Reader Question Day #39 – criticisms of THE GHOSTS and the cosmology of DEMONSOULED
NRachel322 writes with some questions and comments about THE GHOSTS. Spoiler warning!
Questions below:
In Ghost in the Flames, why didn’t Caina work with Ephaeron? She hated mages, and he hates spies, but I think they would have put aside their differences to fight Kalastus.
The problem was that Ephaeron believed that the Ghosts were behind everything that had happened in Rasadda, as part of a plot to discredit the Magisterium. So anything that Caina said he would discount as part of the plot.
Additionally, Ephaeron hates the Ghosts, and Caina really hates the magi. Sometimes mortal enemies manage to put aside their differences to face a common foe…but sometimes they do not. In fact, frequently they do not.
In Ghost Dagger there is a serious typo. In chapter two Caina says she hopes Ark will find his missing wife someday, but Ark finds her in Ghost in the Blood, two books earlier.
That’s because GHOST DAGGER takes place after GHOST IN THE FLAMES but before GHOST IN THE BLOOD. Caina doesn’t meet Tanya (Ark’s wife) for the first time until halfway through GHOST IN THE BLOOD.
And why does Caina want children so badly? Both I and lots of other women don’t need children to make them fulfilled and happy.
This is true. That said, a very large percentage of women do, in fact, want children. Even in the United States or the UK, countries where childbirth is frequently a choice and not a method of providing for one’s old age (until Social Security runs out of money, anyway), women frequently want children. So it’s not at all unrealistic that Caina would want children.
Additionally, she was a born of a noblewoman of the Nighmarian Empire, and in the Empire it is commonly understood that noblewomen will marry and have children. Caina never questioned that assumption, and if she had questioned it, would have decided that she still wanted children. The fact that the life she wants is very different than the life she has drives a good deal of her inner conflict and motivations.
Seraph316 asks:
This is probably the wrong place to put this but I don’t know how else to contact you. I just started the book and so far so good, but I would like to know more about the series before going any deeper. From your site I was able to gather much information about the demonsouled world, all except it’s cosmology. I love mythology, and I always like to know the setup behind a fantasy world before I get into it. What is the cosmological setup behind the demonsouled world? It’s Gods, it’s creation myth, and the like.
Basically, the cosmology of the DEMONSOULED books is fairly loose. The humans have their own gods, as do the Elderborn. However, there’s some crossover – groups of humans worship the Elderborn gods (specifically, the humans of the Old Kingdoms south of Mastaria in SOUL OF TYRANTS). Additionally, not all the worshipers of a group of gods agree on how to worship those gods or even if they exist at all. The western and eastern groups of the San-keth (the serpent people) have very sharp disagreements on the nature of their god. (This will be a major plot point in the sixth book, SOUL OF SKULLS.)
I left it loose on purpose for two reasons. First, it reflects the diversity of real-world religion. Like, 90% of Christians will agree that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, but will disagree on what that means and what to do about it. Second, it provides an excellent driver of the plot. A group of people who worship the same set of gods but disagree on the nature of those gods provides a fertile field for conflict, which is ripe to be used in a story.
Danny asks:
I like to write myself but always run into the same problem I start by doing a brief outline of what happens in the book. like a couple lines per chapter but then when I try to expand on it I seem to have trouble getting beyond 6 pages or so per chapter. I try to add descriptions and details etc to make it bigger but then always seem to get stuck. Do you do it similar or do you just write a chapter and then go onto the next and put in all the details as you go? What is the easiest and best way to do it? Thanks for any help you can give.
I do outline all my books thoroughly before I begin writing. I find this is helpful, since it provides a roadmap of where I want to go with the book. It prevents the sort of writers’ block that occurs when you get halfway through the book and don’t know where to go next.
As for getting bogged down on the details, I have found that action, not description or details, needs to drive the plot. Like, a classic mistake is starting out a book with a detailed description of the weather, or a description of what the main character looks like or is wearing (better by far to start out a book with dramatic action of some sort, like someone walks into the room and shoots a gun). A book needs to be built around actions that the protagonist or protagonists take to resolve their dilemma, whatever that may be.
In my case, the actions come first, and then the details. When I outline a book, I’ll note that in Chapter 12 “Mazael fights these people in this place”, or “Molly does this.” Then when I actually write the chapter, I will flesh it out. If in Chapter 12 Mazael is supposed to fight a dozen Malrags in a ruined castle, I can flesh it out with additional detail – one of the Malrags is a shaman, the castle’s walls are covered with lichen and it smells like mildew, the swordfight starts in the courtyard and ends upon the ramparts – that kind of thing.
I wouldn’t worry about the chapters being too short. People sometimes wonder how long a book should be, or how long a chapter should be, and the answer is always “as long as it needs to be.” It shouldn’t be any longer than that, though. Franklin D. Roosevelt famously said that key to effective public speaking was to “be sincere, be brief, be seated”, and I think that applies to writing as well.
-JM
