Interview: James Barclay – Author Of The Ascendants Of Esotrea, Part Two

This is the conclusion of the interview that started on these pages yesterday with British author James Barclay, who has given the world the exploits of the mercenary band The Raven and Cry Of The Newborn, the first installment of his new two-part series, The Ascendants of Esotrea. I would recommend reading part one first, but to each their own.

Do you find that you draw inspiration from anything around you? For instance the whole idea in Raven of mankind's unwillingness to consider the repercussions of our actions as it might affect the future, or another people, or even another species or universe. Do you mean for that to parallel anything in current events, recent or otherwise?

When I began writing The Raven, I was writing adventures pure and simple. I wasn’t consciously paralleling current events. Introducing themes came later and I think you can see as The Raven books go on that the issues of blind politics, religion (positive and negative), authoritarian intransigence, arrogance and the potential consequences of an arms race. I was also keen to develop the Raven’s key themes around love and belief making a group of individuals infinitely greater than the sum of their parts.

How about Cry of the Newborn and its sequel; any parallels there?

I’m fascinated (morbidly mostly) by the controlling effects of a powerful religion on a society. What the Ascendants did was allow me to investigate what would happen if the central tenets of a faith were challenged by a new reality. Blind faith is a dangerous thing and I sought to demonstrate that. But at the same time I wanted to take a balanced view, showing how moderation and acceptance are far more powerful in the long term than denial, denouncement and violence.

As for the sequel, a central theme there concerns the challenge to authority of a power beyond that authority’s power to control. Whether the power is benevolent or malevolent, many of the issues are actually the same, but they are realised in different ways. Because the sequel, A Shout For The Dead, is set a decade after the end of the first book, I’ve been able to go into the longer term effect of the Ascendants on their society, on the core religion and on the attitudes of people in authority. And particularly, as the book unfolds, on the huge uncertainty the Ascendants bring. So many what ifs…

Do you ever find any of yourself creeping into characters, or maybe even traits you wish you had. I have this feeling that your favourite character in The Raven series was Hirad.

Well, you’re right. As I mentioned above, he was my character in my role-playing all those years ago. I’m absolutely certain I creep into my characters. I try not to but inevitably, a writer gives themselves in whole or part to their story and the outward demonstration of that is going to be in their characters.

There are traits I wish I had… utter confidence and the ability to say exactly the right thing every time would be damned handy. A lovely thing about writing is that your characters can say those words you wish you’d said in a similar situation. They can talk the tough words and fight the good fight like you cannot.

I thought the whole relationship with the dragons in The Raven series was really nice. The Kaan could have squashed our world flat, but chose not to, because of our obvious use to them, still they regard most humans as a blight upon existence. What was your inspiration for their characters and viewpoint?

I’m not sure about my inspiration for them. I wanted my dragons to be enormously powerful. So powerful that no man could ever kill one. I wanted them to be intelligent and to have their own society with its joys and tragedies, conflicts and needs. The idea of a link between dragon broods and other dimensions grew as I wrote Dawnthief. It makes dragons flawed, it means they are reliant on others for their survival and forces them to be benevolent dictators rather than pure tyrants.

The Kaan, typified by Sha Kaan have no particular love for humans because they believe them to have fatal flaws that could lead to the destruction of themselves and hence the dragons. They fear that and hate the fact humans can be so blind and arrogant. Only a few demonstrate the strength of will that they respect. Hirad and The Raven were such people.

I've read reviews comparing the Raven books to the Magnificent Seven, the cowboy movie with Yul Brynner and company. Is there any validity to that? Are you even a fan of the material?

I certainly enjoyed the film when I was young. And I’ve seen Seven Samurai since. While I didn’t consciously mimic the "band of people protecting the helpless" theme, it still happened that way and I think the comparison has credibility. I didn’t base The Raven on the magnificent seven but the parallels make me laugh now (Seven people in The Raven, a bald guy, people who’s skills are just beginning to decline… I can see where it comes from.)

In the Ascendancy you have created an empire that is very similar to the Roman Empire in the structure of it's military, and some of their social customs; dress, manner of eating etc. Was there any particular reason for that or is it just a period you like and are comfortable with.

I didn’t want to write a medieval fantasy. I wanted to create a different feel and the Romans were ideal. A fascinating society, quite advanced and very ambitious. A system perfect for expansion of empire. Very organised. Perfect for mucking up by dropping the Ascendants on them. I enjoyed the research and learned heaps. One name check for you – Adrian Goldsworthy. A superb historian and expert on the Romans. I owe him.

You worked for so long with a specific set of characters in the Raven sequence, how difficult was it for you to switch gears so quickly into a completely different world and characters?

Very. And that, as much as anything else made it necessary to do. The comfort zone is a dangerous place for a writer, I feel. No matter how successful you are, you can get stale writing the same characters, world and style. You don’t have to look far for people who exhibit that. Even Terry Pratchett doesn’t write Discworld novels all the time despite their enormous success and I reckon the fact that he steps away from that world from time to time has helped keep the series as fresh as it mainly manages to be even now.

What I found tricky was not writing lines or creating characters that were mirrors of The Raven. I had to fight very hard to stop Paul Jhered being a carbon copy of The Unknown Warrior. I had to examine every line of dialogue, every attitude and gesture to make the men individuals. Again, I think I succeeded and as the drafting went on, it became easier because the new characters found their voices and began to shout for themselves.

You included lots of military details, styles of fighting both on land and at sea, compositions of forces, and the engineering techniques involved in early field artillery. Was this all research you did specific to this book, or was it knowledge you had floating around in your brain beforehand waiting for a chance to be used?

It was research specific to the books. I wanted to get the warfare as accurate as I could without becoming dull. The scale of battles was huge and I needed to have knowledge of how they were fought for real to make my versions anything like credible. Again, it was to distance myself from medieval warfare. Roman techniques were organised and devastatingly effective for the most part. What was particularly interesting to me was having to understand how it worked so that I could understand how it might go wrong. Terrain, enemy tactics, weather, the virus of panic. So much could turn order into chaos. I have assimilated a lot more knowledge than appears in the books. I think that’s the right balance.

When I told an author friend of mine the length of the first Cry Of The Newborn, he said thank goodness for British publishing. Was there any balking at the fact that you had produced an 800-plus page book?

Not really but that’s because I had already written six successful novels and so the risk of it falling flat because of its size was relatively small. Interestingly, my US agent has so far been unable to place it and it’s pretty clear that as a first novel in the US (because The Raven is yet to be published there) it is too big. I can understand that. I suspect that had I rolled up to Gollancz with this as my first novel, I would have received a cooler response. As it is, it has done very well here in the UK.

The concept of the Ascendants, humans who can communicate with natural forces and manipulate them is fascinating. How did you conceive of them? Was it difficult to understand their characters and the experiences they underwent when they began to first come into their power?

It was an idea that came to me in an instant and a theme I have always found interesting. I didn’t want ‘standard’ wizards using mystical force to create spells. I wanted to ground the magic in things we all know. The elements are hugely powerful and the thought that they could be manipulated by individuals is both wonderful and scary. It made the fight with the dominant religion all the more bitter since the faith is very much earth and element based.

The four Ascendants were a tough challenge but one I relished and very much enjoyed. I had to keep in mind that they were just young children coming into their teenage years with all the attendant issues. But on the other hand, they are who they are – they were not normal children who were gifted powers, they were born with them. They don’t know how to feel any other way. What they needed was guidance about how to control their power. But no one could really advise them. They were true pioneers and the knowledge of being unique, of being the first to hold such ability is difficult to handle.

The only trouble with an email interview is you don't get that final couple of moments where you say goodbye and the person on the other end of the line says goodbye and you thank each other. So there's no real way to end these interviews without it sounding abrupt, like it does here. But it does have the advantage of providing an easy way of closing the conversation.

The standard ending question of what do you have forthcoming he already answered earlier on, volume two of The Ascendants Of Estorea that will be released in Canada November followed by a third as of yet unnamed book, so there was no point in asking that one. Since he also mentioned that he and his wife are expecting a child shortly, you can bet he will a little preoccupied with baby stuff. (Can we all guess who is not a parent in this crowd?  Baby stuff, sheesh!)

While people in the United States are able to buy all six books of The Raven series through Amazon.com unfortunately they are not selling The Ascendants Of Estorea: Cry Of The Newborn. Whether or not that will change when the mass-market paperback comes out, I believe in November, I don't know. I do know that you can purchase it online through either Amazon or his Canadian distributor McArthur & Company.

I would just like to thank James Barclay for taking the time out of his busy life to answer my questions, and I hope you found his answers as intriguing as I did. If you were at all fascinated or intrigued by this interview, then be assured you will find his books equally captivating.