Helloo!

A few weeks ago I reviewed the excellent The Words of Kings and Prophets by Shauna Lawless a wonderful mix of Irish history and myth that achieves that always difficult part of a trilogy delivering not just the bridge to the grand finale but a compelling story in its own right. It was therefore a pleasure to welcome Shauna back to the blog to answer a few questions.

How do you like to booktempt The Words of Kings and Prophets?

I am literally the worst at this! I’ll try though. The Words of Kings and Prophets is the sequel to The Children of Gods and Fighting Men. In my series, I mix 10th century Irish history with Irish mythology. It is a tumultuous time in history, with war and political scheming, never far away.

In this tale I felt the societal pressures on the characters to act or be treated a certain way came to the fore was this a deliberate choice?

Yes. Both my protagonists are women and I feel that they both struggle with how their respective societies expected them to behave. That is a universal issue, because I think women today also struggle with that. But I also wanted to show how the male characters struggle with expectations too. The patriarchal system that existed at the time isn’t a great system for anyone to be in. Insults must be countered. Violence is never far away – and this has consequences for all the characters in my books. And I do believe that for characters like Brian, Murchad and Sitric, they bear such a huge weight of responsibility – and I really wanted to get across too.

The history of this time is complex there is no clear ‘good guys’ even the way slavery is outlawed in some parts of Ireland at this time is found to be greyer than some Kings proclaim. Was this a part of the history you wanted to explore this time?

Absolutely. When I studied modern history, I discovered that the only slave ship to come to Belfast was turned away. However, when I began to look back to older histories (10th-11th century), I discovered that Dublin was a major slave market. I just became fascinated by this – and why that would be.

DNA research in Iceland has revealed a huge percentage of their ancestry comes from Ireland – and we know from historical records that many Irish people were taken as slaves. It became even more fascinating to discover, that despite being hurt by the slave trade that Ireland eventually became connected to it – benefitted from it, even. I’ve looked at many historical records that discussed slavery in Ireland, both from Irish sources and from letters/records about Ireland that were written elsewhere – and it’s just an area of history that I’ve never seen fully examined in modern literature. I thought I had to at least try to explore it my novels. Sitric, A Viking King, but born in Ireland, has very different views on slavery compared to Brian Boru, who had many family members killed by the Vikings when he was young. And his views were different again to King Sechnall, who had greatly benefitted from the Viking markets in Dublin when he was High King.

As I said at FantasyCon, I find economics very interesting and no doubt this played a huge part as to why these markets existed in Ireland and why some Irish kings supported them, and others didn’t.

What are some of your favourite middle volumes in a trilogy?

The Two Towers. King of Thorns. The Martyr.

What three words can you share to describe Book 3

Tragedy. Vengeance. Battles.

Where can readers find out more from you?

I’m active on twitter at ShaunaLwrites. I’m also on Instagram. And if you want more communication, I do a monthly newsletter. My website is at www.shaunalawless.com and all links to my blogs and newsletters are there.

What great books have you read recently?

Ooooh – so many. Dark Water Daughter by H.M Long. Gods of the Wyrdwood by RJ Barker. Demon in White by Christopher Ruocchio. The Book That Wouldn’t Burn by Mark Lawrence. Ascension by Nicholas Binge. A Sword of Bronze and Ashes by Anna Smith Spark.