Year Of Worldbuilding in Fantasy # 11: Celebrating Our Supernatural Underground Worlds

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#YoW Year of Worldbuilding
#WiF Worldbuilding in Fantasy

A Year In Worldbuilding – And Celebrating Our Supernatural Underground Community

Throughout 2020, I've focused my posts on worldbuilding in Fantasy fiction, with some attempt to look at worldbuilding over time and in different Fantasy subgenres, although the only true constant has been to hone in on worlds that have spun my own worldbuilding and reading "wheels" in some way. And, of course, to have fun with a subject and genre I love, in the hopes that you may also get some fun and enjoyment out of the process.

It has, after all, been a year in which a little additional fun and enjoyment would not go amiss. :-/

In every year, camaraderie and a sense of community always help keep our personal worlds spinning on their axes. In a year like 2020 that seems designed to test us, camaraderie and community feel more important that ever – which is why I felt the privilege in being part of a community of authors like the Supernatural Underground with additional keenness this year, and appreciated the friendship and support of my fellow authors just a little more deeply.

I am additionally privileged and appreciative that some of our Supernatural Underground authors have been able to make time in their busy writing and life schedules to share insights into their worldbuilding process – because being a community of Fantasy authors, worldbuilding lies at the heart of what we all do.

And because, in my own humble opine, my fellow Supernatural Underground authors, their creative ethic, and the creativity they gift the world, all rock. And I'm quite sure the books they pen have "gone bump in the night" for a great many, if not all of you, over the past decade of Supernatural Underground goodness. :-)

So for 1 December and the conclusion of my Year of Worldbuilding in Fantasy, I give you:

• Amanda Arista
• Kim Falconer writing as AK Wilder
• Merrie Destefano
• T Frohock
• Helen Lowe

Celebrating Our Supernatural Underground Worlds

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AMANDA ARISTA – & The Two Worlds Of Merci Lanard in THE TRUTH ABOUT NIGHT and THE TRUTH ABOUT BLOOD

For the two books in the MERCI LANARD files I built two different worlds for Merci to walk through. While the magics of Merci Lanard didn't change, the worlds between the two books couldn't have been more different as they went from gritty city murder mystery to cozy small town murder mystery.

Big city magic is my wheelhouse. I loved building a city that was filled with magic just under the surface of everything, hiding, laying in wait. Graffiti that was actually magical sigils. Demon blood as addictive as drugs and mistaken for such. Bumps in the night that were actually bumps in the night. 

It made for a perfect place for Merci to explore her own power – in a familiar backyard. She knew her city more than she knew her own power. But by the end of the book, her relationship with her city and the world of magic within it balanced her newly honed power and how she could protect it.

So for the second book, the natural thing was to take Merci out of that element. Take her out of the big city and build her a sweet cozy little town filled with active retirees whose smiles made her suspicious. She would stick out like a sore thumb and have to work all over again at finding her balance. The magic of a small town was literally in everything, but hidden until Merci was ready to see how it was right out there in the open, unlike her big city. 

Though it turned out that darkness can be found in the sweetest of places, Merci had to learn some things that the city didn't require: subtlety and forgiveness. Only once she found her peace with her mother and peace within the town, could she find out who was taking out her newly found friends.

And for the third book, well, we are taking her totally out of her element again! THE TRUTH ABOUT SHADOWS coming 2021.

Amanda’s books are available in eBook and Print from: Amazon , Apple Books, Barnes and Nobles, Kobo

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About Amanda Arista:

Writer, Story Nerd, Woman Extraordinaire – Amanda is a graduate of the SMU Creative Writing Program and now teaches other aspiring authors. 

You can find Amanda on Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/pantherista/  She tweets: @pantherista

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AK WILDER – CROWN OF BONES (Forthcoming) & Evil, Seduction, and Constraint

The other day, the wonderful Helen Lowe asked me what my personal recipe was for creating believable worlds. After giving it some thought, I came up with three primary forces or creation deities. Their names are Evil, Seduction and Constraint, just as intense as they sound.

Evil and Worldbuilding

Placed properly, Evil moves the story forward. This deity forces our heroes to struggle, grow, obtain and accomplish… or fail against a power greater than themselves. But Evil is more than just entertainment. It is a shadowed part of our unconscious.

According to Jung, the shadow can be extremely confronting to experience in ourselves, so we look for it ‘outside’ in films, books and art. There it reveals itself in a safe (for us) environment, offering an opportunity for integration and wholeness.

In my upcoming release, CROWN OF BONES, we meet characters who clearly express their shadow side quite freely: Tann, the Sierrak warlord who leads an army of phantoms against our heroes. Salila, the beautiful Mar who embodies the sacred feminine and is demonized for it, and the Sea itself, terrible and majestic, holding the secrets of death and eternal life. Without this ‘force of evil’, the world would definitely fall flat. 

Seduction and Worldbuilding

I think it’s important right away to distinguish deity from the idea of plausibility. The fact is, a story need not be plausible to be seductive. Take the incident on October 30, 1938 when millions of Americans panicked as they listened to the ‘news’. Earth was under attack from Mars! Programs were interrupted to give vivid descriptions of the events resulting in nation-wide alarm. You can listen to it here.

But it was only a performance, an adaptation of the science fiction novel The War of the Worlds, by H. G. Wells, directed and performed by Orson Welles. In adapting the book for radio, he delivered it like a news broadcast, to increase the suspense. Welles seduced his audience with a story that was low on plausibility but high on allure.

In CROWN OF BONES, Seduction infiltrates much of the worldbuilding: the terraced sanctuaries of phantoms, the Mar of the sea and the whistle bones themselves are not plausible but they do seduce the reader into believing. 

Constraint and Worldbuilding

The final deity of worldbuilding I want to honor is Constraint, the laws the story itself must adhere to. The truth is, fantasy readers are not testing a story against Newtonian physics, but they do want it to abide by its own laws. In CROWN OF BONES, Constraint contributes to worldbuilding in many ways including the limitations of phantoms, the power of the Ma’atta corals and the rise and set of the Second Sun. In a way, it is the consistent use of these unbendable rules that holds everything together.

CROWN OF BONES, Book #1 in the sweeping new Amassia series, is out January 5, 2020  – and it's available for pre-order now.

About Kim Falconer, Currently Writing As AK Wilder:

Kim Falconer, currently writing as A K Wilder, can be found on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. 

Or pop over to throw the bones or Raise Your Phantom on the AKWilder.com site.

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MERRIE DESTEFANO – Her Worldbuilding Rules & AFTERLIFE 

Below is a list of world-building rules I follow when I write:

1. Set up your world so that it can have a natural evolution.

For instance, try changing just one thing within our existing world—like P.D. James did in The Children of Men, where suddenly, no one could have children—then see how, over time, that one change could affect everything else in the world.

2. These changes can be subtle or they can be drastic.

But spend time considering how this one change could have an effect upon our culture, from politics to religion to social mores. In my book, AFTERLIFE, I created a technology where people could resurrect instead of die and this had a trickle-down effect on nearly everything, including major world religions. I didn’t realize it until I started working on the book, but death is a very significant part of our lives.

3. Reveal these changes to the reader.

But do it carefully, gently, clue by clue, throughout your story. Reveal the world in bits and pieces, a little snippet here and there. Make it a mystery and remove the veil, one layer at a time. This way the reader is never overwhelmed or pulled out of the story. Remember, story is king. All the pretty writing and deep, tortured characters in the world cannot replace story.

For more world-building and writing tips, please follow Merrie Destefano’s blog here. Or subscribe to her newsletter here.  You can purchase AFTERLIFE: THE RESURRECTION CHRONICLES, her first book with HarperCollins, here.

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About Merrie Destefano

Award-winning author Merrie Destefano writes lyrical tales of magic, mystery, and hope. Her traditional books have been published by HarperCollins, Entangled Teen, and Walter Foster, while her indie imprint is Ruby Slippers Press.

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T Frohock – Realism Meets The Supernatural In Her LOS NEFILIM World 

With my LOS NEFILIM series the world I’m building is our own, but as it’s seen through different eyes. As an adult adoptee, I’ve always felt something like an outsider looking in wherever I’ve lived, so with LOS NEFILIM, I wanted to translate that feeling into characters who straddled the line between the otherworldly and the mundane. Also due to my background as an adoptee, I believe in found families—those precious people who accept us unconditionally, and I wanted to show the value of these families.

I merged all the realism in the LOS NEFILIM books with a fantastic world made up of supernatural creatures. My interest in Christian mythology goes back to my novel, MISERERE, which also played with the ideas of angels and demons and their interrelationship with humans. LOS NEFILIM takes these very scary angels, combines them with self-centered daimons, and places them in the early twentieth century, a time of great upheaval in the world. The Inner Guard is a secret society of Nephilim, which is set up much like John Wick’s world of assassins, except in LOS NEFILIM, the creatures possess supernatural abilities.

Blending it all together, the LOS NEFILIM novels are a mix of Gothic horror, political thrillers, and war/resistance stories that I had a great deal of fun writing. They also afforded me the opportunity to show the brave men and women, many of whom were LGBTQ, who served during Europe’s fight against fascism. 

I also had the opportunity to shed light on something that I love to address in a fantasy setting, a loving committed relationship between Diago and his husband, Miquel. Too often in fiction, we see the beginning of a relationship, which is always exciting and fun, but I wanted to show the difficulties and joys of a couple in a long-term relationship. As Diago and Miquel face new traumas and experiences together, they remain supportive of one another.

The most surprising thing that I learned while writing the series was in the world-building itself: as I wrote the angels’ story, I realized that the otherworldly creatures in LOS NEFILIM were actually the angels that lost the war in Heaven. They were the fallen angels, descended to the earthly realm, where they created the Nephilim to serve them. It was a fun ah-ha! moment for me and added yet another dimension to the world of LOS NEFILIM, which just goes to show that no matter how well an author thinks they know their own world, there’s always room for new developments.

T’s books are available in eBook and Print from your favorite bookstore, either online or on the high street. A SONG WITH TEETH, the third and final novel in the LOS NEFILIM novel trilogy, is forthcoming on 9 February 2021 and is available for preorder.

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About T. Frohock

T. Frohock has turned a love of history and dark fantasy into tales of deliciously creepy fiction. A real-life cyborg, T. has a cochlear ear implant meaning she can switch you on or off with the flick of a switch. Make of that what you will. She currently lives in North Carolina where she has long been accused of telling stories, a southern colloquialism for lying.

You can find T. on her website, here and on Twitter: @T_Frohock

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Helen Lowe – Worldbuilding At Front And Center In THE WALL OF NIGHT Series

I embarked on this worldbuilding post series because I love Fantasy, but also because I believe worldbuilding lies at the heart of what makes the genre distinctive from other styles of literature. 

All literary genres must set their scene, but in Fantasy this process goes beyond landscape and backdrop to encompass alternate realms and forms of being – and to persuade the reader to suspend disbelief and embrace the alternate reality.

In terms of my own series, while the Wall of Night doesn’t comprise the entire world in which the story takes place, it isn’t chance that the series is named for it. Perpetually twilit, windblasted, and storm-ridden, the Wall pervades and shapes Book #1, THE HEIR OF NIGHT, through sheer physical presence and the emotional and mental demands on the characters. 

While the action in Book #2, THE GATHERING OF THE LOST, takes place far from the Wall geographically, its presence pervades the rest of the world and its influence continues to shape the main characters. 

Although aware the Wall was central to the story, I didn’t appreciate the full extent of its significance until midway through GATHERING. I loved the way the world was expanding to encompass the Sothern Realms of Haarth—particularly the River and the city of Ij, before moving to the wild and isolated Northern march of Emer—and was enjoying the unfolding narrative.

Yet despite these positives, the book as a whole felt a little rudderless—disconnected even—until I wrote the two-chapter sequence, The Border Mark, that returns the story to the Wall and the Derai, the society that garrisons its harsh terrain.

Immediately, GATHERING and the series’ arc both felt grounded and sure, as if—like the mythic Titans that must maintain contact with the earth to preserve their power—I must maintain ‘contact’ with the Wall to keep the overall story centered. It was an illuminating moment, and testament to worldbuilding being front and center of THE WALL OF NIGHT series. So much so that it’s been described as a character in its own right.

I didn’t need to remind myself to include the Wall as a similar ‘touchstone’ for Book #3, though, as DAUGHTER OF BLOOD returns the main characters and the series arc to its heartland, on the Wall of Night.

As with T’s LOS NEFILIM series, THE WALL OF NIGHT #1 - #3 are available in e-book and paperback, through online retailers and bricks-and-mortar stores. J

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About Helen Lowe

Helen Lowe is a multiple award-winning novelist, poet, and lover of story. With four books published to date, she is currently completing the fourth and final novel in THE WALL OF NIGHT series.

Helen posts regularly on her “…on Anything, Really” blog, monthly on the Supernatural Underground, and tweets @helenl0we.

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Conclusion

Well, this is it – the wrap up for the Year of Worldbuilding in Fantasy. I can think of no better way to finish than with the crown of good company – and my fellow Supernatural Underground authors are the very best of company. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading their insights into the worldbuilding process as much as I’ve enjoyed putting the overall post together – and I’ll see you again on the other side, in 2021. 

Take good care and stay safe through the holiday season.

He

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2020: The Year of Worldbuilding in Fantasy 

February: The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe (Chronicles of Narnia) by CS Lewis

March: A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin
April: Sparrow Hill Road by Seanan McGuire
May: Palimpsest by Catherynne M Valente
June: Ship of Magic & the Liveship Traders series by Robin Hobb

July: Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
August: Tymon's Flight (Chronicles of the Tree) by Mary Victoria
September: Dreamhunter, Dreamquake, Mortal Fire, by Elizabeth Knox
October: The Many Worlds Of Kate Elliott
November: A Wealth of Fabulous Worlds

Year Of Worldbuilding in Fantasy # 10: A Wealth Of Fabulous Worlds

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#YoW Year of Worldbuilding
#WiF Worldbuilding in Fantasy

Introduction: 

Well, here we are: already on November 1, with Halloween immediately behind us, and only one more worldbuilding post date to go on December 1. (And I hope to have something special planned for that. J)

Reaching November 1 and #10 in the worldbuilding series, though, made me realize just how many fabulous worlds there are in Fantasy – far too many to encompass in eleven posts, alas. So this penultimate post is going to look at more than one author and world, just to squeeze a few more in under the wire.

Just by way of a reminder, these are worlds that have made an impression on me in their own right, evoking a “wow” response. I started the series with CS Lewis and Narnia, and he is famous for the phrase “surprised by joy” – a term I would paraphrase, in terms of Fantasy worldbuilding, as “surprised by delight.”

So here are a few more examples that have surprised me with delight, evoked moments of wow, and generally spun my fantasy-reading wheels.

The Alvin Maker Series by Orson Scott Card

I have only read the first trilogy of this series: Seventh Son, Red Prophet, and Prentice Alvin, all published in the late 1980s, although I understand there is a second trilogy, and a seventh, concluding novel potentially forthcoming.

The Alvin Maker worldbuilding made a huge impression because it was among the first epic fantasy series I read that wasn’t set in a quasi, medieval Western European milieu. It was also the first Fantasy world I encountered that drew on the folklore and history of colonial North America. 

I loved it: the weaving together of the magic/power of “making”, with “knacks” and “hexes”, together with an alternate historical geography of colonial North America that juxtaposes a Puritan republic in the north, with a Stuart kingdom-in-exile in the south, a still-extant Iroquois Confederation, here a separate republic, and a smaller United States and neighboring Appalachee somewhere in the middle.

As with most alternate histories, there is still enough real history to provide significance and recognition for readers. So this is still the colonial North America of religious difference, wars between Native Americans and white settlers, and of slavery, all of which play a significant part in the evolving story. 

There are also appearances by, or references to, real historical figures such as Benjamin Franklin, Tecumseh and his brother Tenskwatawa (the “red prophet” of the second book), and Mike Fink. 

As the series evolves, the magic of “making” evolves beyond component knacks and hexes into a symbiosis with the “greensong”, an eco-magic of the land and grounding in / balance with it – in that respect a little like Ursula Le Guin’s “equilibrium”, although otherwise these are very different worlds.

Winter’s Tale by Mark Helprin

Staying with fiction published during the 1980s and also set in the (largely) historical United States, but shifting into what is as much magic realism as alternate history, I have always been inspired by Mark Helprin’s Winter’s Tale.

 The heart of the book is the world, and the world is New York – Manhattan and Brooklyn and Up State – in a variant of Gangs of New York meets Westside Story. A world that is to all intents and purposes “real” – except, that is, for the magic: a white horse that rediscovers flight, a pursuit that traverses a century, a bridge of light to infinity… It’s a rich, mythic, and utterly fabulous world, especially if you like a Victorian Gothic overlay to your historical urban setting.
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Chocolat by Joanne Harris

Leaping onward to the late 1990s, but lingering on the shores of magic realism imbued storytelling, brings me straight to Joanne Harris’s Chocolat. Instead of a mostly historical New York, we have contemporary French village and a tale that hooked me from the very first line:

“We came on the wind of carnival, a warm wind for February, laden with hot greasy scents … the confetti sleeting down … We are a curiosity to them, a part of the carnival, a whiff of the outlands…”

The heart of the world may be food (chiefly chocolate) but the sleepy world of village and river draw us in with their themes of self and other, light and dark, the divine and the mundane, the stranger amid a strange land that may perhaps become known… Not to mention far more than a dash of everyday magic to bring it into my fantasy lineup.
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Northern Lights / The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman:

“Sometimes a book comes along that just seizes your imagination and for me, Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights/ The Golden Compass was one of those books. I just loved it …”

I wrote these words in 2011, but they are still just as true now as they were then – and hard to believe to, that it’s a quarter century since Philip Pullman’s tale of snow and northern lights, panzer bjorn (armor-wearing polar bears) and Finnish witches, “dust”, alethiometers and daemons, was first published. I still love its alternative historical Oxford that opens the book, and the story’s prevailing Victorian sensibility, including an age of exploration and scientific inquiry – not least “trepanning” – but also of exploitation, including of children.
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The City & the City by China Mieville

Published far more recently, in 2009, I experienced a definite moment of worldbuilding “wow” on first encountering the interlocked and overlapping cities of Beszel and Ul Qoma in China Mieville’s The City & The City.

I enjoyed the Eastern European flavor to the divergent cultural characteristics of the two cities in terms of ethnicity, culture, religion, governance, and architecture. The way the citizens are trained from birth to “not see” the overlapping city that is all around them is also fascinating, as is the physical way in which Beszel and Ul Qoma interact, like a series of unfolding puzzle boxes. Definitely an excellent example of a world that is close to a character in its own right.
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So Many Worlds...

Other outstanding worlds of more recent times include the cities of Sky and Shadow in NK Jemisin’s Inheritance Trilogy – while the graveyard in Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book is a world entire of ghosts and magic within the larger, everyday world.

The Damar of Robin McKinley’s The Blue Sword and Alan Garner’s dark and eerie Elidor from the book of the same name, are also seminal worlds for me.

And to return, in a sense, to my beginning, the world of Courtney Schafer’s Shattered Sigil series is shaped by the mountains and deserts of the American West – although the story and magic are a distinct secondary world, rather than the alternate colonial history of Alvin Maker.

So many fantastic and fabulous worlds, yet so little time to read and discover them all, yet alone post about them – almost an epic journey in itself, one you may be sure I shall keep pursuing in between my own writing. In fact, the pile on the TBR table has decided teeter-tottery characteristics…J

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Previous Months:

February: The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe (Chronicles of Narnia) by CS Lewis

March: A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin
April: Sparrow Hill Road by Seanan McGuire
May: Palimpsest by Catherynne M Valente
June: Ship of Magic & the Liveship Traders series by Robin Hobb

July: Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
August: Tymon's Flight (Chronicles of the Tree) by Mary Victoria
September: Dreamhunter, Dreamquake, Mortal Fire, by Elizabeth Knox
October: The Many Worlds Of Kate Elliott

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Helen Lowe's first novel, Thornspell (Knopf), was published to critical praise in 2008. The second,The Heir of Night (The Wall Of Night Series, Book One) won the Gemmell Morningstar Award 2012, and the sequel, The Gathering Of The Lost, was shortlisted for the Gemmell Legend Award in 2013. Daughter Of Blood (Book Three), was published in 2016 and Helen is currently completing the final novel in the series. She posts regularly on her “…on Anything, Really” blog, monthly on the Supernatural Underground, and tweets @helenl0we

Year of Worldbuilding in Fantasy #9: The Many Worlds Of Kate Elliott

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#YoW Year of Worldbuilding
#WiF Worldbuilding in Fantasy
 

Introduction:

My blogging theme for 2020 is Worldbuilding in Fantasy, chiefly because I believe it's an essential element that all the differing subgenres have in common. Plus it's always been an aspect of speculative fiction that spins my writing and reading wheels. :-)

When it comes to this month's author, I feel she's a must-include. To be honest, I'm not sure it's even possible to pen a series on Fantasy worldbuilding without featuring Kate Elliott. Quite simply, the worlds are a wow factor in every one of her series that I've read.

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The Many Worlds of Kate Elliott

I'm going to start at my beginning, which was The King's Dragon, first published in 1997 around the same time as A Game Of Thrones (1996). I recall reading them back-to-back and loving both of them, with the worldbuilding a standout of the Kate Elliott novel for me. 

Along, that is, with Sanglant, the eponymous King's Dragon. Definitely an ooh-la-la encounter in the epic hero stakes... ;-)

I'm not sure if I've said this previously, but I really love history and historically informed Fantasy.Consequently, it's completely unsurprising that I love The King's Dragon's kingdoms of Wendar and Varre, in the continent of Novaria. 

I believe these kingdoms are loosely based on the Holy Roman Empire in the age of Charlemagne, with an empire and civilization being forged out of the (relatively) chaotic era that followed the disintegration of the Roman Empire. In this respect, the descriptor "Holy" is accurate, as it was the Christian religion that provided the new cohesive structure for Charlemagne's kingdom.

Kate Elliott echoes this historical structure in Wendar and its adjoining kingdoms, so religion and religious structures are an important part of the worldbuilding. So, too, are the clerical civil service, but also the military structures that support the power of the King. In this world, though, magic is an important element in the power structures of both church and Court. 

The worldbuilding also reflects the differences between the poor, chiefly rural peasantry, and the knightly/landholding classes, with the Church and the service of the King offering the main paths for advancement between the classes -- albeit only to an extent. And like Charlemagne's Dark Ages' empire, the kingdom of Wendar is beset by internal divisions and external enemies. 

I guess you might be getting why I also think of Kate Elliott's storytelling as anthropological. Culture and context are always integral to the worldbuilding. Yet The King's Dragon (and the subsequent Crown Of Stars series) is still Fantasy with a capital F. 

Magic is integral to the society and its power structures, and also to the powers that threaten it. These include the nonhuman Eika raiders, the nomadic Quman, gryphons, and the Elf-like Ashioi, whose kingdom was banished into another sphere of space-time under cataclysmic circumstances, millenia before, but is now poised to return...

Two subsequent series, the Crossroads and Spiritwalker trilogies, are also excellent examples of Kate Elliott's anthropological worldbuilding crossing with fully fledged Fantasy.

In fact, I believe the author's own words probably best sum up the Spiritwalker ethos:

"...this post-Roman Afro-Celtic icepunk alt-regency adventure fantasy, with Phoenician spies, shapeshifting saber-toothed cats, a handsome if icy cold mage, a woman who likes to eat, and of course lawyer dinosaurs."

Ya gotta love it, right? Right!

Recently, though, I read and loved Kate Elliott's YA trilogy, Court of Fives (which begins with the novel of the same name) --- and immediately loved the world because when it comes to historically-informed Fantasy, I (probably) love an archaic-Mediterranean world best of all.

The Court Of Fives world is (again loosely) reminiscent of ancient Eygpt, overlain with the later Ptolemaic empire of Alexander the Great's half-brother, Ptolemy, and his successors. So the city of Saryenia (think Alexandria) and surrounding realm of Efea, comprise two cultures and two 'worlds', one politically and physically imposed upon the other. The warfare that besets Efea is also consistent with the break-up of Alexander's massive empire following his death.

Best of all, though, this world has the Fives, a game of athletic and strategic skill based around a maze, which permeates every aspect of the culture. In this respect, I discerned echoes of the Minoan maze and the competitive games of the bullring.

As with all Kate Elliott's worldbuilding, I love the attention to detail in food and clothing, religion, cultural practice, and the rituals of the Fives training and competitions, all of which bring the world to life. Again, she does not rely on history, but makes the culture of the world her own. 

In particular, old Efea is a matriarchal cum matrilineal society and Efean women compete as equals in the Fives' Court. The magic of the world is drawn from the land and involves oracles, the reanimation of spirits, and the animation of mechanical "spiders" used for desert scouting and battle.

The heart of the world and the story is the Court of Fives and the adversaries that compete for the victor's crown – in particular the heroine, Jes, who is born of both Efea's cultures, and Kalliarkos, a charming and talented scion of the conquering power...

If you love Fantasy worldbuilding and haven't yet read Kate Elliott, I hope I have conveyed enough to whet your interest. And if you are already a fan – well, then, you won't need any reminder of just how fine a worldbuilder this author is. :-)

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Previous Months:

February: The Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe (Chronicles of Narnia) by CS Lewis

March: A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin
April: Sparrow Hill Road by Seanan McGuire
May: Palimpsest by Catherynne M Valente
June: Ship of Magic & the Liveship Traders series by Robin Hobb

July: Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

August: Tymon's Flight (Chronicles of the Tree) by Mary Victoria
September: Dreamhunter, Dreamquake, Mortal Fire, by Elizabeth Knox

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Helen Lowe's first novel, Thornspell (Knopf), was published to critical praise in 2008. The second,The Heir of Night (The Wall Of Night Series, Book One) won the Gemmell Morningstar Award 2012, and the sequel, The Gathering Of The Lost, was shortlisted for the Gemmell Legend Award in 2013. Daughter Of Blood (Book Three), was published in 2016 and Helen is currently completing the final novel in the series. She posts regularly on her “…on Anything, Really” blog, monthly on the Supernatural Underground, and tweets @helenl0we