Anderson Gibbons does not approach fantasy as a place to run from reality. He approaches it as a way to survive reality, examine it, and give shape to the things people often carry in silence.
His upcoming novel, My Third Self, is an epic fantasy built on Time, memory, family, and consequence. At first glance, it has the markings of a large-scale speculative world: hidden planes, ancient powers, living forces, cosmic stakes, and a mythology that stretches across generations. But the deeper story is more intimate. It is about what happens when grief becomes part of a person’s architecture.
Gibbons’ own backstory gives the book a rare sense of purpose. In his acknowledgments, he writes that he used writing as a way to cope with feeling out of place. He also reflects on the death of his brother and on the challenge of appearing “normal” after retiring from the military while struggling with PTSD. Those details matter because My Third Self is not a fantasy novel that treats pain as decoration. Pain is part of the engine.
The book follows Oryious, an ancient consciousness connected to three selves. His First Self represents past mistakes. His Second Self carries present awareness. His Third Self guards the potential self, the one he has yet to become. That idea gives the novel its central emotional and philosophical framework. People are not only shaped by what they have done. They are also shaped by what they fear becoming, and by what they still hope can be saved.
For Gibbons, fantasy becomes a language wide enough to hold that tension.
In My Third Self, time is not background. It is active, unstable, and deeply personal. Memories do not simply sit in the past. They return. They accuse. They guide. They threaten. The characters move through a realm where Time, Light, Death, Body, Life, Knowledge, and Wisdom are not abstract ideas, but forces with weight and influence.
That kind of world-building will appeal to readers who want more than a fast plot. Gibbons is writing for an audience that enjoys scale, but also substance. The book asks readers to follow a complex system of powers and planes, yet its emotional center remains clear: family. Oryious is not only a being of immense reach. He is a father, a protector, a figure haunted by what he could not prevent and determined to guard what remains.
This is where the novel’s personal roots become most visible. Gibbons dedicates the book to his brother, Torey Dwayne Gibbons, and to Lynnise and Dwayne, whom he says inspired two of his most powerful characters. That dedication reframes the book’s larger mythology. The story is not only about invented realms. It is about legacy, and about how the people we lose can still shape the work we leave behind.
There is a business lesson in that, too. In a crowded book market, where fantasy titles often compete through spectacle, My Third Self stands out by leaning into emotional identity. Its strongest selling point is not just that it has a big world. Many books do. Its advantage is that the world appears to have been built from a personal need to understand grief, memory, responsibility, and endurance.
Readers can feel the difference when fantasy is built from the inside out.
The novel also arrives at a time when conversations around mental health, veteran reintegration, and creative recovery continue to matter. Gibbons does not turn the book into a memoir, but the acknowledgments make clear that writing became part of his own process of moving through loss and trauma. That gives the work an added dimension for readers interested in the human story behind the fiction.
Still, My Third Self is not a small book wearing a large costume. It is large by design. The manuscript spans a broad chapter structure and introduces a carefully layered universe with its own language, rules, forces, and spiritual logic. For readers who enjoy being challenged by a fantasy world, this is part of the appeal. The story does not flatten itself for quick consumption. It invites immersion.
The most compelling part of the book may be its refusal to separate power from consequence. In Gibbons’ world, every force has a cost. Every choice leaves a trace. Every attempt to protect someone may create another burden. That makes the story feel less like a simple battle between good and evil and more like an exploration of what survival demands.
At its heart, My Third Self is about becoming. Not in a polished, motivational sense, but in the difficult way real people become. Through loss. Through memory. Through family. Through mistakes. Through the version of themselves they are still trying to reach.
For Gibbons, that journey begins in fantasy, but it does not stay there. It reaches back toward the reader’s own life. Everyone has a first self, shaped by what happened. Everyone has a second self, trying to move through the present. And everyone, whether they name it or not, carries a third self somewhere ahead.
That is the promise of My Third Self. It is not only asking readers to enter another world. It is asking them to consider who they are still becoming.
