British fantasy writer Samantha Shannon: ‘Novelists can be unintentional oracles’

British novelist Samantha Shannon is one of the world’s bestselling fantasy writers. (Photo: Twitter)

The 32-year-old British novelist Samantha Shannon is one of the world’s bestselling fantasy writers. Her debut novel, The Bone Season (2013), began the eponymous seven-novel series, of which the fourth and latest book, The Mask Falling, was released in 2021. In 2019, Shannon released The Priory of the Orange Tree, a standalone feminist retelling of the fable of Saint George and the Dragon. And now she’s back with a prequel to that book, A Day of Fallen Night (Bloomsbury India, Rs 899), an 800-page whopper that expands the universe of The Priory of the Orange Tree (this series will now be called Roots of Chaos, Shannon has announced).

A Day of Fallen Night.

The narrative follows women on opposite ends of the world, each struggling to find and fulfil their purpose in life. Glorian, the heir to the throne of Inys; Dumai the ‘godsinger’; Tunuva a warrior of ‘the Priory’. And at the heart of the story lie ‘wyrms’, fire-breathing dragons that are worshipped by some cultures and feared/reviled by others. A Day of Fallen Night is marked by Shannon’s signature depth of characterisation, deft symbolism and expansive universe-building. She spoke about the making of the novel in an email interview. Edited excerpts:

In the world of A Day of Fallen Night, dragons are revered by certain kingdoms and feared by others. Through the course of the novel we see characters overcoming differences like these. Is it fair to say that in this world, apocalypse (or the prospect of it) ends up bridging certain gaps in knowledge and empathy?

Shipbuilding is less advanced during this century of the Roots of Chaos timeline, with the deep Abyss being virtually uncrossable, so the characters are often divided by great distances, with travel and communication posing more significant challenges than they did in The Priory of the Orange Tree. This means some regions of the world know almost nothing concrete about each other at this point in history. But there were opportunities to show that humankind can pull together in times of crisis, even across fault lines of religion and opposing beliefs. I think catastrophe brings out both the best and the worst in us, and I played on both sides in A Day of Fallen Night, with some characters taking advantage of the chaos for personal gain, while others extend compassion and mercy.

The characters Dumai, Glorian and Tunuva, are they critiquing the 'strong woman' stereotype so often seen in fantasy movies and literature? Talk a little about creating these characters and the various challenges you placed before them? 

To me, the term ‘strong female character’ is a loaded and interesting one. At the beginning of my career, between around 2013 and 2016, there was a fixation on this phrase that I found discomforting. I first noticed its problematic side during an interview in 2014, when the journalist asked me why I hadn’t created a strong female character like Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games. I found the question puzzling, as I consider Paige — the narrator and protagonist of my debut novel, The Bone Season — to have a lot of strength in her, both physical and mental; I also couldn’t work out why she was being compared to Katniss, as if the two women were in competition.

My theory is that female characters at that time were being praised for embodying stereotypically masculine traits like aggression and stoicism, with vulnerability derided as weakness, and any missteps brutally criticised. It can be empowering to see women fighting on relentlessly in the face of impossible odds, but my personal interest lies in creating female characters who feel like unique, relatable, multifaceted people — not role models or two-dimensional heroes, but real human beings, with flaws and layers and emotional complexity. Some of my characters are warriors, like Tunuva, but I like to acknowledge and celebrate many forms of strength in women. Sabran VI is politically ambitious, Dumai excels in survival and mountaineering, Esbar and Glorian are inspiring leaders, and Tunuva is a wonderful mother and friend, alongside her deadly skill with a spear.

When we survey the belief systems of the different kingdoms in the Priory/A Day of Fallen Night world, we find that each of them is interpreting the same story in very different, often in polarising ways. It's almost frustrating to see characters fighting over dogmas that old men have passed on to them centuries ago, and yet as readers we recognise the realism in this. Have you, as a student of folklore and an accomplished novelist, ever felt frustrated at this real-world phenomenon?

Yes. Some of it stems from personal experience. I was raised Christian, but left the church partly because of what I saw as its problematic teachings about women, which have been passed from generation to generation for centuries, continually stoking the flames of misogyny.

Bodily autonomy is a big theme in the novel, especially when we're looking at Glorian. When you were writing the novel, did you think that this issue would escalate in the way that it has, with respect to abortion rights under attack in the United States and elsewhere?

I was, of course, aware of the long campaign to overturn Roe vs Wade, and I won’t deny that it was on my mind when I wrote Glorian and Dumai’s storylines in A Day of Fallen Night, but I didn’t foresee that campaign succeeding before the book was even published. It was a sobering reminder that novelists can be unintentional oracles — we simply never know what kind of world our books will be launched into, as a long time often passes between the initial conception of the idea and the day the novel first appears in bookshops. I also couldn’t have predicted the COVID-19 pandemic, and I suspect the plague in the book will now be seen in light of that event, despite it being primarily inspired by the Black Death.

As a reader, what traits/qualities do you look for in a fantasy novel? Which 21st century writers/works score highly on these parameters for you?

I appreciate thoughtful worldbuilding, paired with close attention to character development and relationships — books that wed the epic and the intimate. Some of my recent favourites are The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri, The Final Strife by Saara El-Arifi, Juniper and Thorn by Ava Reid, The Escapement by Lavie Tidhar and Babel by RF Kuang.