Sarah Kozloff's Blog

This is the last of a series of commentaries revealing my allusions and intentions in a volume of The Nine Realms. Spoilers ahead. Also, I hope, insights.

In the very first draft of the series, I didn’t know that I was going to write this final book. Generally, the prince or princess succeeds in gaining the throne—time for rejoicing. But I realized that changing leaders and repairing the past was hardly so simple.

Since The Cerulean Queen contains more music and dancing than the other volumes, sometimes I thought of it as my musical. To switch metaphors, if A Broken Queen is the slow movement of a symphony, Book Four is the finale, all crashing chords accompanied by cymbals and percussion. 

Most of the feeling of finality comes from the unveiling of all the secrets characters have been keeping from one another, revelations and reunions that cause both joy and pain. (One of my family members started weeping when Thalen and the Raiders march into the Throne Room, and I must confess that I have often reread that chapter myself—not to edit it, but just to bathe in its emotion.)

We see Cerúlia come into her own and discover that holding onto power involves not only dressing the part, but also seeking to the truth, and developing a degree of ruthlessness. Her mother was a nobler (and softer) person. Cerúlia murders Lolethia with her own hands, leaves Matwyck to suffer and die, and poisons General Yurgn. I hope that while readers see the necessity for her actions, they also start to recoil from the main character.

Meanwhile, Thalen, who has commanded men in battle, moves toward mercy. He has suffered “moral injury” from the war. Only by saving his Oro captives from being lynched (a scene inspired by To Kill a Mockingbird), does Thalen start to recover. 

I intended that Clovadoska’s assassination attempt and Belcazar’s treachery come as surprises, and I tried to distract readers from the Oro army’s inevitable invasion as long as possible. The whales joining as combatants sprang from Moby Dick (of course) and the seagulls’ late intervention harks back to Hitchcock’s The Birds. Wareth’s and Thalen’s conversation at the end of the battle is a tip of my hat to the melancholy dialogue at the end of The Seven Samurai. 

Stahlia is probably no one’s favorite character but mine. Her contribution to the long adventure is modest—all she does is “mother.” She raises Percia, Cerúlia, and Tilim as best she can under sometimes harsh and dangerous circumstances. Yet I made her a weaver (like Penelope), who pulls together all the threads, which is why she gets the point of view chapter after the Battle of Cascada Harbor.

My own favorite bits in The Cerulean Queen include such moments as Stahlia’s vision of a tapestry she calls “Cerúlia and the Catamounts;” Cerúlia’s confrontation with Ciellō where we learn that his devotion has curdled; Destra’s calm perception of Belcazar’s treachery; the unflappable trumpeter who attends Wilimara, and Catalina’s toddler mouth full of apple. 

Concerning Catalina, perhaps readers noticed that the whole series includes more children of varied ages than the typical epic fantasy—this was intentional, a part of moving away from the tropes of many male-centered fantasies. Conflicts between realms don’t merely involve men of fighting age, but also women (of all ages) and children. 

The peace reached at the end is equivocal because no victory brings ever-lasting end to conflict.

I was sorry to leave The Nine Realms, but the final chords faded away.

As I’ve done with the first two books, here I reveal some of my references and intentions in the third volume of The Nine Realms. Spoilers ahead!

Mikil’s sojourn on a deserted isle was originally part of A Queen in Hiding but I shifted it to this volume because the first had too many strands following too many characters. I’ve always been intrigued by the Robinson Crusoe-Swiss-Family-Robinson-Castaway situation.

The chapter that follows, recounting sea creatures saving Cerúlia, is the most overtly magical interlude in the whole series. I worked hard to give each species a distinct tone of voice.

I intended Thalen’s and Cerúlia’s depression, heartbreak, and injuries to fulfill the tropes of “melodrama” as defined by film theorists. Heroic deeds constitute part of protagonists’ admirable traits, but so does bearing up under suffering. (See my chapters about the genre in The Norton Introduction to Film Genres and about Frodo’s tribulations in From Hobbits to Hollywood.) Like all authors and filmmakers, I also play with the melodramatic tropes of “just in time” and “too late”:  the rescue ship spots Mikil’s craft just in time, but Mikil realizes the mysterious young woman’s identity too late. The reason Tolkien entitles two of his chapters “Many Meetings” and “Many Partings” is that separation and reunion are key themes of melodrama.

Speaking of LOTR, Peddler’s magical mirror is a direct steal of the exalted Mirror of Galadriel. And I hoped that all readers subconsciously grasp that series’ central verse, written by Cerúlia’s tutor, “Though Dusty sits the Nargis Throne,” copies “All that is Gold Does Not Glitter,” in rhyme scheme and structure. 

Perhaps even more than the previous volumes, A Broken Queen works with setting, costumes, and atmospherics: see, for instance, the scenes of the Raiders’ trek on the windswept cliffs, the strange features of Wyeland, the cold, midnight confrontation with the Oros holding Jutterdam captive.

 (“Yoo-hoo, Queenie” is the best line of dialogue in the whole series.)

 I wrote the pledge that the three erstwhile Queen’s Shields take to steel themselves to their purpose as a tribute to George R. R. Martin’s poem about the Night’s Watch. I wish it had half the power. 

Although plenty of confrontations transpire in this book, A Broken Queen should read like the slow movement of a symphony, lyrical and sad.

A change begins when the catamount confronts the princella, a switch into activity that builds when she engages the Ciello’s services. (Think of the sexual tension of The Bodyguard with Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner.) After Cerúlia slaps Ciello, she reclaims her true name.

Of course, Nana being the first to recognize Cerúlia replays the scene of the old servant who recognizes Odysseus when he comes home in disguise. 

 Part Six, the last part, provides a tense segue to The Return of the Queen.

This blog post—like a previous post on A Queen in Hiding—reveals easter eggs and my intentions in Book Two of The Nine Realms. Spoilers ahead!

 For the most part, Raiders is a Western. I hope readers conjure visions of a lonely band of riders, dwarfed by an immensity of wilderness, with their numbers inexorably decreasing. The tally at the beginning of each chapter repeats the trope of “Battlestar Galactica.” 

 The auditioning and gathering of the Raiders was inspired by The Seven Samurai/The Magnificent Seven. I admire both the Japanese original and the American remake. In each I find the long sequences of enlisting fighters for a hopeless mission particularly stirring. The name “Kambey,” for the weapon’s master, directly alludes to the ronin “Kambei.”

 The name, “Emerald Lake,” is a tip of my hat to my childhood in Colorado, where my family often hiked in Rocky Mountain National Park.

 I also had the theme of “terrorism” in mind:  from one perspective the Raiders are terrorists, purposefully bringing havoc into their enemy’s homeland and attacking its most sacred places. Do we feel differently about terrorism when we understand the perpetrators’ motives?

 A famous photograph of a drowned, 2-year-old Kurdish boy washed up on the beach in Turkey morphed into the Sweetmeadow subplot. I wanted to stress the cost of all wars on civilians. Readers may find it interesting that the massacre at Sweetmeadow was the first chapter of the book I ever wrote, and although all my books went through extensive revision, this chapter remained essentially unchanged.

 On a more prosaic level, Sweetmeadow’s peaceful goat-herding community holds traces of my childhood fascination with Heidi. 

 Many readers have found the battle scenes of Raiders stirring. The strategies that Thalen employs started as mine, but I ran them through the wisdom and experience of a generous West Point colonel, who taught me, for instance, about the usefulness of an abattis.

 Two of the action scenes—the attack in the Iron Valley and the infiltration of Femturan—feature short paragraphs from alternating points of view. I had cinematic montage in mind.

 If you asked me to identify my favorite parts of the book, I’d point to all the business with the animals:  the goats butting the would-be kidnappers, the hawks’ cold-heartedness, the eagle’s susceptibility to flattery, or the reappearance of the Butter and Didi from out of the wilderness. For the last, perhaps I might have been channeling the heart-stopping climax of The Incredible Journey.

I’m not sure how I feel about “Easter eggs.”

As a reader, I shudder at the notion that I might be missing something, that the author has hidden double-meanings accessible only to the cognoscenti. As a theorist, I’ve always found insights into a writer’s intentions invaluable. As a writer, I discovered that easter eggs are . . . unavoidable. Ideas come from somewhere, and for me they came from a rambling storehouse of fictional connections, some current, some dusty.

 I don’t want to keep these from you, my readers. Buckle up for some backstage insights on A Queen in Hiding. Spoilers ahead.

1.     “Nargis,” the name of the fresh-water spirit, refers to the stage name of the most famous Indian actress of all time. The rest of the Spirits’ names are translations of their elements in different languages.

2.     The idea that a Spirit would give a princess a magic gift comes from Snow White.

3.     This magic gift—talking to animals—is common in fantasy. I particularly had The Sword in the Stone and Robin Hobb’s “wit” in mind.

4.     Any similarity between Circle Council Meetings and contentious department faculty meetings is purely intentional.

5.     Wilim, a “peacekeeper” who talks instead of fights, is a transmutation of Jimmy Stewart’s character in the 1939 western, Destry Rides Again.

6.     Having Cérulia hide her identity behind a rustic guise as Wren deliberately copies how Aragorn disguises himself as Strider.

7.     I wanted my readers to be slightly confused as to who was the main character, Queen Cressa or Princella Cérulia. (This confusion was dispelled by the press’s summary on the book jacket, but never mind.) When the Queen is killed, I hoped readers would feel shocked and adrift, just like viewers feel over Marion’s death in Hitchcock’s Psycho.

Fantasy Tropes. Some I leaned into, others I purposely avoided. For instance:

·      There’s no mystery as to who is the “Chosen One” or about her parentage. Cérulia knows her identity from the beginning. How many mysterious orphans can one genre handle?

·      The Scholáiríum is not a school for magic and its teachers do not wield special magical abilities. Nice as it might be to have a Gandalf or a Dumbledore at one’s back, this series contains no all-powerful mentors.

·      In fact, “magic” per se appears very sparingly. Characters need to solve their difficulties by human effort.

·      The antagonists are people, not Orcs or another non-human species that we can exterminate without moral qualms. No Dark Lord or Sauron figure stalks these pages. I tried to create a measure of understanding or sympathy for the main villains. As the film director Jean Renoir once said, “Everyone has their reasons.” 

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Everywhere we go in contemporary life, we are asked to rate our experiences of a restaurant, a shirt, a flight, a movie, or a book. When consumers have a super-abundance of choices, ratings are a marketing tool, providing a means to reassure us that we are spending our money or time wisely.  

I’ve always wanted “art” to be spared such commercialism. 

Think about it: “Thumbs Up” or “Thumbs Down” to Shakespeare, Rembrandt, or Beethoven? Isn’t the question absurd?  FYI, “King Lear” has a 3.91 rating on Goodreads, quite a bit lower than Harry Potter #7, which clocks in at 4.62. 

What criteria are readers using to rate the books they’ve read? I’ve noticed that clothing companies now ask specific questions about the quality of the fabric or trueness of fit. Yet even with a garment, I might like something edgy and bold whereas you want something subtle and classic. No one judges the shirt per se, but how well it corresponds to their personal taste and how much it flatters their shape. Standards of taste are never universal, but rather influenced by a myriad of social factors, and they change over time.

Even if we all understand that ratings will be subjective, I still feel uncomfortable with the practice vis-à-vis art. Who am I—who are you—to believe that our taste could or should be universal? In 1968 the Village Voice film critic Andrew Sarris ranked directors in The American Cinema:  Directors and Directions. Fifty years later I’m still offended by his book, which was massively influential in film studies, wondering where Sarris got his chutzpah. Surely, he knew that his viewing exposure was limited:  he’d hardly seen any movies (for instance) by women or African American directors, and for some reason he despised movies that engaged with social issues, lumping them all as “strained seriousness.” Sarris was (inevitably) a man of his time:  he put D. W. Griffith in the Pantheon of film directors, whereas now many of us would put Griffith on trial. 

“Humility” is not a prized quality amongst reviewers; to do their job they must assume the pose that they have seen/read enough to be able to form a reasonable judgment and guide their readers through infinite possibilities to more rewarding choices. Reviewers build up followings when enough readers find their judgments align with their own.  

Perhaps crowds sourcing, which Rotten Tomatoes, for one, takes as its methodology, cancels out personal biases? I doubt it. Who are these professional critics that Tomatoes counts as experts? How diverse is their pool? Moreover, advertising budgets and brand name clout—not pure merit, however defined—have a lot to do with how many people pick up a book or watch a film, so some works attract larger or smaller crowds to begin with.

Let’s admit it:   sometimes we want to actively promote a book. We want to do our mite to help a debut author by leaving reviews and a high rating. (I am very grateful to every person who has rated my efforts, and I know that in this hyper-commercial and competitive climate, ratings are golden.)

But especially for non-contemporary works, I suggest a radical hesitancy in front of art. How many times have you read or seen something, not liked it, but discovered on a second try that it thrills you? How many times have you watched a movie, felt uncomfortable, and then realized that the movie wasn’t addressed to you, but rather to spectators with more background in its cultural references?

Certainly, one can say, “X doesn’t appeal to me,” or “I found Y touching.” Everyone has a right to their reactions and comparing and explaining these reactions is a great way to start a fruitful discussion. But let’s not be dogmatic; let’s not pretend that our first gut response is an actual measure of objective merit. I shrink from the flippancy and hostility in the icons used to sum up reviews. Thumbs up/thumbs down seems more suitable to Gladiator than reasoned evaluation and thrown tomatoes—fresh or rotten—are just gross, as if by purchasing a ticket one also purchases the right to pummel people if we don’t feel entertained. Others have noticed that the “little man” icon, featuring a white, male, middle-aged audience member, makes uncomfortable assumptions.

Although stars are more neutral, I rarely fill in the stars on Goodreads. I don’t make lists of what I think are the greatest films of all time, nor do I rank works as better or lesser than others. Although I have opinions, I don’t engage with Oscar handicapping, Twitter questions, clickbait articles about the “best movies of the 80s” or the greatest epic fantasies.

This is my tiny stand against treating works of imagination on par with lemon squeezers or tennis socks.

One of the lesser problems of writing fantasy involves how to describe dogs without using contemporary, earth-based terminology. For instance, in a 2nd world fantasy, you can’t write about “German Shepherds” or “French Bulldogs” because those countries don’t exist. An author also can’t use dog breeds with names based on foreign languages, e.g.—bichon frisé, affenpinscher, or shiba inus.

In The Nine Realms, I tried to get around this problem by using basic classifications, such as a “herder” or hunters of certain prey.

Here is a list of the major dogs in the series. Not that any of these are pure-bred or candidates for AKC registration, but can you tell which contemporary breeds I had in mind?

Gili, Wren’s companion in Wyndton

Baki, the stray who offers himself as a guard dog

Maki, the fighting dog with the Raiders

Didi, one of the dogs that follows Kestrel out of Tar’s Basin

Jaki   “

Laki   “

Whaki, the dog Phénix rescues from the man with the axe

Puffy, the dog she gives to Hope

The Queen’s Canine Corps:

Vaki

Mimi

Nini

Haki

Cici

Which of the dogs appealed to you the most? Which did I manage to bring to life, in all his or her precious dogginess?

Apparently, most dogs learn about 165 words of human language. Cerúlia is completely fluent in dog-speech. Do you know any “Lupus?” Some of us understand a few phrases, but we don’t speak it.

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