Writing about violence, especially in a series for young adults, is a choice that carries a lot of weight. It would be easy to fill the pages with cool-sounding firefights and consequence-free explosions, but that was never the story I wanted to tell in The Neskan Chronicles. I never set out to glorify violence, but to instead explore its true, often terrible, cost and its impact on the people forced to use it.
In The Neskan Chronicles, our hero Adan doesn’t start out as a warrior. He’s just a marginalized kid from a rundown neighborhood whose first instinct is finding ways to avoid fighting. Early in the series, he actively refuses to kill a potentially powerful adversary even when he’s given the clear, tactical opportunity, choosing a difficult mercy over an easy kill. When violence is inevitably forced upon him, it becomes a source of trauma that leaves deep, psychological scars—the nightmares that jolt him awake in a cold sweat, the constant flinching at sudden noises, the heavy, unshakable guilt for the lives he has taken, even when completely justified.
Showing those scars is important. So often in genre fiction, our heroes can walk away from a deadly firefight with a witty one-liner to begin the next scene. But real violence doesn’t work that way. It’s costly. Showing the impact of Adan’s trauma and PTSD grounds his journey in a sense of emotional reality. For Adan, violence is never cool or free of consequence. It’s a terrible weight he’s forced to carry, shaping every decision he makes afterward. Instead of being a simple power-up, his eventual hardening becomes a tragic necessity born from the damage he’s already sustained.
But Adan’s personal reluctance to inflict harm is constantly at odds with the world he lives in. His former home is a fascist state that uses violence as its primary tool of control. His journeys across Neska, while filled with some of the warmest, kindest people imaginable, also brought him to the doorstep of some genuinely awful people willing to attack him, kidnap his friends, and use threats of violence to ensure his compliance. This created a central, tragic question for the series: what do good people do when faced with an enemy that will only respond to violence? While noble, non-violent resistance is often met with brutal, overwhelming force, forcing Adan and his friends to make impossible choices in the name of simple survival. Those experiences taught him that sometimes, violence can only be met with violence, and that his own hesitation could be a deadly liability to the people he was trying to protect.
Adan’s evolution from a simple laundry worker to a capable soldier is central to his story. But, in the end, he’s still who he is, learning to be thoughtful in his tactics and decisive in his actions without descending into thoughtless brutality. The key to grounding his growth was forcing him to confront the unintended and often painful consequences his actions have on others.
Violence is never clean, and a rebellion is never bloodless, especially for the innocent. The cost of fighting back isn’t just Adan’s personal trauma, but the heavy weight of the collateral damage his choices create. This constant awareness of the cost to others is what separates him from his adversaries. He accepts violence as a grim necessity, but he carries the burden of its terrible ripple effects. It’s his struggle with these consequences that keeps him grounded and prevents him from becoming the very monster he’s fighting. He remains a hero not because he’s a perfect soldier, but because he never stops seeing the faces of the people caught in the crossfire.
While violence can become a necessity, it isn’t always the only answer. Adan is constantly wrestling with this choice. His greatest moments of growth as a leader often come when he has the power to solve a problem with overwhelming force—like during a tense standoff with the Motari leaders—but instead chooses de-escalation and trust. There are sometimes still alternatives to brute force, and true strength lies in knowing the best tool to use for the job.
The victory in this story is won as much by other forms of resistance as it is by any battle. It’s won by intricate spycraft, risky political maneuvering from inside the system, and the quiet, essential courage of allies who offer shelter and skill at immense personal risk. The most powerful blow Adan strikes in the final act isn’t with a blaster, but with his voice, in a broadcast that sparks a rebellion of the heart.
That’s what makes Adan a hero. It’s the scars he carries. It’s his struggle to understand that while some enemies must be met with force, violence isn’t the only way to fight back. And most importantly, it’s his constant, painful awareness of the cost of his actions, both to himself and to the innocent people caught in the crossfire. A hero isn’t someone who’s good at violence. They’re someone who understands its terrible price and still chooses to pay it for the chance at a better world.