Exclusive: Author Andrea Stewart tells us about The Bone Shard Emperor

2021 has been a pretty epic year for fantasy books, and it’s about to get a whole lot better. Next Tuesday marks the release of the second book in The Drowning Empire trilogy by Andrea Stewart, The Bone Shard Emperor. The first novel in the series, The Bone Shard Daughter, was one of the breakout fantasy debuts of 2020, and with good reason: it’s a superb book, filled with excellent characters, fascinating magic, and gut-wrenching twists.

We’ll be doing a spoiler-free review of The Bone Shard Emperor in the days leading up to its release on November 23, but in the mean time, here’s a bit of a beginner’s guide. The Drowning Empire is set on a drifting island chain in the midst of a vast ocean world. The series begins with Lin Sukai, daughter to the Emperor and heir apparent of the Sukai Dynasty, struggling to unlock the secrets of her own past, which she has forgotten due to a disease that robbed her of her memories. Lin’s father rules with an iron fist, aided by monstrous constructs that he created and powers with bone shards, literal shards from the skulls of the empire’s living citizens which are collected in a ceremony called the Tithing. Sometimes, the citizens don’t survive, because chiseling out a piece of a person’s skull while they’re alive has a pretty small margin for error. As you might expect, this isn’t a super popular public policy, which leads to continually evolving political turmoil that stretches far beyond the first book.

Readers of The Bone Shard Daughter will know that the first novel ended with some immense reveals and game-changing events. Several characters are thrust into new political positions, others are torn between loyalties, and still others linger on the outskirts of society with nefarious plans. Stewart set the stage for The Bone Shard Emperor to escalate everything readers loved about her previous novel. If The Bone Shard Daughter shook the empire, The Bone Shard Emperor asks if that empire can be saved and turned into something better. Or even if it’s worth saving.

To celebrate the release of The Bone Shard Emperor, author Andrea Stewart stopped by WinterIsComing to answer some of our burning questions about the series!

Daniel Roman: Hi Andrea — thanks so much for taking the time to talk about your books with us today! To start, how did you come up with the premise for The Drowning Empire? Is there an origin story for how this series came into your life?

Andrea Stewart: I usually have a number of ideas that are brewing in my head at any time, and then something else occurs to me to pull them all together. I knew I wanted to write a book with constructs, and a daughter trapped in her father’s creepy palace of locked doors, and I knew I wanted the magic to have a bit of a body horror element. It wasn’t until I was eating lunch with some author friends, and my friend Marina Lostetter nearly choked on a shard of bone in her food that everything came together. I thought, “Huh, what if bone shards were magic?” I didn’t start writing the actual thing until a few years later, but that’s what set it all off!

DR: The Bone Shard Emperor expands on the scope of the first book in so many ways. How was the process of writing this book different from The Bone Shard Daughter?

AS: Oh it was definitely more of a struggle! I wrote The Bone Shard Daughter in three frenzied months, with minimal revisions. I’d had quite a lot of experience writing first books by then. But I hadn’t written more than one second book. I feel like second books are so difficult because you’ve now set up expectations, you need to keep consistency so readers of the first book still enjoy the second, but you also need to expand on what you did in the first one. I wrote the whole thing, dithered over structure and plot elements for a while, and ended up doing a complete rewrite of about a third of it.

DR: The bone shard magic system that you introduced in the first book was so cool and unique, but in the second, you’ve delved even farther into the secrets behind the various magical elements that populate the world of your story. Did you always know the direction you were going to be taking the origins of the bone shard / elemental magic in this book, or was that something that developed as you wrote?

AS: Some of the small specifics I developed as I wrote — like how one might get around certain commands or confuse a construct — but the basics of it I had nailed down beforehand. I love creating new worlds and part of that are the things that have been lost to time, that people need to now piece back together in order to better understand their place in it. I felt like I needed to know these secrets in order to pepper in clues and to plan certain reveals.

DR: One of my favorite things about these books is that you use first person perspective for some characters and limited third person for others. What made you decide on that approach, and how did you choose which characters would get which type of POV?

AS: I really enjoy writing in both first and third perspectives, so the simple answer is that I wanted to do it, and reading books like The Fifth Season and Spinning Silver gave me the courage to just go ahead and do it. I feel like Lin and Jovis are the two POVs at the heart of this story, with the others revolving around them and moving in and out.

DR: The Sukai Dynasty has a lot of secrets. Were there any that surprised even you?

AS: Not too many! But there is one that surprised me, one that I knew needed to be addressed eventually, and that was what exactly happened to a character that you learn died very young. I hope that’s not too spoiler-y!

DR: Was there any particular scene or moment in The Bone Shard Emperor that was your favorite to write? Or exceptionally challenging to get down?

AS: Oh, I love writing the awkward moments between Lin and Jovis where they’re each unsure of what the other one is thinking and feeling, and they each jump to conclusions. As a person who has gotten into many awkward social situations, it’s cathartic.

DR: No way am I going to miss an opportunity to ask you: where did the idea for Mephi, and the mythos behind his species come from?

AS: I knew I wanted to write an animal companion into this series — I just love books with animal companions! As for Mephi himself, I’m quite fond of creatures who are sweet, but also mischievous and chaotic. And the mythos behind his species…the inhabitants of the Empire haven’t seen his like in a very long time, so it does take the characters some time to unravel all the mysteries surrounding them.

DR: There are so many twists in your series, and you pull them off masterfully. What advice would you give to aspiring writers who want to develop great plot twists in their work?

AS: I’d say to have a plan from the beginning — at least for the big stuff. I started knowing the really big stuff and then dove deeper into the implications of those mysteries, which provides smaller reveals to work with. And if you know this stuff from the beginning, it becomes really fun to drop in little hints that readers might miss on the first go-round.

DR: Before The Bone Shard Daughter was picked up by Orbit Books, you published quite a lot of short stories. If readers enjoyed The Drowning Empire and wanted to check out some of your shorter works, where would you recommend they start?

AS: I have a list of my published short stories under the Bibliography section of my website, with links to the ones that are available online to read for free! Favorites of mine are “The Unchanging Nature of Stones” and “The Dreams of Wan Li.” Or if you’re looking for a bit of flash fiction, “This Doesn’t Appear to be the Alien I Paid For.” The title for that one is pretty explanatory, hah!

DR: Are there any recent science fiction or fantasy books that you’ve really enjoyed reading?

AS: So I am super late to the party, but I’m nearly finished with the Daevabad series by S.A. Chakraborty, which has excellent characterization and a lush, well-drawn world. Very easy to lose yourself in. Daughter of the Moon Goddess by Sue Lynn Tan is a delight and is out in January. The Poison Wars series by Sam Hawke is rich with politics and inherited problems. And I adored Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time and Children of Ruin.

DR: To end on a lighter note (or…a grim one?): You’re building a construct army, and can turn any three characters or creatures from other fantasy stories to your cause. Which would you choose?

AS: OKAY how do I even choose?? It’s like you’ve set me loose in a high-end bakery with an endless amount of money. First off, a Pern dragon. I need one. Second, Drizzt Do’Urden. The guy can dual wield scimitars. I was obsessed with him as a kid and he’s like two fighters in one. Third, Arya Stark. The whole changing faces thing could be really useful.

DR: That is a group I would not want to mess with. Andrea, thank you again so much for taking time out of your schedule to chat with us!

AS: Thank you so much for such wonderful questions! Especially that last one, over which I will fret for months on whether those are the correct choices.

The Bone Shard Emperor is out from Orbit Books on Tuesday, November 23. Keep an eye out for our spoiler-free review of the book coming soon. In the mean time, you can find out more about Andrea Stewart’s work on her website, as well as follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

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