Dvarsh, An Introduction (Paperback or Softback)

It is one thing to construct a language. It is another thing altogether to construct one that breathes life into another world.
 
Dvarsh, the creation of Robert Stikmanz, has been celebrated as beautiful and visionary. Its completeness and imaginative scope compare to Sindarin, Na'vi or Klingon. Like those inventions, Dvarsh is carefully crafted, fully functional, and semantically rich.
 
The same care evident in the language shows in Dvarsh, An Introduction. As a reference, the book is well organized, practical and clear. Stikmanz has penned a fine, sober authority. However, he did not stop there. Instead, with a nod to predecessors as diverse as Laurence Sterne, tabletop role-playing, and Codex Seraphinianus, he pushed Dvarsh, An Introduction into a double existence.
 
On the one hand, it is a resource as well formed and powerfully imagined as the language it describes. Features include a short essay on Dvarsh people and culture, a history of the language, presentation of the writing system, essential grammar, Dvarsh-to-English and English-to-Dvarsh dictionaries, and notes on numerals, time and calendar.
 
On the other, it is a work of engaging prose and sly wit, a puzzle with countless solutions, and a vast field of play. Every part of Dvarsh, An Introduction, from the opening chapters on culture and history, through the grammar and dictionaries, resonates with every other. The interplay of detail evokes worldviews, social dynamics and the anthropology of a fictional civilization. A yellow brick road of interactive literature, the book reveals a different narrative to each seeker on the path. Strange and wonderful, Dvarsh, An Introduction packs a remarkable amount of vision into conceptual space somehow larger than its 162 pages.

Robert Stikmanz is an author of fiction, most notably the novel, Prelude to a Change of Mind, The Author's Edition, and the novella, Rose Moon. He is also creator of Nod's Way, the ancient oracle of the dvarsh. In November 2017, he was named "Best Creator of a New Language" in The Austin Chronicle's annual Best of Austin awards.