Marketing The Agartes Epilogues in a genre that thrives on a lot of cool ideas and concepts has always been a challenge. Quenby Olson’s review of Sapphire’s Flight a couple of weeks ago summarizes this very well:
At its heart, it’s about its characters, caught in the machinations of an epic fantasy world that simply will not leave them be.
It’s no question that perhaps a “big mistake” I made with this series was choosing to write it from the point-of-view of at least two of the most uninteresting characters in fantasydom. But it was a deliberate mistake. I could have written from the point-of-view of the “heroes,” and then we wouldn’t lack for cool things happening. You’ve got your prince who refuses to be crowned because of his ideals. You’ve got your talented mage and her sister. You’ve got a skilled soldier and the princess he was sworn to protect. Why did I write it from the point of view of a seamstress, a mercenary, and a merchant?
Short answer is that I’m taking the big story and dragging it down to a human level. The longer answer is that there is something laid very clearly out in the Prologue of Jaeth’s Eye that I hope readers will remember as they carry this trilogy to the end–a glimmer of the humanity that drives or results from the BIG THINGS HAPPENING. I feel like the theme of this trilogy would be lost if I had chosen to write it from the POV of those other, better, more interesting people.
Maybe. Maybe not. I do know one thing: this challenge honed the way I thought of stories and plot in a character-driven narrative, making me understand how to work with events beyond just cool things happening. I’m looking back at stories I’ve abandoned and realizing exactly what was missing in them. I’m excited to bring life to those novels again.
