren and the rest are dispatched to another school of student adventurers as part of an exchange.
And so they find themselves at the grim and dour Shadow Mountain Academy, appropriately enough, in the province of Ursvaal, with Durren in particular feeling like he's starting from Level One again. It's not so much a fish out of water story, as a koi carp plucked from its ornamental oriental pond and dropped into the ocean story, and from there things only go from bad to worse.
But then, if they didn't, how could our heroes prove themselves to be just that?