“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.

The dreaded sophomore novel is always a telling test for a new writer. And the most difficult incarnation of it may be the second novel in a super-hyped, highly acclaimed fantasy series. S.A. Chakraborty’s The City of Brass was a superb introduction to both the author and her intricately detailed, vividly realistic world inspired by Middle Eastern legends and fairy tales.

The Kingdom of Copper begins five years later, with former Cairo grifter Nahri ensconced in the dangerous court of Daevabad, her once-friend Prince Ali on the run from his father and an unknown new threat growing stronger on the horizon. An emotionally devastating, character-driven novel that also succeeds in building out its complex world, The Kingdom of Copper is further proof that the Daevabad trilogy is on its way to becoming a modern fantasy classic. We talked to Chakraborty about the mythology that inspired her novels, why she added a new point-of-view character and more.

How was writing your second book in this series different from writing the first?
I was writing to a deadline! My first book began as this personal, private project that meandered all over the place and took nearly a decade to write—the second book I turned around in eighteen months. And while I was grateful for the opportunity to dive back into the world, it was very difficult to adjust to the crunch.

Some of the conflicts in this book are over questions of historical accuracy (what happened) and of historical interpretation (how we should feel about it). How did your passion for history influence how you deal with these sorts of questions?
It’s the constant reading of different sources. I very much believe history is written by the victors—we can look even today how different media outlets frame current events. And I wanted the characters and the world to reflect that. They’re deeply attached to their version of the past—it’s their truth, what shapes their politics and everyday lives, and yet so much of it rests on a very shaky foundation. I feel like every day I read a new interpretation of some historical fact I’ve always taken for granted, and I wanted the background of the world to seem just as volatile.

In The City of Brass and The Kingdom of Copper, Nahri is forced to deal with living under two separate occupations, first in Cairo and then in Daevabad. Why did you choose to contrast those particular regimes?
There is a bit of a spoiler for the third book in this answer that I’d like to avoid, and I don’t think we see enough of Cairo in the first book (it takes place in the earliest weeks of Napoleon’s invasion), to be able to offer a contrast just yet. That being said, I wanted it to feel like a bit of a portal fantasy that stepped back in time. Nahri’s Egypt is entering the modern era whereas the magical world is a few centuries behind humans—more so than usual because they’ve started to turn inward.

One of the things that feels different about this book is the choice to set it five years after The City of Brass concludes. So often trilogies tend to stack one book after the other with very little breathing room between. What led to the decision to give your characters that much space?
I always knew I wanted to give the characters that kind of breathing room. Nahri and Ali are fairly young in the first book when their worlds are turned upside down and they’re thrust into very different hostile environments. To me, it was a bit more interesting to pick up later—when they’ve learned to adapt and survive and train in their respective specialties (it was also important to me to show that Nahri’s medical training would take years)—and show their growth through even worse challenges.

The City of Brass is told from Nahri and Ali’s points of view. Why did you add in Dara’s perspective in The Kingdom of Copper?
The book deals with the consequences of choice. Injustice and oppression are not the sole responsibility of tyrants—they require a lot of regular people to either tacitly endorse such systems or turn a blind eye. With Dara, I wanted to introduce a character I knew people would come to love, who would be rightfully understood as a hero, as a love interest, as a fundamentally good man—and then show how someone like that can commit great evil, without ever justifying it to the readers. For the second book, it felt more effective—though heartbreaking—to accomplish this from his perspective.

I love the tribal and regional nature of magic within this series. Did the distinctions of which tribes do which kinds of magic come out of your research, or was it more of a narrative choice?
Both. In the history of the book’s world, the djinn are separated into six tribes by the Prophet Suleiman, stripped of much of their magic and cast off into the human world. They survive in many ways by quietly grubbing off the local humans they’ll later look down upon and adding what remains of their magic to human technology. So djinn who awoke in wealthy trade cities on the coast end up taking local ships and enchanting them to fly, becoming premier traders in their world.

If Ali didn’t have to deal with palace intrigue and the threat of assassination, what do you think he’d prefer to be doing with his time?
I think under different circumstances, Ali could have found happiness in the djinn village of Bir Nabat. He’s the consummate do-gooder and here he was able to help people in a far more straightforward, tangible manner—dig a well, start a school. I could see Ali making a quiet life, starting a family to replace the one he lost in Daevabad and being generally content. Unfortunately for him, his author had other ideas.

One of the things I love about this book is that the city of Daevabad is as complex a character as any in the series. How did you go about crafting a setting as complicated as Daevabad?
Haha, I worked on it for a decade! But honestly, I just tried to make it realistic, as vague as that sounds. It’s a messy, chaotic place born of centuries of occupation and forced migration—but it’s also a thriving metropolis where tens of thousands of people are just trying to get by. Magic or not, you’re going to need some order in the marketplaces, a service to pick up the trash and places where regular people socialize.

You can really feel the depth of research behind The Daevabad Trilogy as you’re reading it. Often it feels like there are stories lurking around every corner that we just aren’t privy to as readers. Can you talk about a historical story you found in your research that you loved but that just didn’t fit with the trilogy?
This is fairly silly, but I’m a big fan of the old regional folktales such as 1001 Nights and Tales of the Marvelous and News of the Strange, and one trope I’ve yet to find a place for are its murderous automatons. Sometimes they’re ancient sculptures that come to life with magic, other times they’re the metal creations of brilliant scientists—an early form of steampunk. Either way, if a character comes across an eerie armed statue in one of these stories, someone is definitely about to be murdered. I haven’t been able to work one in yet but I’m still hoping!

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of The Kingdom of Copper.

An 848-page fantasy novel is a daunting task for any writer. But an 848-page standalone novel, completed in the middle of another bestselling series? Preposterous. Which simply makes Samantha Shannon’s The Priory of the Orange Tree even more astonishing. Written in between installments of her extremely popular Bone Season novels, Priory is a wonderfully complex, female-driven fantasy novel with dragons, ancient evils and just the right amount of political intrigue. We talked to Shannon about reimagining mythical creatures, which of her fictional worlds she’d like to live in and what prompted her shift into high fantasy.

Your latest book has the kind of heft and scope that seems to demand a secluded week or two from the reader, but that’s nothing compared to the undertaking of writing. How many years did The Priory of the Orange Tree take to complete?
Over three years—April 2015 to June 2018.

What inspired you to take on high fantasy? Who are some of your creative influences in the genre?
I wanted to write a book that explored some of the history of our world—particularly the 16th and 17th centuries—but also to incorporate myth and legend, and to have the freedom to create my own countries and events. Epic fantasy was the best genre for that. Most of my influences for this book were historical (e.g. The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser, various versions of Saint George and the Dragon, the Nihongi and the Kojiki), but some of the authors I admire within speculative fiction are N.K. Jemisin, Zen Cho, George R.R. Martin, J.R.R. Tolkien and Laini Taylor.

You give a great deal of care and attention, not only to the characters, but to the creatures they encounter, embellishing common fantasy animals with your own zoological quirks. Which was your favorite to reimagine?
The ichneumon! They’re mentioned in literature of old—sometimes under the name echinemon—as the enemy of the dragon or serpent. In Priory, they’re huge, loyal, mongoose-like animals that have teamed up with human mages to fight wyrms. They have powerful jaws with teeth that can pierce scale, and their bones can be used to fashion weapons.

You’ve been hard at work on The Bone Season and its sequels for years. What made you take a detour from that series to create an entirely new world?
I started The Priory of the Orange Tree during an interlude in the Bone Season series, where my editor had the manuscript of The Song Rising for quite a while and I was unable to start work on the next installment. Since I’m a full-time author and needed to occupy myself while I waited for notes, I decided it would be the perfect time to start writing a re-imagining of the legend of Saint George and the Dragon.

You veer between a number of characters in this story. Which of the voices or perspectives came to you most naturally? Which was the most rewarding to work with?
Tané was the first of the four perspective characters to step into my head. Out of all of them, she’s most like me—an anxious workaholic with imposter syndrome. Ead and Niclays came next, and finally, Loth. I loved taking each of them through their arcs and unpicking their various backstories, but Ead was the most rewarding to write overall. She’s shrewd, brave and certain of her beliefs, with a bit of a dry sense of humour, and her story is bursting with court intrigue and ancient secrets. Ead is also the character whose story is most connected to the title.

If you could live in one of the civilizations you invented for this book, which one would it be?
Tough one, but probably Seiiki. It’s a beautiful country—a mountainous island of deep forests and black sands, surrounded by the limpid green-blue waters of the Sundance Sea, where glowing dragons roam the skies and swim beneath the waves. It’s also home to the calendar trees, which bear different coloured flowers every season.

Do you plan to write any more books or stories set in this universe?
I would love to, yes. The world of Priory has more tales to tell . . .

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of The Priory of the Orange Tree.

Author photo credit Louise Haywood-Schiefer.

The pitch for R.J. Barker’s The Bone Ships is simple—fantasy pirates, sailing on ships made out of dragon’s bones. But there’s a lot more going on under the surface (sorry). We talked to Barker about the inspirations for his seafaring world, questionable taxidermy and why the matriarchal society of The Hundred Isles isn’t exactly a utopia.

At times The Bone Ships reminded me of a grown-up, fantastical Treasure Island or one of Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey-Maturin series. Where did you draw inspiration for The Bone Ships?
Treasure Island is definitely a really early influence, so is C.S. Forester with the Hornblower books. Then later on I drifted away, got distracted by other things, as I do, and Robin Hobb’s Liveship traders put me back on the path to the sea (so it was a huge thrill when Robin described The Bone Ships as “brilliant”). From there I discovered Patrick O’Brian and I fell in love with the world of Captain Aubrey and Dr. Maturin. I’ve also always loved the sea. It’s something I can watch for hours and never get bored, the constant shifting of it, the sheer size, the way it dwarfs us. We think we are the masters of the planet but every so often the sea rises up and shows us we are no such thing.

Where did you get the idea for ships made of dragons’ bones?
I’m kind of known for, maybe, being a bit odd, but I always think the way I get to these things is really logical. I wanted to write about ships but in a fantasy world, so I thought about what I could take away from our world that would make me go about it slightly differently. The first thing that sprung to mind was trees. Then you need a different material to build from, and bone was often used for tools by neolithic societies and it was also popular among sailors for doing scrimshaw (bone carving). So bone made sense in that way but, obviously, if you’re going to build a ship they have to be big bones, so from there you get to dragons—though I think if you were a dragon pedant, you might take issue with me describing the arakeesians as dragons. I tend to think of them as more akin to kaiju but dragons is an easy shorthand.

Will we get to see more of the Gaunt Islanders? I feel like we got a small window into how different their society is from that of the Hundred Isles, but they still seem like such a mystery.
Yes! But not immediately. I’m writing book three now and large parts of that will take place within the Gaunt Islands, so we’ll get to see their society and I’m really looking forward to writing that. One of my problems as a writer is I get bored really quickly and taking things to a new place is an easy way of refreshing things and rediscoveirng my excitement. So we’ll definitely get to see the Gaunt Islanders because it allows me to invent more things, and I like to invent things.

Other than for control of ships, why is the war even being fought? Will we ever know? (And do the countries even really remember?)
I’ve no great plans to explain the beginnings of the war because I don’t think it’s needed for the story the books are telling. When I write, I tend to keep it quite close to the character’s point of view—so we can only ever really know what they know and, as you said, they don’t know. It’s just what they do. I always hope when people read what I do they don’t go away thinking that violence is cool. The violence in the Scattered Archipelago* is essentially pointless, it’s a waste of life. As is the story in the book in many ways, they’re sent out to hunt this magnificent creature, and for what? So people can go on killing each other for reasons they don’t even understand. Part of Joron’s growth through the book is that he begins to see his society in a different way and understand that maybe, very fundamentally, something is wrong.

*That is the first time I have EVER spelled “archipelago” right the first time. Go me.

One of the most interesting (and maybe most disturbing) parts of Hundred Isles culture is the interplay between childbirth, religion and political and naval power. Why did you choose to center the power structures of this society around birth?
I don’t know where the first thought came from. But often, historically, our societies have hidden women away because the ability to have children is precious and hugely important. And of course there’s the wish for men to ensure that a child is theirs, that their genetic line is continuing. But the flipside of anything being valuable is it gives you power, and in this world to have healthy children is very rare, and it's definitely more important than continuing someone’s genetic line. And since that line is matriarchal it doesn’t really matter who the father is (it’s never said but definitely implied that women have multiple lovers), so it seemed like a steady base to set a society up on. Then once you have that reasoning set up, everything comes after—their religion paints men as flawed and gives them reasons for men to never be in control. So women are put in positions of power, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

One of the reasons for flipping a society is to make people look at ours again. Putting women in charge doesn’t magically make everything great in the Hundred Isles, because women aren’t some bizarre other species. People are people. You set up these things and go “look, everything is different,” and then you use that to show that our fundamental flaws, the things that cause the darkness in our world, are the same. Greed, pride, the lust for power. The Hundred Isles are a terrible place, but it’s normal for the people that live in it, and it’s only when they are forced to look at it, and to some degree be outside it, that they begin to want change.

The more I think about the Gullaime, the more questions I have. How did they end up enslaved? Are there any out there who aren’t? And what exactly is a Windspire, really?
Aha! So many questions I cannot answer without ruining the next two books. . . I think (hope) people will be as interested in the Gullaime as you are, and we will definitely find out a lot more about them and their society. The Gullaime (who three books down the line, I am kind of wishing I had given a name to) has an ever growing part to play. I love writing him/it, there’s something very mischievous and yet innocent about the Gullaime. And his/its relationship with Joron is probably one of my favourite things.

The world of The Bone Ships feels both enormous because of the sheer volume of islands, and hemmed in because of the great storms raging at the edge of the map. Why did you choose to have the storms there as a sort of “edge of the world”? And have they always been there?
They have always been there, because it was one of the first things I thought of when this idea was playing about inside my head. A lot of things fell by the wayside but the storms stayed. I just really like that idea. In a lot of old maps you have this thing where for the people drawing them, or looking at them, the world just ends because they don’t know what exists past the edges of their map. I really liked that idea of creating a world that actually does have hard and impassable borders, and I didn’t want walls or mountains. Storms seemed fitting for these people and this place. As far as the people of the Scattered Archipelago know they have always been there, yes. But, as I said, we only know what they know. . .

In your bio, you mention a collection of “questionable taxidermy.” Where did that come from? And is there a difference between proper and questionable taxidermy?
When my wife and I got married, we bought ourselves this fox head we’d seen in a shop. It had been there for years and years, and it had just been there moldering away because it didn’t look very good, and we felt kind of sorry for it. We really like things that maybe other people wouldn’t love. There’s a fashion for ‘bad’ taxidermy at the moment but we’re not really part of that. I can’t really explain what it is we like about a thing, just that we have no interest in some lovingly stuffed hunting trophy. We like the things that maybe wouldn’t find a home anywhere else. They’re not quite right, but someone meant well, and we love these things for it. They have to be old too. Rather than collecting odd taxidermy, I like to think of us as more of a home for retired taxidermy. Taxidermy that’s got a bit eccentric in its dotage.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of The Bone Ships.

Author photo by SMB Photography.

Kacen Callender’s unforgettable new fantasy Queen of the Conquered explores thorny questions of race, privilege and power in a lushly detailed Caribbean-inspired setting. Sigourney Rose, the only leader descended from indigenous islanders in the colony of Hans Lollik, tells herself that her ruthless mission to become the ruler of all the islands will enable her to free the enslaved, but her own personal vendettas and quest for power complicate her every move. We talked to Callender about the intersections between discrimination and privilege, the history that inspired Queen of the Conquered and more.

Was there a real-life inspiration behind the character of Sigourney Rose? Readers will really be torn between rooting for her and being afraid of her, but there’s no doubt she’s a unique protagonist on multiple levels.
Yes, I was inspired to write Sigourney Rose’s character in part from history and in part by my own experiences as someone who is oppressed but also has privilege. When I was in high school, I first learned that Black people had also once owned slaves, and that fact stuck with me throughout the years as I wondered what sort of person would degrade their own people for the sake of power.

This was a horrifying quality of Sigourney’s since she does own slaves who’re also islanders, and as the main protagonist, I knew that she had to be sympathetic at least on some level for readers to care enough to continue reading about her journey. Her family’s massacre at the hands of the colonizers was a part of this. I also wanted to explore what I think is a relatable conflict of being oppressed and knowing discrimination, but also having privilege, and in some ways contributing to systematic oppression simply by existing in a society that feeds on others.

“When I was in high school, I first learned that Black people had also once owned slaves, and that fact stuck with me.”

How did growing up in the U.S. Virgin Islands influence the setting of Queen of the Conquered? When you started writing, did you ever see yourself penning a novel set in a world inspired by your particular experience?
The U.S. Virgin Islands, which were once part of the Danish West Indies, were the inspiration for the fantasy world. The royal island of Queen of the Conquered is called Hans Lollik, for example, which is an island in the USVI. The language in Sigourney’s world also borrows from Danish. The magical ability in the book is called “kraft,” which means “power” in Danish—power as an ability, but also power as in privilege.

Growing up in the U.S. Virgin Islands did also influence the story as someone who was a local but attended a private school where for a few years I was the only Black, local student in the class. I faced horrific bullying and ostracization almost every day of my life by white students, but it was privilege that let me attend a private school. Throughout my life I’ve found myself in similar situations where privilege got me a place or position, but I’d be the only Black person in the room facing discrimination, which inspired Sigourney’s character. I love my home, and I’ve always wanted to write novels set in and based on the U.S. Virgin Islands, so hopefully there are many more to come.

What is your favorite genre to read? What drew you to write in the SFF genre?
I honestly don’t have a favorite genre to read. I love it all—it just depends on whatever mood I’m in. I do love speculative, though, because SFF is a metaphor for the real world and lets us take a look at our world from a different lens, which can sometimes offer even more clarity than if we had written about our world in a contemporary setting. Writing a contemporary about the intersection of privilege and discrimination might not have made the same points about power and systematic oppression in the way that I was able to in Queen of the Conquered.

"Writing a contemporary about the intersection of privilege and discrimination might not have made the same points about power and systematic oppression."

What settings have you not yet covered in your novels that you would like to escape/travel to through your fiction? What’s your favorite geographical location to write in?
Because I write contemporary, magical realism and speculative for both children and adults, I spend a lot of time thinking about real settings for the contemporary books and the pieces that could be taken from those places to create fantasy spaces. But I also like to look for the magic in the real world. I’ll walk around St. Thomas or my new neighborhood in West Philadelphia, and I’ll look up and see an alley or a field that feels out of place and stories begin to spark. There was once a park I’d walked through in New York City where suddenly the trees were almost too big and too green, butterflies started to rise from the grass with every step, and when I looked around there were no other people in sight. I began to think I’d walked into a completely different world. I turned a corner and got to the street where the city reappeared. When it was time to go home, I tried to find that section of the park again, but it’d completely disappeared and was replaced by swing sets and people walking their dogs. It’s possible I just made a wrong turn and/or that I have an overactive imagination, but it’s pieces of magic like this that I like to collect to create worlds.

“I . . . like to look for the magic in the real world.”

Sigourney eventually realizes that in certain lands, she is lumped into the same category as other people of color and inevitably endangered. All the while, the islanders of Hans Lollik fear and despise her for her psychic and political power. In your research and personal experience growing up in the islands, what did you unearth about the peoples who were colonized by others at this time? Were any of their stories the inspiration for Sigourney’s family?
There weren’t any specific stories that inspired Sigourney’s family besides what I’d learned in high school about Black people who did own slaves. Any research was focused on slavery in the Caribbean and what our ancestors had to endure to survive. There’s another key piece about slavery in the Caribbean that I did a bit of research for, but don’t want to discuss it here because it would risk spoiling the ending of the book.

This book introduces the concept of kraft, a unique reference to psychic power that is passed down through the family. Sigourney’s kraft allows her to manipulate but also experience others’ emotions, whereas others hold the power to commune with the dead, extract the truth, etc. What inspired this particular system of magic?
Kraft is specifically a mental ability, and just like in the real world, mental ability and talent is evenly distributed among all of us. However, the Fjern—the oppressors of Hans Lollik—declare that only they are allowed to have kraft by the divine right of their gods, and any islander found with kraft is executed. This is a metaphor for our world, because we also don’t allow everyone with ability the opportunity to use their talent to further themselves in the way that the Fjern do in Queen of the Conquered. People of color face mass incarceration and execution and racism and systematic oppression, taking away so many of our chances to use our talents and abilities as well.

It’s clear that Sigourney’s mental health has understandably deteriorated after the murder of her family and her continued participation in the kongeligs’ cruelty towards, genocide of and enslavement of the islanders. How important do you feel talking about mental health is for fantasy authors and authors in general, regardless of the genre they write in?
This is a close subject to me because of my own struggles with mental health, and I do often find myself writing about mental health at least in some aspect in most of my books. I don’t think that it should be a requirement for anyone to speak or write about mental health because this is something that can be triggering, and not everyone is in a place where they can speak or write openly about mental health. But, if authors are able to and feel inclined to do so, then it’s an important topic and the act of doing so could be potentially life-saving.

“We tell ourselves that we would’ve been better than our ancestors.”

Sigourney’s self-hatred and fear are palpable. How did you feel writing a protagonist who isn’t 100 percent admirable?
I wanted to write a protagonist that was morally gray because it feels more realistic and honest and vulnerable to me to write a character who struggles with many qualities that I do also. I face discrimination as a Black, queer and trans person, but I also have privileges that give me a comfortable home, food and water and education and the laptop that lets me write these books. There are people who would be able to do the same if they’d been given the same privileges as me. I think of how, in our society, so many of us like to consider ourselves the heroes of our own stories. We tell ourselves that we would’ve been better than our ancestors: We would’ve fought slavery, fought internment and concentration camps, stopped genocide. Yet these are all things that are happening in the world right now, and I feel a helplessness and hopelessness that Sigourney also struggled with. I think it’s important to wash away the ego and come to terms with the fact that we’re all morally gray people like Sigourney, who also aren’t 100 percent admirable, because then we’ll be able to begin to create real change.

Sigourney experiences a web of feelings, both physical and emotional, towards others, but she’s more focused on her own situation and end goals. What was your aim in writing a book about coming-of-age and aspiring towards ones’ goals, no matter what they might be?
Sigourney’s goals are technically admirable and understandable: She tells herself that she wants to take power back from the Fjern who have colonized her islands, enslaved her people and massacred her family for revenge. But what interests me most about any character’s goals are the complexities. Sigourney tells herself that she wants to take power back from the Fjern for the sake of her people, but she has to grapple with the idea that her desire for power might actually be for herself and her selfish greed. She tells herself that she acts for revenge, but she treats her people the same way that the Fjern do, and is no better than the other kongelig, or nobles, of the royal island. Though it seems that Sigourney always aspired to her goals no matter what, her path is filled with self-hatred and doubt, and this is coupled with the mystery of the murders of the kongelig, Sigourney often questions herself. My aim was to complicate Sigourney’s path realistically.

You’ve also worked as an editor, acquiring inclusive fiction and bringing a diverse array of voices to bookshelves. What do you hope readers will discover about the world or themselves after reading the books you’ve edited and acquired as a publishing professional?
I was an editor for children’s books, so for young readers, I always hope that they’ll come away from the books I edited with validation and self-love. I wanted marginalized voices to feel seen and heard since there’s so little representation for us.

Speaking of diversity in publishing and SFF, how do you think your books help add to this movement towards multicultural/LGBTQ+ fiction and representation of all sorts of character identities?
I think that my books specifically add to the movement of Black identities. I don’t want to write for people of color of cultures and identities other than my own because I don’t know their experiences and I don’t want to take space when I know there are others who’re trying to write their own stories and their own books. I hope that adding my voice to the mix as a Black, queer and trans person from the Caribbean allows others who share any piece of my identities to feel seen, especially as I keep writing and keep getting more stories with different mixtures of my identities into the world. I hope that people from other cultures and communities can read my books and see characters and cultures they might not see often enough, enriching their own worlds also.

What’s next for you and your writing? Will there be a continuation of Sigourney’s story, or the story of the people of Hans Lollik?
Yes, there’s a sequel titled King of the Rising, which will be from Løren’s perspective following the events of Queen of the Conquered.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of Queen of the Conquered. 

Author photo by Ashlee Cain.

Alina Boyden’s gorgeous, transportive debut novel, Stealing Thunder, synthesizes Mughal Indian history and her own anthropological work with the transgender communities of South Asia to create a richly detailed fantasy world. Here, Boyden shares how she developed the fabulous clothing of Daryastani society, why she developed an “anti-dragon” and more.

This is your debut novel, and it’s haunting, gorgeous and amusing at all the right moments. What places and times would you like to travel to in your fiction going forward?
First of all, thank you so much for that lovely compliment. I am definitely continuing the story of Razia and Arjun with a sequel. I’ve written that one, and it broadens the horizons of the world of Stealing Thunder quite considerably. I’m also working on some non-Razia related projects. Currently that is taking me to the south of France and to Spain in the 13th century, though it won’t be a historical fiction piece, so that’s just the inspiration. It brings me back to my undergraduate years as a medieval studies major. But there are so many other places in the world and so many other cultures that I find deeply inspiring that I think if I’m lucky enough to have the sales figures to keep my career going, I will have no shortage of places and times to visit.

“. . . to see communities of (largely) transgender women, which have existed for thousands of years, was awe-inspiring to me.” 

Readers may not know that the hijras in Stealing Thunder are inspired by the real-life communities of the same name in Pakistan, which you’ve studied during your work as a cultural anthropologist. When did you first learn about these communities, and why do they fascinate and inspire you?
Well, for starters, the communities in Pakistan are properly referred to as “khwaja sira” communities. In Pakistan, “hijra” is often considered to be a slur. In India, “hijra” has greater currency as an autonym and is not nearly so often considered to be negative in its connotation. I chose to use “hijra” as a term because it has so much wider currency in American discourse than “khwaja sira” does, and because the word “transgender” in English is such a recent innovation that I felt it might distract readers from the fantasy world I had created.

I first learned about hijras when I was 12 or 13; I suppose I was, like a lot of trans women, searching the world to see if there are others out there like her. You see, when I was growing up, I was taught that being transgender was a modern phenomenon, that trans people didn’t exist in other countries, that we were a particular pathology rooted in the modern West. So to see communities of (largely) transgender women that have existed for thousands of years was awe-inspiring to me. Most trans women I know in America grew up believing they were alone. Each of us had to learn for herself what being transgender even was, because there was so little cultural understanding of transness as a phenomenon.

So to see a culture where not only is transness broadly known and acknowledged, but these trans women live together in their own communities—that was really shocking to me the first time I came across it. It made me realize that things didn’t have to be the way that they were for me growing up in America. There are many other ways that transness can operate in the world, and one of them is this radically visible and community-oriented form that we see in the hijra and khwaja sira communities of South Asia.

Your description of Razia and her hijra sisters’ transitions is eloquent and beautiful, normalizing the process to readers even when the other members of Daryastani society may not feel the same way. As a trans rights activist, was this a stance that you knew you wanted in the book from the beginning, rather than the oft popularized stories of only hardship and pain?
Absolutely. If there is one pernicious myth that needs to be addressed in our own society, it is the idea that transition-related treatments are as painful or more painful than gender dysphoria, or that they are imperfect facsimiles of cis experiences. Those ideas permeated my own upbringing and my own early understanding of transition, and they are myths that I only banished within myself somewhat recently, because they are so virulent.

I’m not really sure why cis people are so taken with the idea that transition-related procedures are painful or damaging or imperfect. Maybe it’s because cis people don’t have gender dysphoria, by definition, and therefore they imagine what it would be like to undergo those procedures themselves and come away horrified. Maybe it’s something else. I don’t know what being cis is like. But for trans people, it’s actually the reverse. The procedures are not horrific, damaging things; they are profoundly mundane medical interventions which result in bodies that largely feel normal—often for the first time in our lives.

Now that’s not to say that every trans person needs or wants the same (or any) medical interventions in their lives. However, for those trans people who do medically transition as a result of the dysphoria they experience, the decision to begin transition or to have surgical intervention can be fraught with fear and doubt because of the salacious misinformation that they have been exposed to. The truth (as I have experienced it as one trans woman) is that the medical interventions in my life were not only greatly beneficial in terms of my mental well-being but also have given me a far greater sense of normalcy than I ever expected they would.

I wanted to include that sense of normalcy in Stealing Thunder. I wanted to normalize the physical experience of being transgender without centering the narrative around medical interventions or physical changes. I did this quite consciously, because cis people seem to focus far more on our hormones and our surgeries than we do in our daily lives. Yes, for many of us, those interventions are a part of our lived experiences. Yes, I do wake up every morning and take estrogen, and take it again before going to bed, and have since I was 18 years old. But I don’t really spend a lot of time dwelling on it. I don’t view it as particularly central to my daily lived experience, and it’s certainly not something that, if I were writing the novel of my life, I would spend a whole lot of time on. So, when writing the novel of Razia’s life, I didn’t spend a lot of time on it either.

When did you first become fascinated with the Mughal Empire, and why do you think that era of history is so resonant for you?
I’ve been fascinated by the so-called “Gunpowder Empires” of the 16th and 17th centuries for as long as I can remember. This was a period when the military dominance of European powers was something still on the horizon. It was a time when Ottoman armies besieged Vienna, and when India was the wealthiest country in the world. These empires represented a substantial fraction of the world’s population, a substantial fraction of the world’s GDP and produced some of the finest art and architecture ever to be found anywhere on the planet. If I had not experienced the incredibly Eurocentric public history education that we have in the United States firsthand, I would be genuinely baffled as to why anyone looking at the 16th and 17th centuries would be so focused on the activities of a tiny, dreary island in the North Atlantic when they could focus on the Red Fort of Agra instead.

Were there any real-life muses who inspired the individual characters of Razia Khan and Prince Arjun?
Razia’s namesake is obviously Razia Sultana, the only female ruler of the Delhi Sultanate. I visited her tomb in Delhi, which was an amazing experience, as it’s quite hard to find and very poorly marked, having no major structures associated with it. However, aside from the name, which I really liked, there isn’t a great deal of similarity between Razia the sultana and Razia the character.

Arjun is kind of a sly reference to the character of Arjun(a) the Archer, from the Mahabharata. In the story, Arjuna spends a year cursed to live as a hijra, so I threw in a slight reference to that in Stealing Thunder as well, though I don’t know if anybody noticed. I thought it was kind of fun to have the male lead be named for a well-known character who spent a year living as a trans woman himself. I don’t know if that necessarily explains why Arjun is such an empathetic character when it comes to Razia, but maybe that informed my thinking a little bit.

Your characters are resplendently dressed and described, to the point where the reader can truly visualize Razia, her comrades and her foes. What was your favorite part of crafting the garb for this book?
The garb was so hard! Fashion changes so much over time, and to make a decision about what people are wearing when you have to consider changes over time and region, and then also practicality, took a ton of work. But I think my favorite part was just looking at all the gorgeous examples that exist both from South Asia in the past and South Asia today. It was an awesome excuse to watch some really fun Bollywood movies, to delve into 16th and 17th century miniature paintings and to go sari shopping with friends. Honestly, research is probably my favorite part about writing, and I love historical costume research, so as tough as it was to feel like I’d done it justice, the whole thing was just a joy.

“I actually have to confess that I’ve always hated dragons in fantasy . . .”

Every time one of the zahhaks stole a scene, I became more curious about your inspiration for these glorious creatures. What’s their backstory? And is their name an intentional homage to the villainous Zahhak of Persian mythology?
Yes, zahhaks, what’s going on with that? Well, honestly it comes down to the fact that there really is no one good translation of the concept of dragon into South Asian culture—or at least, I couldn’t find one that satisfied me. Obviously, dragon could be translated into Urdu as “azhdaha” (which is a Persian loanword). And Zahhak is a villainous character of Persian mythology whose name is sometimes translated as “dragon.” So when I was trying to find a good word to get across the concept of dragon, I really was torn between those two words, and I settled on zahhak as being easier for non-Persian and non-Urdu speakers to read without being distracted by questions of pronunciation.

But their backstory is entirely my own invention. I actually have to confess that I’ve always hated dragons in fantasy, because they’re not aerodynamic, and they don’t behave in ways that make sense in terms of how they’re used militarily in fantasy books. I’ve studied military aviation my whole life, and I love birds—I used to train birds of prey for a living, and I’m familiar with ancient treatises on falconry, including ones from South Asia. So I have long had this knowledge about falconry and this obsession with flight, and I fly airplanes too, so I brought those things together to create a kind of dragon-like creature, but one governed by the actual laws of aerodynamics as much as possible. I researched extinct giant birds and pterosaurs, and I mixed them together with living birds of prey and with my way-too-vast knowledge of military aviation, and I essentially created these biological fighter planes which look like resplendent peacocks. I was so sure that nobody else would like them, but people have really responded positively to them, even though they’re my anti-dragon in a way.

What do you hope readers will discover about the world or themselves after reading your book?
Well, I don’t know that I have enough faith in my own writing to believe that people will discover something life-altering about themselves from reading one of my books. My hope is a bit simpler than that. I just want trans women, especially young trans girls, to read this book and feel seen and represented. I want them to realize that they can be anybody they want to, that they can dream as big as anyone else, that the world is as much their oyster as anyone else’s.

And I realize my readership is largely not going to be trans women, young or old. That’s just a demographic reality. So for the bulk of my readers, especially for my cis readers, I just hope that they come away from this book having our existences demystified a little bit. I think the truth of being a trans girl is profoundly boring and normal. I think if I’ve properly explained what it’s like to be trans to a cis reader, their response is probably going to be something along the lines of, “Oh, is that all there is to it?” And that’s fine with me. Because I think that sense of normalcy, that sense of “Oh you’re just like me,” that’s where acceptance begins.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of Stealing Thunder.

What’s next for you and your writing? I’m sure readers would love to know what’s in the pipeline for you, Razia and her chosen family and friends (and zahhaks!).
Well, the sequel draft is done and sitting with my editor right now, who is working on it through this pandemic we’re currently dealing with. I think it’s a really exciting book. It’s got tons more action, tons more drama, and you get to learn about a totally new species of zahhak, as well as to see the ice zahhaks from Stealing Thunder “on camera” for the first time. So that’s going to be super cool, I hope. And, of course, I’m plugging away on another project I can’t really talk about yet, but I can’t wait to share that one with the world too. Other than that, I’m surviving this social isolation as best I can, and I hope everyone reading this are healthy and as happy as can be expected given the circumstances.

Author photo by Spencer Micka.