The Raverran Empire is like Venice, but with same-sex marriage and fire warlocks. Galitha City is a bustling metropolis on the cusp of revolution where you can buy a charmed dress to make you lucky in love. Melissa Caruso’s The Defiant Heir and Rowenna Miller’s Torn have some of the most beautifully realized settings in fantasy, places where courtly intrigue and gowns matter just as much as magical powers and threats of invasion.

The second book in Caruso’s Swords and Fire trilogy, The Defiant Heir, follows Lady Amalia Cornaro and the powerful mage Zaira as they try to prevent a cataclysmic war between the empire and the Witch Lords of Vaskandar. Miller’s heroine, Sophia, finds herself in a similar position in Torn, as she balances the demands of her firebrand reformer brother and noble customers as tensions in the city approach a boiling point. We talked to Caruso and Miller about living vicariously through world building, putting their characters in danger and fighting in a ballgown.

You both have fantasy worlds with several different nationalities that intersect with each other in such interesting ways. Where did you go for inspiration about culture when you were writing your books?
Melissa Caruso: The setting of the Swords and Fire trilogy is loosely based on the Venetian Empire. I’ve wanted to write a book set in a fantasy version of Venice ever since first visiting that magical and unique city, and it provided the inspiration for Raverra, the city in which much of the first book is set. It also doomed me to many hours researching 17th-century Italian cuisine and salivating over delicious food I can’t have! (Uh, and other research, but the food may have made the greatest impression.) Some of the other cultures in the series are less directly inspired by the real world, most notably Vaskandar, which you see a lot more of in the forthcoming second book, The Defiant Heir. I wanted Vaskandar to have kind of a dreamy, dark fairy tale feel to it, but to also have a bit of a strange and alien flavor as well, so I combined familiar elements like gothic-looking spooky castles and long black coats with made-up stuff like jagged, asymmetrical embroidery and designs.

Rowenna Miller: Like Melissa’s books, there’s a combination of history and fantasy and folklore in the setting of Torn. The strongest influence on Galitha is 18th-century Europe. Lots of little details of city life in that era gave me ideas to populate a bustling city, from ballad-sellers singing in the streets, to migrations of people of other nationalities, to fishmongers with carts of wares. The “Cries of London” sketches by several artists from the 18th and early 19th centuries, like Francis Wheatley, gave me a shot of lively inspiration when I started to flounder a bit on the flavor of my city. While the higher-level political systems and socio-economic realities are important to the bones of world building, I keep coming back to everyday, ordinary people for inspiration. It’s the history nerd in me—I can get enough inspiration from one image, diary entry or newspaper story from the past to write for days!

Rowenna, you re-create and research historical textiles. Did the idea behind Torn spring from that work? And how did your knowledge of these techniques help you create Sophie’ s magic?
RM: In a lot of ways, crafting clothing is magic. You have a simple length of fabric and through the process of draping and stitching, it becomes a gown or a jacket or even a simple petticoat. I was actually researching the evolution of jacket styles in the late 18th century (nerd alert) when I got the idea for a charm-stitching seamstress—so the two are very much intertwined. Knowing how intimate and hands-on the process of hand-sewing a garment is, as opposed to working with a machine, it seemed almost natural that a magical practitioner could utilize needle and thread to cast a charm. There are places in the process where the work can be very collaborative but also places where a charm-casting seamstress could work on her own.

Something I admired about Torn was that Kristos is only able to spend his time writing and protesting because he relies on the financial and emotional support of Sophie, which undercut the Les Mis-esque fantasy that depictions of rebellion can often fall into. Rowenna, what drew you to the more neutral and practical character of Sophie? And why do you think we so rarely get stories of people like her?
RM: Writing a politically neutral character is hard, and it was a real challenge to keep Sophie from reading as boring or passive rather than passionately invested in what she does care about—her work, her personal ethics and her family. So much of spinning a good story is the tension between what a character wants and how other characters, the social system they live in, a very large bear in the woods, whatever, are preventing them from achieving that goal. A character like Kristos has a much clearer, more black-and-white goal and conflict. I think we often prefer to write and read a Kristos because there’s some wish fulfillment there. There’s a thrill in imagining we could abandon the other facets of our lives to be in service to A Cause.

But I wanted a story centered on Sophie because there are so many historical characters like her—people motivated by love of the quiet but also vitally important things like family and livelihood, and by the fear of losing those things to outside political conflicts. Most of us are probably Sophies at least some of the time, balancing all the things we care about, often in conflict with one another.

What type of charmed garment would you each want Sophie to make you?
RM: I would want something I could wear frequently—charms don’t come cheap, so I want bang for my buck! Perhaps a lightweight short cloak or mantelet (it goes with everything), charmed for your basic go-to good luck.

MC: I’d want her to make something for my kids, with good luck to keep them safe and out of trouble! Definitely something they could wear everywhere, but not something small like a handkerchief because they’d lose it. My teen would probably like a stylish jacket, and maybe a nice shawl or scarf for my younger daughter.

What is your favorite era of clothing?
MC: Ooh, that’s a tough one. One of the things I love about fantasy is that you get to mix up the fashion a bit in terms of real-world era and gender (though of course you have to be good about keeping recognizable themes that unify the fashion for your world so that it feels coherent, even if you’re cheating). So for instance, I think 17th-century men’s coats and jackets are cool because they have swashbuckling flair and gorgeous embroidery. I made it acceptable (though unusual) for women to wear them in my books because I wanted my main character to have them (uh, basically as wish fulfillment). I don’t know if I’d pick 17th-century Europe as my favorite overall, but I do think it’s generally underappreciated (so long as you stay away from cartwheel ruffs).

The 18th century is fun for the sheer, ridiculous, over-the-top factor, and I do like a good old Renaissance doublet. I also want to continue to learn more about non-European historical clothing, because there are a lot of cultures out there with incredibly rich fashion histories full of gorgeous fabrics and beautiful patterns and embroidery. And frankly much more comfortable-looking clothing.

RM: I know, it’s so hard to nail down just one! Fantasy is fun for allowing more of a mélange, or for introducing elements that didn't show up historically. When I research historical clothing I can get very, very picky—if I'm recreating clothing for, say, a woman in Virginia in 1780, I have to ask myself if that French fashion plate or Swedish museum piece is something she would have had. In fantasy, I can remove some of those barriers and set clothing norms that accept or reject some historical realities.

My overall favorite is the late 18th century—roughly 1770 through 1790. The over-the-top Rococo stuff was waning, and clothing had this more restrained, tailored aesthetic while still being sumptuous and elegant and doing truly incredible things with draping and design. Not just for the wealthy, either—the lower-class gowns of the era make me really happy, too. There’s this pragmatic insouciance of “This skirt hem is in the way, I’m rucking it up,” and BAM, it’s a fashion statement. I also love the bustle era of the Victorian period—the draped skirts and tailored bodices are just scrumptious—and for actual real-life wearability, I’m a sucker for the 1930s.

Melissa, something I’ve really enjoyed in your novels is watching characters use social events and relationships to raise their own standing, conduct diplomacy or levy threats. How do you get the subtext of that sort of courtly maneuvering across in your writing?
MC: I love writing those kinds of layered court intrigue interactions! I think there are two keys to getting the subtext across: the setup and the reaction.

For the setup, I try to make sure that I’ve already given my readers all the information they need to understand the significance of what might otherwise seem like a simple social interaction. For instance, once you know fire warlocks can destroy entire cities, you’ll instinctively understand the power dynamics of bringing one as a guest to your rival city’s party without me needing to spell it out.

Then the reaction works on much the same principle you see in stage fight choreography—it’s the person getting hit that sells the punch. It’s the reaction of other characters to hearing Amalia’s mom’s name that tells you what kind of reputation and power she has, and it’s where characters pause or wince or buy time with a sip of wine that mark the points in a barbed political conversation.

Fantasy has often portrayed noble characters as detached from reality at best, and completely villainous at worst. But both of your books have upper-class characters that are deeply concerned with the welfare of their subjects, and who grapple with their own privilege and limitations. What do you find so compelling about those characters?
RM: Most people, in my view, want to be decent. They see themselves as invested in positive systems and worldviews. Few people wake up one day and say, “Hey, I’m going to exploit and abuse people because being evil is fun!”

I envisioned my politically advantaged characters as very dutiful, responsible people who perhaps only half understand the extent of their privilege. It’s uncomfortable for them to be challenged as the “bad guys” in a revolution that accuses them of hoarding power and wealth because they didn’t see themselves as withholding these things but rather using them for everyone’s benefit. Of course, we as outsiders can see that it’s not really possible to have all the systemic power and not benefit from it, regardless of one’s intentions, and I find that compelling. What do not-bad and even pretty good people do when presented with evidence that they’re benefiting from a corrupt system?

MC: I think an utterly corrupt fictional ruling class can lead to some wonderfully fun stories, but I agree with Rowenna that in reality, most people view themselves as trying to do good. In the Swords and Fire trilogy I wanted to write stories with court intrigue and dilemmas about the exercise of power, both political and magical, and to me, that’s much more interesting when the players in the conflict aren’t just out for personal gain. Everyone has something they’re trying to protect, and what’s putting them into conflict isn’t that they don’t want to make the world a better place, but that they have very different ideas about how that should be done and what they’re willing to sacrifice to do it.

Also, satisfying as it can be to read a classic overthrow of an evil regime (and let’s be clear, I love that trope), in this series, I wanted to show characters grappling with how to preserve the good in a system while challenging its flaws and standing up to power while still respecting the rule of law.

Torn is set in a traditional, fairly patriarchal country whereas the Swords and Fire trilogy is set in a progressive society with same-sex marriage and gender equality. How did you each decide what type of fantasy world to create?
MC: I think that we need both kinds of stories, and some of my favorite books have characters who struggle against (and triumph over) a system biased against them. (For instance, I really enjoy how there are so many women in Torn who find ways to have power even in a society that doesn’t want to grant it to them.)

But as a writer, I love imagining characters that haven’t had real-world prejudice weighing them down and are free to just be their awesome, badass selves. Fun as it can be to build a fictional patriarchy and then smash it, I find the building-the-patriarchy part to be too depressing. Besides, I don’t want to build rules into my fictional world that will in any way restrain me from writing as many women leaders and warriors, happy gay couples and so forth as my brain cares to generate!

RM: Like Melissa, I love both kinds of stories and agree that we need both. Both explore and reveal questions and problems we grapple with in our world either by mirroring it or by rejecting the mirror. For me, and for this particular story inspired in no small part by a real-world age of revolutions, I wanted to spend some time with women who are strong within the confines of a society that doesn’t give them many options. They create their options.

And I think this is important to work with, lest we ignore some of the strength and dignity of women both past and present. When we talk about “cool women in history,” we usually talk about the ones who rejected traditional feminine roles, which starts to walk an iffy line of condemning women who worked within the confines of their society to do good work. For instance, we talk about Deborah Sampson, who dressed as a man and fought in the American Revolution, not the Philadelphia Ladies’ Association, who raised a bunch of money that the army desperately needed for socks (and other stuff, but an army needs socks, people). So, this time, I wanted to play within those constraints. Next time, maybe not 🙂

Melissa, you had a fantastic thread go viral on Twitter that explained how a character could actually fight quite well in a ball gown. How well could Sophie fight in one of her voluminous skirts and cloaks? And what sort of clothing do you put Amalia, Zaira and your other female characters in when they know they could be in a fight?
MC: Well, my biggest concern for Sophie’s ability to fight in the kind of clothes Rowenna describes is probably the super-stylish jacket she wears to impress the nobles she wants to sell her work to. That sounds really tailored, and I’m betting she’d probably have to rip the seams of her beautiful work to get decent arm movement, which would just be too tragic.

For my female characters, it really depends on their role and the situation! Some of them are soldiers and would be wearing uniforms designed for battle. Amalia, on the other hand, has to dress appropriately for the social occasion even if she expects to be jumped by assassins, so she might wear anything from her preferred loose-fitting coat and breeches to a court gown that gives her free movement in the shoulders and has enough clearance that she won’t be tripping over her skirts.

Zaira always wears skirts, which are great for hiding things, and if she’s going into danger, she dons a corset with enchanted stays that protect her from blades and musket fire. Because there’s no reason not to be fashionable AND battle-ready!

If you could place yourself in your fantasy world, where would you want to live and what would you like to be?
RM: This is always such a difficult question because of course, the worlds we usually write aren’t comfortable ones at the time we’re writing them. I’d love to visit Galitha City during the social season as a guest of Lady Viola, but in the midst of a dangerous revolution? No, thank you! It doesn’t make it into the book aside from some dialogue, but the agrarian regions in southern Galitha would make for about the calmest, least likely place to get run over by a mob. I’d set up shop in a small village—as a seamstress, of course!

MC: Well, I couldn’t pass up the chance to have magic, but I wouldn’t want to be forced to join the Falcons either. So I think I’d want to be a minor vivomancer living in some nice little villa in the countryside not too far from Raverra, so I could make day trips into the city and host occasional parties. I would use my vivomancy (life magic) to collect way too many odd pets (I want a raven! And a fox!).

I love that both Rowenna and I are clearly thinking to place ourselves in some safe, quiet location where we could happily putter away undisturbed by the dangerous adventures we put our poor characters through. Sorry, characters!

Caruso photo credit Erin Re Anderson. Miller photo credit Heidi Hauck.

Bryan Camp’s stunning, spellbinding debut novel, The City of Lost Fortunes, is a tale set in a post-Katrina New Orleans full of gods, monsters and magic. We asked Camp about the book’s inspiration, his thoughts on magic and what’s in store for its sequel.

You’ve said this book began as you and your family were evacuating before Hurricane Katrina hit. What was the initial seed of the idea? Was it an image? A wish? Something you lost that you were hoping could be magically found?
The initial seed for this book was a homework assignment, actually. I was in my last semester of undergrad at Southeastern Louisiana University, taking a fiction workshop with Bev Marshall. As a class exercise, she had us describe a room, and as we wrote, she called out senses to focus on, aspects of the room to incorporate. Since I was also taking a detective fiction class at the time, what came to my mind was a seedy backroom poker game, smoke in the air and the snap-shuffle of cards and a bunch of crooks. The last thing she said was to add something that didn’t belong, so I made one of the players a literal angel.

Our homework assignment was to take those few paragraphs of description and incorporate them into a short story. Mine was due the next week, and the storm hit that weekend. Having grown up in Louisiana, I figured Katrina would be like all the other storms I’d experienced: Since we were fortunate enough to have the means to do so, we’d evacuate, be gone for a few days, and then come home. And since my story would be due when we came back, that’s what I was working on in the backseat of my parents’ car as we drove to stay with my aunt and uncle in Florida.

That card-room description stayed exactly the same through every draft and revision of the novel except the last one, when it got rearranged. But the core idea and the wording is basically the same as what I wrote in a feverish 10-minute writing exercise all the way back in 2005.

New Orleans is a city that’s already been heavily mythologized in fantasy fiction of all kinds. In creating your version of it, what did you learn about this beloved American city that you cherish most when you look back on the book?
I don’t think New Orleans is only a myth in fantasy fiction, I think it’s a myth in the popular imagination as well. From the reasoning behind placing a city in this particular crescent-shaped bend in the river, to the “French” Quarter (which burned down and was rebuilt by the Spanish), to the lies Iberville told the English at English Turn, to the narrative that slavery was somehow “better” here, to the images of brass bands and gumbo and Mardi Gras, everything about New Orleans is some kind of myth, be it a story or a con or a full-on lie. Sometimes for good and sometimes for ill.

And that’s what I love most about this place, that I am—just like everyone else who lives here, who visits here, who reads about it in a book—constantly creating my own version of this city, one that’s simultaneously “the real” New Orleans and also nothing like the one you picture in your head when you think of it.

What aspects of New Orleans, whether real or fantasy, were you most excited to introduce to readers that you felt other writers hadn’t highlighted?
There’s a scene in [the TV show] “Treme” where one of the characters runs into a handful of tourists who have obviously been drinking all night in the Quarter, and he tells them that if they go a couple of blocks over, they’ll find the Clover Grill, this really great greasy spoon kind of diner. As they walk off, thanking him, he mutters, “Well [expletive deleted] now where am I gonna have breakfast?”

That’s such a quintessentially New Orleanian moment, because the things you want to show people when they come here are usually not the things they came here for, and then once you share them, you almost wish you’d kept them to yourself. Everywhere my characters eat and drink, for instance, isn’t just a real place, it’s a real place where you might run into me if the timing was right.

I’m certainly not the first writer to try to capture this side of New Orleans, but it was important to me to show parts of the city that weren’t just the Quarter and the cemetery and the mansions on St. Charles.

Jude is a fascinating character, simultaneously embodying certain aspects of the reluctant fantasy hero and subverting other aspects. Was the book always so firmly rooted in his journey through this world he thought he’d left behind, or did he take the story over in the writing of it?
The book was definitely always centered on a demigod with the magical ability to find lost things, but the core of the character shifted and changed throughout the various drafts of the book. That was partly me growing as a writer, but mostly me becoming more aware as a person. I still struggle to overcome the toxic aspects of my masculinity, and the earliest versions of the character, written in my 20s, were filtered through the lens of aggression and misogyny through which I saw the world. It took me a while to realize that not only was that not the way I really wanted to interact with the world, it also wasn’t the kind of hero I wanted to embody in my fiction.

Jude’s still a bastard, in every sense of the word, but those subversions you mention are deliberate, my way of actively turning my back on the kinds of violent, impervious, morally superior “heroes” I was taught by popular culture that I ought to emulate.

The particular assemblage of gods at the poker game that jump-starts the novel is an intriguing and somewhat surprising group, though their individual reasons for being at the table become clear as the novel progresses. Was there ever a version of that game featuring other various deities? Did another Egyptian god sit in Thoth’s seat at any point, for example?
Well, without getting into the spoiler territory of explaining why this particular group of gods is at a game like this, I can say with certainty that no, Thoth was always Thoth from the very beginning. It could only have been him.

In terms of different characters inhabiting chairs at the game meant for other deities, the seat filled by the Fortune God of New Orleans, Dodge, was once occupied by Coyote from the folklore of various Native traditions. I don’t think I even made it through the first draft before I swapped him and Dodge, though. For one, I was finding it difficult to separate my first attempt at this novel from the work of Charles de Lint, whose work loomed large in my mind, and who wrote Coyote better than I ever could. Mostly, though, I moved away from using that figure because I simply didn’t know enough about the traditions—the active faith of living people—to feel comfortable that I wouldn’t cause harm. I’ve read the stories, but that’s not the same thing as knowing the culture, and to just take something I didn’t feel like I understood is basically the definition of appropriation, which I did my best to avoid.

Also, there was once another player at the table, a faerie, who was removed and not replaced.

You wrote a fantasy novel set in New Orleans and made one of your major characters a vampire. Vampire stories set in New Orleans have been dominated for decades by the work of Anne Rice. Was that ever something you worried about, and what in particular did you find fascinating about your portrayal of this powerful New Orleans blood-drinker?
Yeah, to be completely honest, I originally wanted to write a novel without vampires at all, and because it was New Orleans I just couldn’t do it. Remember, a lot of the foundational thought for this book happened in 2005, so it wasn’t just Anne Rice I was up against, mentally, but also Stephenie Meyer and Laurell K. Hamilton and Charlaine Harris. All those brooding, glittering, sex-god vampires. I don’t say that in a derogatory sense, just in a sense that there was a well-trodden path that I hoped to avoid.

And yet, I kept coming up against the folklore of New Orleans. The Casket Girls. Jacque St. Germain. All those stories that inspired Anne Rice to create Lestat in the first place. As much as I didn’t want to write the popular-culture vampire, I couldn’t ignore that the myth was woven into the larger myth of the city.

So I turned to the folklore. I wrote the monstrous, demonic avatars of hunger and lust that humans of every culture have imagined through their fears of death and their own vulnerability. I think the fascinating thing about Umberto Scarpelli is that he absolutely loves being what he is. There’s no remorse, no hesitation. He’s a monster who likes to play with his food. It was the only way for me to address the well-deserved shadow that Anne Rice casts over New Orleans fantasy fiction without pretending I didn’t notice it.

In your world, particularly as Jude explains it, magic is a somewhat mutable force, and magical texts are often viewed as guidelines rather than rigid systems, while much of fantasy fiction is dominated by extremely structured frameworks for the use of magic. What inspirations did you draw from in crafting the magic in your novel, and what, in your mind, is the secret to effectively and believably using magic in fiction?
This is a hard question for me to answer succinctly. I think that what you consider “magic” says a whole lot about you as a person, about where you come from and how you see the world. I was raised Catholic, for example. I was taught that in the middle of the mass, the bread and wine on the altar are literally transubstantiated into the flesh and blood of a man who died 2,000 years ago. When you’re kneeling in the pews, that’s a matter of faith. But to someone not raised in that tradition, that sounds like magic. And then you look at things like quantum entanglement or the fact that time works differently depending on gravity, and those things sound like magic to me, too.

So when I was thinking about gods and myth and the way we interact with our world, instead of making magic a kind of science the way some fantasy writers (myself included, in other settings) do, I considered magic to be simply an imposition of one’s will upon the world. The world just listens to some people more than others.

In terms of having magic be believable, whether it’s a structured, pseudo-scientific magical “system,” or just “he snapped his fingers and the door opened,” the trick is to always be consistent. What I mean by that is that magic should never solve your problems as a writer. If you’ve established a world where magic is on about the level of our current technology, say, and you realize that you’ve written yourself into a corner where you need a character at point A to be at point B, you can’t just say, “oh, well, there are teleportation spells now.” That’s violating the contract you’ve made with your reader to solve your own problem. Fantasy readers are great—they’ll follow you down any road you want to go down, so long as you play the game straight from the beginning.

You’re already at work on a second novel in the same “Crescent City” universe. What can you tell us about that, and what inspirations are you drawing from the second time around that you didn’t the first time?
Well, I’m still waiting to hear back from my editor on it, so I can’t go into too much detail, but it follows one of the characters from The City of Lost Fortunes. She’s a psychopomp (one of the spirits who guides the recently dead through the Underworld) who shows up to collect a soul only to find that he’s not there. She pretty quickly learns that he’s not just missing, but is part of a bigger plot that involves storm deities and destruction gods, the guardians of the seven gates of the Underworld, and the delicate balance between the living and the dead. Searching for this lost soul leads her to the depths of the Underworld and then to the worlds of the Afterlife beyond.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of The City of Lost Fortunes.

R.F. Kuang’s superlative fantasy debut, The Poppy War, follows ambitious orphan Rin as she enters prestigious military academy Sinegard, attempts to survive her crushing workload and vicious fellow students, and discovers her shamanistic powers—as well as the ability to communicate with the gods through hallucinogenic drugs.

The Poppy War enthralls readers with a textured, well-crafted world inspired by both 20th-century and Song Dynasty China, before growing steadily darker and more mature as Rin and her companions encounter the brutality of war outside the classroom and Rin tries to come to terms with her destructive power. We talked to Kuang about discovering her inner editor and creating a heroine that represents her worst impulses.

Since this is your debut novel, what were the greatest challenges you encountered in the writing or editing process that you might not have encountered in writing workshops or during school?
I actually hadn’t taken received any formal writing training when I finished The Poppy War. That was weirdly liberating—I wasn’t aware of all the things that could possibly go wrong, so I just had a good time writing a story that I enjoyed. But that’s not a sustainable path to improving your craft, because it means you remain ignorant of your own faults. After The Poppy War and its sequels sold, I went first to the Odyssey Writing Workshop in 2016 and the CSSF Novel Writing Workshop in 2017. That’s when I developed some serious imposter syndrome and second book syndrome. All the techniques that felt so intuitive and effortless to me when I was writing my first book now seemed impossible (I always compare this to Lyra of The Golden Compass and her alethiometer). It took a long time for me to trust my writing voice again. But now I have a confident writing voice and a harsh inner editor, which is a good place to be.

The Poppy War draws inspiration from Chinese history. What periods of China’s past resonated most with you when writing? What resources proved the most helpful?
The book draws its plot and politics from mid-20th-century China, and its aesthetic from Song Dynasty China. I read all the standard Western historical works—Spence, Fairbank, Dikotter, the Cambridge History of China series, what have you. On the Chinese side I was reading historians like Ray Huang. I also drew heavily from Iris Chang’s work. Her historical analysis has been challenged by many historians since The Rape of Nanking was first published in 1997, but it touches on many themes—outrage, intergenerational memory and trauma, nationalism and erasure—that are defining features of the study of the Rape of Nanjing today.

The island nation of Mugen seems to reflect World War II-era Japan with its military might. Does The Poppy War seek in any way to reflect on Chinese-Japanese relations throughout history?
The Poppy War has deliberate parallels to Sino-Japanese relations during the 20th century. (So deliberate, in fact, that whenever I describe the world I just say “faux China” and “faux Japan.”) The map in the hardcover looks almost identical to the East China Sea! The similarities aren’t just aesthetic. The Poppy War’s plot is mirrored almost entirely on the Second Sino-Japanese War (World War II). You see a deeply militarized, westernized society invading a comparatively backward, huge but fragile empire. You also get a fantasy version of the Rape of Nanjing, the experiments of Unit 731 and the Battle of Shanghai. And the themes of the book are, of course, intergenerational trauma and cycles of violence—extremely important topics in Sino-Japanese relations today.

There’s a great deal of detail and care given to the scenes in Sinegard, where Rin and her fellow students learn the ways of war. What was it like to write about student life? Did you find yourself feeling nostalgic or reliving your own experiences as a student?
I am still a student, so I wouldn’t say that writing about student life was nostalgic as much as it was cathartic. I like writing about the high-pressure academic rat race. I don’t think that many fantasy books explore the ways that students develop their own kinds of addiction to success and external praise. That mindset can ruin you. We should talk about it more.

As the war continues, Rin and her compatriots discover scenes of increasingly monstrous acts committed by the enemy. Was it difficult to conceive of and write some of the more intense scenes of brutality that your characters witness?
It wasn’t difficult to conceive. It’s never difficult to conceive of inhuman brutality—you just have to open a history book. But many scenes were very, very difficult to write. Parts one and two flew by during the drafting process, but parts three and four took me much longer because I could only write a few paragraphs at a time before I had to step out and take a walk.

In many ways, The Poppy War can be seen as an examination of the effects of suffering. Physical, psychological, mental and spiritual trauma informs the identities of many characters. Was this by design? Did the suffering these characters experience make for better or different decisions in your writing process?
Yes, The Poppy War was intentionally a study on pain, sacrifice, vengeance and trauma. There are two separate themes to tease out here. The first is pain as a necessary sacrifice for power. Rin has to give up so much, has to suffer so much, for where she ends up. She self-mutilates. She has a hysterectomy. She puts herself through brutal torture, both mental and physical, to keep her place at Sinegard. Was it worth it?

The second theme is the question of whether past trauma ever justify future atrocities, even if it explains them. The Poppy War explores this on both an interpersonal and international level. Take Altan. He’s been through so much shit, but he takes his inner issues out on others in a way that is inexcusable. What do you do with that? Do we forgive him for being both emotionally and physical abusive towards Rin just because his childhood was a string of horrors? Then take the Nikara Empire and the Federation of Mugen, who have been abusing each other (and Speer) for centuries. When your foreign policy decisions are motivated by national trauma, when does the cycle of violence ever stop?

Rin is a flawed and fascinating heroine, and the beating heart of this story. Do you see yourself in any part of Rin's character? How are you different from her?
I think Rin and I are quite different! I’m generally quite positive, and she’s generally quite . . . not. I just want to become a professor, settle down with my boyfriend and live a happy life with our two corgis (we don’t own them yet, but we will). Rin wants to . . . burn cities, I guess.

That being said, I think Rin represents my worst impulses, exaggerated to the extreme. I get angry. Rin rages. I’m ambitious. Rin is addicted to her ambition. She’s impulsive, furious, vengeful, over-the-top angry. These are all the things that I try to rein back in myself.

What was your favorite part about constructing a universe full of gods and shamans? What other fantasy worlds gave you inspiration?
My favorite part by far was writing about psychedelics. It’s impossible to take a scene seriously if everyone in it is tripping balls. I haven’t seen this particular mechanism used as a magic system in other fantasy works before, so I wouldn’t say I drew magical inspiration from any fantasy worlds. It all comes from history. I’ve been obsessed with the Opium Wars for a long time, and it’s interesting to entertain a world where opium is not just a source of Chinese debilitation and humiliation, but also of unfathomable power.

When you reflect on the time you spent writing, what passages or sequences do you remember most vividly?
The chapter about Golyn Niis–that chapter–was extremely difficult to write. I remember that week very vividly. I did my research in the morning, took a mental health break, wrote in the afternoon and took another mental health break. I cried a lot. I was getting so depressed that my roommate made me stop working on the manuscript for a few days.

On the lighter side, I love the scene where Rin and Nezha fight back to back during the battle at Sinegard. It’s such a pivotal point in their relationship. It transforms from a petty schoolyard rivalry to something bigger.

Can you give us any information about the next installment in Rin's story?
Only that a draft of book two has been finished and you can expect it around a year from now (:

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of The Poppy War.

Jacqueline Carey’s Starless is both deeply traditional and delightfully innovative. The fantasy icon’s latest book, where gods walk the earth and soul mates exist, is told with grand ambition and mythic prose. But within her epic framework, complexity abounds—prophecy is dizzying and frustrating, a character with physical disabilities isn’t magically healed and nothing is as it seems. We talked to Carey about keeping twists under wraps, the power of found families and which of her fictional gods she would worship.

On your website, you mention that you had “mixed feelings” about other reviews revealing a very important part of who Khai is. What sorts of conversations did you have with yourself and your publisher about how to present this element to the reader?
Ah, you’ve posed this question in a nicely non-spoilery way, and answering it in kind is tricky! Honestly, I was planning to be upfront about it. As the book is written, the reader is intended to suspect the truth about Khai’s nature long before he does, and I think the inspiration behind that creative decision is a fascinating talking point. No doubt some readers will think it’s a very contemporary postmodern choice, while in fact its roots lie in a rather unexpected place. (Pssst! If you’re curious, Google the term bacha posh.)

However, when Khai does learn the truth, it’s a huge, impactful revelation, and it was my editor, Claire Eddy, who pointed out that we ran the risk of depriving the reader of sharing in the emotional impact of that seminal moment of our hero’s journey. So we chose not to include the reveal in the cover copy or PR material and let the chips fall where they may when it came to reviews.

You mention that Starless both works within and actively subverts many tropes of the fantasy genre—I heartily agree! Do you think the genre has become too reliant on these tropes?
In some ways, yes, absolutely. As someone who loves fantasy, I want to be inspired and exalted; I want to read books that make me wish I’d written them. Work that operates solely within the framework of existing tropes doesn’t do it. Yet at the same time, there’s a comfort food factor. Sometimes you want a good old-fashioned PB&J sandwich. Sometimes you want to curl up on the couch and read something that feels familiar and reassuring because it ticks all those boxes—and not in a twisty, subversive way.

I may only be saying that because I binge-watched “Iron Fist” last year when I was home alone with a miserable head cold. Not my proudest moment.

Something you do in Starless that I love is that you examine what it might be like to see the future. It might mean lying to your student or not revealing a companion’s true fate to ensure Brother Yarit’s “If this, then that,” equation plays out. Is writing about prophecy confining or liberating?
A couple of years ago, I had the chance to contribute to a Cards Against Humanity fantasy extension pack as part of Patrick Rothfuss’ Worldbuilders fundraising, and I was disappointed that one of my favorite suggestions, “Goddamn passive aggressive wizards,” wasn’t chosen for the final version. Inexplicably cryptic wizards, druids and seers of all ilk have annoyed me for ages. So I suppose one might consider Brother Yarit an explicitly cryptic seer! I tried to convey in a visceral manner what it might be like to see all those crossroads and possibilities, to sense the mental dexterity it would take to surf those waves, as well as the weight of that responsibility.

On the whole, I’d say it’s more confining than liberating to write about prophecy, as each choice does narrow one’s possibilities. But I’ve never minded working within strictures.

I can tell you had fun creating some of the gods in Starless. If you were an acolyte of any of them, which would you choose?
Probably one of those who only gets a passing reference, like Johina the Mirthful. Or possibly Aardo the Intoxicated!

The idea of family gets several different definitions over the course of the narrative. Did writing about Khai and his companions’ quest inform how you think about families?
In contemporary society, one thinks about the families into which we’re born, the families into which we marry or otherwise bind our lives, our work families, the families of choice that we create for ourselves. Writing this did make me think about the way a shared destiny—and a very extreme experience—forges unlikely familial bonds.

Let’s talk a bit about Zariya. How did you decide that you wanted to give her a physical handicap? Did any of your choices for her in the story change as a result?
Sometimes character decisions are conscious; other times, not so much. This time, it was the latter. Zariya’s physical disability was simply a part of her backstory and who she was. But I will say that I’m so, so very grateful to have read several of author Nicola Griffith’s discussions of what she calls “crip lit” during the writing of Starless. Griffith has an aggressive form of Multiple Sclerosis—I have friends and family members with MS, and while it sucks across the board, some forms are definitely more debilitating than others—and in recent years has been writing candidly about the difficulties it engenders, as well as opening up a conversation about the depiction of characters with a wide range of disabilities.

Before reading on this topic from the perspective of a variety of people with first-hand experiences, I was thinking, oh, perhaps I will magically cure Zariya! And then she can walk, yay! And be better equipped to save the world! Reading these conversations made me realize, “Whoa, that’s a lousy trope and a cheap-out, and it’s offensive! Do not do it!”

I did equivocate a little bit, because for narrative purposes I needed to unblock Zariya’s chi, basically. But I didn’t make her fully able-bodied and having a character that’s unable to, say, traverse uneven terrain at speed when in a life-or-death situation created some interesting challenges. And I think how those challenges are met speaks to both Zariya’s inner strength and courage, as well as the idea of unlikely families.

What do Rhamanthus seeds taste like? Would you take one, given the chance?
Rock-hard pomegranate seeds. And I want to say no, but I imagine that’s something one never knows for sure until the option is presented.

When you reflect on the time you spent writing, what passages or sequences do you remember most vividly?
In Starless, it’s a toss-up. Khai learning that he’s bhazim, and that word echoing over and over in his head. Zariya’s ordeal inside the Green Mother’s hut on Papa-ka-hondras . . . eeek! The Hieronymous Boschian nightmare of the risen dead at the end of the world.

There are probably readers out there with whom Khai’s personal conflict will resonate more than others. Do you have any advice or thoughts about coming to peace with yourself, whatever doubt you might be feeling inside?
Just be kind to yourself; be gentle and patient. Understanding your own identity is a lifelong process, and it’s one that’s in a constant state of evolution. Who you are today doesn’t have to be dictated by who you were yesterday, nor does it have to determine who you are tomorrow.

In the final passage, Khai and Zariya are on their way back to the Fortress of the Winds. What do you think Brother Yarit would tell them when they arrive?
“Nice work, kid. Did you bring me any oranges?”

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of Starless.

Author photo by Kim Carey.

“I was seven years old the first time my uncle poisoned me.” The first sentence of Sam Hawke’s City of Lies lets the reader know exactly what they’re in for. A deliciously tense, well-crafted start to a new fantasy series, City of Lies follows Jovan and Kalina, two young nobles who have been raised to detect poisons and prevent them from harming the ruling family of Sjona. When their father and the monarch are assassinated, Jovan and Kalina have to protect the new ruler—their close friend Tain—from threats both within the city and outside its walls. We talked to Hawke about devising fictional poisons, creating a magic system based on emotion and the real-world parallels in her fantastic new world.

A lot can happen in the process of crafting a novel, especially when it’s part of a series. How different is the final product of City of Lies from what you originally intended when you set out to write it?
In some ways very similar, and in others quite different. I think it has stayed true to its core—that is, the main characters, who they are, how they relate to each other and the broad plot. What changed fairly dramatically over the course of editing was its structure (it was originally geared more heavily toward Jovan’s storyline, and undersold Kalina’s), some of the history of the world and the motivation for the rebellion and the active role of magic in the story.

I think the six guilds (Warrior, Craft, Artist, Stone, Theatre and Scribe) are fascinating, both because of their roles in the plot and the picture they paint of Sjonan society. How did you choose them? Was it more about plot, world building or something else entirely?
Definitely world building. The Guilds are a handy shorthand for what the society values and elevates—arts, science, learning, cultural pursuits—and what it doesn’t. There were a few extra Guilds that got cut for the purposes of tightening the cast early on, though!

Many religions use clothing as a mark of faith or status, and discrimination against members of those religions based on their dress is both a huge contemporary issue and something that turns up in City of Lies with characters like Hadrea. Did you intend to deal with or comment on those real-world parallels?
I definitely was influenced by real-world events in looking at how a dominant culture can steamroll smaller ones, whether through deliberate design or unthinking ignorance. In this case, the cultural difference is partially religious, but it’s also based on the class and geographical divide between the cities, and the land and people that keep the city fed and supplied. Where there are no racial or other physical cues to identify differences, dress custom, jewelry and other body markings can be a visual identifier of those differences and therefore the target of mockery and discrimination (or subtler aggressions such as taking the trappings of the religion and using them in a manner stripped of meaning).

Your choice to focus on proofers and poisoners reminded me of Robin Hobb’s Assassin’s Apprentice series. Were those books something you thought about when writing City of Lies?
I love a good assassin story but I wanted to write the kind of inverse to that: the tale of the spoiled and pampered officials being targeted, rather than the tale of the assassins themselves. What I particularly love about Robin’s books, and what makes them stand out from other assassin romps, is that the poisonings and manipulations performed are never presented in a glorified or glamorous way. Fitz takes no joy in his position. He’s not a wry, unruffled or revenge-fuelled assassin. He’s not a cool loner. If anything, I was inspired by the way those books deal with the emotional cost of every decision and the consequences of a lifestyle of that nature. While my story is focused on defense rather than attack, the way that my characters think about poisonings and violence is never offhanded.

Your blog is a mix of thoughts on writing, life stories and humor (I had never considered how well I actually know the back of my hand until reading your bio), and your novel reads in a similar way, so I was curious—how much do you think you have a “writer voice” that’s different from your normal voice? You can take that to be about word selection, pacing or basically anything else you’d like.
I’m a lot sillier in real life than in fiction (at least I hope), and more conversational in my style, but I suspect the ole Samishness bleeds through into everything I do. I admire other writers who are far more elegant in their writing than I am, but I always sound like me to me. Just, with fewer rants about cheese hangovers.

You clearly put a lot of thought into the specific poisons and their effects in City of Lies. How much is all of that based on actual research into historical and current poisons, and how much of it was invented for your world specifically?
Oh, lots of both. Because the world I had created was pretty low magic, I still wanted it to feel like a different reality, and one way to do that, besides pretty significant cultural differences, was to have a lot less reliance on our world’s standard trappings in terms of flora and fauna. So while there are some recognizable “earth” type plants and animals, most are invented. I also didn’t want to be writing a manual on how to poison somebody for real, and I didn’t want to be bound by particular expectations about what certain plants do and don’t do. But having said that, a lot of my fictional poisons are based loosely on real ones to help me along! I left a few clues in the names so keen-eyed readers can probably spot some similarities.

I love that your magic is based on a kind of emotional communion rather than incantations or spells, and I’m always curious where fantasy writers get those structures from, especially when they’re as central to the conflict as yours. Can you talk a bit about building the magical and cultural mechanics of Sjona, and what kinds of inspiration you drew on for that process?
My POV characters know literally nothing about the magic in their world. I wanted it to retain a certain air of confusion and mystery and surrealism because that’s how it comes across to them. (Readers who are only into very detailed, rule-based magic systems, beware, this may not be for you.) Since the Darfri culture was the original way of life for Sjona, and is something retained in the more remote areas of the country but largely forgotten in the cities, it seemed natural to fit with an indigenous tradition of great respect for and desire to work harmoniously with the land. It made sense to have a kind of elemental magic that linked people and the land itself. Without giving spoilers, the concept of spirits bound to particular landmarks was obviously important to the plot, and I wanted there to be a symbiotic relationship between people and spirits, and for the use of magic to be tied to that relationship. As part of my personal tastes, I like reading about magical systems that are entwined with emotions rather than intellectualism (because that’s messier, and gives you loads of scope for good character moments), and that felt like a natural tie into what humans could offer to the equation.

City of Lies functions really well as a standalone story, but knowing it is the first installment of a trilogy changes the interpretation of several main storylines. How confident should we be in the way things seem to have wrapped up at this point?
Hmm, I’m not sure how to answer this without spoilers. You can definitely read City of Lies as a standalone—no big cliffhangers and the main plot threads are resolved (for the immediate term anyway). But the second book, Hollow Empire, deals with the very messy aftermath of the events in the first book and brings in new but related threats. The story will also pan out to see more of the continent outside Sjona. I don’t think I can say much more!

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of City of Lies.

Author photo (c) Kris Arnold Photography.

“One of my biggest challenges was to see how far I could push that morally gray area, how uncomfortable I could make the reader feel without having them bail on the book.”

The protagonist of Temper, Auben Mtuze, is literally an evil twin. His brother Kasim was born with six out of seven possible virtues, and only one of the seven vices. Which means Auben has six vices, an almost-unheard-of number that marks him for poverty and disdain in a world where the good and the bad are neatly separated by walls between their respective neighborhoods.

With this striking premise, author Nicky Drayden launches fearlessly into questions of morality, religion and marginalization, following Auben as he struggles to come to terms with his identity, and also maybe exorcize a demon that’s taken up residence in his body. We talked to Drayden about taking the reader into uncomfortable places, creating a visually rich Afrofuturist world and why science is deemed lecherous in her society.

Temper has such an interesting and unique premise. What was the spark of that idea for you?
Well, two main concepts sparked this story. The first was reimagining an African continent that had escaped the ills of colonization. Through examining the “could-have-beens” in this not-quite alternate history, I wanted to open a door to a world where anything was possible. The second concept came to me after reading about how some parts of Nigeria have very high rates of twinning, like nearly one in 10 people are a twin. That left me wondering, “What if we took it further? What if 80 or 90 or 99 percent of people were twins?” And from that, this story was born.

So often in genre fiction, the protagonist of a novel is the moral center, and the supporting characters are the ones who are free to be more morally gray. Did you find that writing from Auben’s perspective opened up new possibilities for the story?
Starting out, I very much wanted to write a “good twin/bad twin” story from the bad twin’s point of view. One of my biggest challenges was to see how far I could push that morally gray area, how uncomfortable I could make the reader feel without having them bail on the book. By exposing that raw, uncomfortable feeling, I’m hoping readers will be willing to look deeper into themselves and see things from different perspectives.

Without giving too much away, Temper explores how a society constructs and legislates morality, and the pitfalls of strictly adhering to either end of a good/evil spectrum. What do you think compels you to pose questions like this?
In Temper, people are dealing with lots of issues, prejudices and discrimination brought into play by fantastical societal constructs. In this story, twins are divided into groups based on the number of vices they are assigned as children. There are seven vices: Vainglory, Envy, Duplicity, Doubt, Lechery, Greed and Temper. The twin with the least number of vices is deemed the “greater twin” and has better opportunities in life. The other is the lesser twin, pretty much destined for a life of poverty.

I think this structure, with its clear and visual recognition of the ways we divide people, magnifies the divisions laid upon us in the real world. How do these divisions give power to some, while taking it from others? What happens when a person from one marginalization refuses to open their mind to the struggles of other marginalizations? And who gets to define what constitutes good and evil to begin with? I don’t have all the answers (or maybe any of them), but I do enjoy chewing on the questions.

Your previous novel, The Prey of the Gods, was set in a futuristic South Africa. Temper is set in a fantastical world inspired by many African cultures, but still shares quite a few similarities with South Africa. Why is that country such a rich source of inspiration for you?
I visited South Africa as a college student, and the experience challenged me and changed me well before I became a writer. I’m excited to see more genre fiction coming out of the country, because there are infinite stories to share from a place brimming with so many cultures, languages, accomplishments and struggles. In the way that The Prey of the Gods was a near-utopia, I wanted Temper to tell a story that was the opposite . . . something dark, gritty and stifling, but also something hopeful and even humorous at times.

A detail I thought was particularly inspired was how the society in Temper characterizes science and a desire for scientific knowledge as lecherous. Was this inspired by the ways in which many religions have demonized sexuality and science throughout history?
There is definitely precedent for religion looking down upon those things, and one of my favorite themes is how religion and science don’t have to always be at odds. Deeming science lecherous in this book made sense to me. . . . It’s a sort of self-flagellation of the mind, often consuming all other thought, taking pleasure in logic and the underlying structures of nature, exploring wild theories, experimenting with risky ideas . . . until that moment of “Ah-ha!” when all the world suddenly bursts into absolute clarity. How could science not be seen as lecherous?

The plot of Temper constantly kept me on my toes—what did structuring this novel look like on your end? Did you always know that the story would go to so many different places?
Well, I had to rewrite the last quarter of the book twice, so there’s that. My outline was very thin, maybe a half a page of notes. Structuring this novel involved a lot of touch-and-feel, making sure I was taking care of the reader, reassuring them when needed before pressing them and challenging them to go to new (and often darker) places. There’s just so much to this world, and I had very few opportunities where I could ground the reader using clues from our own world. With a young protagonist possessing a limited worldview and a hunger to learn more, I had a great vehicle to ease both the reader and myself into this very layered story.

As someone who completely geeks out over costuming and fashion, I adored the attention you paid to clothing in Temper. Were there any real-world inspirations you pulled from? If not, how did you establish the look of the book in your head?
Ah, thank you! That was a big part of the world building for me. My inspiration came from South African Fashion Week, which is an amazing display of artistry! I wanted a world where fashion consciousness is a way of life, even for those without means. Each character’s dress and look comes from one of the runway models, and it was totally fun to describe them all. Here’s a peek at the current season.

Would you ever set another story in the world of Temper? And if so, what would it be?
I’m not big on writing sequels, but I’d never say never. My next book is shifting away from South Africa, shifting away from Earth altogether, in fact. I’m working on a space opera about the unlikely heir to the command of a biological, city-size starship carved up from the insides of a spacefaring beast. “Space politics and family drama with a heaping side of tentacles” sums it up nicely.