Jessica
Rydill’ s Malarat
Pb
2013 by Shamansland.com - Kindle Edition
Annat Vasilyevich
is a shaman and an outcast Wanderer. No longer
her father's
apprentice, she watches enviously as he sets out into enemy
territory with his
new pupil, Huldis of Ademar, and their companions.
War has come to
Lefranu, and while Annat defends the besieged city of Yonar, her father has to
face his destiny and confront a demon known only to the Wanderers. Their world is
about to be shattered by an
attack from the most deadly of enemies - the mediaeval Duc de Malarat and his
ally, the twisted but beautiful Inquisitor, Valdes de Siccaria.
Malarat is Jessica Rydill's third book. Set in the same
world as her earlier stories, it can be read as a stand-alone novel. Malarat is a much darker work than its
predecessors, dealing with themes of loss, guilt and betrayal.
Q&A
with Jessica Rydill for Malarat
Tell
us a little about yourself.
I’m the younger daughter of a naval architect
and a social worker. My elder sister is the Fantasy writer Sarah Ash, who has
had a huge influence on me, though our books are very different. I’ve spent
most of my life living in Bath or London, but I think Bath has won out now. I
studied English at University and would have liked to become an academic, but I
didn’t get a good enough degree. So I trained as a solicitor and had a somewhat
chequered career in local government. The best bit by far was working as a
locum for the London Borough of Lambeth; as a housing lawyer as I got to stand
up in court (though solicitors have horrible gowns, unlike barristers). I gave
it all up in 1998 in order to write. A writing course at Fen Farm taught by
David Gemmell was a breakthrough for me. It made a huge difference to my
writing though it was still some time before I produced a book that was
publishable!
Malarat is standalone book
and somewhat darker than previous books in this world. Can you tell us a little
about that?
I suppose Malarat
is on a more epic scale than the others. I like to imagine my books as movies,
and Malarat is a bit like War and Peace in
scope. The beginning is quite light, and one of the main characters is preoccupied
with what she’s wearing. But in that first chapter there is a hint of what’s to
come. There will be a war, and all the characters will be affected. In some
ways it’s a story about obsessions of various kinds. The Duc de Malarat wants
to rule the country through a puppet king. The Inquisitor wants to eradicate
magic. And behind that is a man with the weirdest obsession of all – Colonel
Carnwallis. He sets out to change history and the afterlife in line with his
view that the Anglit – the English, in effect – are true descendants of the
Lost Tribes of Israel. The way in which these characters set out to achieve
their ends is disastrous for everyone else. So there are some dark episodes.
The standalone bit relates to the fact that you don’t need to have read my first
two novels to understand this one. If anything, I have enlarged the amount of
contextual detail relating to the world and country where the story is set. Some
of the characters are the same, but the entire episode is separate.
You
had two previous novels set in this world: Children
of the Shaman - short listed for a Locus Best first Novel -
and The
Glass Mountain. Fill us in on the
details.
Children of the
Shaman
introduced the Vasilyevich family. They are Wanderers, an ethnic group similar
to the Jews. They also have magical powers to varying degrees, which is why
they are known as shamans. The children, Annat and Malchik, have been brought
up by their aunt and grandparents. Their father abandoned them and their mother
died young. Malchik is rather nerdy and weedy and Annat, the young girl, is
bolder and more adventurous. When their aunt has to go into hospital, their
father, Yuda, takes custody of them. He’s on a secret mission to a frontier
town called Gard Ademar (which does exist – it’s called La Garde Adhemar). Since
the Great Cold ended, the Railway People have been constructing a railway north
into the unknown wastes of what is (more or less) northern France. And when
they reach Gard Ademar, they accidentally disturb a hornet’s nest. Yuda is
there to investigate a series of murders, and he and his children get caught up
in the magic of the place. He’s a very mercurial and charismatic person and not
at all an ideal father; he can’t accept that his son, Malchik, is not only not
a shaman but also completely bookish and wimpy.
The Glass Mountain deals with some of
the fallout from Children of the Shaman.
It talks a lot more about what it means to be a shaman and focusses on Yuda’s twin
sister, Yuste. In this story most of the trouble is caused by a Magus who
carries two suitcases with …unusual…contents. He practises necromancy and
fancies himself as a rival to the powerful Sklavan Magus Kaschai the Deathless.
The mountain of the title is his hideout, and he kidnaps Annat and Malchik to
further his purposes. The setting is 19th century again but there
are mediaeval elements because of the fact that parts of the world have been set
back by the Great Cold.
Magic and shamanism.
There are (at least) two kinds of magic in
this universe. Shamans are an evolutionary phenomenon. Before the Great Cold,
they were rare and were found mostly in Cine (which is China). After the Thaw,
the centre for the study of shamanism was established in Inde (India). They had
a long tradition of academic study, and they were excited when news came
through that shamans were starting to be born in Europe. So they sent out a
number of emissaries, one of whom was Prakhash Sival, who planned to establish
a school or college for shamans in Masalyar. Sival ‘discovered’ Yuda and Yuste Vasilyevich
when they were children, and recognised that they were both unusually powerful.
So he set out to study and train them.
The characteristics of a shaman are that they
can use telepathy, heal, and travel into other dimensions, particularly the spirit
world. A small number of them have much more flamboyant powers and can also
fight. They are often but not always bisexual, and they tend to be on the short
side. But there are exceptions to every rule!
The Magus is a shaman who uses other forms of
magic. He casts spells and uses mirrors. The shamans frown on this type of
magic because it’s superstitious and tends to involve abuse of power.
There is another species of magic which only
gets hinted at: gifts, which are a specific magical ability. In Children of the Shaman, there is a
painter called Cluny who can use his paintings to escape from his confinement.
He is not a shaman and has no other magical powers.
If you could visit a
fantasy world from another book where would it be?
That’s a tricky one! I would once have loved
to go to Narnia, but discovering that it was a Christian allegory rather
knocked that on the head for me. More recently, I have wanted to go to Lyra’s
Oxford. The trouble with fantasy worlds is that they’re dangerous. It’s not unlike
going travelling, backpacking, and I these days I prefer my home comforts such
as sanitation, hot and cold running water and sofas. I’m emotionally close to
Bilbo Baggins before he set out for Erebor. So I think I’d choose Middle-Earth,
specifically the Shire, because you can smoke and drink beer (and eat well) but
there is also the possibility of Elves.
How do you see the
rise of eBooks affecting writers and writing?
I believe
it’s too soon to call, really. The effect could be quite deleterious in one
scenario. At the moment, many people are rushing into print before they have
had a chance to learn their craft, and there is no editorial control. There are
thousands of eBooks out there and it is hard to discover which are any good. It’s
also very hard to get reviews for self-published eBooks due to the sheer volume
of books being produced. So on the one hand there is the opportunity for people
to publish work that might not otherwise have been published – but on the other
hand there’s no gateway, no vetting process and so it’s almost as if there is
an eBook for everyone in the world.
I love ‘traditional’ reading but I fear that
in the future it may not survive. I may be completely wrong, but I get the
impression that young people enjoy so many different formats – games, films,
tablets, music and more. Sitting down to read a book is a much more
concentrated and reflective experience. On the other hand, eBooks have a lot of
unexplored potential. One could incorporate music, images – who knows what! –
into a book.
So I feel the rise of eBooks is a challenge;
they rely on technology and a hi-tech society to exist. I’m a bit of a Luddite
– I love low tech things like steam trains and wind-up gramophones – but I have
to confess I also love iPads and computers and suchlike.
Who is hot on your reading
list?
I want to read ‘Wind Follower’ by Carole
McDonnell, which has been waiting on my Kindle. Lots more Sherlock Holmes, and some of my Terry Pratchett pile. The Kindle is
quite bad for a book hoarder like me (in one way) in that I can download stuff
and there it is, waiting for me! I am keen to read more of the Graceling books by Kristin Cashore.
What next?
I’ve started something called Winterbloom. That’s only its working
title. I’ve got to scan my first two books to bring them out as eBooks, but
Winterbloom is pre-occupying me. It’s my work-in-progress and it looks as
though parts of it may take part in England – a fictional 19th
century England – and also in the Anglond of the shaman world. At the moment
there appear to be characters from three parallel worlds interacting. It may
also have Sherlock Holmes in it, but I’m not sure because Conan Doyle was such
an outstanding writer. But I used to love the old Sherlock Holmes TV series with Jeremy Brett playing the Great
Detective, and now I am a huge fan of Sherlock with Benedict Cumberbatch,
Martin Freeman and Mark Gatiss. I’m terribly fan-girly about the whole thing!
So Winterbloom might have a Sherlock Holmes strand. After Malarat, I wanted to do something a bit more playful, and I have
always wanted to mingle my characters with someone else’s. The main problem at
the moment is structural – I know what I want to do but not how to get there!
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