The Queen of Vorn Re-Release (Path to Power) - Marketing Materials
Hello, everyone. Welcome to this off-the-cuff analysis.
Based on everything she’s shared on Twitter, Charlotte Goodwin is committed to re-releasing The Queen of Vorn (now titled Path to Power) in early 2026, followed by the rest of the Homecoming Trilogy (now called the Stolen Throne Trilogy) and the Offspring Trilogy in that same year. She’s shifted the focus of her daily posts from general engagement bait to hype for Path to Power, sharing her title and the new cover she’s made and apprising us of the progress of the editor. Now she has posted the first chapter as sample content.
Since we have that first chapter, now is as good a time as any to cover a few odds and ends for this release, things that weren’t necessary worth covering on their own but are worth covering as part of a wider discussion of marketing.
Today, we’ll start with a quick review of this sample chapter. We’ll then move on to my thoughts about the changed title. Lastly, we’ll discuss a new bit of lore Goodwin dropped: that The Queen of Vorn is not the first book she’s unpublished.
SAMPLE CHAPTER 1
As of the time of this post, the sample chapter is accessible directly from Charlotte Goodwin’s website. I encourage you to read it for yourself if you don’t want spoilers.
Everyone ready?
Good.
Chapter 1 of The Path to Power is just Chapter 4 of The Queen of Vorn.
By this, I don’t mean it covers the same events and same story beats. I mean that the bulk of it is word-for-word the same. She just took the Chapter 4 and made minor edits to it.
Chapter Recap
Zark, the Zargon observer, is feeling bored, so she decides to watch a home video of the day she abducted Emma and spirited the young princess away to Earth. She then gets a call from her former superior, Captain Darkle. Darkle exposits about the political situation with Queen Lila and orders Zark to fetch the now-adult Emma back from Earth.
Changes
I read this sample chapter side-by-side with the unpublished version. In the first half of the chapter (before the conversation with Darkle gets past the initial pleasantries), these were the only changes I could find.
An added dialogue tag for the ninth paragraph.
Maybe two or three words that were changed to synonyms that better reflected what Goodwin wanted to convey.
A correction of a minor mistake. In the original story, Lila was marked as being from “Geo-14G”, which would be a different planet from Earth (“Geo-33G”), despite us being told later in the story that her father is Kenyan. Goodwin has now fixed this so Lila is also from Geo-33G.
After that, until about the halfway point (when the conversation with Darkle starts to build up momentum), the only other changes I could find were a handful of tweaked work choices.
These are all good changes. It’s just they’re insignificant in terms of the broader quality of the narrative. The best I can really say about them is that they are proof that Goodwin has indeed hired an editor and is willing to listen to said editor for at least the small stuff.
Once the conversation with Darkle builds momentum, there are more changes. A few sentences of irrelevant backstory about a character we never meet have been deleted. The expositional dialogue between Zark and Darkle has been reshuffled slightly. It now reads less “as you know” and more like Zark being updated on things she reasonably might not know about. We also get clarification out the gate that Queen Lila plans to exterminate all the non-human races, not just goblins. This is good for setting clear stakes right out of the gate, though it does imply that the Zargons don’t care about the goblins being genoicided (and still raises the question why the Zargons will intercede for “elves” and “dwarves” but not for any of the human populations that have been and continue to be victims of genocide).
Analysis
I think that using the events of the Chapter 4 as the opening, rather than spending three chapters on character vignettes that don’t contribute to the wider narrative, makes for a stronger hook. I also don’t think any of the changes Goodwin made here diminish the chapter from what it was before. She clarifies things, she adds more detail, and she makes things feel more natural overall.
With that being said, the execution of these events is still not very engaging.
The scene of Emma’s abduction (and the assassination that abduction spared her from) could make for a thrilling hook, but it’s being presented to us as a movie that Zark watches while she is stewing in boredom. It’s a perfect example of a story being told to the audience rather than letting them experience it. There’s nothing to build emotional investment. Without that investment, the exposition dump still reads like an exposition dump, even if it is an organic one. natural exposition dump is still an exposition dump. We’re being Told about a bunch of things, Told they are important, and expected to be care just because. It all feels very disconnected.
Final Thoughts on Chapter 1
I don’t find this chapter particularly encouraging. The changes we do see are confirmation that Goodwin does have technical skill as a writer and can grow and improve. However, the fact we’re getting recycling text that leaves fundamental issues in place is a warning that Path to Power will just be a slightly rearranged and repatched version of the original text, with maybe a little connective tissue to help things flow better. Given that a lack of connective tissue was a huge problem in the original, maybe that will be enough for the strong concept to shine through. I hope it is. If not, then we could be in for another rough ride.
TITLE CHANGE
For a few months, Goodwin has been batting around the idea of changing the title of her books. I’m not sure what her motivation was for this. Maybe she thinks that new titles will be more marketable, or maybe she’s trying to get a blank slate for marketing (though, given some other things we’ll cover below, she seems hellbent on undermining herself if a blank slate is indeed what she’s going for). In any case, as you may have noticed from the sample chapter and can be seen in this Tweet, it does appear Goodwin has settled on Path to Power as her final title.
I don’t think it’s an inherently bad title … but it’s worse than The Queen of Vorn.
First, there’s the matter of what the title is supposed to do: catch the eye of potential customers. I’m not a marketing expert, yet it seems like The Queen of Vorn has the leg up here. The mention of Vorn, a fantasy land, is something out of the ordinary that anchors the title to the story and genre itself. Path to Power could be a book in any fiction genre (or many non-fiction genres, for that matter). The generic title also feels less evocative to me than referencing a character who can be assumed to be an important figure within this setting.
Second, unless Goodwin has radically reworked the story (again, the sample chapter makes this seem unlikely), this new title is far less relevant. The Queen of Vorn worked on two levels, acknowledging the narrative objective to reinstate Emma as the true monarch while also nodding to the villain of the story. Path to Power is, at best, an overly charitable description of Tom and Emma wandering from place to place until his magic is triggered. It implies some deliberate process, when in fact, characters just go from Point A to B to C to D because people told them Tom might unlock his magic in another location.
Overall, I think Goodwin was better off with that original title. At least people have heard of The Queen of Vorn at this point. That’s free publicity, even if it isn’t necessary good publicity.
THE UNPUBLISHING SAGA
Last night, this popped up in my Twitter feed.
I was confused, to say the least. Goodwin first published The Queen of Vorn less than 5 month ago, and unpublished it soon after. Where is she getting two years from?
So, I went to her Goodreads page, and found …
… the Offspring Trilogy. The “sequel trilogy” to the Homecoming Trilogy / Stolen Throne Trilogy. As Goodwin said in the Tweet, Goodreads lists these books as having been released two years ago, though it gives no indication that they were unpublished.
(Apparently, she's also written a children’s book called Mike the Baby Mammoth.)
Rewriting History
Why did Goodwin not mention the past publication of the Offspring Trilogy in the Preface of unpublished version of The Queen of Vorn? Take a look at this screenshot from that unpublished book. This is everything she says about the Offspring Trilogy.
I don’t feel it would be fair to say Goodwin lied to us in the Preface. Maybe she wrote the Homecoming Trilogy first, followed be the Offspring Trilogy, but decided to publish the Offspring Trilogy first because she felt it was “a decent product - one [she was] pretty proud of”. However, omitting this history does feel like Goodwin was, at the very least, trying to control the narrative around her series.
This is something she has a precedent for. That email she sent me when making excuses to reject my feedback included a lot of time dedicated to asserting her side of the unpublishing drama. The way she discusses said drama is recent Tweets also reads like an effort to steer public perception. Neglecting to mention a past failure is rather mild by comparison.
The thing is, if this is her intent, she just shot herself in the foot. By making this Tweet to demonize the "trolls”, she encouraged people to look at her Goodreads page. Does she really think that no one is going to notice the unpublished books from two years ago are the sequel series she’s promised us for next year? The titles haven’t been changed! And sure, the covers have been updated, but they still look so similar that I actually thought they were the same until I did a side-by-side comparison. These are very obviously the same books!
Originally, I was going to cap things off here and roll into my conclusion … but something gnawed at me.
How, exactly, does Goodwin know when 1 star ratings were applied to her book?
You see, originally, I thought she was just talking about star ratings, not the reviews. There are dates written for the reviews, but I couldn’t figure out how to pull the dates for the star ratings. Originally, I was going to say, “Well, we have to just take her at her word that these bad ratings are recent.”
Then I double-checked her Tweet.
“The sea of 1 star reviews.”
The Lie
Goodwin specifically said reviews, not ratings.
Not one of the reviews posted on Goodreads for any book of the Offspring Trilogy is less than 3 stars rating.
The General’s Son (Book 1): 12 reviews, of which 9 are 5 stars, 2 are 4 stars, and 1 is 3 stars. Also, despite being “unpublished almost 2 years ago”, 1 of the 5 star reviews was from April 26th of this year (barely 5 months ago) while the 3 star review was from March 10th of this year (just under 7 months ago)
The Queen's Son (Book 2): 2 reviews, with 1 each at 5 stars and 4 stars
The Prince’s Nephew (Book 3): 1 review at 5 stars.
So … Goodwin flat-out lied to us.
We can’t simply assume all the 1 star reviews were deleted for failing to meet Goodreads standards (such as they are). Setting aside the question of whether the ratings would remain if the review was deleted, then we’d have to apply that logic consistently and assume that Goodwin’s book was being puffed up by people whose opinions are equally illegitimate. For example, the The General’s Son has 15 ratings at 5 stars. That’s 6 more ratings than there are 5 star reviews. Is Goodwin going to disavow those positive ratings?
Playing the victim is not new for Goodwin. Her attempt to pillory a 3 star review and her branding of her critics as “trolls” (and “arseholes”) is proof of that. However, here, she is outright making up victimhood. Anyone who actually looks at a Goodreads will see all the bad star ratings, sure, but they will also see the “sea” of encouraging reviews (some of which had to be written after these books were unpublished). Her Goodreads page honestly oversells her writing.
There is a small possibility that Goodwin is not lying. Maybe she mixed up the rating and reviews. That wouldn't really fix things, though. It just means she’s either unobservant or actually believes the falsehoods she’s using to promot herself. We go from lies to either incompetence or delusuion.
Narcissism
Barely a week ago, Goodwin posted this Tweet, celebrating how no one remembers her un-publishing drama this past spring.
Yes, I called her out for this already on Twitter, but I also left the door open for her. I’d love to see her make a comeback as a writer. I’d love to see her take criticism better the next time around. I’d like Path to Power to be good.
Now … I’m already losing what little hope I had.
Back in my final conclusion to the review series for The Queen of Vorn, I stated that Goodwin is more interested in being perceived as a Writer than in actually writing. She doesn't care about telling good stories. She wants to be a “best seller” (to use her phrasing from her email to me). It seems pretty clear, at least to me, that the audience exists to serve her, rather than her serving the audience.
In ramping up to her re-release, Goodwin is doing nothing to disabuse me of this notion.
Between the two Tweets sampled here, we have two instances of her trying to frame herself as a victim, with one pretends she has overcoming an evil that doesn’t actually exist while the other ignores that the “little twitter storm” she’s survived was backlash for her own entitled behavior.
She’s now revealed that she’s already pulled the Offspring Trilogy from publication once before. I can't begin to guess why. Maybe it was selling poorly, or maybe she had a much quieter meltdown that previous time. Either way, she has loudly announced to everyone that unpublishing books is something she’ll do even if she hasn’t set off a “little twitter storm”.
Over the past few weeks, she’s made a couple of posts lauding herself for what wonderful writer she is. Based on how little her sample chapter has changed from the original book, there’s good reason to doubt that she has actually improved from her previous state.
Arrogance and outright narcissism are nothing new among the authors reviewed on this site. I’ve only been calling out the virtue signallers, but there have been others (Shad Brooks and Jon Del Aroz, for example) whose loudly oversell their capabilities view their various platforms while also making it very clear that their ears are closed to criticism. What is so galling about Goodwin is just how hard she’s working to make things up to triumph over.
For a point of comparison, consider Rebecca Yarros. Yes, The Empyrean is a vomitous mass of delusion and entitlement. Yes, every time Yarros virtue signals about Representation, it is transparent that she only really cares about herself. However, these issues tie back into very real hardships. Yarros does indeed have chronic health issues. She has been in life situations where military leadership could be perceived as this oppressive force that threatens her loved ones. Both of these things are out of her control. The power fantasy she wrote to play-act at overcoming their obstacles is nonsense, but at least one can see where she started from. If she had more respect for the Fantasy genre and actually took the time to make the power fantasy make sense within the world she’s created, she could make great stories out of these hardships.
Goodwin’s drama does not stem from her “shit childhood”. All her problems in the writing sphere are wholly self-inflicted. There’s no clear connection between them and the quality of her work. Despite this, she not only insists on selling herself as victim, but is outright fabricating new victimhood just so she can market herself on overcoming it.
Before today, I’d never been tempted to accuse someone of having Main Character Syndrome in real life. Now I’ve been confronted by the embodiment of it. When Path to Power doesn’t grant instant success, I won’t be shocked if Goodwin pulls a book from publication a third time while blaming everyone but herself.
I don't want to give up hope entirely. Maybe, just maybe, Path to Power will be truly be a triumphant comeback. Maybe it will even be so good as to make all Goodwin’s behavior up to this point irrelevant.
Or maybe it will crash and burn, and we’ll get ringside seats to another meltdown.
I guess we’ll find out in 2026.
WALKING THE PATH
Well, that certainly got spicy there near the end, didn’t it?
I do still plan to review Path to Power when it comes out. Yes, this first chapter hasn’t wowed me, and I don’t think the title does it any favors, but the version of the book I beta-read was already better than The Queen of Vorn. I’d like to give Goodwin’s writing a chance to at least be decent. I’m hoping the comparative review will be able to focus on positives, even if the book itself isn’t anything fantastic in isolation.
In any case, I don’t expect to post anything more about Goodwin until Path to Power comes out. Maybe if she drops another sample chapter or some other bit piece of marketing material, I’ll review it and comment on any other developments. For now, though, I’m hoping we can just hunker down and wait to see what’s next.
THINGS TO COME
So … assuming you all are sick of all my negativity … how about something positive for a change?
Tomorrow, we kick of the review series for The Will of the Many. I am beyond psyched to tell people about this book. It takes so many of the things I have complained about in other books and does them right. This book is easily a 10/10, and we need to take four parts just to explain how incredible it is.
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