Taking a quick break from hyping Glassblade to talk about my other series, the Drifting Lands.
It’s been a year and a half since Prince of Clay came out and it’s been really interesting watching peoples reactions to it, who understood what I was putting down, and who didn’t.
Because if Skyfarer was an adventure story, and Dragon Road was a thriller, Prince of Clay needed to be, and is, a war-story. And that means by definition for me to be honest when handling that sort of story, it couldn’t be upbeat or cheerful. It needed to be messy, and complicated, and painful and abrupt, and leave a partial taste of ash in the mouth at the end.
If I hadn’t done that, it wouldn’t have been a war story. It would’ve been another adventure story that used war as its backdrop. Those are fine, but they’re not war-stories.
There were moments of glory and triumph in Prince of Clay, but it was not intended to be a story of Glory or Triumph. It was intended to be something else altogether. It’s been really interesting seeing who that resonated with, who it didn’t, and why.
Anyway you can buy the Drifting Lands books here