Pied Beauty

Glory be to God for dappled things —
…For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
……For rose-moles all in stipple on trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
…Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;
……And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
…Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
……With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
………………………………Praise him.
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Gerard Manley Hopkins, 1844 – 1889

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It’s been a while since I posted a poem here, but this poem—and the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins generally—is a favourite. I love the sense of delight in the poem and the intense observation of nature and differing aspects and textures of the world. I also love Hopkins’ famous sprung rhythm and use of alliteration, which remain distinctive but were very different from the poetic norms of the Victorian era.

Gerard Manley Hopkins, who converted to Catholicism in adulthood and was ordained as a Jesuit, is now regarded as one of the more significant poets of the Victorian era, although his work was not published until some time after his death.

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In 2017, I resumed my “About the Characters” post series that focuses on the minor characters in The Wall Of Night series, because :

“I think it’s the presence of the smaller characters that “makes” a story, creating texture around the main points of view.”

~ from my Legend Award Finalist's Interview, 2013 

Initially, the series focused exclusively on characters from The Heir of Night, but now I’m continuing on with minor characters from both The Gathering Of The Lost and Daughter of Blood simultaneously — in alphabetical order, of course!

(The quotes, together with the covers, indicate whether the character appears in both or only one of the books.)

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Corlin: warrior-priest from the House of Adamant
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“Torlun shrugged, but jerked a thumb toward the storerooms built into the tower wall. “Sird, you and Corlin lock them in there.” He watched the unconscious marine and the ensign, who was in little better shape, dragged away, before rounding on Hur. “Have the yard swept and fresh dirt laid over that blood. We’d better muster an honor escort as well, since we’re to show this Stars lot respect.” “

~ from © Daughter Of Blood: The Wall of Night Book Three, Chapter 48 — Watchtower

One of the excellent folk I follow on Twitter is UK SFF author, Gareth L Powell, who last week wrote a The Guardian article featuring his Top 10 Spacehips In Fiction.

If you want to check it out, it’s right here:

Gareth L Powell — Top 10 Spaceships In Fiction

However, as is often the way, it immediately got me thinking of Spaceships I Have Loved, mostly in SFF over the years — and I really do like spaceships A Lot! 😉

Eagles in Space 1999

Many of them are in TV and film, for example:

• the Eagles in Space 1999;
• just about all the spaceships in Babylon 5, although the White Stars and the Vorlons’ sentient ships are “probably” my favourites;
• I think Dr. Who’s Tardis has to count right as a spaceship, right? (Right!)
• The Millenium Falcon (Star Wars, of course!)
• Serenity! (Firefly)

Plus a raft of others — some, like the USS Enterprise and the Discovery One in (the film) 2001 A Space Odyssey are almost too famous to mention, while other films such as Alien (plus sequels), Deep Impact, Interstellar, The Martian (again to name only a few) have a wonderful supporting cast of spaceships.

But as with Gareth’s post, the spaceships I encountered in literature are my first love, possibly because in books you feel as though you’re really inside the ship. And although I did a big high five to the ships included in his Top 10, here are another few I thought of straight away that will always be on mine:

1. Helva in Anne McCaffrey’s classic The Ship Who Sang: I loved the idea of human brains in ship’s bodies (the Shadow ships in Babylon 5 are a darker version of this idea) but mostly I loved the character of Helva and her interactions with others, particularly her human crewmember. It’s certainly one of the few books, too, where the ship is the or a protagonist — Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice and Iain M Banks Consider Phlebus (and Culture novels generally), both of which are mentioned in the Guardian feature, are among the others.

2. I was really torn when it came to CJ Cherryh because she has so many spaceships-of-awesome, in a list of so many great SFF books that NASA named an asteroid after her ( 77185 Cherryh). I can’t list them all but here are a few of my favourites:

• The Pride of Chanur in the book (and subsequent series) of the same name. First contact and swashbuckling space opera at its best
• The spaceships of Downbelow Station, chiefly the warship Norway (Norway…Norway…Norway…) and its captain, the indomitable Signy Mallory; the merchanter, Finity’s End; and the ghost ship, Estelle.

3. I’ll always have a place in my heart, too, for the Solar Queen of Andre Norton’s series called Time Traders . Early SFF but seminal, especially for YA and younger readers.

4. More recently, I particularly enjoyed my encounter with the spaceship Perhonen in Hannu Rajaniemi’s debut The Quantum Thief (and Jean Le Flambeur series.) Perhonen is another sentient ship, with a complex and intriguing relationship, chiefly with her pilot, Mieli, but also with the thief, Jean Le Flambeur.

Other space ships of note include the luxury yacht, Sweet Delight, in Elizabeth Moon‘s novel Hunting Party, also Big Yellow in the Valor series by Tanya Huff, and Lady Macbeth in the Night’s Dawn trilogy by Peter F Hamilton.

I’m sure you have many more suggestions to share, so please do! 🙂

The Wall of Night Series map; design by Peter Fitzpatrick

The A Geography of Haarth post series is exploring the full range of locales and places from The Wall Of Night world of Haarth.

From January 25, 2013 to November 25, 2014, the posts traversed locations encountered in The Heir Of Night and The Gathering Of The Lost.

Now the series has returned to gazette the geography of Daughter Of Blood (The Wall Of Night Book Three.)  The new series comprises updates of previous entries as well as new listings.

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Jaransor:  a range of uninhabited hills that lies to the west of the Gray Lands
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‘Kyr looked at her curiously.  “What do you know of Jaransor?” he asked

Nhairin shrugged.  “Only what anyone does. Those hills have long been forbidden, off limits, because too many of our people have foundered there.  And the old records say that Jaransor is hostile to both the Derai and the Swarm.  They claim that it is one of the ancient places of this world, possessed by a power that sleeps but lightly and is dangerous if woken.  They also say,” she added, “that Jaransor is ghost-ridden and drives people mad.”

~ from © The Heir Of Night: The Wall of Night Book One; Chapter 25 — The River Of No Return
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“Kalan stared at the cairn, recalling the first and only time he had seen the Winter woman: a rider cloaked in white and seated on a white horse amidst falling snow, with a hawk resting still as stone on her forearm. In Jaransor, he thought—and was seized by the loss, pain, and terror, mixed with exhilaration, that had accompanied their flight through those hills. He clenched his hand hard around his sword hilt to stop himself crying out against the memories’ sharpness. The metal of pommel and guard pressed into flesh, cold as the snowflakes that had fallen from an iron sky, five years before.”

~ from © The Gathering Of The Lost: The Wall of Night Book Two; Chapter 31 — Tenneward Lodge
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“The voice of this land, bordering wilderness, was more somber. The song of the wildfire and the flood, she thought. And because she was wearing Nhenir, she also heard another sound far beneath it: the faint, distant rumble of rocks, grinding deep in the earth.

Jaransor, the Hills of the Hawk, might lie well beyond the horizon, but Malian knew she would never forget the anger that smoldered beneath their tors. Hearing that savage grumble now, however muted by distance, she realized that the Rindle might not have been her first encounter with the song of Haarth, after all.”

~ from © Daughter Of Blood: The Wall of Night Book Three, Chapter 35 — Dissonance

“A people are as happy and confident as the stories they tell themselves. Sick storytellers can make nations sick. Stories can conquer fear and make the heart larger.”

~ Ben Okri

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Ben Okri is a contemporary novelist and poet, who won the Booker Prize (UK) in 1991 for The Famished Road and the Premio Palmi (Italy) in 2000 for Dangerous Love.

USA

In 2017, I resumed my “About the Characters” post series that focuses on the minor characters in The Wall Of Night series, because :

“I think it’s the presence of the smaller characters that “makes” a story, creating texture around the main points of view.”

~ from my Legend Award Finalist's Interview, 2013 

Initially, the series focused exclusively on characters from The Heir of Night, but now I’m continuing on with minor characters from both The Gathering Of The Lost and Daughter of Blood simultaneously — in alphabetical order, of course!

(The quotes, together with the covers, indicate whether the character appears in both or only one of the books.)

—

UK/AU/NZ

Col:  master archer at Normarch, in Emer

“A clangor shattered the morning’s peace, followed by voices shouting. Still half asleep, Carick fumbled the shutters open, shading his eyes against the early sun. Girvase and Hamar were circling each other in the center of the yard, swords in hand, while their comrades yelled from the perimeter. Carick recognized Malisande and Alianor, looking down from the loft, while Raher, Audin, and Jarna stood just inside the gate. The two combatants continued to cut and thrust, their faces intense with concentration. When Carick leaned further out, he could see Ser Bartrand striding down the hill, with Col, the Master Archer, beside him.”

~ from © The Gathering Of The Lost: The Wall of Night Book Two; Chapter 14 — Maister Gervon

For any fan of epic fantasy, Tolkien’s Middle Earth has to be one of the definitive fantastic worlds—and since Sir Peter Jackson made the three The Lord of the Rings (LoTR) films here in New Zealand (and followed up with The Hobbit project) I often get comments to the effect that being a fantasy author must be synonymous with living in New Zealand. 🙂

Yet as a fan of epic fantasy growing up in this country, I always conceived Middle Earth—especially the Shire, but also regions such as Rohan—as very much rural England. A far cry from New Zealand’s alpine South Island and a North Island that ranges from the arid central desert to the semi-tropical north—-or so I thought! Whereas now there are very few parts of the country that cannot lay a claim to being “Middle Earth,” from Hobbiton to the Westfold of Rohan, to the Gates of Argonath.

credit: B Miller

Although it is not the only landscape—or more correctly, series of landscapes—that has influenced my own Fantasy world of Haarth, New Zealand has undoubtedly been a major influencer on my worldbuilding.

For example, not long after The Heir Of Night was first published, a friend said (something like):  “You know that part in Heir, where Malian and Kalan cross the river into Jaransor and there’s rose briars and thorn scrub on the hillside, and thyme growing wild beneath their horses hooves? I couldn’t help thinking, ‘that does seem a lot like Central Otago.’”

Central Otago aka the “Westfold of Rohan

And, of course, it is—although not the part that filmgoers will immediately recognize as the Westfold of Rohan from the early sequences in The Two Towers (LoTR2). But fairly close by, all the same. So—my friend then demanded—does this mean that all of the Jaransor landscape is pretty much Central Otago?

To which I had to say “no.” There were several other real-world landscapes that influenced my concept of Jaransor. For example:

“She walked on alone to the edge of the trees, staring out over wild terrain to the west and the steep, bush-clad heights bathed in evening amber, and was struck again by the immensity of the land, and a sky that held nothing except the falcon’s hovering speck.”

Upper Moutere area

In this scene, what Malian sees is very close to the view from the heights of Australia’s Great Dividing Range—a very long way from Central Otago! I’ve spoken before, too, about how the canals of Ij, in The Gathering Of The Lost, were influenced by the khlongs of Bangkok, while the Tenneward and the Argent Vale in Emer were shaped by the area around Nelson, back in New Zealand again, particularly the Waimea Plain and areas such as Upper Moutere.

Still Otago, but tussock, not thyme…

I say “shaped” and “influenced” deliberately, though, because all world building in my fantasy writing is an amalgam: of real places that I have seen; of places I have not seen but can imagine from descriptions / photo / film; and other places from history that I can only visualize as they may once have been.

In these latter cases the worldbuilding imagination may be inspired by an account, but more often it is sparked by the idea of what that place once was.

Hill Tower, Jaransor; art by Peter Fitzpatrick

Ultimately, too, there is the purely fantastic—the leap of imagination that can springboard from the wild thyme of Central Otago, to the vistas seen from the Great Dividing Range, to ruined towers which have shadow structures that exist out of time, in a chain of hills that may themselves be sentient and drive the unwary mad …

I suspect that Tolkien’s Middle Earth evolved from a similar amalgam of the real through to the purely imaginary.

But it is undoubtedly very special, as a writer of fantasy fiction—and epic fantasy, what’s more, in the case of The Wall of Night series—to live and write within the landscapes in which the film versions of The Lord of the Rings were so vividly imagined—even if they are not the English landscapes that I visualised when first reading the series. 🙂

Gates of Argonath country…

The Wall of Night Series map; design by Peter Fitzpatrick

The A Geography of Haarth post series is exploring the full range of locales and places from The Wall Of Night world of Haarth.

From January 25, 2013 to November 25, 2014, the posts traversed locations encountered in The Heir Of Night and The Gathering Of The Lost.

Now the series has returned to gazette the geography of Daughter Of Blood (The Wall Of Night Book Three.)  The new series comprises updates of previous entries as well as new listings.

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Ishnapur: a fabled city and empire on the southern edge of the known world, bordering the great deserts of Haarth.
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“A line of pewter marked the thousand leagues of road that ran from Emer to fabled Ishnapur and beyond that again was the vast and unknown desert, a sea of dunes wrought in jasper, topaz and bronze.”

~ from © The Heir Of Night: The Wall of Night Book One; Chapter 17 — Eye of the Storm
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‘ “It is a very long way from Ishnapur to Ij—especially for the unwary.” Something in the Master’s tone sent a chill down Jehane Mor’s spine. “Bringing down the heralds will send a message that no one is beyond our reach. But they must all be dead. No one must escape the net.” ‘

~ from © The Gathering Of The Lost: The Wall of Night Book Two; Chapter 5 — The Guild House
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“He had even seen an Ishnapuri mariner once, with wide silk trousers, curved knives thrust into her waistband, and curled toes to her shoes. She had winked when she caught him staring and tossed him a small silver coin with the lion and stars of Ishnapur on one side, and a ship on the other. He had drilled a hole through it and wore it still, on a leather thong around his neck.”
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~ from © Daughter Of Blood: The Wall of Night Book Three, Chapter 2 — The Serpent Prince

Essential to the writing life…

I wanted this entry to be COFFEE but it doesn’t fit the dictionary definition of an artefact, so the entry had to be a coffeemaker. And after all, without a coffeemaker of some sort or t’other, there can be no coffee.

I know I shared my new oventop coffeemaker with you when it was new, but it is doing sterling service so I feel deserves to star again. 🙂

And since coffee is an essential part of the writing day, then a coffeemaker is an equally essential part of my writing life. Adhering to the Platonic principle of moderation in all things (although I believe Plato ascribed the principle to Socrates) I try to keep consumption to 1 to 2 cups per day — but I find the ritual of the coffeemaker (as opposed to instant coffee), as well as the deliciousness of the end result, helps focus the various sections of the writing day.

Deploying the larger of the coffeemakers

You probably know that the second part of the Platonic adage is moderation in all things, including moderation itself. So sometimes, when the going is tough or genius is flowing, the coffee too must flow — which is when a bigger coffeemaker must be deployed. 😉

And I believe both the coffeemakers fit the definition of functional and decorative.

*Artefact: "a functional or decorative human-made 
object."

UK/AU/NZ

In 2017, I resumed the “About the Characters” post series that focuses on the minor characters in The Wall Of Night series, because :

“I think it’s the presence of the smaller characters that “makes” a story, creating texture around the main points of view.”

~ from my Legend Award Finalist's Interview, 2013 

Initially, the series focused exclusively on characters from The Heir of Night, but now I’m continuing on with minor characters from both The Gathering Of The Lost and Daughter of Blood simultaneously — in alphabetical order, of course!

(The quotes, together with the covers, indicate whether the character appears in both or only one of the books.)

—

USA

Caril Sondargent: the Duke of Emer, an independent duchy in the Southern Realms of Haarth
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“The foremost horseman was bareheaded, with a coronal around closely cropped hair, and Malian caught the glitter of gilded mail beneath a black jupon that bore the oak of Emer in gold across its breast. Caril Sondargent, Duke of Emer, she thought, noting the authoritative lift of the iron-gray head. The body beneath the black jupon had thickened with age, but he look looked powerful still, although well worn—as you would expect of the man who had ruled Emer since he was seventeen, cementing the peace that was the last long battle of his father’s and grandfather’s wars.”
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~ from © The Gathering Of The Lost: The Wall of Night Book Two, Chapter 32 — Cockcrow