“The Wall Of Night” Series & Reflections On Characters
Having a new book scheduled to come out “soon”(-ish!) gets you thinking about the books that have come before them, especially in a series—and Daughter Of Blood is very much part of the continuing The Wall Of Night story.
Partly, this is what made me embark on the recently commenced “About the Characters” posts—altho’ “meet the characters” might be another way of thinking about!—which has been focusing on minor characters, mainly in The Heir of Night (The Wall Of Night, Book One.)
All that has got me thinking about the whole process of developing characters, not only in a book, but also in the book that you know is the first step in the long and winding journey of “series.”
And (in my humble opinion, anyway!) The Heir of Night (Heir) and The Wall of Night (WALL) series is all about the characters: who they are, what code of values they subscribe to—and how they behave in relation to those values when the chips are down. So I guess that’s why Heir is quite an adventurous story (OK, it’s also because I like treks into dangerous territory, sword fights and hunts and battles with demons, to be strictly honest!) as well as being character driven. Because it’s only when the going gets tough that the person you believe you are gets tested.
The two central characters in WALL are Malian, the eponymous Heir of Night, and Kalan, who is both her sidekick and a major character in his own right. In Heir they are both young (not unlike the five Stark children in George RR Martin’s A Game of Thrones), but dark events are thrust upon them. How they deal with that is very much part of the story, so that Malian at the beginning of The Gathering of the Lost (Gathering — The Wall Of Night, Book Two), despite her youth, already has a harder edge than the girl in the opening scenes of the book.
One of the more difficult characters in the early story, at least in terms of values and being tested, is Malian’s father, the Earl of Night. Some time after the book first came out in 2010, a reader said: “Oh you can just feel the weight resting on him.” This did please me, because it is very much how I hoped that the Earl would come across: not as a straightforward personality, but as a man caught between opposing forces and conflicting values, not least his personal inclination and circumstances that are driving him in a different direction—which means that he is tested, sometimes even severely tested, as a character. Needless to say, he is not necessarily a likable man—but I hope that readers find him an interesting one
Big ideas, big story, characters under pressure—or a tale of adventure, battles and flights from danger? I love stories that weave the two elements together, so it’s probably not surprising that I’ve striven to achieve the same result in The Wall of Night series.
And I think you’ve succeeded in those goals. I look forward to “how you did” in the newest one
Thank you, Paul. And “not long now” so long as the deities of story prove kind.