When I first started writing Forbidden Beyond, I knew where the journey began.
I didn’t know how large the world was going to become.
What started as an expansion beyond the known lands of Behemoth has now grown into its own series—a fantasy frontier connecting characters, places and ideas from Behemoth, SideSuper and Forbidden Beyond itself.
And today, with the publication of Forbidden Beyond Book 8, the series has reached another milestone.
The Behemoth Beyond 8 have finally arrived at SideSuper.
But strangely enough, reaching the destination has made the world bigger rather than smaller.
It Started Beyond Behemoth
The idea behind Forbidden Beyond was simple: What happens when the characters of Behemoth travel beyond the part of their world they already know?
There was always something farther away.
Another road.
Another territory.
Another civilization.
Another mystery.
Then the discovery of ancient underground routes changed everything.
Those routes didn’t simply connect different areas of Forbidden Beyond. They eventually revealed something much larger:
Forbidden Beyond could connect worlds.
That opened the door to SideSuper.
And once that happened, Forbidden Beyond stopped feeling like merely an unexplored portion of Behemoth.
It became the place where these worlds could meet.
Eight Books Into the Journey
The Forbidden Beyond series now includes:
- Forbidden Beyond: Behemoth Meets SideSuper
- Forbidden Beyond: Super Sized — SideSuper Joins The Party
- Forbidden Beyond: Brilliance or Bust — The Sinister Wind Starts to Blow
- Forbidden Beyond: The Sinister Wind
- Forbidden Beyond: Sinister City — Drozzz Makes the Capital City of the Underworld
- Forbidden Beyond: Beneath The Pink Sugar Moon — The Rise of Moonbright
- Forbidden Beyond: The Super Underground Frontier
- Forbidden Beyond: The Behemoth Beyond 8 Arrive at SideSuper
Each book has pushed the travelers farther through the frontier while adding another piece to the larger world.
There have been underground kingdoms, strange civilizations, giant windmills, new cities, new factions, monsters, heroes, villains, trains, tunnels and routes nobody knew existed.
Some characters have joined the journey.
Others have stayed behind and built something of their own.
And some villains have discovered that conquering a place isn’t nearly as interesting as building one.
The Forbidden Beyond Doesn’t Have One Side
One of my favorite things about the series has been allowing heroes and villains to travel through the same world without pretending that suddenly makes them friends.
Sometimes their interests overlap.
Sometimes they fight.
Sometimes they help one another.
Sometimes they simply tolerate each other because something much larger is standing in front of them.
That eventually produced the Behemoth Beyond 8, or BB8—a traveling group consisting of five heroes and three villains:
Giganteous, Brunka, Thalira, Neon Moonshot, Moonshot Monster, Colossal, Big Purple and Mincemeat Pie.
They aren’t one traditional superhero team.
They’re eight people who traveled the same road.
And after eight books, that road has finally brought them to SideSuper.
Meanwhile, People Started Building
Exploration is only half of Forbidden Beyond.
As characters discovered new territory, some of them stopped traveling and started building.
Brilliance or Bust, or B.O.B., helped turn engineering and invention into part of the frontier.
Drozzz and the Sinister Wind created an underground power center culminating in Sinister City.
Then Moonbright rose beneath the Pink Sugar Moon as something very different—an open and welcoming underground city.
Suddenly Forbidden Beyond wasn’t simply somewhere characters passed through.
People were beginning to live there.
Build there.
Compete there.
And claim pieces of it for themselves.
That may ultimately be one of the biggest changes in the series.
The unknown frontier is slowly becoming a world.
Book 8 Changes the Direction
For seven books, much of the journey was about reaching SideSuper.
Book 8 finally does it.
Forbidden Beyond: The Behemoth Beyond 8 Arrive at SideSuper brings the BB8 into Skyguardia and reconnects them with the larger SideSuper world.
But other routes are opening too.
B.O.B. has developed a train connection to Moonbright.
Heroes are discovering Forbidden Beyond.
Villains are discovering Forbidden Beyond.
Drozzz and the Sinister Wind are still watching events unfold from below.
And in Grayvora, King B and the Bling Queens have recognized another opportunity: the enormous surface of Forbidden Beyond itself.
So after spending eight books trying to reach SideSuper, the direction of travel is beginning to reverse.
SideSuper is now coming to Forbidden Beyond.
Three Worlds Are Beginning to Collide
That’s where the series stands today.
Behemoth helped discover the frontier.
SideSuper helped reveal where its roads could lead.
Forbidden Beyond grew between them.
Now characters and factions from all three are beginning to occupy the same larger universe.
That doesn’t mean everybody is joining hands.
Quite the opposite.
There are heroes.
There are villains.
There are independents.
There are builders, explorers, rulers and opportunists.
Everybody sees something different when they look at Forbidden Beyond.
And that’s exactly what makes the next stage interesting.
There Is Only the Next Boundary
One thing I don’t want Forbidden Beyond to become is a journey toward one final location where everybody arrives and the exploration ends.
The whole point is that there is always something beyond what the characters currently know.
A new road can change the map.
A tunnel can connect two worlds.
A villain can build a city.
A group can split apart.
Someone who seemed unimportant can suddenly discover something that changes everything.
That’s why the central idea of Forbidden Beyond remains:
There is no fixed destination.
There is only the next boundary.
Eight books into the series, the BB8 have finally reached the destination they spent so long trying to find.
And instead of ending the journey, they may have just made the frontier bigger than ever.
Welcome to the Forbidden Beyond.
