Hunt and Power
‘Hunt and Power’ is the third novel in the Magic Crystals series. It picks up almost immediately where ‘Rock Haulter’ left off, taking place over the following two weeks. It has a much darker theme than its two predecessors as the danger increases and the villains begin showing the true extent of their evil. It also reveals, for the first time, the direction of the Magic Crystals series as a whole, and why the crystals are effectively more valuable than any of the Sorcerers using them.
Apart from some small sections of the storyline, most of MC3 was completely unplanned. It veered sharply away from the original braille series by this point, but came at a time when the future of the Magic Crystals series remained unclear. Stephen Hayes began working on it in January 2006 but struggled to write the first five chapters over the following eighteen months. It was only as he reached the middle of the book in September 2007 that he began to see where the series was going, and as his excitement grew, he put MC3 on hold to clean up the first two novels to make them consistent with his ideas for the remainder of the series. He then set to work again, rapidly completing the novel by August 2008.
Unlike the first two novels, there was no Edition Zero of MC3. It was first edited in the second half of 2013, just months after the official publication of the first two novels and a year before it was intended to be published as an Ebook. This process completed in time for early production to begin on an audiobook format of the book, and early Ebook formatting so that it could be made available to reviewers up to three months before publication. Apart from an unfortunate lack of interest from reviewers, the road to publication of MC3 was much smoother than it had been for MC1 and MC2.
MC3 was published on June 28, 2014, in Ebook format. It was made available in Kindle (mobipocket), Nook (EPUB), PDF, and three other formats exclusive to the Magic Crystals Store (two of which are no longer available). These formats can be purchased here or through various retailers such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iTunes, Google Play, and so on.
Initially, publishing the Magic Crystals novels in a physical format such as paperback, hard cover or even CD-ROM wasn't considered because the profit margin made them seem unsuitable. In early 2014, however, this option was re-examined and it was decided that some areas of the target audience weren't accessing the story because they preferred to read actual physical books. Work began on formatting MC3 for print immediately after the print publication of MC2, and after a few months of work, MC3 was published as a paperback edition in October 2014. It is referred to as the ‘2014 Paperback Edition’ and may not be the last print edition of the book, but it is presently the only one available and can be purchased here.
The audio version of MC3 went into early production in the hope that it could be published at the same time as the Ebook. Recording began in late 2013, but the project took longer than expected to complete and was eventually published in November 2014, four months later than expected. Like the previous Magic Crystals audiobooks, it was recorded by Nick Flint, but unlike the first two Magic Crystals books, it was more than 21 hours of audio, and can be purchased here.