{"id":9348,"date":"2011-10-29T06:30:05","date_gmt":"2011-10-28T17:30:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=9348"},"modified":"2011-10-28T09:35:20","modified_gmt":"2011-10-27T20:35:20","slug":"world-building-in-the-heir-of-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2011\/10\/29\/world-building-in-the-heir-of-night\/","title":{"rendered":"World Building in “The Heir of Night”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

"Red UK edition; Blue USA edition ..."<\/p><\/div>\n

Yesterday I posted an excerpt<\/a> from Thornspell<\/em>, building on my Wednesday post about \u201cEncountering Fantastic Worlds\u201d<\/a>, one of the themes in a recent presentation to a local Friends of the Library group.<\/p>\n

Some of what I had to say about The Heir of Night<\/em><\/a>, the first book in The Wall of Night<\/span> series, as compared to Thornspell<\/em>—in the same presentation included:<\/p>\n

“<\/em>Heir is set in an entirely alternate world, where the main protagonists, the Derai are alien to the world in which they find themselves<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Netherlands edition <\/p><\/div>\n

It is a darker story, and explores a society that believes itself to be defending good, but is divided by prejudice, suspicion and fear. <\/em>Heir is also more strongly influenced by both the epic and tragic elements of myth, what another reviewer called \u201ca Nordic doom pervading the tale\u201d (Specusphere)—while still being classic Fantasy, with its magic and battles, dark forces and heroes.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cIn my book,\u201d Fantasy is always about magic, to some degree or other, and in <\/em>The Heir of Night the magic is both dark and a little surreal. Malian, the Heir of Night herself, is one of\u00a0 two central protagonists. The second, Kalan, has been thrust into a life that he hates because he is seen as cursed by the old magic powers of the Derai and he discovers that much of that power is rooted in the realm of dreams.<\/em><\/p>\n

This next sequence is a little bit about what happens afterward\u2014and the strange paths on which the Gate of Dreams can take you:<\/em><\/p>\n

.<\/span><\/p>\n

~ from Chapter 19, The Huntmaster<\/strong><\/p>\n

The storm assaulted the Keep of Winds with renewed fury, battering the watchtowers and shrieking along the ramparts of spear-deep stone.\u00a0 Even in the inner fastness of the temple quarter its voice formed an uneasy backdrop to the tumbled darkness of Kalan’s dreams.\u00a0 He had dreamed every night since returning to the New Keep, a jumble of faces and voices and scenes that were as random and disconnected as the debris caught in the storm’s vortex.<\/p>\n

On the first night back, Kalan had seen his father’s face, cold and closed, just as it had been on the day he disowned Kalan and threw him out.\u00a0 His words were not the formal rite of renunciation and expulsion, but sharp, nonetheless, and cold as stone.\u00a0 “What are you, boy?\u00a0 Who?\u00a0 You must be a changeling, an incubus, for none of our family ever had such powers!”\u00a0 In the dream Kalan had stretched out his hands, trying to protest, but his father had turned coldly away.\u00a0 Only his voice came floating back: “Nay, do not cry out to me for I invoked the rite long ago.\u00a0 You are no more son of mine!”<\/p>\n

You are no more son of mine.\u00a0 Kalan had woken in a panic to the pressing darkness of his sleeping cell.\u00a0 The storm had still been building then, but he had felt its power closing in on him like the walls of the narrow chamber.<\/p>\n

The dreams, like the storm, had grown in strength as the days passed and although none were as clear as that of Kalan’s father, they were all shot through with a sense of threat, snatches of conversation and the keep seen from odd angles.\u00a0 Other images intruded as well: Malian pacing in a red and white room, a glimpse of the heralds standing by a great pillar of stone, the wind whipping their hair beneath a sullen sky\u2014and a great war spear with a blade like black flame and a collar of feathers, darkly iridescent as a crow’s wing.\u00a0 It sang to him, a low, fierce song of danger that reverberated in the core of his being.<\/p>\n

“But you are lost,” Kalan said, coming on it unexpectedly through a wreathing of mist. “You pierced the Raptor of Darkness and fell with it, into the void.” …<\/p>\n

He was standing on a path surrounded by banks of fog that stretched between the stark trunks and branching black of a great forest.\u00a0 The Gate of Dreams, Kalan thought\u2014 except that this forest seemed vaster, wilder and infinitely older than the wood that surrounded Yorindesarinen’s fire.\u00a0 He shivered, for the space between the trees was dense with impenetrable undergrowth and the voice of the storm had gone, replaced by the creak and rustle of branches rubbing together.\u00a0 It sounded, he thought uneasily, like some dark, secret, and not altogether friendly conversation.<\/p>\n

The fog in front of him lifted slowly and drifted apart, revealing the tall figure of a man.\u00a0 His back was turned to Kalan and a long black cloak fell almost to his booted heels; his right hand grasped a tall, hooded spear and a crow perched on his left shoulder.\u00a0 The bird’s head turned, snaring Kalan’s gaze with one bright gleaming eye, then it lifted its wings and cawed, the harsh cry echoing through trees and mist.\u00a0 The man looked around and Kalan gasped, for the stranger’s face was concealed beneath a mask of black leather and his left hand had been severed at the wrist.<\/p>\n

Kalan forced himself to speak boldly.\u00a0 “Who are you?” he asked.\u00a0 The mask’s blank eyeholes were fixed on him but the man did not speak, just stood there, leaning on the hooded spear.\u00a0 “What is your name?” Kalan said, trying again.<\/p>\n

The crow cawed a warning; the masked man’s voice, in the quiet of the wood, was harsh as the bird’s.\u00a0 “Welcome, Token Bearer,” he said.\u00a0 “It has been a long time since the Huntmaster was summoned to the Hunt.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday I posted an excerpt from Thornspell, building on my Wednesday post about \u201cEncountering Fantastic Worlds\u201d, one of the themes in a recent presentation to a local Friends of the Library group. Some of what I had to say about The Heir of Night, the first book in The Wall of Night series, as compared […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-about-my-books"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9348","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=9348"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9348\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9363,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9348\/revisions\/9363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}