One of the first things I did when I rewrote Jaeth’s Eye in 2012 was to maintain the focus on three point-of-views.
Now, anyone who’s read the series and is reading this will know I’m kind of lying, because I have Interlude chapters as seen through the eyes of the rest of the characters. But these are erratic and all over the place. The only consistency is that you are seeing the story from 3 specific characters, whose lives are hopelessly entangled with each other and with the other characters in the novel.
It’s interesting how I feel like The Agartes Epilogues is a short series, despite the massive wordcount by the 3rd book. I think this is because the worldbuilding and plot get relegated to the background. A lot of the focus revolves around the tangled web between the main characters and the epic plot that they find themselves in–in other words, what does the epic plot mean to their circumstances, their goals, and their principles?
Maybe I am doing the series a disservice by saying this. There is a plot. You do see it up close, more so by the end of the 2nd book and into the 3rd book. There is enough action and sword fights and magic to justify this being called a fantasy. The scale of events is massive enough to justify it being called epic fantasy.
But my primary reason for writing this in the first place is to explore how three “minor” characters could react to such an epic plot. The experience, to say the least, was eye-opening. Writing this series, I became hopelessly entrenched in each characters’ lives and the lives of the people around them. When you begin to understand that people are more complex than a simple sentence or paragraph can describe, you suddenly start to see threads everywhere, causes and effects.
I also learned that someone does not have to be there for his or her story to have an impact. An example is Oji alon gar Kaggawa, who is described in the blurb as having died in the first chapter. His death sparks the series of events that lead this series to its inevitable conclusion, but he doesn’t leave when he dies. Most of his story unfolds long after his death. Even years later, I could see how his ghost is tugging at the strings of the plot, manipulating them even up to the end of Book 3. Without Oji, this story would not exist, and I’ve tried my best to acknowledge that.
This, of course, means that there’s still a few loose ends I haven’t tied up by the end of Sapphire’s Flight, which means I already have a sequel trilogy in mind. It’s going to have to wait until I’ve finished at least two other projects, maybe more, but it will happen at some point. I already can’t wait.
I’m not lying when I said The Agartes Epilogues is kind of like a soap opera.
