A to Z Challenge – I is for Impossible
As part of the A to Z Challenge for the month of April. I’m posting about my Valkyrie world. I will try to present elements of the world without being too spoilerific ;)
So today is the letter I which stands for Impossible.
Within the world of the Valkyrie series I’ve used a number of different creatures. Bear in mind that I have taken a tiny bit of artistic licence in using the Norse mythological creatures in Bryn’s world.
Today’s post is just a mention of the impossible. Bryn gets sucked into a world that has only ever been a mythology. Legends and fairy tales. It was impossible that this would be real.
But so many things in the Valkyrie series are the impossible that defies reality. The gods are real, and so are dragons and dwarfs, elves and werewolves. Not to mention wings and talking birds, and traveling on a bridge you can’t see, going from plane to plane and materialising as if nothing strange had just happened to your body.
Writing a fantasy novel based on creatures that do not exist, and on a mythology that is largely no longer a living religion, is both easy and difficult.
It’s easy to let you mind wander, to take creativity along roads its never been before. Because you know the reader opens the page sof the fantasy already suspending disbelief, it is easy to play with unrealistic aspects, like women with animal tails and backs made of tree bark, or a bodyless head that predicts the future, or talking birds and shapeshifters. Fantasitcal aspects are what a reader expects and that is what you provide as entertainement.
The difficult is in the way an author presents the fantastical. The story must be grounded in the believable, it must make some sort of sense within the context of the book, and the world the author creates must be balanced. Everything mus make sense withing the story itself.
Very few people will pick up a paranormal of fantasy and say ‘That just wasn’t believeable’ or ‘That’s jsut not possible’ because in choosing these genres you are entering the pages of the book expecting to read something impossible, something fantastical.
In both my mythology series The Hand of Kali and The Valkyrie series I use mythology to convey the story of the main characters growth. In both I try to respect the belief system as much as possible because I understand that people who still believe in those religions would not appreciate or understand if I ripped thier beliefs to shreds.
May believe that the idea of gods and goddessed influencing our lives are impossible. But what if they are true? What happens then?
;)
So come back tomorrow for J is for Jotunn
For the rest of the alphabet see below:
A is for Armor | B is for Blood | C is for Creatures | D is for Dwarfs | E is for Einherjar | F is for Fenrir |
G is for Gungnir |H is for Huldra
The Valkyrie Novels – Norse Fantasy Series
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