Andy Marino rides the balance between good horrific fun and grisly speculation in The Swarm, a tale of a cicada emergence of biblical proportions.
Andy Marino rides the balance between good horrific fun and grisly speculation in The Swarm, a tale of a cicada emergence of biblical proportions.
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Deborah A. Wolf makes her epic fantasy debut with The Dragon’s Legacy, the first novel in an ambitious trilogy about the Zeeranim, a tribe of fierce female warriors determined to protect their desert homeland. One of the brave young warriors, Sulema, is stunned to learn of her long-hidden connection to the powerful Dragon King who rules in a neighboring land. The novel traverses the sands of the Zeera desert and beyond as readers encounter dream-shifting shamans and terrifying mythical creatures.

Wolf has personal experience with wild landscapes and ferocious creatures, since she grew up in an Alaskan wildlife refuge. We asked her for some insight into what she calls her childhood as a “barbarian warrior”—with all its bumps and bruises—and how those experiences translate onto the page in her thrilling new novel.

How did you decide to create a matriarchal society like that of the Zeeranim? These characters pack some serious girl power. Are there any women in your life who should be ruling the world?
One of the things I’m having fun with as I write The Dragon’s Legacy series is trope-flipping. Desert tribes are overwhelmingly portrayed as male dominated and repressive of women and women’s sexuality, so I wanted to write that backwards and see what emotional impact it might hold for my readers. Also, I grew up in the middle of Alaska, and the women in my village were for the most part powerful and admirable, whether for their skills at hunting and fishing, jobs on fishing boats and in the oil fields, or for their abilities in providing for and raising families in a dangerous and awesome environment. My Granny should have ruled the world. It would be a much kinder place today had she a voice in making policy.

The Dragon’s Legacy is filled with all sorts of strange (and scary) animals. How did you come up with the creatures in the novel? Are they combinations of your favorite animals, your least favorite, or just animals that you think would look interesting blended together?
I grew up on wildlife refuges, so the natural world informed my development from an early age. I enjoy worldbuilding as far as imagining ecosystems and the life forms one might find, especially on a world born of a dragon’s dreaming.

World building is an incredibly difficult undertaking. Can you tell us how your experience as an Arabic linguist and your love of different cultures contributed to your talent for creating new worlds?
I can’t imagine how much more of a struggle this would be if my upbringing and early adulthood had been more homogeneous. Exposure to and appreciation for cultures different from my own have imbued me with a fascination for the breadth of the human experience; we are so strange, so wonderful and odd and funny and frightening as a species. Sulema is an intriguing and unique character. She is brave to the point of recklessness, fierce and strong.

Is there a little of you in Sulema? In a perfect world, would you like to live your life like hers?
There is a lot of me in Sulema, which is probably why I’ve had knee surgery, cortisone shots and some hearing loss. I regret nothing. Sulema is a good kid, and people who knew me as a young soldier will recognize many of her personality traits. That being said, I’m probably more like Hafsa Azeina [Sulema's adoptive mother] at this stage of my life.

If you woke up tomorrow as any mythical creature—including ones of your own invention—which one would it be and why?
A dragon, of course. Even the least of dragons inspires us to awe.

Which came to you first, the plot or the concept for the world of The Dragon’s Legacy?
The concept came first, though it was in the beginning a much simpler story, meant to be a quick sword and sorcery in the desert tale of Sulema’s journey to meet her father and create her destiny. Writing is much like parenting; you conceive a child and love it immediately with all your heart, and then kind of sit back and watch in awe as that child defies all your preconceived notions and grows into something more wonderful than you could have imagined. The novel has so many unique castes and occupations, from dreamshifters to First Mothers to vashai.

Was there any real-world or historical inspiration for the hierarchy and cultural structures in place?
I am an avid reader of histories, biographies and faerie tales, and at any given time you might find me engrossed in a National Geographic magazine or BBC documentary. So the short answer to this question would have to be “Yes, all of it.” History, current events, and a big dose of ‘what if’. What if China had interfered with Roman expansion? What if Atlantis had sunk down into the earth instead of the ocean? What if the threat of earthquakes in California is actually a result of a restless dragon stirring in her sleep?

Elaborate a little about the connection between issues in the book regarding indigenous peoples and their struggles to find and keep their place in a violent world. What has been your real-life connection to this topic, and what do you hope the reader comes away with?
I grew up in a mostly Native village on the Kuskokwim River, and have seen firsthand the social issues that directly result from imperial expansion and cultural genocide. These observations were not from the viewpoint of a seasoned adult with preconceived ideas and a view of the Other, but as a child whose friends’ lives were (and are) directly impacted by forces outside any of our small spheres of influence. I hope that the reader might come away with the ability to see indigenous peoples as people, ordinary people, rather than as savages or museum displays or quaint, backwards societies in need of enlightenment.

How did growing up in Alaska influence your development as a writer?
Because I attended high school in McGrath, Alaska, I was blessed to have come under the tutelage of English teacher Deane O’Dell, who (because she has the patience of all the saints) was able to imbue the reluctant mind of a young barbarian with an unlikely love of culture and literature. Alaska is huge, it is limitless and ancient and powerful, and it is deadly. Alaska will put you in your place and teach you the meaning of insignificance. Alaska taught me to love this world, and hope for its continued existence.

Also, the fishing is superb.

Who inspires you as an author? Are you a longtime reader of epic fantasy, and if so, what are some of your favorites in the genre?
I grew up reading such greats as Katharine Kerr, Katherine Kurtz and of course Anne McCaffrey; I wanted to be a Dragonrider so bad, you have no idea. I used to hunt for fire lizard clutches on the beach. More recently, favorites and inspirations include Pat Rothfuss, Robin Hobb and George Martin. This is a short excerpt of a very long list. I feel fortunate to live in such times, and humbled to be published in such august company.

Can we have a few hints about the forthcoming books in the trilogy?
Keep an eye out for spiders, and trust no one—especially not the author.

Deborah A. Wolf makes her epic fantasy debut with The Dragon’s Legacy, the first novel in an ambitious trilogy about a desert tribe of fierce female warriors.
Interview by

Holly Black has played in the world of faeries for as long as she can remember. When she was a child, her mother would enchant her with ghost stories, convince her that their house was haunted and even set up scavenger hunts for her to find little indications of faeries around their neighborhood.

“I grew up with a great deal of belief in the supernatural,” Black says during a call to her home in western Massachusetts, where it’s a damp, misty day. “It seemed very possible that the faerie world was always just around the corner. And when you really believe, it seems a lot scarier.”

Black went on to read, fall in love with and draw inspiration from the original folklore and art of faeries—which are far darker than most people realize. Faeries are “often seen as kind of Tinker Bell-y in that pastel, friendly way,” Black says. “But the original folklore is pretty brutal.” Some faeries might “steal people, trick people, lead them astray, off cliffs and into the water where creatures will eat you.” These are the kinds of darker faerie characters that Black explores in many of her bestselling faerie novels, and more deeply than ever in The Cruel Prince, the first book in her new Folk of the Air trilogy.

As The Cruel Prince opens, human twin sisters Jude and Taryn get their first introduction to the creatures of Faerie by way of Madoc, their mother’s first husband and the bloodthirsty grand general of the High Court’s armies. Though he knocks on their door and slaughters their mother and father right in front of them, he is not without honor. He not only takes back his biological, half-faerie daughter, Vivian, who’d been “stolen” from him, but he also agrees to adopt her half-sisters—Jude and Taryn—and return with them to Faerie and raise them as his own.

Ten years pass as Jude and Taryn grow up in Faerie, learning the inner workings of this strange land while being treated like members of the court. The downside to this, however, is that they must attend classes with Prince Carden, the youngest and wickedest son of the High King. But the faerie king will soon abdicate the throne and pass down his crown to one of his many children. This transition of power could unravel the entire, delicate fabric of Faerie—to the advantage of those ready to pounce on any sign of weakness.

Jude and Taryn are determined to carve out a place for themselves. But as Jude digs deeper into Faerie’s dark corners—all the while spying and learning of long-running political intrigues, power games and rivalries—the faeries she meets along the way only further demonstrate how cruel this place can be. As Jude transforms into someone who’s more than just a simple pawn, readers see the intimate duality of her struggle for place and power.

“It seemed very possible that the faerie world was always just around the corner. And when you really believe, it seems a lot scarier.”

Fans of Black’s faerie realm will recognize this tale as new territory: “Most [faerie] stories are set in our [human] world and are about a kid from Faerie who was switched,” Black explains, but The Cruel Prince “isn’t about just one person stumbling into a faerie situation and maybe learning their own magic.” Set almost entirely in Faerie, with human characters who were raised there and therefore know all the rules, this story reveals greater depth and detail of Faerie than ever before. Black’s characters are no longer playing the game without knowing the consequences, and to her, “that idea of having to rely on your wits and on cleverness, when everybody else has magic, is really interesting.”

Black unfolds this sweeping, twisting narrative with the fine-tuned understanding of someone who’s spent nearly her whole life poking around the depths of Faerie. It’s just what fans expect from the beloved author, whose various faerie books have sold over 2.5 million copies. To date, she has published more than 30 novels, and her Spiderwick Chronicles, co-crafted with Tony DiTerlizzi, were made into a feature film. But for all her critical acclaim and reader appreciation, it was her 2014 Newbery Honor for Doll Bones that engendered the greatest transformation in how she viewed herself as a writer.

“I grew up seeing those stickers on books and knowing those were ‘the good books,’ ” Black says. “When you’re a person who writes fantasy, you’re usually thought of in a different way—as a genre writer—and genre writers are often seen as not serious. So it really was a big shift in my view of my own writing to think that it could be seen as a serious work, as something that was objectively good.”

To put it mildly, The Cruel Prince is definitely good. The singular reading experience continues in the upcoming second book in the planned trilogy, which finds Black’s characters in a much larger political arena within Faerie. As Black gleefully explains, we’ll get to watch with bated breath as her cast of human and faerie characters learns “how everyone wants power for their own reasons—and how much harder it is to keep that power than it is to get it.”

 

 

Justin Barisich is a freelancer, satirist, poet and performer living in Atlanta. More of his writing can be found at littlewritingman.com.

 

This article was originally published in the January 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Author photo by Sharona Jacobs

Holly Black has played in the world of faeries for as long as she can remember. When she was a child, her mother would enchant her with ghost stories, convince her that their house was haunted and even set up scavenger hunts for her to find little indications of faeries around their neighborhood.

Interview by

“I don’t think time heals all wounds, but occasionally it can let us accept those wounds.”

Matt Haig’s new character, Tom Hazard, looks 40, but due to a rare genetic disorder, he’s nearly 400 years old.

Soon to be adapted as a film starring Benedict Cumberbatch, How to Stop Time leaps back and forth from the 16th century to present-day London to eras in between, revealing the story of a man haunted by the pain of his past and the uncertainty of his future, who nevertheless searches for a reason to keep living.

How to Stop Time shifts dramatically in timing and setting. How did you ensure that structure would make emotional sense to the reader?
The book darts all over the place, but Tom is telling the story from the present, from his perspective now. Each of his memories has helped shape him. They each add to the whole.

There’s always a temptation to have a character like Tom meet all sorts of famous people, but the figures he runs into are well placed and vital to the story. Why did you pick the people you did?
Some of them were there purely to serve the story—Captain Cook and his crew are there for the sheer reason that I wanted Tom to get out of England. I did not want to write 500 years of history in the same country. Shakespeare is there because he was alive when Tom was born, and is still such a big part of our present. Shakespeare’s wisdom on time shaped the book to an extent. F. Scott Fitzgerald was a little bit of an author indulgence. I simply enjoyed writing about him.

You’ve said that Tom’s psychology is inspired by your own experiences with depression, and his mental state after 400 years is a “nightmare version of mindfulness.” Why did you extrapolate your own experiences to this character?
The whole idea came about when I was recovering from anxiety and depression. After three years of continuous mental illness, you actually feel as if you have lived for 400 years. And the questions you face during that time—the point of life, of going on, of the desperate search for hope—would be the same for someone who was alive for centuries.

What do you think Tom misses most about the time period he was born into?
Well, apart from the first love of his life—Rose—I think he misses the old London. The theaters, the inns, the absence of cars and where social life happened on the streets, not on the internet.

What are you most excited to see in the movie adaptation?
It will be incredible to see Benedict Cumberbatch bringing Tom to life. That intensity of centuries. Also, it will be fun to see the South Pacific and his adventures there.

Given enough time, do you think Tom would ever get over the hardships he’s experienced? Can time really heal all wounds?
I think Tom is reaching the point in his life where that is beginning to happen. For centuries, he has been struggling, but now he is reaching a real point of change. Despite it all, I feel optimistic about his chances. I don’t think time heals all wounds, but occasionally it can let us accept those wounds.

What part of How to Stop Time was the most difficult to get right?
Well, the Elizabethan stuff, I think. For one thing, it took a lot of research. A lot of social history. I have a degree in history, but political history and social history are totally different things. I wouldn’t have known before, for instance, that children would drink beer because it was safer than water. New York in the 1890s took a lot of research, too, and early 20th-century Arizona—even though it is only one chapter—required quite a bit of study.

It was hard also because it is tempting to treat those time periods as the past, but at the time, it was the present. It was modern.

And of course, Shakespeare himself. Putting words into Shakespeare’s mouth risks hubris. But I wrote this book with a rare (for me) spirit of courage. I was determined to go precisely where the story wanted to go. I wasn’t going to hide from hard stuff.

 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of How to Stop Time.

Author photo by Ken Lailey.

Matt Haig’s new character, Tom Hazard, looks 40, but due to a rare genetic disorder, he’s nearly 400 years old. Soon to be adapted as a film starring Benedict Cumberbatch, How to Stop Time leaps back and forth from the 16th century to present-day London to eras in between, revealing the story of a man haunted by the pain of his past and the uncertainty of his future, who nevertheless searches for a reason to keep living.

Interview by

Madeline Miller’s second novel, Circe, tells the story of a secondary character from Homer’s Odyssey, the classic Greek epic. After being exiled by her father for transforming a nymph into a sea monster out of jealousy, Circe hones her witchcraft on an isolated island. But chance encounters lead her to reconsider her past and seize control of her fate.

We asked Miller, who won the Orange Prize in 2012 for her first novel, The Song of Achilles, a few questions about the power of myth and the allure of immortality.

Your novels are tricky to pin down by genre. They take place in the past, but have elements of the supernatural. How do you think about your own work?
I think of my books as either literary adaptation or mythological realism. Or just plain old fiction! Genre is such a permeable and changeable thing—Homer is considered some of the most literary literature there is, but if the Odyssey came out today it would probably get shelved in fantasy.

Other than the Odyssey,​ what sources did you have for information about the legends surrounding Circe? Why did you choose to tell her story?
Circe has always been fascinating to me because of her power and mystery; we know she turns men to pigs, but why? To say that it’s because she’s evil by nature isn’t interesting—nor is it true. After she and Odysseus become lovers, she’s one of the most benevolent deities he meets, and I wanted to dig into the reasons behind all of that.

Circe’s also interesting because of the way she relates to so many other famous myths—she’s Helios’ daughter, the Minotaur and Medea’s aunt, Prometheus’ cousin and more. Finally, I loved that she’s the first witch in Western literature. She was born a goddess with little status or power, but finds a way to carve out an independent life for herself by literally inventing something new in the world. I wanted to tell the story of such an interesting and complex woman in her own words, rather than filtered through the male protagonist’s perspective.

In terms of sources, I used texts from all over the ancient world and a few from the more modern world as well. For Circe herself, I drew inspiration from Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Apollonius of Rhodes’ Argonautica, Vergil’s Aeneid, the lost epic Telegony (which survives only in summary) and myths of the Anatolian goddess Cybele. For other characters, I was inspired by the Iliad, of course, the tragedies (specifically the Oresteia, Medea and Philoctetes), Vergil’s Aeneid again, Tennyson’s Ulysses and Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida. Alert readers may note a few small pieces of Shakespeare’s Ulysses in my Odysseus!

“I loved that she’s the first witch in Western literature. She was born a goddess with little status or power, but finds a way to carve out an independent life for herself by literally inventing something new in the world.”

Without giving too much away, Circe’s encounter with Odysseus pokes some holes in the heroic identity that he is given by Homer. Can you talk a little about what it was like to present Odysseus from a different perspective?
Odysseus was one of my favorite characters to write in The Song of Achilles, so I was excited for the chance to revisit him from a different character’s perspective, and at such a different stage of his life. Odysseus is one of the most storied heroes out there—he has been rewritten and reimagined thousands of times. He’s been pretty much everything: beloved trickster, scheming puppet-master, treacherous supervillain, pompous gasbag, wise philosopher among savages, petty bureaucrat, master artist, victim of the fates, courageous leader, cunning thug and on and on. So poking holes in his heroism is definitely a time-honored tradition, even in the ancient world! When we speak of heroes today, we use the term to mean people who have moral courage and integrity. The ancient world didn’t use the word the same way. Their heroes were bold and larger than life—with equally larger-than-life flaws (see Achilles, Agamemnon, etc.).

In the Odyssey, Odysseus beats his men when they argue with him, his greed often gets him in trouble, and it is his own boastfulness that brings the Cyclops’ wrath down on his head. In the Iliad, he ruthlessly kills enemy soldiers in their sleep, as well as a spy to whom he’s promised mercy. I think we’ve come to love Odysseus because he’s the “smart” one, because he’s suffered so much and because he deeply loves his wife and family. That’s all true to the myths, but so is the fact that he’s a violent, compulsive liar who’s cheated on his faithful wife at least twice. I was interested in how both of those perspectives might be true at once.

As for my own Odysseus, I have always seen pragmatism as one of his core traits. He believes that the world is a brutal and dishonorable place, and if you want to thrive you have to be willing to set aside the traditional ideas of honor and get your hands dirty. He’s definitely an ends-justify-the-means believer.

Despite the myriad goddesses in the pantheon, there’s a broad streak of misogyny that runs through classical mythology. What was life like for women in Greece at the time the Odyssey was being told?
This varied depending on location, time period and class, but the general answer is: not great. Women in the ancient Greek world were controlled by a man throughout their lives. As girls, they were under their father’s control, which then passed to their husband and finally to their son. Some of these fathers would of course have been more sympathetic to their daughters’ wishes than others, but even the most doting ones were still having the final say. A woman’s duty was clear: marry so as to provide her father with a good alliance, then produce good heirs for her husband.

Women in ancient Greece were often considered to be creatures of a lower order—bestial in their lust and appetites and untrustworthy, as opposed to intellectual and enlightened men. They were usually not taught to read or write. An exception to this were the hetairai—high-class prostitutes/escorts that have some similarities to geishas. These women were able to attend the fancy, all-male intellectual dinner parties called symposia. They were expected to be learned and artistic, able to discourse wittily on poetry and myth and display other artistic talents. But they were of course also sex workers with little social status, who would never have been allowed to marry one of the men they escorted.

Circe leads an isolated life but still manages to cross paths with some of mythology’s best known characters, like Hermes, Athena, Daedalus, Prometheus, Medea and the Minotaur. Was there a personality you were particularly eager to bring to life?
So many of these characters were fun to imagine, it is hard to pick just one! I loved writing Pasiphae, Circe’s sister. She’s outrageous and vicious—but she has reasons for her behavior. Daedalus, the master craftsman and artist, was another favorite. And perhaps most of all: Penelope, Odysseus’ loyal wife who is as brilliant as he, if not more so.

The Greek gods are immortal, but few use their eternal life spans to seek wisdom, choosing instead to be ruled by their passions and pursue pleasure. It’s almost like a state of eternal adolescence. Do you think mortality inspires us in some ways to become better people? Why or why not?
I think mortality and pain can inspire us to be better—our own struggles can teach us great empathy and give us the push to help others. But I think it can also go the other way—that people who have suffered want to make others suffer. Humanity is always double-edged, and it is all of our responsibilities to encourage our better natures.

Also, as a teacher of high school students, I’m going to defend adolescents! I would take a teenager running things over a Greek god ANY day. Teenagers have big emotions, but those emotions are often positive ones—a passion for experience and learning, a desire for justice and improving the world, and a knack for sweeping away the old cobwebbed compromises and hypocrisies of the generation before. Setting aside a few exceptions (Prometheus, Chiron, etc.), Greek gods don’t feel empathy and only care about themselves. In my mind, they are more like narcissists.

Humankind has long been drawn to myths and legends. What do you think they teach us, or reveal about humanity, that other forms of narrative can’t?
I think there is something in the outsize nature of myth that speaks to us. The dragons and monsters, the angry gods all allow us to work through powerful emotions. None of us has actually met a dragon, but I think most of us have had moments of extreme hope, terror and adrenaline that feel larger than life and need some kind of epic expression. Imagining ourselves into myths provides an outlet for that. Myths let us be the valiant, suffering, flawed and clever heroes of our own lives.

If you could have one supernatural power, what would it be?
Circe’s power to communicate with animals would definitely be up there. Can I have Achilles’ superspeed as well?

What is a typical writing day like for you?
My writing schedule has changed since The Song of Achilles. Back then, I was also teaching and directing plays full time, so I tended to binge-write on weekends, vacations or in the summers—I would do total immersion for days or weeks at a time, then take long breaks. Now I have two young children, which means that I don’t have those nonstop binges, but I do write every day. I usually start around 8:30 a.m. or so, jumping right into a new scene. Then I work on older scenes, then back to the new scenes. Somewhere in there I work out, or at the very least take a long walk. Movement is vital to my writing—I work through lots of writing problems while I’m working out. It’s a great time for my brain to chew over solutions.

What are you working on next?
Two projects are drawing my eye. One is a piece inspired by Vergil’s Aeneid (one of my favorite pieces of literature of all time), and the other is inspired by Shakespeare’s Tempest (Shakespeare is the other great intellectual love of my life). I have no idea which one is going to pull ahead first!

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of Circe.

Photo credit Nina Subin

We asked Madeline Miller, who won the Orange Prize in 2012 for her first novel, The Song of Achilles, a few questions about the power of myth and the allure of immortality.
Interview by

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 Ive 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.

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. We talked to Caruso and Miller about living vicariously through world building, putting their characters in danger and how to fight in a ball gown.

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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.

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.

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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.

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 R.F. Kuang about discovering her inner editor and creating a heroine that represents her worst impulses.

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David Arnold is one of my favorite authors to run into at a Nashville literary event. Although he left Tennessee for the bluer grasses of his hometown of Lexington, Kentucky, he’s still a regular face around town, and he’s often the most genuinely excited author in the room.

On the day of our chat, which is sadly via phone instead of at one of our favorite local record stores like I’d hoped, we’re exactly one month away from the publication of his third novel, The Strange Fascinations of Noah Hypnotik. When I ask how he’s feeling, I’m pretty surprised by his answer: “You know what’s funny about that?” he says. “I’m less excited and nervous with each book, and I’d say that’s a good thing. You have to move on. I feel very strongly that whenever someone asks what’s your favorite thing that you’ve written, it’s always the newest thing. I feel very strongly that Noah is my strongest novel. Noah is my most personal book in a lot of ways. I have never written an autobiographical character, and I don’t really plan to, but Noah would be the closest thing to that I’ll ever write.”

You might be a big fan of Mosquitoland or Kids of Appetite, but Arnold’s latest, with its sci-fi-tinged explorations of time and reality, is easily his most ambitious to date.

Sixteen-year-old Noah Oakman seems to be living a pretty typical suburban life, even if it feels like his trajectory is a bit out of his hands. He’s a star swimmer being courted by college scouts (although he’s faking a back injury while he dreams of a life outside athletics), his parents are almost annoyingly in love, his doting sister idolizes him, and he’s so set on living a life of predictability that he has a self-imposed wardrobe—jeans and T-shirts emblazoned with David Bowie’s face.

Noah’s starting to feel like he’s outgrowing aspects of his life, so he retreats into the things that bring him comfort: “Gilmore Girls” and YouTube rabbit holes. The only person who can pull Noah out of his reverie is his half-Puerto Rican gay best friend, Alan (whom Arnold admits is lovingly modeled after his own best friend, fellow author Adam Silvera). When Alan and his twin sister, Val, convince Noah to let loose at a high school party one night, Noah has a few too many drinks and lets a mysterious man hypnotize him. When Noah wakes the next morning, he finds himself with more pressing issues than his first hangover. Key details of his life have changed, and everything he’s accepted as fact and reality is turned upside down.

“In 2010, my wife and I went on a cruise, and there was a hypnotist on the ship. When you’re on a cruise, you just go with it,” Arnold says with a laugh. “I remember him asking for volunteers, and thinking, what if someone went under and when they came out, everyone in their life was completely different?”

The seed may have been hypnosis, but Noah’s story began taking shape when Arnold and his wife moved from Nashville to Lexington. “We lived with my parents while we were looking for a house, so I literally wrote a chunk of this book where I did my homework in high school,” Arnold says. “So of course I’m going to write a story about a kid who looked like me when I was that age. Of course I’m going to write a . . . book about change when that’s the predominant thing going on in my life at the moment.”

“In high school, I remember feeling like I was changing and no one else was.”

Much like Noah, Arnold struggled with some existential angst during his teen years, although he had to figure it out without the added wrinkle of hypnosis and altered reality.

“When I was a senior in high school, I remember feeling like I was changing and no one else was,” Arnold says. “The great secret is that everyone felt that way. That’s sort of what this book is about: a kid who feels like he’s changing, but no one else is, and no one else could possibly understand what he’s going through. Over the course of this one night, everything gets flipped. It’s almost a mirror image: Everyone in his life has an actual, physical change, and he’s the only one who hasn’t.”

Although The Strange Fascinations of Noah Hypnotik is propelled by a surrealist mystery that asks heady questions about how each of us experiences our own reality, Arnold keeps it all grounded by reminding readers that Noah’s most pressing struggle is simply growing up.

“I did feel very strongly that I wanted to write a character whose struggles were completely internal. When the book opens, [Noah’s] feeling this low-frequency dread, and you’re kind of like, why though?” Arnold says.

With whip-smart dialogue, fun pop-culture asides, endlessly endearing and fully realized characters and a hypnotic mystery, it’s no surprise that Paramount has already secured the film rights for The Strange Fascinations of Noah Hypnotik. This fan, for one, would love Arnold to write the screenplay.

“I would not be opposed to taking a crack at writing it . . . but if I had my preference, I would rather someone who knows what they’re doing do it,” Arnold says with a laugh. “Becky Albertalli [author of Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda] is my critique partner, and I’ve been able to see what she’s gone through. If it’s in the ballpark of Love, Simon, I’ll be thrilled.”

 

This article was originally published in the June 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

David Arnold is one of my favorite authors to run into at a Nashville literary event. Although he left Tennessee for the bluer grasses of his hometown of Lexington, Kentucky, he’s still a regular face around town, and he’s often the most genuinely excited author in the room.

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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.

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 that 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.

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“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.

“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.

Interview by

“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 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.

Interview by

A fairy tale fractured by prejudice and the pitfalls of adolescence, Rena Rossner’s The Sisters of the Winter Wood is a mesmerizing update of Hassidic legends, with a bit of Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market” thrown in for good measure.

Set in the early years of the 20th century, Rossner’s story begins at the edge of a tiny town named Dubossary, where a Jewish population lives a simple life next to a forbidding, dark forest. Sisters Liba and Laya have grown up on the outskirts of this community, and when their parents are called away, they learn something shocking about their family. Their parents are shape-shifters, and the girls have inherited their power. Liba can turn into a bear, and Laya into a swan.

We talked to Rossner about writing in both poetry and prose (one form for each sister), the importance of food and creating the stories she wishes her younger self could read.

What kind of folk tales did you grow up with and how did those stories influence this book?
I grew up on a steady diet of fairy tales, having been born and raised in Miami, Florida, (three hours from Orlando and Disney World) and my mom also read to me from Andrew Lang’s Fairy Tale books that were collections of fairy and folk tales from around the world. But more than all of that, I was raised on Hassidic tales, many of which have magic and supernatural elements to them. From the Wise Men of Chelm to Isaab Bashevis Singer’s stories, Jewish folk tales were a large part of my childhood and my father, who worked in Jewish education, was great storyteller. He often told stories as part of the speeches he made and the lectures he gave. I only wondered why I never found any of these magical tales in any traditional fantasy novels: Why were there no Jewish fantasy novels? Why did I never see Orthodox Jewish teens like myself as the heroines of their own fairy tales? As I got older I was determined to write these stories so that my daughter would be able to someday see someone like herself in a fantasy novel that drew on the stories and tales of my childhood.

Readers might not know much of the history of the real town of Dubossary, which you mention in the author’s note. Do you find its history inspirational? Or tragic?
The truth is that I didn’t know much about the history of the real town of Dubossary either. I was simply looking for a place to set my tale, and I decided to start reading some of my family’s genealogy books (which I had never read before). I found a poem online that was part of the Dubossary Yizkor (Memorial) book that echoed some of “Goblin Market,” it mentioned that the town was full of orchards and vineyards, berries, grapes, pears, apples and melons, and I knew where I had to set my book. On the one hand, I was inspired to write a story about Jewish resistance not set during the time of the Holocaust, and I was proud that the Jews from the town that my ancestors came from fought back and made sure that a pogrom didn’t happen in their town. On the other hand, starting in September 1941, the Nazis came to Dubossary and forced 600 Jews into the main synagogue and burnt it to the ground, after which they systematically wiped out the entire Jewish population. Today, there are 18,000 Jews buried in mass graves in the forests surrounding the town and only about 100-150 Jews left from the town. It is a bittersweet tale, but I wanted to bring to life the shtetl as it was before tragedy befell the town, to tell a story of courage, resistance and resilience, not a tale of tragedy.

Let’s talk about writing prose and poetry in the same book. First of all, what drove this choice? Did you alternate each style as you wrote, just as the chapters alternate? Did you find yourself liking one style versus the other while writing?
I originally set out to write the book in prose. But when I was trying to differentiate Laya’s voice from Liba’s voice I started to hear Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf” melodies in my head—the plodding sound of the grandfather or the wolf, and the flute-like sound of the bird, and I realized that I needed to do this in literary form. I was a poet first, well before I decided to try my hand at writing fiction, and I love a good novel-in-verse, so I thought, why not a novel written half in verse and half in prose? It’s not something that we see very often, and it just felt right. I was really excited to play with this new format and see where it took me. I think that writing Laya’s sections was more fun, and it was nice to take a break from Liba’s sections and write a little poetry in-between. It kept things interesting.

This book is full of Yiddish phrases and Hebrew words, which gives the story a feeling of authenticity and place. How did you choose what words to employ and when to employ them?
When I realized that the book was going to be set in the shtetl of Dubossary I knew that I had to put Yiddish into the book. You can’t write about turn-of-the-century Eastern Europe without including some Yiddish. I was very much inspired by the way Laura Ruby used the Polish language in Bone Gap, and I really wanted to do the same kind of thing for Yiddish (and Hebrew) in my novel. As I looked up phrases that I knew had a good Yiddish equivalent, I often found that the right word popped into my head before I had even completed a search on the internet. My grandmother’s voice came to me as I worked, and this book is dedicated to her, for she taught me all the Yiddish I know. But I also spent hours reading lists of various colorful Yiddish phrases and spread them all out around me so that when the right opportunity arose I could use a choice phrase in the novel so that I would be incorporating as many authentic Yiddish turns of phrase into the book as possible. To me, more than anything, I hope this book helps keep the Yiddish language alive in the minds and hearts of readers.

Food is important in this story. The sisters each crave different foods and are heavily affected by them. Is this rooted in the part of the world the book is set in? Did you use food as a way to impact the story?
Food is a really important part of Jewish culture. Every holiday, every weekend (Shabbat) is centered around shared meals, customs and symbolic foods. Besides that, I am a foodie myself and my first book was actually a cookbook. Anyone who has eaten at my table knows that about me, so it was only natural that food should find its way into the books that I write. I think that food is very much a part of how we define ourselves culturally, and “Goblin Market” itself is a poem filled with descriptions of luscious fruit—I love books that are super evocative, where you can see and smell and taste the world that is being described, and I was determined to make sure that readers could literally taste my book on their tongues.

Tell me about writing a story centered on two sisters with two very different perspectives. Was it difficult to unify these perspectives into one story? Are there parts of how they’re tied together that you’re most proud of?
I think that a lot of the work of being a sibling and being part of a family is forgiveness. There is a lot of petty stuff that happens on a day-to-day basis between siblings, and from a very young age we are constantly forgiving and forgetting. The bigger challenge is what happens when we grow up and grow apart. What happens when your siblings start to make important life choices that you don’t agree with? This is something that happens in every family. And I think the parts I’m most proud of are the places where the sisters have to work hard to forgive each other and to love each other despite how different they are. It’s a hard lesson, and one that I think is really universal. The places where the sisters love and fight for each other even though they don’t agree with the choices that the other is making are the parts that I hope come across as nuanced and real—those are the parts I’m most proud of.

What are some of the defining elements of folklore that comes from Russia, the Ukraine and other parts of Eastern Europe that were inspirations here?
I started with the Hassidic folk tales I was familiar with—taking a man who dances in a bear cloak to save a fellow Jew (from the tale of the Shpoler Zaiyde) and making the leap from that to a man who can actually turn into a bear wasn’t that hard! But there are magical elements to a lot of Hassidic tales—they are just not as well-known as traditional fairy and folk tales. I discovered that the bear is the national symbol of Russia and that in the Ukraine, it is traditional to dance in a bearskin (head and all) to welcome in the new year. There is a line in “Goblin Market” that compares one sister’s neck to that of a swan, and that was the jumping off point for me to making Laya and her mother into actual swan-maidens. Russian, Ukrainian and Moldavian folklore are chock-full with swan-maiden and swan-prince tales, often in epic poems called blyini.

When you think back on writing the book, are there parts of the writing process that stand out in your mind?
Once the bare bones of the novel were finished, it took me many drafts to get it to the place that it’s at now. But to a certain degree—revising is kind of my favorite part. I’d say: “Ooh, I need to put Yiddish into my novel,” and then start from the beginning and braid the threads throughout. Then my agent suggested I make the woods creepier and add more of a sense of foreboding, so that was fun, too—going back in and making the woods come to life, while setting the stage for more of a sense of fear and uncertainty in the air. Writing is rewriting. The hardest part of working on a project for me is getting down the bones. Painting in the muscles and sinews and fleshing out the skin is the fun part.

You also mention in the author’s note that you’re a great fan of both history and fantasy. Are there other works out there that you would recommend for readers itching for similar tales?
I think that the further you go back in history the more mythological or fantastical historical fiction becomes. Mark Noce writes books that are categorized as historical fiction (Between Two Fires and Dark Winds Rising) but that skate on the edge of myth and have fantastical elements to them. J. Kathleen Cheney’s The Golden City series is one of my favorites and one that truly combines a sense of history and fantasy, Gretel and the Dark by Eliza Granville does this as well, and Naomi Novik’s most recent Spinning Silver is absolutely magical, but firmly rooted in elements of history.

Okay, be honest . . . would you rather be a bear or a swan?
I think that I am most like Liba in my personality, but, if given a choice, I would much rather be a swan. Perhaps it is because I am very un-swan-like in reality. I think there is a little of me in both sisters, and like Liba, I often wish that I could be something other than myself—something a bit wilder and more free.

 

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

Author photo credit Tomer Rottenberg.

We talked to Rena Rossner about writing in both poetry and prose, the importance of food and creating the stories she wishes her younger self could read.

Interview by
This BookPage Icebreaker is sponsored by Baen Books.

When one talks about military sci-fi, one has to talk about David Weber. Author of the long-running, deeply influential Honor Harrington series, Weber has been delighting readers with the action-packed adventures of his titular character since 1992. A decorated politician and soldier, Honor is a “strong female character” that is allowed to have more personality traits than simply strong and female. Clever, empathetic and dedicated to her loved ones and country, Honor has starred in 13 standalone novels, and fans have been eagerly awaiting the 14th, Uncompromising Honor.

We talked to Weber about visualizing warfare in space, plotting character arcs over several novels and if his latest book is the last we’ll see of the indomitable Honor Harrington.

I know that the Honor Harrington books were reportedly inspired by the Horatio Hornblower series, but when you originally conceived of them, were there any other influences for her character in your mind?
Well actually, the inspiration for the books wasn’t Horatio Hornblower. I knew that if the books succeeded, that was who she would be compared to. So I decided to go with that motif all the way through. She’s actually much more as character inspired by a mix of Horatio Nelson, who was killed at the Battle of the Nile, and Alexander Cochrane, who is a much less well-known, at least in the United States, British admiral. And so in a sense, she and Horatio Hornblower share a historical ancestor, since Hornblower was clearly modeled on Nelson.

Now, people have asked me many times why I made Honor Harrington female. And the answer to that is that it never occurred to me to make her anything else. Not because I was making any feminist statements or anything else, but because—alright, if you follow my books in general, most of them have very strong female characters, and I would say the majority of them, probably, have female protagonists. If you look at the Safehold books, you’ve got Merlin Athrawes, who was born a woman but who had to become man by reconfiguring a cybernetic body. I write about strong female characters because I like women and I like strong people, and that produces strong female characters.

I think probably my statement on women’s rights is to be seen in the fact that nobody’s fighting about it in my books and it’s a done deal. I think that maybe near-future science fiction is a good platform for novels that emphasize the role of women and the equalization of genders. But I think if you write far-future science fiction like I do, and your female characters are still facing the same glass ceilings, the same restrictions and so forth, then you’re really shortchanging women. Because 2,000 years from now, I’d like to say the whole question of gender equality will have the burning significance to people of say, the pharaoh’s policy towards the Hittites does to us, because it will be a done deal. Half the human race, at least the last time I looked, is female. And that means that half the capable people on the planet are female. And my theory is that any society that doesn’t want to take advantage of that deserves to be stuck in the Middle Ages and probably will be.

I feel like your books take that same stance in regard to race—that we wouldn’t define race in the same way that we do on Earth once we’ve colonized a galaxy. So of course it’s going to be a multicultural society.
Actually one of my friends who is black called me up after reading Field of Dishonor and said, “The queen of Manticore is black.” And I said, “Yeah.” And he said, “You don’t understand, the queen of Manticore is black!” And I said, “Yeah, I wrote the book. I know she’s black.” And he said, “But no one says anything about it.” And I said, “That’s what they said about it.”

Right, there you go, that’s it.
Yeah, I think that science fiction in general tends to be an optimistic genre. Even the most dystopian people at least assume we’ll have a future to be grim about, if you know what I’m saying. But I think that in general, it tends on the social side to take current problems and visualize solutions to them, whether that’s a good solution or a bad solution, and see how that plays out.

So I always stalk the person I’m interviewing online, as a matter of course. You have to be prepared. And in several of the interviews I’ve read with you, you’ve said that you see yourself as a storyteller as opposed to an artist. I was wondering if that is how you personally approach your work or do you think that is a thing that is, for want of a better word, necessitated by the genre?
I really can’t answer that question for other people. Those who write the stronger stories, for me, are those who are storytellers first, and writers second. Writing is the medium through which they tell their stories. And I think that my judgment has been that people who set out to grind a partisan ax, whatever the ax may be, I think that really weakens your work. There are exceptions, but those exceptions are usually where the entire object of the story was to be polemical, like Orwell’s 1984.

Or Brave New World or something along those lines.
Yes, exactly, exactly. And you’re in a different readership, reading for a different reason, than you are for the general readership of science fiction. And that’s not to say that there’s not crossover between the two, because there definitely is. I think that to me, the crunch point comes when your vision of yourself as a writer, as a stylist begins detracting from the story you’re trying to tell. The point at which the reader begins looking at how you’ve done it rather than what you’ve done.

My judgment is that you can learn to be a writer, but you can’t learn to be a storyteller. You either are a storyteller or you’re not. Now you can learn to tell them better. But you have to have that storytelling bug.

Going back to the social structure of the world you’ve created, something I think is unfortunately rare in sci-fi especially is a religion that is not a terrifying cult or seen as alien or prehistoric. I think there’s this idea that, when we’re talking about a society evolving beyond sexism and racism, that somehow society will also evolve beyond religion. And I don’t think I agree with that, and I like reading books like yours where that is very much not the case.
Well, I am proof in advertising. I’m a Methodist lay speaker, although my certification has lapsed. I think that the people who believe that religion has to wither away probably don’t really understand faith in the first place. And I don’t intend that as a slam, because there are people who are people of faith, and there are people who aren’t, and a lot of depends on what your own personal experience has been. I know people who are blindly religious and don’t care about any possible challenge to their beliefs. I know people who are equally blindly secular, and will admit no evidence that might challenge their beliefs.

My personal view is that religion is very unlikely to ever wither away completely. I think that for whatever reason, we as a species are hardwired to look for something beyond ourselves, something greater than ourselves in which to believe. And I think that people who claim to not be religious have, in many cases, simply expressed that need to believe in and identify with something greater toward something other than God. There’s something that they put at the top of their hierarchy. And again, I’m not condemning them for that. I think that all of us have that need, that hunger.

I have met that need in myself through my faith in God. And I try to portray religion fairly in my books. As a practicing Christian and as a person of faith, I obviously believe that religion has a place in people’s lives. As a historian, I am aware of how that need to give God a place has been distorted and used for absolutely counter purposes time and time again. And I try to show both the positive and the negative side in what I write.

And as a historian, how do you visualize warfare in space? Are there forms or kinds of historical battles that have helped you figure out how you would plot a battle in space?
Well, I must confess—I think it’s probably the worst kept secret in science fiction—that I deliberately structured the technology in the Honor Harrington books to do the line of battle of naval warfare. I designed it so they would do broad sides at each other. The elements of naval strategy aren’t going to change all that much. The environment will change. And I think that naval combat is going to be a better guide for what goes on in space combat that say, air forces are.

That would have been my first assumption, because aerial battles are more three-dimensional.
Right and see the U.S. Navy has carriers and it has submarines, so it’s already a 3-D playing field.

Oh, I didn’t think about that!
And the U.S. Navy is unique because of our carrier fleet. The Navy has to be able to practice air-to-air warfare, anti-submarine warfare, commerce raiding warfare—it has to be able to put an invasion fleet ashore. And no one else in the world has anything like that capability.

Now, in the Honorverse and in interstellar warfare, it’s going to have a lot of resonances with World War II in the Pacific. Because the islands of the Pacific were isolated points in the middle of the ocean. Once they can be isolated by your fleet, nobody could possibly reinforce them, so one way or another, the island is going to fall.

In the Honorverse, once you control the gravity well of the planet, the planet is expected to surrender under the laws of war. Because if they can’t keep you from dropping rocks on them, you’ll eventually control the planet. And the Honorverse has the equivalent of the 18th-century, 19th-century laws of war that very clearly specify when a besieged city is supposed to surrender, what happens if it doesn’t surrender, etc., etc. And those grew out of the Forty Years War in Germany, which was just incredibly brutal. So they evolved a code of recognized practices of war.

I write military stories, and they tend to be about combat. Combat is absolutely horrific. And as a writer, writing about it, you have a responsibility to not sanitize it. I tend to be more of a believer in that you deal with the personal costs in terms of grief or guilt, and just every so often, you whack the reader in face with a scene that tells them how horrific it was. The hardest scene I think that I have ever had to write in the Honorverse was from Honor of the Queen. When Honor is dealing with the ensign who survived the mass rapes and the atrocities at the hand of the Masadans. And figuring out how to tell that critical part of the story without being overly graphic on the one hand, without dismissing it on the other.

And I think that the way I did it works. And I’ve had many women tell me that it works. It’s basically that you don’t actually see the assault at all. You’ve got this woman who’s obviously been shattered by what happened to her, trying to hang onto her sanity long enough to tell her commanding officer what happened. And then you have the commanding officer’s reaction to it. And I personally feel that that was a more effective way to handle it. Because you’re dealing here with what did it actually cost the human being involved.

So with such a long-running series and a character that’s been with you for so long, how do you approach plotting out a character arc?
With Honor, I knew a whole heck of a lot more than I told the reader in the first two books. If you read the first two books, you are introduced to this young, very focused, cool, calm collected person, and there’s truth to that. But it’s not until she meets Paul Tankersley and is forced to deal with things that she had suppressed—that had turned off one entire side of her life—that you begin to see that the Honor you met in the first two books is only a part of who she is.

I did that deliberately, because I knew that the character was going to grow and change over the course of the series. I wanted something that I could unpack for you as the reader. I wanted to be able to unwrap pre-existing parts of her that you didn’t know about to maintain that revelation process. I always knew that she was going to wind up with Hamish and Emily. That was really the only nailed-down part that I had.

So what’s coming up next for you?
The next Honorverse novel is A Call to Insurrection, which I am working on with Tim Zahn and Tom Pope. The next solo novel in the Honorverse will almost certainly be about Honor’s father and will be the story of his marine service. And Through Fiery Trials, the next Safehold book, is coming out in January.

I don’t know when/if there’s going to be another Honor-centric novel. One of the problems I had was that she was supposed to die in At All Costs, and she didn’t. And that’s fine! I love Honor, I’m glad she didn’t die, I’m good with that. The problem was that she was supposed to die at the pinnacle of her career. So here I have this woman who’s the commander of the grand fleet, and she’s this and she’s that—you can’t send her on death rides anymore! She’s too senior to be interacting with any junior officers. So the analogy I use when people ask me about this is that Honor will probably become Lessa from the Pern novels. Lessa and F’lar in the later novels are the senior leaders and not going out doing any of the crazy stuff. They are still central characters tying everything together, but they’re no longer the focus of the action.

Sci-fi/fantasy editor Savanna Walker talks with David Weber about visualizing warfare in space, plotting character arcs over several novels and if his latest book, Uncompromising Honor, is the last we’ll see of the indomitable Honor Harrington. Sponsored by Baen Books.

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