Sarah Campbell asked Kayla Cunningham:

What do you hope readers take away from your portrayal of rebellion, imprisonment, and survival in your story?

Kayla Cunningham Great question—what I hope readers take away from Blood Oath is that rebellion doesn’t always begin with a sword in hand. More often, it starts with a choice. A choice to speak when it’s safer to stay silent. A choice to protect someone, even when the cost is everything. For Allyria, rebellion isn’t a grand, defiant act—it’s personal, painful, and deeply human.

When it comes to imprisonment and survival, I wanted to explore the idea that people can be trapped in more than just chains. Fear, shame, guilt, expectations—those are prisons too. But survival isn’t just about enduring. It’s about refusing to break, even when the world is trying to erase who you are.

I’ve seen a few comments comparing the prison elements in Blood Oath to Sarah J. Maas’s books, and I want to address that—because this is about more than just tropes. It’s about history and the purpose behind storytelling.

The concept of imprisonment—especially forced labor camps, state-sanctioned punishment, and wrongful detainment—is not unique to any one book or author. It’s deeply woven into human history across cultures and centuries. From the gulags of Soviet Russia, to the Tower of London, to imperial China’s exile and forced labor systems, to colonial penal colonies like Australia—prisons have long been tools of control, punishment, and political oppression.

Fantasy often mirrors real-world systems to help us explore some of the ugliest truths in safer, symbolic ways. Imprisonment in fantasy isn’t about trend or shock value—it’s about what it means to survive when your voice, freedom, and identity are stripped away. It’s about power, injustice, and the resilience of the human spirit.

In Blood Oath, the prison setting wasn’t chosen to mimic another work—it’s foundational to Allyria’s journey. Her time in Redvine is where she is broken down and rebuilt. Where she learns that her worth isn’t in what she can do, but in what she chooses not to surrender. That story isn’t derivative—it’s deeply human, and historically grounded.

Stories like this matter. They give us room to ask hard questions:

What happens when survival itself is criminalized?

How do you keep your soul intact when the world wants to crush it?

How do you fight back when you’re not the strongest, the chosen, or the free?

Working as a teacher in a prison, I can tell you that a prison systems—real and fictional—are never just settings. They’re reflections of the societies that build them. And in fantasy, they give our heroes something real to rise from.

So yes, Blood Oath begins in a prison. Not because it’s trendy. Because that’s where true rebellion begins.

At its core, this story is about a girl who isn’t chosen, powerful, or protected by fate. She just refuses to give up. And that, in itself, becomes a rebellion. I hope readers see a reflection of their own strength in her journey—and remember that survival, resistance, and holding onto your humanity is sometimes the greatest act of all.

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