Ralph Harris

Science Fiction & FantasyFantasy

Soulkeeper

Review by Ralph Harris

Soulkeeper by David Dalglish is a nearly perfect representation of a game of Dungeons & Dragons come to life. A fighter, wizard, cleric and a rogue encounter dragons, magic and much more within the pages of Dalglish’s delightful romp. Tension and action set in right from the beginning of Devin the Soulkeeper’s journey, and the overall sense of unease permeates the book throughout.

Soulkeepers are a group of extremely cool coroner/pastors responsible for the literal ascension of souls into heaven. Oh—they also burn the bodies on a pyre when the process is complete, if they were not cool enough already. Every classic fantasy trope can be found in Soulkeeper’s world, called the Cradle, each with its own twist. Faeries are wrought from stone, clerics wear porcelain doll masks and members of the religious order are called Keepers. A new, dangerous wrinkle is added when ancient forces and dangerous magic begins to awaken, placing the entire world in danger and forcing Devin to add “monster slayer” to his list of duties.

Soulkeeper is an excellent companion to rainy March days, despite the fact that Dalglish does not shy away from vividly described gore and violence. In the span of twenty pages, Dalglish allows his characters to enjoy days of uninterrupted, wholesome fun and incredible bouts of depression and anxiety. One might think that such quick swings would cause emotional whiplash, but Dalglish handles the pacing well, creating genuine characters with realistic emotional depth. Each protagonist is goodhearted and caring in a way that is increasingly rare in the era of “Game of Thrones” and “The Walking Dead,” and I often found myself chuckling or snickering at Dalglish’s lowbrow humor.

Dalglish wears his influences on his sleeve throughout the story, pulling from Lord of the Rings and R.A. Salvatore to craft a complex, highly developed systems that serve as the backbone of his world. As a veteran player of tabletop role-playing games, I can easily imagine that Dalglish either built a system of rules that his world runs on or that he took inspiration from rule intensive games like Magic: The Gathering or Pathfinder. Either way, the result is that the magic of Soulkeeper is grounded and consistent.

I found myself chewing through the story, eager to see the next turn in each subplot. I often wish I could forget all my memories of playing Dungeons & Dragons, just so I could experience the first time playing again. Soulkeeper brought me back to the nostalgia I had during that first game of Dungeons & Dragons: a sense of wonder, exploration and camaraderie difficult to find anywhere else.

Soulkeeper by David Dalglish is a delightful romp, a nearly perfect representation of a game of Dungeons & Dragons come to life.

Science Fiction & FantasyScience Fiction

The City in the Middle of the Night

Review by Ralph Harris

Charlie Jane Anders hurls her latest book, The City in the Middle of the Night, against the boundary of imagination with her strange, beautiful alien world. Anders re-maps modern English onto new science fiction concepts and creatures, and begins the novel with a fictional translator’s note alerting the read that the text of The City in the Middle of the Night will use well known creatures and terms in lieu of the alien, helping to ease the jump into a world wildly different from our own. In theory, this seems wild and confusing but in practice, Anders’ stylistic chocie helps the reader understand the strange lives led on the planet January. Crocodiles are definitely not crocodiles, I would not suggest trying to ride their cats, and most food is likely nothing like its terrestrial counterpart.

One side of January permanently faces the local star and one side faces entirely away. A thin band of land between “day” and “night” provides a barely hospitable patch for the human colonists. In this narrow band of life, humans struggle to regulate their sleep and wakefulness. When inadvertent revolutionary Sophie is banished into the bleak wilderness outside her city, her life is saved by the mysterious aliens who roam January’s surface and what she learns from them may change the planet’s society forever.

Time is a key theme of Anders’ novel—the human settlements visited by the two main characters, Sophie and Mouth, are defined by how they structure life around the endless dusk. Anders masterfully constructs both settings, using her protagonists’ reaction to the flow of time in each city to paint a different kind of claustrophobia. I never thought I would describe a book as painting a story entirely in different shades of anxiety, but Anders nails the feelings of claustrophobia, fear of acceptance, inferiority and loss of identity all in the span of 360 pages.

No character in the story is “likeable,” but all of them are incredibly relatable. The awkward relationship between Sophie and her best friend/love interest, Mouth’s aggressively territorial protection and ownership of her birth culture, and several other character specific conflicts are handled with tact and painful accuracy. My interest in continuing the story hinged completely on the intricate setpieces and the air of mystery surrounding the alien life on January—on both points, Anders overdelivers.

The City in the Middle of the Night does not end cleanly, and perhaps it’s fitting that a story so well grounded in realistic and relatable protagonists ends with such an unsatisfying tilt. In this novel, Anders has lovingly crafted a unique world, and finishes with a wild twist that left me endlessly interested in the next book of the series.

Charlie Jane Anders hurls her latest book, The City in the Middle of the Night, against the boundaries of imagination with her strange, beautiful alien world.

Science Fiction & FantasyHistorical FantasyFantasy

The Winter of the Witch

Review by Ralph Harris

A three minute jaunt into your local bookstore will reveal a plethora of books detailing the lives of young, magically gifted girls, but no author marches her gifted protagonist through trials (and oppressive Russian winters) like Katherine Arden. From the beginning of her Winternight trilogy, Vasilisa Petrovna has been constantly bombarded with tragedy, and Arden’s conclusion, The Winter of the Witch, is no different. Quite literally burned, battered and cursed with broken ribs, Vasilisa has been thrust into the public spotlight. And contrary to the previous entries in the trilogy, she cannot escape the dangerous attention of men and chyerti this time around.

Finding a place to live in the world of Orthodox Russia has been difficult for Vasilisa, and her final quest for power and responsibility is marked with copious opposition. Even after emerging victorious over each foe she has encountered, Vasilisa must endure Bruce Willis in Die Hard-levels of abuse to reach her goals, with little to no reprieve. Seemingly in pace with her injuries, Vasilisa also exponentially expands in power, adding several spheres of power to her magical portfolio. Many of these tricks and explosive flashes come with particularly satisfying payoffs.

The Russian language can confuse Anglophone readers (looking at you, Doctor Zhivago), so Arden has added in several detailed notes about Russian names and a glossary of terms to help the unfamiliar. With a fluid incorporation of Russian diminutives and references, Arden wonderfully blends Russian culture into her novel. Conversations are brought to life in a realistic and relatable fashion, even when half the participants are devilish fey creatures.

Arden also embraces another commonly Russian trait in her writing: stoicism. Arden’s entire cadre of fictional actors constantly shrug off the weight of the horrors they bear, pushing themselves to a new edge. There is no commentary on the value of ignoring grief, no celebration of their grit. Just an acknowledgement of humanity’s inevitable tendency to ignore the wounds we incur, physical or otherwise. But when a character does, eventually, break down, they find themselves comforted, allowed to mourn. This respect for grief is rare, and well written in The Winter of the Witch. Seeing characters agonize over their past scars brings a true depth to even the most vile among them. While understanding a tragic backstory can help a reader sympathize, seeing a person or character truly suffer invokes empathy (even within my cold, dead heart).

To readers of the previous books, there is no spoiler in revealing that the end is not perfectly happy. Arden does go out of her way to wrap nearly every loose end the series has set up, and therein lies my only criticism. Arden writes the mystical and mysterious forces of her fey world well, and keeps the reader engaged with its mysteries. But in answering almost every possible question I could have had, Arden removes that mysticism from the setting. Some readers may find they like a tidy ending, but for a book fraught with sacrifice and cost at every turn, I would have liked to see an ending just as messy.

However, The Winter of the Witch was a fantastic way to end my literary year (as this reviewer read it in the last weeks of 2018), and I would highly recommend it. Arden explores the line between paganism and Christianity in a way that lends respect and power to each, which is especially amplified in her impressive final installment of the trilogy. Vasilisa is a heroine worth rooting for and her final story is just as impressive.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our Q&A with Katherine Arden about The Winter of the Witch.

A three minute jaunt into your local bookstore will reveal a plethora of books detailing the lives of young, magically gifted girls, but no author marches her gifted protagonist through trials (and oppressive Russian winters) like Katherine Arden. From the beginning of her Winternight trilogy, Vasilisa Petrovna has been constantly bombarded with tragedy, and Arden’s conclusion, The Winter of the Witch, is no different. Quite literally burned, battered and cursed with broken ribs, Vasilisa has been thrust into the public spotlight. And contrary to the previous entries in the trilogy, she cannot escape the dangerous attention of men and chyerti this time around.

Science Fiction & FantasyScience Fiction

Restless Lightning

Review by Ralph Harris

Vanilla ice cream gets a bad reputation. Most would consider it secondary—a side dish to better, richer flavors. But on the contrary, vanilla ice cream does one thing better than anything else: simplify an experience down to its best attributes. Vanilla ice cream is sweet, smooth and, most importantly, tastes exactly as expected, every time.

Richard Baker’s Restless Lightning is a wonderful, delectable bucket of vanilla ice cream, set in an idealistic vision of a future age of space exploration. Baker is not afraid to flood the reader with alien and military lingo, flexing twenty-five years of experience designing tabletop role playing games for industry titan Wizards of the Coast. The dearth of unexplained vocabulary avoids obstructing the flow of the story, instead creating a pseudo-realistic atmosphere a la “Star Trek.”

As the book opens, our hero, Lieutenant Commander Sikander North, finds himself assigned to a backwater station, set up as a diplomatic agent to a race of fishlike beings called Tzoru. The Tzoru are a civilization that has traveled the stars since before humans built pyramids. Tradition and peace have made them a bastion of stability, but the Tzoru way of life is changing faster than they can adapt. Unrest follows, tossing North and his intelligent romantic interest, Dr. Lara Dunstan, into the center of the action.

Combat breaks up the rising political strife, and Baker depicts space combat into a more naval, less Star Wars-style dogfight, experience. Ships line up in formation, forty thousand kilometers away from each other, firing broadside mounted “K-Cannons” at extremely calculated angles. Baker has a knack for writing each encounter in an interesting, dynamic way, without succumbing to bombastic explosive indulgence or boring mechanical descriptions.

Restless Lightning is not going to shake the foundation of science fiction. Instead, amidst a slew of gritty genre offerings like “Game of Thrones” or “Altered Carbon,” this book takes a rose-colored detour to a universe where every character has the best intentions. The most evil character, on a scale from one (least evil) to ten (most evil), ranks at a solid “high school bully” level of malicious intent. Even the main character’s relatively bumbling attitude is endearing; while clearly not suited to be an intelligence officer, North’s struggle to prove his worth is certainly worth cheering for.

In fact, the only weak aspects of this novel are some poorly timed flashback sequences, where Sikander North faces demons of his past. These sequences try to bring depth to North as a protagonist, but unfortunately end up hurting the story’s otherwise smooth plot. These sections are thankfully few and far between.

Four hundred pages later, Baker’s space romp concludes with a space battle, foot chase and an explosion, as it should. Wrapped up in a pretty pink bow, Restless Lightning is a fun fireside read, perfect to break up the stresses of everyday life.

Richard Baker’s Restless Lightning is a wonderful, delectable bucket of vanilla ice cream, set in an idealistic vision of a future age of space exploration.

Science Fiction & FantasyHistorical FantasyFantasy

Katherine Arden

Interview by Ralph Harris

With The Winter of the Witch, bestselling author Katherine Arden has crafted an utterly fantastic, truly satisfying end to her Winternight trilogy. Fans who have fallen in love with the fantasy series’ stalwart, magically gifted heroine Vasilisa Petrovna will be thrilled to return to Arden’s fairy-tale vision of medieval Russia, where the wonder of the setting is undercut by danger at every turn. We talked to Arden about completing her first trilogy, the roots of her love for Russian folktales and culture, and why she can’t stick to an outline.

You are about to complete your first published trilogy. How do you feel?
I’m feeling a lot of relief and excitement. I started the Winternight trilogy in 2011, and I knew how I wanted the first book to begin, and I knew how I wanted the last book to end, but I wasn’t totally sure what was going to happen in the middle. I didn’t know anything about writing trilogies, and I am not the best at outlining, so I had to get it right mostly by trial and error. There were times, honestly, when I was sure I wouldn’t get it right, and I had to just power through that feeling.

As a writer, the fact that all three books make sense, follow an overarching plot arc for the trilogy, have individual arcs for each book and resolve the three major intertwining conflicts of the story, is just amazing to me and I am proud of myself for pulling it off. No one wants to disappoint their readers, and, especially for the final book, I knew I had to stick the landing. The Winter of the Witch does so, I believe, and that is satisfying.

I am also so very excited for readers to be able to read the end of the story. The three novels of the trilogy are set back-to-back, so really they form one giant narrative, and I feel like you have to read all three books to get a sense of the whole design, and I am excited for fans of the series to be able to experience that.

Many of us are very unfamiliar with Russian folklore. Could you go into some detail about how and why you chose to set your books in Russia and heavily root them in its fairy tale history?
I was a Russian major in college and studied abroad in Moscow when I was 19, and again when I was 22. I had always loved books based on fairy tales, and when I decided to try my hand at a novel, writing a book based on a Russian fairy tale seemed sensible. I based the books in historical Russia because I wanted to add a sense of realism that history can give. I wanted my books to be clearly set in Russia, not a Russia-coded fantasy land. That was part of the reason I chose the Middle Ages, a time before the Tsars, before onion domes, and samovars and troikas, and all the clichés that we associate with Russia. I wanted to approach the subject from an unusual angle that might make people reconsider their Russian stereotypes. Also, the Middle Ages in Muscovy are not well documented, and it was easier, in that setting, to create a sense of possibility, that history and myth could coexist.

Other than the ones directly referenced, are there any fairy tales that you think we should read to gain some context?
The ones directly referenced in the text are the fairy tales King Frost (Morozko), The Snow-Maiden and Marya Morevna. There are also indirect references to Vasilisa the Wise, Vasilisa the Beautiful, Ivan and the Firebird, Koschei the Deathless, Finist the Falcon, and Ivanushka and Alyonushka. There might be more that I’m not recalling; all three books are full of fairy-tale easter eggs, for people who are into that sort of thing. I’d recommend reading an anthology of Russian fairy tales—it is absolutely worth it.

Vasya cannot seem to catch a break. She even starts this book with burns and a broken rib! Why do you hurt her so?
I’m not sure people would read 400 pages about Vasya just frolicking happily in the woods with her magic horse, although perhaps I’m wrong.

The magic in Vasya’s Russia is very mystical, like tugging on the strings of the forces of nature, with a few notable exceptions like Kasyan and Vasya’s ice knives. Did you decide on a specific system of magic, or did you intend for the nature of magic in your books to be more loosely interpreted?
I wanted magic to be about how people view reality. The more plastic your view of reality, the more plastic reality becomes. But the downside is if you go too far in that direction, you have no sense of what is real at all and start to go insane. So it’s not a system so much as a trick of viewing the world. And it felt very real to me. I think a lot of what we are able to do in life depends on our starting view of reality.

Any plans to return to Vasya and company in the future? What about a different story also set in Russia?
Not currently. I would love to do a fairy tale collection at some point, either in translation or original, but I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. I am sure I will revisit Russia in future novels, even if they are not about Vasilisa.

What are you reading? Have there been any specific books that helped inspire this trilogy?
Right now I’m reading The Kingdom of Copper, which is out soon, and I am really enjoying the second installment in Daevabad trilogy. I love the fairy tale retellings of Robin McKinley, and those really inspired me. Also Pushkin, Bulgakov, Gogol, Lermontov—the great Russian writers who mix realism, Russian folklore and fantasy. Another writer who inspired me is Dorothy Dunnett, whose historical fiction is both richly textured and incredibly intricately plotted.

Your recent middle-grade novel Small Spaces was a significant departure from your trilogy, but it was still playing with some of the same eerie themes. What did you enjoy about writing a novel for children?
It was a break. It was a chance to use a different voice, to set a book in the present day, to not have to do extensive research, to set myself a technical challenge (being scary but not gory) and to just have fun with writing. Your imagination is like a little kid: force it to do the same thing all the time and it gets stale and resentful. Every author, I think, really benefits from changing it up and I certainly did. It’s also great talking to young readers. Kids experience books in a more immediate way than adults, and it is so fun to see someone taking in your work in that way.

How do you write your books? What does your process look like?
Sit down with a notebook and pen and see what happens. I wish I could be more systematic, but part of my process is letting the process surprise me. I do a lot of research concurrent with writing, and the research informs the writing. I might scribble an outline halfway through, but then I don’t stick to it. Not for lack of trying, it just never seems to work.

If you could tell a reader to remember one thing while reading The Winter of the Witch, what would it be?
That no one is wholly good or wholly evil and we are all human.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of The Winter of the Witch.

Author photo © Deverie Crystal Photography.

With The Winter of the Witch, Katherine Arden has crafted an utterly fantastic, truly satisfying end to her Winternight trilogy. Fans who have fallen in love with stalwart, magically gifted heroine Vasilisa Petrovna will be thrilled to return to Arden’s fairy tale vision of medieval Russia, the wonder of which is undercut by danger at every turn. We talked to Arden about completing her first trilogy, the roots of her love for Russian folktales and culture, and why she can’t stick to an outline.

Science Fiction & FantasyScience Fiction

Stina Leicht

Interview by Ralph Harris

Fantasy author Stina Leicht makes her science fiction debut with the rollicking Persephone Station, which follows a crime lord with a heart of gold and a mercenary who team up to protect a pacificist alien species from a ruthless corporation. We talked to Leicht about making the shift between genres, how she devised the unique characters that populate her world and more.

Persephone Station is your first science fiction novel. What inspired you to switch from writing fantasy and what did you enjoy about sci-fi? Was there anything from fantasy that you missed?
My editor asked me if I had any ideas for a science fiction novel. No, really. That’s the whole story. I’ve been into SF since I discovered Star Trek at age 4. Now, ask me why I didn’t start with science fiction.

The Boys Club.

After decades of hearing that women can’t write science fiction and all the snide comments about “hard” versus “soft” SF . . . *eyeroll* well . . . the prospect was unappealing. I might even use the word intimidating. So, I wrote fantasy first. Of course, when I think back on it now, I don’t know why I thought SF would be more terrifying than writing about the troubles in Northern Ireland. Fear doesn’t have to make sense, I guess.

What I enjoy most about SF is the optimism—the thought that humanity will still be kicking in 300 years or whatever. I love thinking that we’ll come up with some way to stop killing the planet and, thus, ourselves. I want to believe that we’ll solve hunger and the problem of unequal opportunity and provide education for everyone. If everyone gets a shot at living up to their potential, we all benefit. And I guess you know why Star Trek is my favorite. Mind you, I enjoy the action/thriller stuff too. Clearly.

"I didn’t want the aliens to be perfect victims—no one is a perfect anything."

Anyway, writing SF versus writing fantasy isn’t that different. Technically, they both fall under surrealism. You have to focus on getting different details right, of course. For that reason, there’s nothing to miss. It’s not like I can’t go back to writing fantasy. I even indulge in horror sometimes. Having range as a writer is a good thing.

Do you plan to write a sequel, or more science fiction in general?
In my experience, sequels depend upon the publisher and how many copies are sold. I’d love to write more novels and stories set in this world, but I have to wait and see how Persephone Station does. Mind you, I’m already working on a new science fiction novel. I think I’ll be hanging out in this end of the genre pool for a while.

How did you come up with the idea of the Emissaries?
When I sat down to write Persephone Station, I wanted to write something feminist. The setting, the characters, the aliens—I wanted them all to mean something. I like building layers into stories. I’m a rereader, and it’s fun to find something new in a story that I like. That’s why I prefer to craft the surface parts (action, characters, dialogue) that make the story fun and, then provide the more cerebral bits that a reader can get into. But you don’t have to pay attention to the thinky parts to enjoy the story.

So I gave the aliens stereotypically feminine qualities. Their purpose for existing is to serve as mediators and peacemakers. They’re strongly discouraged from aggression. (If you don’t think these are feminine qualities, I invite you to observe a women’s martial arts class. Instructors often struggle to get the average woman comfortable with hitting another person.) A majority of women’s labor is unseen, unappreciated and unpaid, including house cleaning, care work, cooking, laundry and so on. Historically, men have taken credit for women’s creations, too. Finally, as a teen girl, I felt all this pressure to transform myself into whatever it was the male in my life desired. Boyfriend is into country music? Listen to country music. Boyfriend is into tabletop games? Be into tabletop games. I didn’t give much thought to what I wanted for the longest time. The young men I was with weren’t interested in what I wanted either.

I didn’t want the aliens to be perfect victims—no one is a perfect anything. So I made the Emissaries powerfully passive-aggressive. Because I live in the South and passive-aggressive is peak femme.

Your characters have such a jovial sense of fellowship to them, and the pacing of the story feels like a tabletop roleplaying game like Dungeons and Dragons. Was this intentional? Do you play tabletop roleplaying games?
Ha! I learned from the Sir Terry Pratchett school of character and dialog. So I didn’t have RPGs in mind at all. I do play and have for decades, but the pacing should be standard action/adventure pacing because that’s what the plot is based on. But that’s just me.

Kennedy was one of my favorite characters. What did you like most about writing her?
It’s interesting to me how much computer terminology and metaphor are used to describe human brain functions. However, structurally and functionally, they’re not even remotely close. For that reason, Kennedy is one of my favorites, too. She’s basically my Tin Man/Data character—so sincere. She’s all heart and extremely intelligent. As an electronic being with programmed empathy, she needed to live in the emotional equivalent of an uncanny valley. (Just not so much as to make her unlikeable.) She’s a newborn in a way. Physical experience is wondrous to her. Still not sure I carried that off, but that was the idea.

 

What do you do to find inspiration? Do any of your characters have a fun story behind their inception?
I’m a big fan of observing and experiencing life. Long walks with my husband are great—he’s extremely funny. Travel is inspiring too. Listening to ordinary people chat with one another. That kind of thing. I love wandering through junk shops and thinking about what the people who owned the things there were like. I also study how other writers write characters. I like people. I suspect you have to if you’re going to write about people. Sometimes I borrow qualities from people I know—no character is 100% anyone I know in real life. That wouldn’t be right. And I only use names and qualities from people I like. I don’t believe it’s ethical to put anyone you dislike into a story. It feels creepy, you know? Comedy is another influence. My favorite films contain snappy dialogue. Have you seen The Thin Man? Good stuff.

The way my imagination works is I start with a person and then I follow them around in my mind. It’s the same thing as daydreaming. Usually, they’re happy to tell me all about themselves. That’s great until you end up with a tight-lipped character or a character that behaves a certain way and refuses to explain why. For example, when I wrote Of Blood and Honey, Mary Kate kept apologizing about the baby. It made no sense. None of what happened was her fault, but she wouldn’t stop apologizing. So I paused the scene in my mind and asked. And that was when I found out that she’d been pregnant before. That was amazing.

Do you typically write in long, protracted sessions or in quick bursts? Or another way altogether?
Each story or novel is a bit different. I’ve written shorter works all in one go. Last Drink Bird Head was like that. Usually it happens in chunks. Five hundred words here. Two thousand words there. Writing requires persistence.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of Persephone Station.

How have you been holding up in the pandemic? Has it affected your writing process?
Like everyone, it’s affected how much bandwidth I have for creativity. In spite of the mythology around the creative arts—people who are in insecure situations with tons of drama do not do their best work. Creativity requires safety and security. It has to be OK to make mistakes. If you’re worried about whether or not you’re going to eat or be homeless, you’re not going to be very creative because you’ll be under too much pressure. (And that’s why turning a hobby into a profession can sometimes kill your love of it.) I’m super lucky. I’ve a stable home life. My husband rocks. We’ve been married for 19 years and we get along great. That said, anxiety takes up a lot of headspace, and I’m an Olympic-class worrier, but you have to push on.

What are you looking forward to in 2021?
Honestly? The vaccine. I can’t wait until everyone gets the vaccine. Being able to write in a coffee shop again would be amazing. I miss bookstores and movie theaters more than just about anything. Traveling would be lovely too. But above all else—I’m looking forward to there not being hundreds of thousands of deaths in the news. I want everyone to be safe, healthy and happy.

Fantasy author Stina Leicht makes her science fiction debut with the rollicking Persephone Station.

Science Fiction & FantasyFantasy

Marina Lostetter

Interview by Ralph Harris

Marina Lostetter lures readers in to her complex new fantasy with a killer premise: a death mask imbued with the knowledge and personality of a serial killer has been stolen. We talked to Lostetter about how she developed her alchemy-inspired magic system, why The Helm of Midnight needed to be told from three different perspectives and more.

Your past work has been in the realm of hard science fiction. What led you to write your first fantasy novel? Was there anything that surprised you about writing in this genre?
I've always dabbled in both sci-fi and fantasy in my short fiction, and the first draft of The Helm of Midnight was about halfway done when Noumenon went out on submission, so in some of ways I think of it as my second novel, rather than my fourth.

I think secondary-world fantasy's greatest strength is also its biggest challenge. The author is responsible for every aspect of the world. So, when I'm writing it, I get to break free from reality, but there's also no real leaning on reality. For example, if a government functions a certain way, it's because I chose for it to function that way, not because it just does. And I can use a lot more short-hand in sci-fi, because there are real-world touchstones I can reference directly. In fantasy, if I want to use cultural touchstones, I have to establish them first.

Is there another subgenre of SFF that you haven't explored yet that you would like to? And are there any that you have no interest in?
I'm a very never-say-never kind of writer when it comes to dabbling in different genres. I like to keep my options open and play around. I have an alternate-history novel with giant monsters and dieselpunk aspects that's been sitting half done on my hard drive for a while, and I would love to be able to get it out into the world one day.

"To paraphrase Dickens: Charbon, the serial killer, is dead to begin with."

The setting of The Helm of Midnight is elaborately detailed. What is your approach to world building? Where and how does a world begin to take shape for you?
My world building is a tad haphazard in early drafting. I usually only have a tentative grasp on the rules I'm trying to put in place, and end up just throwing in fun things that I later either change to conform to the rules or reform the rules around. The Helm of Midnight was especially challenging world building-wise, because I knew from early on that I wanted hidden history to be a big part of it. Which, essentially, meant I had to world build in layers.

In your magic system, people can bottle and harness emotions, thoughts and time. Do you remember how you first came up with this idea?
The Helm of Midnight incorporates one of my previously published short stories, which features the knowledge-based and time-based magic. When I expanded the world and integrated that short story into a new plot, I wanted to expand the magic system as well. Since the system already focused on enchantments, I decided the magic itself should be mined and harvested from different materials: knowledge magic is in wood, time magic is in sand/glass, nature magic—which is characterized by evolution and transference—is in metals and emotion-based magic is in gemstones.

If you had the chance, would you like to have such powers yourself?
I think any of these enchantments would be great to have—save for the fact that I know how they're made. Let's just say Arkensyre's enchantments are not responsibly sourced.

What was your inspiration for the five-pointed, multi-gendered pantheon?
I hadn't yet built a religion for the Valley of Arkensyre when I expanded the magic system into five magics, and it felt natural to assign each kind of magic to a god. You'll notice above that I only mention four kinds of magic, and that's because when we're first introduced to the world in The Helm of Midnight, one god and their magic-type is unknown. I chose to have a five-gendered pantheon because I wanted to highlight that many genderized aspects of culture are constructions. Five gods with five genders means it's natural for the people of Helm's world to treat gender more like a spectrum, and to reflect their pantheon by using any of the five gods' pronouns for themselves.

The Helm of Midnight is written from three perspectives, all of which take place in different timelines. What was challenging about such a complicated structure? Why was this approach the best way to tell this story?
Each character has their own journey, and the three perspectives end up converging with all the force of planets colliding—which was very exciting for me to write, and I hope is equally exciting to read!

To paraphrase Dickens: Charbon, the serial killer, is dead to begin with. The novel kicks off when his death mask—imbued with his knowledge and an echo of his personality—is stolen. Knowing how and why he began killing prior to his death is essential to grasping what's really going on in Arkensyre Valley. Krona is a Regulator, tasked with re-containing his mask. Hers is the present-day perspective and really gives us a baseline understanding of how society is "supposed" to work. It's Melanie who feels like the odd one out at first. Her storyline might initially seem divorced from the other two, but the entire narrative hinges on her and her bizarre encounters with magic.

Essentially, it took three perspectives across three timelines because there are aspects of the story that are outside each character's purview. The audience is getting the full story, not the individual characters.

Melanie's point of view was the only one that gave me any problems structure-wise, which I think stems from the fact that her perspective is the one that incorporates the original short story. It was also a bit of a challenge to make sure all three perspectives wove together in a way that made each chapter in a new point of view naturally flow from the last.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our starred review of The Helm of Midnight.

What's one thing you would suggest a reader keep in mind as they read this book?
Each character is moving through the narrative acting on what they believe to be true, rather than what is true.

What's next for you?
I have another book coming out this year! Activation Degradation will be released on September 28, 2021. It's a thriller-esque sci-fi novel set in Jovian space, featuring soft robots, queer space pirates, action-adventure and unreliable narration.

 

Author photo © Jeff Nelson.

Marina Lostetter lures readers in to her complex new fantasy with a killer premise: a death mask imbued with the knowledge and personality of a serial killer has been stolen.

Science Fiction & FantasyHistorical FantasyFantasy

P. Djèlí Clark

Interview by Ralph Harris

In P. Djèlí Clark’s A Master of Djinn, the world was forever changed in 1872 when a man named Al-Jahiz opened a portal to another world and let all manner of magic into our own. Decades later, someone claiming to be Al-Jahiz returns from the dead goes on a murderous rampage through Cairo, threatening both the delicate balance between the world powers and the uneasy accord between humans and the supernatural. We talked to Clark about the inspirations behind his alternate history.

I love the world you've created! How do you start world building at the very beginning of a project? Was there any specific moment or image that kickstarted your vision of an alternate Cairo?
Thank you! I think for this world—what I think is now called the Dead Djinn universe—the idea began with an image in my head of the main character, Fatma, in the suit and a dead djinn hovering over her. Who knows what made me dream that up? But once it was there, I needed to figure it out. Who was this person? Was this a detective story? Maybe she’s a detective. No, maybe she’s an agent. OK, what’s with the dead djinn? What’s even the larger mystery here? And it went on and on like that, until I had a story.

Egyptian mythology (among other African and Middle Eastern cultures) has a strong influence in this book. Was there any specific work that inspired you? What draws you to the stories of that corner of the world?
My earliest years growing up, I was exposed to a lot of Afro-Caribbean folklore, Hindu cosmology and Muslim festivals (like Hosay)—part of my environment. So the non-“Occidental” has always been part of my lived experience. And I think I’ve always found myself searching for it, no matter where I’ve ended up.

"I didn’t have a plan for writing anything else here after my short story 'A Dead Djinn in Cairo.' It was the reception by readers that inspired me to do more."

Fatma, Siti and Hadia are such fun characters to see interact. How do you approach writing dynamic conversations?
With all characters, I try to imagine how they would approach a situation or react to others. I think of them the way I would real people, with certain personality traits, habits, quirks, etc. So when Siti says something, I ask myself how Fatma would respond, or Hadia. And I just try to stay true to who they are.

Dr. Hoda is my favorite side character so far, so I have to ask—will she get her assistant?
LOL. Great question. I like side characters like Dr. Hoda precisely because they leave the door open to revisit them later. In the meantime, if I can get readers to identify with them (despite their limited presence) and see them as characters with depth, I’m happy.

Is there anything from your personal life you drew on to write this book? Or do you prefer not to think consciously about what parts of your life go into your work?
There are parts that are based heavily on my memories of visiting Cairo. And certainly, I pulled from themes and issues in my head at the time I was writing. The Dead Djinn world as a nod to anti-colonialism reflects much of my own personal bias. But overall, the characters and whatnot have their own experiences and lives that are quite separate from my own. Also, I haven’t yet actually seen a djinn.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of A Master of Djinn.

Do you want to continue writing stories in this world? If so, do you have a plan for how many more books you would like to write, or will you just see where the story takes you?
Plan? No plans here. I didn’t have a plan for writing anything else here after my short story “A Dead Djinn in Cairo.” It was the reception by readers that inspired me to do more. Fortunately, because I enjoy world building, I always leave myself different doors and paths to explore. So, I don’t have anything yet in mind. But who knows?

What have you read and loved recently?
I am reading Creatures of Passage by Morowa Yejidé. The prose and imagination are magnificent!

What else are you working on?
A project I’m not yet supposed to talk about. But let’s just say, I may be writing for a decidedly younger audience. Though the rest of you are welcome to come along, too.

What do you want the reader to walk away with after reading A Master of Djinn?
A satisfied smile. And a hunger for Egyptian street food.

In P. Djèlí Clark’s A Master of Djinn, the world was forever changed in 1872 when a man named Al-Jahiz opened a portal to another world.

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