Welcome to this Track of Words Author Interview, my ongoing series of quick interviews with authors talking about their new or upcoming books. These are short and sweet interviews, with the idea being that each author will answer (more or less) the same questions – by the end of each interview I hope you will have a good idea of what the new book (or audio drama) is about, what inspired it and why you might want to read or listen to it.
In this interview I spoke to Matthew Ward about his epic fantasy novel Legacy of Ash, which is out this week in paperback from Orbit. If you’re a fan of epic (in more than one sense of the word) fantasy novels, then this should be of interest – it’s getting great reviews, and sounds fantastic!
Without further ado, over to Matthew…
ToW: What’s the elevator pitch summary for Legacy of Ash?
Matthew Ward: Beset by war, the Tressian Republic is falling into anarchy. But amid the confusion, a new generation has a chance to set right the mistakes of the old – if they can put aside old enmities long enough to do so.
ToW: Without spoiling anything, who are the main characters and what do we need to know about them?
MW: First up, we have Viktor Akadra – a soldier’s soldier determined to defend his homeland from the invading Hadari Empire, whatever it takes. He’s at home on the battlefield, but the arena in which he finds himself is as much about politics as swordplay.
Elsewhere, we have Josiri and Calenne Trelan, the disgraced children of a woman who almost tore the Republic apart. Josiri is determined to finish what his mother began, whereas Calenne simply wants to be free of it all.
Last of all, Melanna Saranal seeks to follow in her father’s footsteps and ascend to the Imperial throne. However, Hadari tradition not only dictates that such claims must be proven in battle, but that women may not bear swords.
There are (a lot of) other characters in the story – demons, gods, rebels, soldiers and schemers – but those are the main ones.
ToW: Can you talk a little about the world in which this story is set?
MW: Aradane is a secondary world in the tradition of Tolkien, perhaps a nudge more obviously magical than Arda and Westeros. It’s a place of feuding nations, meddling gods, haunted by the remnants of what came before.
ToW: You’ve worked on an interesting range of projects over the years, from Games Workshop IPs to stories set in the London Underground – what’s the particular appeal of writing an epic fantasy trilogy now?
MW: Oh, this one’s been on the cards for a while – the premise far predates my time at Games Workshop, for example. It’s one of those stories that I wanted to get around to telling, but for years couldn’t work out just the right way of doing that. In the last few years I’ve generally alternated between real world and epic fantasy. This time when the slot came up, I decided to give Legacy of Ash its chance.
Then, when I saw how long it was running, I started to wonder if I’d made the right choice. It’s quite nerve-wracking getting to the end of a 240k word novel…
ToW: Where did this specific story come from? What made you want to write this in particular?
MW: As I mentioned before, I’ve had the idea floating around for a while now – some of the characters, bits of the setting, even a few of the story beats (though most of those will come in later books). All told, it’s grown and evolved across the best part of two decades, but it was only a little less than two years ago when I finally realised I had all the pieces I needed (confidence being one of the big ones) to get started.
ToW: Who or what would you say have been the main influences on this book?
MW: Like most epic fantasy, this book wouldn’t exist without Tolkien – there’s still no one to match his thoroughness when it comes to building a world (even if you don’t see most of it on the first pass).
Style-wise, I owe a lot to Bernard Cornwell (isn’t Sharpe the best?), J M Straczynski, Timothy Zahn and Alistair MacLean. But I should acknowledge a huge debt to a lot of the books and TV I experienced as a child, which left me with a love for hidden magic in settings of all kinds.
ToW: This is an impressively large book, and part of a trilogy no less – so how much of the story, the world and the characters had you mapped out before you started writing it? Presumably you needed to be reasonably well prepared to tackle something this ambitious…
MW: For Legacy of Ash, I knew where I wanted to end up but not how I was going to get there. In fact, quite early in the writing process I just wasn’t quite feeling it. Something was missing, and I wasn’t sure what that something was. Then, in a moment of fleeting whimsy, I added some new characters into the mix, and everything just started working. What had been figuring out the story became much more like remembering it.
From there on out, I knew I was either doing it very, very right, or horribly wrong. Looking at the reviews so far, it would seem to be the former…which is a huge relief!
ToW: Are there other stories available in this world, if someone wants to read more while waiting for the next book in the series?
MW: I’ve written a bunch of Aradane stories over the years, but most of those that I did self-publish are currently unavailable, simply because I’m not sure how they’ll mesh with Legacy of Ash. However, there are still two up on Amazon: The Game and The Tribute. Same world, different time and different characters. They’re both of longish short story length, so pretty simple to get to grips with.
ToW: What do you hope fantasy fans will get out of this by the time they’ve finished it?
MW: Hopefully that they’ve enjoyed the journey and are eager for more! But beyond that, I’d hope to leave readers with the sense of a world that goes on and on long after the final page. That’s a crucial part of any setting for me – no matter how big the story, the world is vaster still.
ToW: This is book one of the Legacy Trilogy – what can you tell us about what else we’re going to see in the rest of the trilogy?
MW: All kinds of things! More gods, more magic. Terrible, heartbreaking choices, the odd pairing of star-crossed lovers. And, of course, more battles. It’s hard to go into without causing spoilers, so I suppose the best way to put it is ‘more of what you loved in Legacy of Ash’. Book Two (Legacy of Steel) is all done bar the final edits, and Book Three is well underway. I can’t wait to share the rest of the journey!
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Many thanks to Matthew for taking the time to answer these questions! Keep an eye out for a review of Legacy of Ash sometime soon…
Check out Matthew’s website thetowerofstars.com, or iff you don’t already follow him, you can find Matthew on Twitter @thetowerofstars.
Click this link to buy Legacy of Ash, or this one for the audiobook edition.
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