Hey readers. As a follow-up to my Tark series deep dive, I thought I'd do the same for my in-progress Ashes of the Waterfall book series.

What is the Ashes of the Waterfall series?

It's a space opera series available on the Amazon Kindle store. Each book is available on Kindle Unlimited, so you can access it for free if you have a subscription.

The book starts with Aimee MacKenna in the beautiful waterfall settlement of Llynfall, a human colony on the planet Callandria. Her brother joined the Thalassian Dominion ten years ago as an indentured servant, and he never came back. So Aimee is determined to find out what happened to him.

Separately, Blair Redpath is a captain in the ADF Navy, consigned to his offices on Dinas, the moon of Callandria. The Allied Defense Force (ADF) has a military base on Dinas, and Blair has wallowed here ever since his old CO stole some code of his and turned it into a billion-credit company. Blair just wants to leave the ADF Navy and live out the rest of his days in peace. Until an interesting young woman joins his team and suggests he take a more proactive approach.

Who are the characters?

Aimee MacKenna is one of the two viewpoint characters. She's in her mid-twenties, an engineer, and she starts the series off desperate to find what happened to her brother Callum. She spends her day maintaining Llynfall's hydro works, listening to and watching the beautiful falls. An idyllic working environment! I designed this around what I thought my ideal settlement would look like: constant running water, white noise, mixtures of blues and greens, and a sense of shared community.

Blair Redpath is the second viewpoint character. He's in his mid-thirties, a software engineer, and a fleet-level captain in the ADF Navy. He created some software for the ADF to track the movements of fleets. It was truly ground-breaking, using probabilistic analysis to make estimates that meaningfully saved lives. But an unscrupulous boss decided to take the software for himself and commercialise it. That person is now the CEO of Aonach Defense Systems, and a billionaire. All off of Blair's work. Now you can understand why he starts the story so grouchy? :)

Will I enjoy this series?

If you enjoyed multi-POV science fiction stories with rich characters, then I think you'll really enjoy the Ashes of the Waterfall series. If you need science fiction to be harder though, then you're likely not to enjoy this series as much. This series is more about the characters and the drama than the accuracy of the science.

Is the series complete?

Not yet. At the time of writing (December 2025) this series has two books published of a planned eight-book series. I'm expecting to finish this series in 2027/28.