The Dragon-Myth Cycle

With the release of The Key to the Abyss, many of you may have noticed that the series now has a name: The Dragon-Myth Cycle. If you are curious about what the title means, this post is for you.

The Working Title

When I wrote Enoch’s Device, I always planned on a trilogy, but never gave much thought to the series title. The only working title I ever had was The Arcanian Prophecy (which also happens to be the title of Chapter 14 of Enoch’s Device). Of course, if you asked anyone what “Arcanian” means, I suspect you’d have lots of people scratching their heads. If you’ve read Enoch’s Device, you may recall that it’s a reference to Arcanus of Atlantis, the legendary hero who first discovered the prophecy that forms the backbone of the series’ plot. “Arcanus” is a play on the name of King Alkynous, the name Homer used for the Atlantean king in The Odyssey. Too obscure for a series title? I think so.

The Second Draft

By the time I finished The Key to the Abyss, I had a series title in mind: The Paladin’s Prophecy. The title is a reference to Maugis d’Aygremont, one of the twelve paladins of Charlemagne, who protected and preserved the secrets of the prophecy. The title seemed to roll off the tongue, even if it said nothing about the nature of the prophecy or the underlying conflict. The problem, however, is that title was far too similar to the title of a series of Young Adult books based around the Paladins of Charlemagne. The last thing I wanted to do was create confusion between that author’s books and my own.

The Dragon-Myth Cycle

With The Paladin’s Prophecy a no-go, I was forced to think long and hard about what the series was really about. And as soon as I did that, the series name started to crystallize. It began with the first hint of the prophecy scrawled in the book of Maugis D’Aygremont: “Dark cycle of a thousand years, when the dragon is freed …”

As readers of Enoch’s Device will recall, the mysterious prophecy concerns an event that occurs every thousand years. So, the word “cycle” seemed fitting. Also, one of the themes underlying Enoch’s Device and The Key to the Abyss is the universal origin of myths. This is the notion that all myths—whether Norse, Celtic, Greek or Babylonian—stem from a common origin. This brought me back to one of my favorite dialogue scenes in Enoch’s Device when Brother Remi is explaining the prophecy to Ciarán:

“Now do you see who we are dealing with? The Dragon is present in every myth. He is the snake of Eden, Balor of the Evil Eye, Tiamat of Babylon, Ophion to the Greeks, the world serpent of the Norse. The book of Revelation says that after a thousand years, the Dragon must be released from its prison, where it has been bound since its war against God. Maugis says the prophecy is a cycle of a thousand years. Thus, with each millennium, the war that broke out in heaven continues on earth!”

This single passage of dialogue encapsulates the epic conflict that forms the basis for the entire series. And so, The Dragon-Myth Cycle was born.