The Five Islands

A fantasy novel about five islands that all work in surprising (unique) ways … but have to work together to prevent their collapse. The full title is: “The Five Islands (and other miscalculations)”

This novel is only available in Dutch, sorry.

Originally written for a big writing competition. It ranked in 11th place. Some jury members were extremely positive, others were negative and confused by the many story lines.

That’s why I ended up doing a second version (with some major rewrites) to improve it.

What’s special?

Three things.

• The book has five storylines that cycle. (Island 1 -> 2 -> 3 -> 4 -> 5 -> back to 1)
• One of the story lines does not use words, but cryptic images that slowly build into a puzzle.
• This was the first fantasy novel—of full length—that I finished

In the end, I’m quite fond of the novel. But it’s clearly written for a certain audience: people who, like me, have a hyperactive brain and enjoy five story lines (instead of finding it confusing or overwhelming).

I learned a lot from this project, also thanks to the feedback from the judges. Later novels had a better balance (and fewer story lines) because of that.