 I'm so excited today to be speaking with, is it Karu or Karu? Karu, yeah. Karu, okay. Leo Karu, about one of my all-time favorite series, the Under the Northern Sky series. I've talked about it at length on my channel and I've talked about it in my words, but I'm excited to hear Leo Karu himself introduce himself as well as how he would describe his own books. So yeah, my name's Leo Karu, not Karu, it's the audiobook, actually has it. And I am the author of Under the Northern Sky, which is the trilogy you've got, very well displayed on your bookshelf, behind you there. And yeah, it's basically a sort of, it's a trilogy which imagines that more than one species of human survived the Ice Age and lives in a kind of alternate version of Dark Age Europe called Aerobos. And they set up different societies and kind of, there's a fairly major conflict which plays out between them. And it was originally inspired by a sort of, well, I wrote it the first time when I was 12 years old, quite soon after learning to read, which I was very, very late. Then when I often studied biological anthropology is my degree and sort of that like developed a lot of the ideas that I'd had originally. And then finally revisited it when I was sort of, I think, 23 and living in a tent in the Arctic, which gives you a lot of time to think. It was a 24 hour darkness and I've been there for about sort of six months already. And in conversation, more or less run out with the tube blokes I was living there with. And yeah, just went back to that story I'd written when I was 12 and then rewrote it and that's what Under the Northern Sky ended up being. And I will say in my spare time, Moonlight is a military doctor. Just casually. I imagine a 12 year old Leo's idea for the story was probably quite different than what it ended up being. Yeah, it was much more like a, much more how you'd imagine 12 year old would write fancy. Well, I can't imagine being 12 and conceiving of this series. So I don't know what 12 years old would be like. Yeah, it was much more like sort of, I think what I wanted to do is just write about battles, essentially. And I think probably there may have been a tiny bit of it originally inspired by the elves from Lord of the Rings, because like the Lord of the Rings films had come out very soon before that. And I was sort of interested in that thing about alternate species of human and kind of really liked wilderness. Even at that age I was obsessed with trying to get out camping and things like that. So I think in my head those two sort of fused and I just sort of started developing this kind of like weird alternate universe, which I used to think about on my way to choir. And it was really helpful being bored. You'd sort of, you know, back in the days for audiobooks and like iPods and things like it was so, all you had to do was like, let your thoughts run away with you. And I just imagined this story. And actually part of the reason I ended up writing it down when I was 25 was because I was stuck thinking about this, even when I was in my 20s. Like every night before I go to bed I'd sort of think about like, any part of the story and sort of how this would go. And like part of the reason of trying to get it published was because I just wanted to get out of my head, stop thinking about it basically. Fair enough, fair enough. Well, there's a lot to the story and I have a lot of questions as you know. We'll get through a few. But for anyone who's interested, you do also have a blog where you've talked about, in particular the Anakim, which are that, well, they are very different from elves. So if elves were your inspiration for the Anakim, you went quite differently with them. So I'll try not to ask too much about the Anakim that is already answered on that blog. So I'll link that down below for anyone that wants to read it. But, and then I have, I've read the whole series. So I would do want to ask some spoilery questions, but I'll save those for the end so that if anyone is read, and will not read it at all, or read the first couple of books and hasn't read the third one yet, you can still watch the beginning and then we'll talk spoilers at the end. One of the things that I love so, so much about these books is the world building. So I have a lot of questions about the world building. And in particular, a feature that I think becomes more and more prominently featured in the series as we go is the Kryptea. So I know I sent a lot of questions about sort of the origins of the name for them and how you went about creating that element of the story. So the Kryptea was probably one of the most sort of organically evolved elements of the story. They kind of in the original version of the book. Friends who hasn't read them yet, they're like, they're this organization of behind the scenes assassins effectively who are impeded in the Black King, which is the Anakin in society. And their job is to safeguard the power of the Anakin monarch, the Black Lord, or rather stop them abusing their power. And they do that by basically giving you a warning if you've gone too far and then ultimately assassinating if you continue to go too far. And the name Kryptea is from, as I think you know, from the Spartans had a sort of secret organization which used to go out terrorizing the hellots who are this like under underclass of slaves that they used to rule over and who used to basically do that sort of farming and things for them and like make their they'd sort of devolve the like business of subsistence to them so they could train exclusively for war. And it was just, I literally took it from them partly because you know, it's a shadowy organization and partly because Kryptea is just too good a word to waste like Kryptea just sounds sort of like, you know, unhand of it sneaky, doesn't it? And they started originally as like a group of assassins who are kind of more at the Black Lords command. So they'd be able to use them to like kind of root out their enemies. But when it came to actually writing down the story, it just became apparent that that made the monarch too powerful. And you'd end up writing a kind of story much more about a desperate who couldn't really be challenged in a way which I think gets a bit boring and like there's not enough checks on their ambitions. And actually, there's there's something quite challenging about writing about the actual monarch of Eregi. Because there aren't really enough people to like stop them and kind of there aren't enough factors to alter their ambitions and what you really want is a good challenge, don't you? So the Kryptea had to change for a more kind of antagonistic role because otherwise I think things would have been too easy for Rokorame and character. Reading the beginning of the wolf, I wouldn't say Roper would agree that he has things too easy with or without the Kryptea. But I mean, for the overall series, definitely. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Of course, to work against him. And then why a cuckoo as the symbol for the Kryptea? Yes, they've got they made you quite heavily on the branding of the Kryptea. They're leaving their cuckoos everywhere all the time. And it's basically it's basically just because the Anakim are incredibly in touch with the natural world. And they sort of they would think of everything as like, how does this relate to some element of wilderness? And cuckoos famously sort of like go into other birds' nests and will lay their own eggs in place of the other birds. So they will trick the other bird into tricking into them raising the cuckoos eggs and young as their own. And it's kind of it's like an open bride from the Kryptea essentially saying that we can insert our own person into your institution. And there's nothing you can do about it, but he will raise them and your like institution will function to raise our candidate at its own. And you won't even you can't stop us basically. Well, we like accuracy and branding. Oh, yeah, they're all about the branding. Then I did originally want to ask a lot about the Inheru, but I know you said you a plan to post about them on your blog as well. So I don't want to waste too much time on information that I'm going to get anyway. But if you want to tell us a little bit about the inspiration for the Inheru. Yeah, the Inheru. So basically the Anakim is sort of like the model species of them is like is the Neanderthal essentially. Because they're the like species of human we know the most about. So I thought it was my most interesting to use that kind of as our like model species to work out like how you can make a version of humanity which is really different to us humans. And then the Inheru I took as my baseline Gigantopithecus you've ever heard of it is like a like some very fractional remains of I think they only have a jaw of a massive probably the biggest in the great age basically, which is now extinct. And I just thought I was really fun to like have a base entire species of like what we know which is not very much. Basically you've got a sort of like vegetarian enormous ape possibly sort of related to humans, but maybe not. And then you just from being massive and being vegetarian you just extrapolate loads from that and kind of see where that would take you as a society. And quite often they're likened to chimpanzees orangutans as well because they're like thought to be the nearest in terms of the like the jaw structure. So they also drew quite a bit from orangutans to I will like I'll like delve quite a lot more into that when on my blog post. But yeah, that was the basic sort of idea and then like lots of wild extrapolations from that basically. I mentioned the sort of grooming that they do comes from what we've observed of when you do. Yeah, exactly like chimpanzees and sort of that's probably one of the less subtle flights of fancy. It worked because it had a sort of Jabba the hut feel almost to it as well, but also in keeping with it. I hadn't thought of it until this moment but I was like what does it remind me of to have a leader that has this sort of like, I don't know women around him grooming him. Yeah. As you just now talked about with regard to the cuckoo. The anachem are quite in touch with nature and a good example of that is how they keep track of time during the year and they've got it broken down to the week with a name for each week. So I wanted to know more about how you went about well coming up with that and then also coming up with each of the names and the natural occurrences that coincide with that. I think they're like the original idea was from this like the Japanese have a system of micro seasons, I think, which I think is like is fortnightly for them. And I read about that ages ago and thought and again it's like micro seasons sort of just based on like tiny things which happened then which I thought was so evocative like they have things like when the when the cherry blossoms turn pink or start to fall or whatever. And I just read it and immediately loved it knew that's what like the anachem would would have because they would, especially if like so they spend a lot of time doing in their big stone fortress the hindrance they would feel kind of constantly mildly homesick for and the wilderness and they just want these like reminders of sort of how the year was passing. And so I really that was one of the my favorite bits about writing the book was trying to come up with those little micro seasons. Which they divide the year into and they've got things like, you know, sort of whether when the red deer start to roar, they've got a week based on that or like when the crab apples turn red, or like just like evocative stuff for the seasons and then it was really good excuse for getting outside and like just spending as much time as possible so you could notice like, you know, like, this is the week like missile missile tow comes out or like sort of there was a really good one I saw where this is really bizarre array of ghost moths. I don't know if you have them in the states which like they just do this weird like dance going up and down. And I think the moths which like they're born without mouths and like so they never actually eat like only in the larval state can they feed. And it just happens like one week every year the ghost moths come out and start dancing as I was like that's definitely one the anarchy would have. They'd really recognize that and coming up with the words for them. It's mostly sort of it's a combination of something is quite one amount of pay it. So like, I think the week that the cookie starts call is called like hooker. So, you know, not that not that different to the actual noise. And like you're trying to actually listen to what the noise sounds like in real life. So you know how in some cultures cows go like if it was someone's doing impression of the cow they go like rather move or like just sort of like because who or something like that. And we we've sort of like anthropomorphized the sounds which we think animals make and so it was a first of like trying to like listen to actually listen properly to what animals might actually sound like when they're making those noises. And then you make them into a more kind of anarchy than anyone the anarchy have quite like a close of language so there's lots of sort of like keys and like hard sort of like continent in there. And so it was a kind of like blend of trying to put those together to make it sound, you know, authentically anarchy. Well, that leads neatly into my questions about in general there's a lot of anarchy words and so yeah, if you want to talk about how you went about developing the other words that the anarchy have and the other influences, or because like the name Lothbrook is in there which I don't know if you did take it from North Saugas but it certainly reminded me of North Saugas and the Kryptea is Spartan so how you went about developing what we get of the anarchy language. Yeah, I think it's really hard to come up with words. First of all, like, because they always, they always sound faintly ridiculous if you're just plucking off the top of your head and it's really obvious there's a made up word. So the anarchy have like a, I based a lot of their language on Icelandic just because I felt like that was the most, first of its kind of one of the most similar to old Norse. And I felt like that is the culture which leaned nearest to what the anarchy were. And in this sort of alternate version of Europe that we've created, there's lots of kind of like different strands of like influence running along it and the Norse were like heavily influenced by the anarchy. So they kind of like, the southern is like modern humans in Eropos tried to go, they tended to go one of two ways. They either revered the anarchy and so treated them as gods or they became their sort of mortal enemies. And the Norse in this version more revered them and kind of started to emulate them. So that was the thinking behind treating Icelandic as the kind of like base language for them. And there's, but there's different sort of strands. So like Lothbrok is one of the family names in there, which comes from that. But also there's the Fiddar, who are like Ketura, who are one of the main characters, families and her father is Tekoa and all their family are from more sort of Hebrew names. And all of the different families and sort of tribes have different areas of Europe, basically, which their names come from, which is like reflective of where they would originally have occupied. Because in the sort of history of them, they originally occupied Europe as the Neanderthals did. And then when modern humans arrived, they're all condensed into the UK. So the names are like reflective of the areas which they came from originally or their families came from originally. And they've got this, their language I've tried to create to be like, to show how differently they thought, basically, because I really like when I was living in this tent in the Arctic, the Norwegians, who are the people who are like most commonly around, they would always like talking about how poor the English language was, because they were thinking in it, obviously in Norwegian, and then trying to translate it to English. And it made no, like they kept finding getting really frustrated by like words that they had, they couldn't express properly in English. And I really, I really liked that it was kind of so obvious like how differently they were thinking to me just by the fact that it was being like constrained by a different language. So in the Anakin language, I thought like they have to have like words which would be reflective of the way they think. And so I think you mentioned before, they've got this like they've got three ways of talking about friends. And that's partly inspired by like in Norway, got two different ways of saying, I love you, you've got like, yeah, I also could die, which is really intense. Like apparently you'd only say that if it was like your wedding day, even then it would be a bit cheesy. And then yeah, I glad you die, which is like, I'm glad in you. And that's much, that's much more than like our version of I love you because that they haven't got this like, they haven't got the same thing we have. Whereas like in a relationship, you say, I love you. And that's a huge thing. They have a much gentler thing, which you'd say kind of quite regularly. And then like a really intense thing, which is kind of too much. And in the same way, the Anakin have like three different kinds of friend, which is like just makes those relationships a bit more kind of like, like subtle a bit more. They just think about them quite differently. And I think that's the way language can shape culture. I really wanted to bring that in. And that was again, one of the really fun bits about writing was trying to like work up the things that like everyone was familiar with, but which we didn't have words for. So I can imagine if you imagine if there was no word for deja vu. Would you will be ever talk about that kind of isn't we stole that word because we didn't actually have. Yeah. Will we ever talk about it? Do you think like if we if there was no word for deja vu, be like, I had that thing where like, it feels like I've had this before. Oh, yeah, I kind of get that sometimes. Slang comes in sometimes to fill in those gaps when we start to refer to something in a slang way because there wasn't actually a word to really capture. What do you think you're an example? Oh, I feel like I don't know. When people talk about how you're the younger generation, we never know what we're what they're saying because they're saying tons of slang things because they're reflective of how you speak on the Internet and the way you speak on the Internet references things that we haven't in the past and the way that use emojis and the way that you use. I don't abbreviations of words, but the abbreviation doesn't actually mean the same thing as the full word because the abbreviation has become has developed its own meaning by being used a slang. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that's so true. That's really true. I kind of stay off the Internet, so I'm like very very dark and all these these things. I'm glad you'll keep me back down to earth. Do you I know you mentioned Icelandic and Norwegian, but do you speak any other languages fluently and then drew on that yourself? I speak Norwegian reasonably well, but otherwise, but I was literally just from sort of pure immersion. I like a bit I was absolutely hopeless language in school. My French teacher would routinely pull his hair out the side of me. It was a very stressful experience for both of us. Well, speaking of inventing a language that fits how the Anakin think, I'm very fascinated by the concept of possession, which comes up quite a bit. So I don't know if you want to explain possession and then why that became such a thing for the Anakin. So possession was like, is their concept of being totally overwhelmed essentially by an emotion? And like if you're kind of quite often it's associated with groups, say if like if a group is like sort of there's like a general sense of rage and like our rage about like, can you believe so and so did this and they're like what did they can't believe that and so everyone like whips themselves up and dislike fur for it sort of massive anger. And it's like unjustified and it just goes too far and it's a bit sort of unhealthy. That was part of that was like that thing about language and sort of thinking that we probably as a society haven't recognized how toxic that is and like you kind of need a proper word for that. And if we had a proper word for that then maybe we would be more attuned to how bad it is. And partly it was from seeing a wolf for the first time and like I went to a zoo. It's not a very exciting story. When you brought the wolf and the arctic, I had visions of you alone. Yeah, it was actually literally just the year before. And like I've gone to one of those in the UK, you have those like drive through like safari things because our fauna is so massively unexciting. And instead you've got like, you know, like a big park you can drive through and they've got wolves and bears and lions and things in there. And I'd never actually seen a wolf in the flesh before. And I was really struck by it because I'd expect it to look like, you know, see some of those like like a Siberian husky sometimes looks a bit like a wolf. And I thought it'd be like that, but it was really like notably different. It was so like mature compared to a dog and so aware and like you could just every single footfall was considered. And it was just it's sort of like looking in the eyes just a much more sensible character than a dog. And I've always had in my mind is the analog for what the Anakim would be like is It sounds like the difference between Anakim and humans, the way the Anakim think of humans in the book. Yeah, completely, completely. I've always thought that like if you because I think basically what happened to wolves when they became dogs is what happened to us when we became versus our like untogether ancestors. And I've always thought like the analog for an Anakim is they are a wolf if we are the dog. So their constant possession is partly that they're just a more sensible, more sensible character. And I they're just a bit more kind of mature and a bit more like, I think less vulnerable to like flights of emotion than we are. Mob and tallities. Yeah, yeah. Leading in then to something we haven't really talked about but the difference is in Anakim culture between how men and women are regarded their roles in society in the culture of the Anakim. How you went about doing that and why. So, I think this is probably one of the things I'd have. I've had most questions about because it's kind of different from most fantasy in that like women don't appear in like a fighting role particularly. And I think most fancy now they tend to like it's probably much more frequent for women to be involved in the fighting. And I thought I'm really not trying to create like a sort of utopia with the Anakim. I'm not trying to make like a sort of or with that world in general. It's not supposed to be like. They're not right about everything. Completely. And it's and actually I thought like by far the default for most societies in the world has been that women haven't really been involved in the combat side of things. And it was kind of there like the default position I think as societies have developed is that men and women are different and occupied different spheres of life. And it's only really in our society that there's obviously examples of both overlapping. But it's only really in our system. We're moving them sort of closer and closer in our society than I think has been then is like certainly typical of the norm across like cultures. And I think it would it probably marks a book out as being quite distinctly of our age and time if like the number of women fighters that there are like certainly like loads of studies did have women fighters. And so you took inspiration from the North. They certainly have. She'll make things like that. Exactly. But overall it's definitely been a kind of. It's been more the preserve of men. And I think it's that women warrior thing has been well explored by like fancy books. Before. And I and that was actually it was quite a deliberate thing trying not to make it utopia. And to make it kind of notably and like alienly different from what we have now. Because I really didn't want people to think I was creating something she was like. I think it all been too nice and too like familiar and similar. Then I get to be a bit unbelievable. Do you know what I mean? Like a bit less real. Like I think I think the fact of him there's like this things this is like is gritty and like it's probably more believable from an ancient society than like something that's more kind of more recognizable to us. Was that something you came to as you wrote because I mean if there was Norse inspiration I could see very easily just kind of like going with the like. Well we'll have shield maidens then because they did too and that's a. You know or did what did you always know you're like no that's definitely not something I'm doing with the Anakin. That's a really good question. I think I think actually in the original version I wrote when I was 12 there were female warriors and as. I started developing I started looking for more and more ways to like as I sort of got a bit. I was more like they're a bit similar to the Norse at the moment we just we need to actually like. So I think in the original version there were some and also partly doing kind of more anthropology as well I think like. I think it is much more common to have a pretty clear distinction between the roles of men and the roles of women. And originally as well when I wrote the book there wasn't the Academy which is like this sisterhood of historians which is quite a big. Roll which I'm like a very important role which the women fulfill in this society and I felt like that sort of. Created more like an easier division between like what men and women did which I think which I think is kind of probably more typical. Of life and particularly the Anakin are very like insular and very conservative society and that. Those kind of studies seem to prefer like clean breaks between stuff like not blurred categories. And that was another reason I thought that they'd have like very clear like this is what men do and this is like this is what women do. Yeah I mean for anyone that hasn't read the books I don't want to make it sound like women are second class citizens in these books. They certainly are very prominently featured and powerful just in a very different sphere of life. So you don't become powerful in a story just because you wield a sword. Yeah and I kind of ordered the narrative as well I think like the only way you can show that something is really cool is because they're really good at fighting. I find that. I find that mildly sexist I guess. I was going to say as a woman I do get tired of strong female characters being strong because they're just men. Yeah exactly. So it is in some respects refreshing not to have women warriors. Yeah. So I don't know if it segues neatly but next I wanted to talk about characters. And I didn't actually have Katara on my list because I don't really I don't feel that I have questions about her I think she's so well written she is one of the most prominently featured female characters in it. I found as a quick aside that my favorite professors at university I never wanted to go to their office hours because I never had questions for them because everything was clear from lecture and I was like I would love to speak to you more but I don't have anything to ask you I understand everything. Yeah so I guess I'm only asking about characters that something wasn't clear to me. You're not so sure about that. So Bella. She's one of the easiest ones to write and like she's actually she is one of the most of them you don't base or I don't base at all on like people I know from real life. She and it's her and ficture really who are like based almost entirely on people I did actually know. And Katara is very easy because she's just a friend from school who I just every time I imagine what Katara would say I sort of obviously like they've done quite a lot since then but like her origin was like and her mannerisms and kind of like her sense of human sense I just imagine what she would say. And that was like just a very easy way of writing and then started with a really kind of like complete sense of like what she'd like and what she wouldn't like and made life a lot easier. I think it's a compliment to whoever you know was your inspiration for Katara but just the person who inspired Victor know that he inspired Victor. Victor is also actually he was a really good friend and please a very he's a very driven and like mildly tormented character. Not nearly as much as Victor I'm pleased to say but him I just found quite fascinating and like his sort of mannerisms and things like then he's someone like you. I did not expect that. But so I first on my list was actually a Bellamist because he's the most kind of the character that is utilized to bring in like more open conversation about anthropological concepts so like he is kind of the anthropologist in the story at least how I interpreted him, but he is the antagonist. And was that always the intention or was he ever the protagonist or No Bellamist is like he's moved steadily towards the being more of a protagonist less than antagonist so when I did the original 12 year old version. He was purely a villain he was just like a sort of just a really nasty enemy to like Twirling. Yeah, completely. War Cape I think was like a son of my evil henchman and used to like routinely stab his friends in the back and things like that. And as we as I rewrote the book and I think Bellamist kind of inherited a lot of what I would have liked to have been doing kind of been confronted with the Anakin like I would have loved to like go and explore that society like sort of found out more about them. And actually weirdly he's probably even though he's basically the villain. He's probably one of the characters I relate most to like I really understand his motivations are really. And I love people say like oh I hate Bellamist and and I don't hate Bellamist but I have heard that a lot from people who read it. Yeah, I think she wanted she keeps asking me for spoilers for the series because she hasn't finished it yet and she wanted to know. She wanted me to confirm that Bellamist gets like drawn in quartered and I was like well. Gets his come up and I was a bit like I was actually a bit surprised by that because when I even when I wrote this version he's the antagonist be sort of quite sympathised with him up until the cuckoo when he sort of diverges a little bit from what I think was acceptable but he up until that point I thought he was like fine actually and I think you can really understand what he's done from the positions he's been put in. He's he is definitely the person I like related to the most. He definitely makes some like poor decisions because he becomes isolated in the cuckoo. And he the path he's on sort of leads him to like steadily going diverging further and further for his friends. And so he's got fewer people to draw him back down to reality, which is what he needs. But yeah, weirdly, yeah, he started much more moustache furling as you say. And then he became basically sort of he was more like an audience surrogate. So like a sort of way you could experience the Anakin and like sort of how you might know more about them. But making the audience surrogate to the antagonist is a bold choice. Yeah, a strange maneuver. And that was again quite sort of organic because he started as when I rewrote this like this final version of he was kind of quite neutral. And and him and Roper just sort of steadily ended up. Instantly, they weren't supposed to be kind of they've ended up as like arch enemies, basically. They weren't supposed to be initially they were just supposed to be sort of. They rub alongside each other but aren't really opposites and they do end up being opposites. And that was just one of those ways that the story develops. And like I had loads of ideas starting out about how I wanted it to end. Sometimes it just sort of rides itself and you find yourself moving in a slightly different direction. Certainly. Was there did you ever have any concerns about writing a series where you're asking humans to root against humans? No, actually, because I think that's quite quite common now like sort of especially with like environmental movements and things. Everyone's everyone's a bit like fed up of people. Aren't they like there's a lot of us and we seem to do a lot of damage and things like and for the record. I don't actually think those those aren't the views I I share. But there's definitely like an underlying sort of particularly with the eco movement and things like there's certainly times when I. I am really, really, really do love goodness and sort of being in those kind of places. And there's certainly times when I just wish like there was more of this like a bit less of a busyness like. Urbanist and things like that. And I think there is quite a strong sentiment about in the general population as well. And I think it's actually not that difficult to get people to. To think like, well, it'd be quite nice if we're a bit more in tune with. The wild and kind of. How do you might go up to some of our less admirable qualities. I don't think it's hard to root for the Anakin against people. I just think as a, you know, if you're addressing the company's board and about what store you're going to be pitching to the populace and say so the. The villains are the humans. The decision makers to be like, we're not sure if people are going to go for that. Yeah, I haven't even thought about this. It's the the ending is actually the bit which is like, we won't get to that because I imagine we'd say that for the spoiler section. That's the bit which was difficult to convince the board about. It was like the usual. Going back a little bit. I don't think there would be too much to say about this, but maybe you'll surprise me. But the character of Gray and his sort of personal arc and personal goals and journey about overcoming death and overcoming fear of death. Where did that come from? And so there's some like it's I think it's always really funny when you're like when you're a kid and tiny things can like your brain is so small right but tiny things can like take up a huge percentage of it. And I find that. Did you watch Blackadder Blackadder? That was that was quite a big part of my childhood with me. And that was the reason I went to Cambridge, for example, because they keep making jokes to Oxford. And it was the same. There used to be an audiobook of Blackadder where there's in Blackadder goes forth. There's a really moving scene at the end of that where they all charge over the top and everyone ends up dying in no man's land. And as I remember listening to that as I must have been about like probably five or six years old and hearing that bit and being like, oh my God, like one day I'm going to die and it's going to be terrifying. And also think because at the time I really wanted to be a soldier as well. So I was thinking like how on earth do you marry those two things together like the knowledge of death and like and the fact of wanted to be a soldier and kind of. It just seemed the most like impossible and terrifying things been from at that age. And I've just grazed sort of like obsession with it is it's partly that part of just that I've been thinking about like that took up a tiny part of my like quite large part of my brain is quite a small person. And then it takes about the same percentage now I'm just thinking about that where I was thinking about that quite a lot and sort of what you do about that like how I think it's something we don't explore that much. As a society and it's part gray grays like absolutely is partly how I feel like it's this elephant in the room which people aren't really talking about. And I quite like to know how to like deal with that when you get there. And part of it is about gray. Some of the characters have their like origins in historical figures. So Roper when I was like trying to decide what his character would be. And I based him on an explorer called Andy Shackleton. Who is like he's probably morally fairly dubious but like he is like he was a brilliant brilliant leader. And like famously outrageous in a tight spot he was the person you wanted to be commanding you basically. And there's another explorer called Bill Wilson who was on one of Captain Scott's expeditions. And Bill Wilson was like famous for being morally like very upright like he was a really highly highly regarded member of one of the expeditions originally to get to the South Pole. And he had written to his sister like I think 10 years before he died saying he was fascinated by the concept that someone might fit like transcend fear of death and not be worried about it. And Wilson ended up dying with Captain Scott on the way back from the South Pole. Sorry for the spoiler fall. And Scott wrote like a letter. He said this is his leader who he died with in a tent and they all knew he was going to die on the way back. And Scott wrote a letter to Wilson's wife saying he'd seen him face death and like he was just completely calm. And I sort of find about it in the same with Wilson wrote a letter to his wife as well which is still one of the most moving things I've ever read. And I was just really inspired by the fact that he he decided to try and like take on death and like without fear when it came and he did get to do that and he did succeed in it. So I guess it was a combination of the two. But Gray ultimately when I was doing his kind of mannerisms. And like what he believed in the starting point was Bill Wilson from one of Scott's expeditions. Sorry that was slightly dark. I was going to say like I said I thought you wouldn't have much to say about that one and then it ended up being fascinating. That's just how it goes. I feel like you just answered I think two of my questions which were was anyone inspired from real life or history. So we know your friends and Shackleton and the Wilson and then you might have already answered who your favorite character is. If it's Bellamus or who you most identify with certainly is Bellamus. I think my favorite character is probably Roper is Bellamus who you are and Ropers who you wish to be. Yeah I think probably. I think I always like and I've always thought of price is like pricing Gray at the sort of angel in the like demon on my shoulders. Gray is like sort of who I sort of would like to aspire to be and like in my kind of more sober moment I do aspire to be like and then price is like when I feel a bit reckless. He's kind of he's the like temporary girl like be a bit of a dick like you know be slightly more kind of up yourself and like a bit more strive for glory type thing. And so that was that was price is origin as well that he was like who I would like to aspire to be like in my worse moments basically. They're kind of like opposite of Gray basically. But they work really well together as well. Do opposite track I suppose. So I think you've kind of like touched on your writing process and the fact that you came up with it in broad concept at 12 but you know obviously like fleshed it out a lot more much later on and anthropology came into it. But when you did sit down to write the series now properly. Did you kind of have an outline in mind of how this whole arc would go and what were the main things that we wanted to do with it or did you just kind of write. I was very I knew exactly how I wanted it to end. Which is the ending you see in the cookie. Right from the start and I think again actually that probably comes from that Blackadder thing of like wanting to explore that and also just being a lot like a lot of it was just being really like. Contradictory like an a bit alternative because. I don't know if I want to like the spoiler section here or not but most most books and most series the good guys always win. Like you read you read like James Bond expecting. Just knowing he's going to get out and just having to work out why. And I quite wanted to write something where that wasn't the case because it's not always the case. And like what I really wanted to was to create something which was reflective of real life. I'm just playing to like standard narrative tropes and it felt like a really good challenge to try and. Try and do that whilst preparing the reader for it and making it so that it wasn't such a horrible. Shock and didn't feel like an unnatural conclusion to all it when it came. I have absolutely no idea if I if I succeed in that but it was. It just it was a really like it was quite an inspiring challenge and that was the point and you we were trying to go for. And then did also because I like I'm slightly I think probably like again like I was very interested in this whole like heroic age of exploration stories when I was younger and the concept of heroic failure and. Scott on the way back from the South Pole and things like that and. Wanted to explore that because it is. They are incredible stories and it is really common in human experience like to try really hard like it's hard to possibly kind of something and still fail and not succeed. And so often people do get what they want in these books and. I didn't feel that was reflective of what always happened so that was definitely what I wanted to. End up at and then the rest of the books really sort of were kind of groping. Towards that night trying to. Trying to find a way of getting there but kind of not too prescriptively and like writing something's narratively made sense and. Was true to the characters along the way but because it was set up with them all heading towards this destination at the beginning. And I felt like it was true to the characters and partly like great exploration of like the meaning of life and kind of death and things. Was a way of preparing the reader for what was going to happen at the end of. I'll put spoiler warnings around this section if you want to. Ending right now. So yeah I mean one of my questions in the spoiler section obviously the first one is did you know that from from when you started that everyone would die. At least almost everyone on the Anakin side so that yes you did but did you ever along the way go maybe I won't maybe maybe I won't. The only reason I was tempted to do it was because it is at various point have been like the board. But you dial that down just a little bit like. And like to cover dies at the dies in the sort of final battle scene and he's one of my favorite characters probably him. He's he's actually like he's not based on my dad but lots of his lots of what he says like particularly the most unreasonable and amusing bits are based on like lines of dialogue from my dad. And loads people like please can we just keep him alive like sort of having come back at the end or something and it is it is really tempting to have a sort of. And just like have those like explore the possibility of those people might have survived and like be able to write books about them again. But I think that cheapens it and like ultimately the kind of temptation to do that was only really fleeting. I feel like it's either all or nothing. Yeah, I think so and it was. I think it just undermines the kind of what I was trying to get at if people. If like I can't really I can't really imagine how else it would have ended because of that have been like so clearly what I was trying to get at the whole way through. Even if that wasn't entirely obvious the goal like the goal when writing trilogy was to make it so that like it was sort of like. Good stories you could read on their own but then by the time you got to that ending it hadn't made you like absolutely know that that's where it was going. But neither were you completely shocked that like that was the ultimate outcome I guess. Speaking for myself I mean I would I mean I think it is set up and I didn't feel impossible that that's how it would end but it was still devastating to read I cried for like 10 minutes after finishing the cook. But I wouldn't change the ending I think it's a good ending. I think it's it's very like unusual I haven't I haven't read a book where like that happens necessarily before. I mean if the cook who had ended more happily where some of our heroes made it or even if the Anakin one. I think it would still be a fantastic book but I don't think it would have really stayed with me the way that it has I mean. I say erect me but in a possible way I think readers are masochists at their core. Yeah yeah I think it's. I was also trying to find a way of doing that which didn't just feel totally hopeless and nihilistic. And I think that's part of the reason like why sort of get her like is able to find a certain as little like germ of hope at the end there. And part part of it was also about trying to have made I guess ideals more important than like or like really important things to. Throughout the course of the narrative so that like even the diet is not necessarily the greatest failure because that wasn't really the objective. Revealed into another like in more dark territory you must have some more fearful. You wrote the books you know dark. I mean I was going to go try to try to get back to writing approach but my next question is about battle and war. Yeah. Yeah I think there's a lot of very clever things that will both sides get up to. So I'm just coming up with those situations and coming up with those strategies and writing them in a way also where in particular. Trying to crawl back away from spoilers again for a second but I mean what what Roper does and in the wolf you know is very to keep that from the reader so it's a surprise that there's a lot of. Creativeness in battle and war so. I assume you haven't led any armies. Where did this come from. Historical fiction and genuine historic history as well have been particularly the genuine history have been my really good source of inspiration for it. People have had thousands of years to think up really cutting ways to. Like pull the rug out from each other's feet and I think. What Roper does in trying to get back into the hindrance is I think it was originally from. A civil war in Roman times. Between Marius and solar. Which I remember reading about and thinking like oh that's a really like I didn't see that coming cool at all that's a really cool trick. What was a Trojan war horse as well. Yeah it's very Trojan war isn't it. And the same with like. If we're trying to stay away from spoilers I would say. But basically like most of it has it's like. I'll go ahead I'll just tag in a spoiler as well. Or Kateru Kateru is poisoning was based on who I think was like the Russian. It was like a sort of Eastern European states prime minister you'd public you could size Putin or something. And then he was I think progressively. Poisoned and then. It came from that like the concept of poisoning someone's trying to weaken them rather than necessarily to kill them just to make them look. Feeble and like less appealing. Yeah basically like if you it's there's so much inspiration from history like people have been screwing each other for over three years so. Yeah that's fortunately true and then as cliche is as it is who are your favorite authors and did you. Take any inspiration not just I mean from obviously historical fiction is an inspiration for actual battle tactics but in writing. And. Favorite authors. I really love that a couple he ever had a couple. Not yet but I think I'm about to very soon. Oh well they're like the last kingdom he does a really good series on them. Viking Britain and kind of the Viking invasion to Britain. A sharp as well which is who's a rifleman in the Napoleonic Wars which I think is probably the reason I'm in the army now because. I've read those and really love them. It's tragic how much my life has been inspired from just reading books that I like to know really. Hey well I think the American Archaeological Association gave an award to. Harrison Ford for inspiring so many people to want to become archaeologists. I can imagine actually that's so true. And. Yeah well and archaeology was part of my original degree so. They're coming in here Jones was definitely on the to do list after finishing that. I can really imagine that. And actually on the same note one of my absolute favorite authors is Philip Pullman who. You know read the Golden compasses think it's called in the U.S. and I can. Yeah yeah northern lights exactly and that. That's again I think is why I ended up living in a tent in the Arctic. It was in northern lights lots of it set in Svalbard and Svalbard was where I was living. And it was only really after I got there that I was like sort of. Hang on a minute. And I tried to become an explorer I've moved to Svalbard my favorite drink is to Kai. I live in a narrow boat like the gypsies who are in the boat like I've tragically based my life off. The Golden compass basically. And yeah Philip will particularly particularly that book I just absolutely love. Did you write some other really good ones as well. Jonathan strange and Mr. Norwell you read that one. Yeah I really enjoyed that book and I particularly the audio book. What's yours called Susanna Clark Clark yeah. Really love that like the sense of like I really tried to bring some of that to the wall flight the sense of kind of genuine history because it's like a pastiche isn't it of like an 18th century history. Yeah. Yeah exactly two gentlemen magicians and like it's it borrows both in the real world and kind of from how things might have changed if there had been magic during that period. And I really like that like it's so convincingly executed. And they're like the way it was so realistic and like grounded magic and like a sort of academic discipline. If I may my favorite recommendation for people who like that book is the Declaration of the Rights of magicians. What's that. It's very similar where it's an alternate history but so instead of so it's during sort of like abolitionist era but so introducing the idea of magic and so that it's the right to use magic that's being debated. And so we have like Wilberforce in it as a character and Robespierre as a character and but it's an alternate history where there's magic. Oh was that cool declaration of the rights of magicians. Oh try me. It's left to use up so. And yeah, no. There's probably the main ones. Yeah. Very good. Well, for future writing I know my original question was if you plan to come back to this world and these characters or other parts of the map perhaps but also if you have plans to write maybe something. I mean this is speculative and so far as it's an alternate history but something more like, you know, Philip Pullman wrote where there is there is magic or Susanna Clark where there is magic. Is it something that you've thought about writing. Yeah, definitely. I think the what I probably am going to write next is historical fiction like more pure historical fiction with them. I've been reading all about the Aztecs recently and like the arrival of the sort of conquistadors in the new world which I think is just such a like such an amazing story. I just really really want to try and do a sort of convincing version and the Aztecs is is like it's a bit like the other given that it's such a kind of profoundly weird society to us from like our perspective. I would really love to like be able to kind of put yourself in some Aztecs shoes and just sort of work at how that would be and like tell it from their perspective and like see what it would have been like to have the conquistadors like a new world. I really love to do that. But then after that, doing like a sort of serious with some proper magic and like kind of probably like a better thought out. But like system of magic like a really like if you read King killer chronicles. And you know that like the system of magic they've got there this empathy thing. I thought was brilliant actually really well thought out and I really loved that kind of like grounding in reality. So something kind of a little bit inspired by that is like very appealing. We need to go a lot more full. Do you want it to also be in a kind of academic setting like it is in the King killer chronicle. It's a good question. It is fun. The concept of sort of wizard school and things like it's a very successful formula. It lends itself to writing because like having the system of like people who have a reason to be together and a reason to be learning something that the audience would need to learn. I think it's something great as well about being able to aspire towards kind of like you've got the kind of head teacher type model of like the people who are really good. And accomplished at this discipline. And that gives you immediately something to aim for like these people who are kind of amazingly powerful. And there's something universe for that thing of like building slowly towards being really good at something and looking up to people who've kind of appear to have it all and have done it so well. The mentor wizard. Yeah, exactly. Which like a school setting really lends itself towards doesn't it. And then of course there's bullies and rivalries and everyone's together all the time. And you get to write more songs. I did like all the songs and have you do you have melodies in mind? This is not on my list, but did you have melodies in mind for the songs you wrote for the anacondas? They're all set to melodies in my head. Like existing melodies. You should have told your narrator to sing them then. I knew. I think that's very embarrassing to be honest. But the actually writing the songs is my absolute least favourite bit of writing the books. You could have not done it then if you didn't want to. I know. Well, I thought that looked like a massive cop out because you can either say that they then proceeded to like sing a traditional anacondas song. Which sounds lazy and is. Or you can like you have to make up the song and like it has to sound at least mildly convincing. So those were bits which took by far the longest and I hated the most because they were just like. I have no talent for writing songs so like. So were the melodies just melodies you already knew that you kind of like wrote words to go to match? Yeah, exactly. Like Christmas carols and like. The anacondas going caroling. That's a story that you should write. It's a bit less blood curling isn't it? When you imagine it's going to like good things once as well. No, I really want to see the anacondas caroling. Well, going properly into spoilers very quickly because I know we're running short on time. But so you already addressed the poison and the fact that you knew everyone was going to end up dead. But so the smallpox blankets essentially that Bella Miss uses. When did it occur to you to use that element and how did you go about developing that? That was like I think like with most characters which were like combination of lots of different things and babies you've seen in different people. That was a combination of lots of different factors. One of them was again like looking at history and the fact that people did used to be really dastardly with plague and like. Used to deliberately trying to expose enemies to the plague so that their armies would sort of weaken from disease like that's been used for absolute ages. And it's like an horrible weapon which I think gets touched on probably relatively little in like historical fiction doesn't seem to come up very much. It's more fun to write battle than sick beds. Yeah, it is isn't it? Nobody talks about all the dysentery in the dark ages do they? So what is really a little bit a little slice of dysentery? And another one was reading an article which suggested that disease played a really large part in Neanderthal and human interactions and particularly the extinction of Neanderthals who were less well adapted to dealing with certain diseases. And they're actually some of the Neanderthal genome that we carry may make us less more vulnerable to certain diseases, which suggests that you really can have. I always imagine like if you, the Neanderthals and humans, how close they are together, humans and anarchy would have been much much further apart. So they were diverse a lot longer than humans and Neanderthals. So you definitely could, I think, have a disease which would affect the anarchy but not people. And then finally, the actual disease self I modeled on SARS basically the initial like SARS outbreak just because I like I didn't find I think SARS is objectively quite scary. If you think about it, I had like a 10% mortality rate and it kind of made it quite a long way. And it was just sort of the nearest, I think it had to be here for a spiritual virus to like enable it to travel effectively. And it's all, like I say, like I think making things more like real life makes them kind of more evocative and like it's much easier to kind of imagine yourself or imagine that situation unfolding if you can like ground in something real. Did you ever consider having the anachem use the biological weapon against humans rather than humans using biological weapons against the anachem? I think the probably not just because the anachem had enough weapons of their own, like because they were so... Who believed them to do something so cowardly? I think they're too like... The cryptaeo would do it though. The cryptaeo might want to do it. But I think all of them, they're so aloof that it wouldn't occur that they'd lose. So they'd all just be like, we don't need to resort to all this. They're not going to be you. And it was more a weird sort of sneaky way for Bellimus to even the odds. I don't think anyone else would have been desperate enough to come up with it basically. Even he was hesitant about using it and then it sort of went out of his hands. I think that's probably the bit where Bellimus and I diverge slightly. Because you wouldn't hesitate to use biological weapons? No, I'd be whatever it. I have lots of questions but I had one in mind after that. But anyway, speaking of the cryptaeo, they're so determined to defeat or to stop Roper that they would help Bellimus. And I wasn't surprised about that. I guess I was surprised about it. I just feel like there's a difference between on your own side saying we don't like what our side is doing. Let's put a stop to it on our team. But to go so far as to say it's better to have our enemy win than to have our currently tyrannical leader succeed. Why? Why? I think it's a couple of things there. First of all, Roper had left them very few other ways of acting. He'd sort of, by turning people publicly against the cryptaeo, he had made it impossible for them to function the way they usually did. And I just trying to put myself in the shoes of the cryptaeo felt like you get a lot of mission creep. You're told to do something and you slightly lose sight of the fact that, hang on, like is this necessary? Is this like going to really help or make things better? And from their perspective, they've just got this kind of centuries long rivalry with the institution of the stone throne and like the Black Lord. And they just have to, they have to beat him and like they've been like publicly schooled by him. And their institution is basically destroyed if they allow Roper to win. So in their heads, they're justifying the fact that like we'll like help the Southerners for a bit. Because it'll sort of, we're using them basically. And that's sort of like, Yoko is going through the leader of the cryptaeo is going through the phases of justifying in his own heads that like he can use them for a little bit and like they are serving him. It would only be temporarily and then as soon as like order is restored in the Black Kingdom, they have like a monarch who's more happy to do their bidding. And they can resume business as usual. They believe they can control the one ring and they can just use it a little bit for good. Exactly, exactly like you're tempted and like you haven't got anything else you can do. So in the absence of like anything plausible, you do something rather than like, you know. Well, I think speaking of realism in real life, I think characters that always behave logically are unrealistic. So there is a kind of cognitive dissonance, I feel in the way that they get their mandate, you know, through the flip of the coin. And the coin is not saying that Roper's in the wrong. They are not getting their mandate that he's in the wrong, but they continue to pursue, you know, working against him going so far as to help the Southerners. So I mean, the way that they justify their own actions to themselves. Yeah, I think it's totally believable that they would, but it's interesting that they never had the coin flip to justify what they're doing. Yeah. And part of that's obviously like that how kind of religious theonic demand, like how they kind of differ so much to their God, essentially. And just as they, they're also highly hierarchical. So like, I think in their minds, the concept of destroying a head of state is so kind of like apocalyptic, they need to have some element of chance, in which like God could bake his will know, because otherwise they just wouldn't be able to do it. He'll be too sort of, it'd be too huge. And then, well, so the crypto, I do get their hands on Roper, even though they don't get the say so from the Almighty. But do you feel that the book would have ended differently? The story would have gone differently if they had not captured Roper, if he had been able to continue? Is that the thing that made the difference? Yeah, I mean, like, obviously, as we've discussed, I think like, that's always how I wanted the book to end. But I think Roper was probably a good enough leader that he could have potentially have worked out a way of defeating the Southerners. And like, especially in that kind of early time, just before they'd finished their like, properly taken control of what remained of Seuss Dahl, I think like if he had been left on the throne, I speculate that he'd probably have finished the job. So since you decided that the Anakim have to lose is the partway through writing the cuckoo, you were like, the only way the Anakim can lose is if I get rid of Roper. So let me go ahead and get rid of Roper. Is that kind of what happened? Roper's very quick. He's a bit of a cheat code. You sort of need to have him out the way to make it fair. And then, well, the idea to get rid of him, but not fully to have him still come back at the end. Were there different versions where like Roper was never gone and he was just there and they still lost? Or that Roper was actually dead in the beginning of the book and he never comes back? There were definitely versions where he never left. And what I really wanted was for, I think it got sort of, it got difficult for other people to take the spotlight narratively. And I sort of wanted, I needed some time for kind of Ropers. I'd always had it in mind that Roper's, it was going to be a much longer series originally. So I always had it in mind that Roper's brothers were going to grow up. How much longer? Well, like decades, but it was just how long it was going to take to like tell all that. So I always had in mind that the ending would feature sort of Roper's brothers. And it also seemed like Katara was a much better ruler than him. And also it felt like she needed her shot at actually being in control. And there was something about that thing and sort of like Roper's obsessed with the concept of heroism and like that leading everyone else into a mess, which is what it does. Well, they work in balance for each other. So apart from the combination they worked, they would have worked really well. But he ultimately overreaches himself and kind of has that like mentality of like, if there's a will, there's a way. And that does like, that does drive people through some incredible things. And like it does pay off a lot of the time, but also a lot of the time it doesn't. It's a gamble. Yeah, it's definitely a gamble. And that's partly what the story is about, like, that actually you can sit around and like dissect who's one and why until the cows come home. But it's not necessarily, there's not necessarily a rhyme or reason to it. Like sometimes you get unlucky. And sometimes you've done everything you could have done right and you've just picked the wrong fight. And it's about like that kind of that like randomness to the world, which we don't really like. Like we like to imagine sort of humanity will overcome and like, yes, there's a will as a way, but sometimes. Did you intend the sort of final battle in the wolf to be foreshadowing the end of the series? Because the arguably Anakin would have lost if not for the fortuitous lightning strike. So if it wasn't for the almighty saying give lending a helping hand, they would have lost much sooner. And do you know that said they were like, that was based partly on like again, there's like historic battle where there was a lightning strike. And I thought that was quite a cool thing because it was again, like showed exactly shows the randomness of warfare and kind of sometimes it's just not your day. And partly it was to preserve the rivalry between Roper and Bellimus because you have I knew like as soon as they ended up fighting each other that you had to have. a way of the battle ending without and leaving one of their reputations intact. And it's like, I always had in mind, you know, the Battle of Horseloo where it was like Wellington and Napoleon opinion is like big, massive, and if you're geniuses, you'd never actually fought each other. And it's like an unbelievable come back story that Napoleon Bizarrely comes back and they have one final fight to decide the fate of Europe. And I had that in my mind that like, actually what I needed was for Roper and Bellimus to go off and develop their own reputations further and further. So by the time they actually meet each other for real, it's a big thing. And the lightning strike enabled me to get both of them out of that battle without their reputation being destroyed. And so it still leaves the question of like, who would actually win when it comes down to it. In a fair fight. Exactly. Because I knew we're heading towards that final battle, it was like a way of building up the hype for that, basically. What's the plan? Well, I know I asked this and I know you said you didn't really intend for them to be sort of arch enemies and rivals, but they very much are by the end. So they reminded me kind of of Holmes and Moriarty. And then Roper goes over a cliff, much like Sherlock Holmes. Is that why Roper seems to go off a cliff? Because, you know, there's different ways to have him potentially appear to be dead. So I don't know if that wasn't it as well. Yeah, it's actually partly, it's partly a way of solving the problem of like, so that there's no body that they can inspect very closely initially, at least. And so, and partly because it's quite difficult to do a death dramatically, because it's such a it's such a final thing to write. So like, and like, there's nothing that's really more like, shocking or like terrifying in my mind than like falling off a cliff. So it wasn't like a conscious echo of the right and back fall, but it was, I just think it's a really dramatic way of going out. And because you're like, it's such a like big narrative rug pull at that time in the book, you do want it to be as like kind of like hard hitting as possible. And I feel like falling off a cliff is just such a visual way to die in such an impossible way thing to survive that I had to be the way to go. That certainly was dramatic. Well, I have a ton of more, much more detailed, specific nuance, little questions, but I don't know, rope or going over a cliff is a probably a good guess to it. Ending point. But thank you so much for speaking with me about some of my all time favorite books, picking your brain about it is just a treat. So thank you. Thank you very much indeed for your thoughtful questions. It's really good to be able to join you. My absolute pleasure. But yeah, everyone, if you haven't already, if you're still here, I don't know how I'm going to tag spoilers, but if you're able to be here and not have read the books, then I'm obviously encouraging you to read them immediately. They're fantastic. But yeah, thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you very much.