Ah. And apparently I misremembered things. Minor continuity glitches, but it could still effectively work as a prequel.
As regards the standalone series, I highly enjoyed the first three. The fourth one, Dire: Wars loses a few points for effectively ignoring the reveal of the third book but I dig the idea of Dire picking up an entire Third World country and facing issues from superpowers (including the United States) who profited from having the dictator under their thumb no matter their atrocities. The fifth book, Dire: Sins had some good ideas and world-building, but had too much Unspoken Plot Guarantee for me. The sixth book narrates the scenario stated in Dire: Worm of Dire taking on the Judeochristian Devil and I just didn't enjoy it that much. It was an interesting interpretation of Hell as an ecosystem, but the plot fell flat for me, and Dire came off as too over-powered.
I've been following on with The Dire Saga books for a while (I think I got introduced to it via a free EBook of the first book, 'Dire: Born' and I've been buying them ever since), and recently learned that there are more parts to Dire Worm! posted than I was aware of (I think I lost track of it with the forum switch from Space Battles to Sufficient Velocity). It's really amusing to read the fanfic with the benefit of further knowledge from the standalone novels (which are technically prequels... maybe. So far, things are mostly in continuity).
Edited by FuzzyBoots on Sep 2nd 2018 at 9:57:02 AM