{"id":2567,"date":"2010-12-02T06:00:57","date_gmt":"2010-12-01T17:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=2567"},"modified":"2011-01-10T09:50:10","modified_gmt":"2011-01-09T20:50:10","slug":"thornspell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2010\/12\/02\/thornspell\/","title":{"rendered":"Thornspell"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Recently I sent fellow author Mary Victoria <\/a>a copy of my novel Thornspell<\/em><\/a> (Knopf, 2008) and she was kind enough to write back (amongst other things): “Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share a corner of your lively, lucid and rambunctious imagination!”<\/em><\/p>\n

Lively, lucid and rambunctious—I definitely like that! And although every book is a work of imagination, I do think that Thornspell<\/em> fits Mary Victoria’s\u00a0 “bill” (or should that be “billing”?) The basic premise of the story is a retelling of Sleeping Beauty<\/em>, but it’s from the perspective of the prince: from his childhood growing up beside the vast tangled forest and hearing all sorts<\/em> of stories; and then hearing the<\/em><\/span> story—and finding out it is not ancient history, old and dead mouldering beneath tree roots, but very much a clear and present danger to him, in his everyday world. The tale that follows is the kind of adventurous fantasy that I loved as a kid, where sword fights and hunts are as much a part of the story as the magic that stalks through dreams and can reveal both beauty and terror …<\/p>\n

A few people have asked me whether Thornspell<\/em> is “like” The Heir of Night—<\/em>and I think the answer, like those given by Tolkien’s elves, is “both yes and no.”\u00a0 Yes, they’re both Fantasy and both “crossover” reads, although Thornspell i<\/em>s aimed at the 11-14 year old readership, whereas Heir<\/em> is more for adults. And yes, they’re both stories where adventure is a large part of the action, but the magic has a strong element of mystery deriving from dreamscapes and parallel dimensions.<\/p>\n

I think the biggest differences are that Thornspell<\/em>, although a fairytale retelling, is very much of this world (albeit in that country ‘far away’), with one central protagonist and a small group of key supporting characters. The Heir of Night<\/em>, on the other hand, is set in an alternate world, with two central protgonists but five or six other important point of view characters as well.\u00a0 Finally, Thornspell<\/em> is a standalone novel, whereas The Heir of Night <\/em>is the first part of a quartet.<\/p>\n

But I like to think that they’re both lively, lucid and rambunctious works of imagination.;-) (Thank you, Mary Victoria!)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Recently I sent fellow author Mary Victoria a copy of my novel Thornspell (Knopf, 2008) and she was kind enough to write back (amongst other things): “Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share a corner of your lively, lucid and rambunctious imagination!” Lively, lucid and rambunctious—I definitely like that! And although every book […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-about-my-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2567"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2567\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3088,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2567\/revisions\/3088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}