Interviewing Eliza Chan

Helloooo!

I recently reviewed the great Fathomfolk by Eliza Chan a really intelligent and creative fantasy with dragons, magic and exploring intelligent themes of immigration and a lot more. Its a story I keep thinking about weeks after reading it which is always a great sign of a great book. I was lucky to have the chance to ask Eliza a few questions about the book and a few other things.

How do you like to booktempt people to read Fathomfolk?

Fathomfolk is what if the little mermaid was a pissed off immigrant in a semi-submerged East and Southeast Asian inspired city, and it was never about the love of a man, it was for the love of her home.

The Fathomfolk themselves are not simply one single culture but as we see a complex groups of societies? Was this something you were keen to explore in Fantasy?

Definitely! In some traditional fantasy books, elves or dwarves are generally very uniform in their appearance, culture and worldview. I knew I was using the fathomfolk as a stand in for immigrants, BIPOC folk or general any minorities and I wanted to show that whilst a community might be lumped together from the outside, inside it’s much more complex than that. The fathomfolk are everything from water dragons to kappas, kelpies and mermaids. They are from different cultural backgrounds, different generations, social classes, with different magical abilities and forms.  I was really keen to explore how this cross section of differences manifested in the choices characters made.

We have two key characters in Mira and Nami and they come from very different places as well as having different approaches to solving problems. How did these two evolve?

East Asian dragons in mythology are kings or the sons of kings, living in opulent underwater palaces and associated with the emperor. Nami came from my desire to take the wise sage Asian dragon trope and turn it on its head. Surely water dragons are not simply born wise? What would a young dragon, eager for fast results, with all the good intentions but a limited, privileged life experience, be like?

Mira on the other hand, was born of my frustrations with the trope of the femme fatale in mythology. As a half-siren, people assume she is using her charm to manipulate, which really spoke to me in the wake of #metoo and general stereotypes about Asian women. As someone born and brought up in the city, Mira knows things are more complicated and that solutions are not easy. Her approach is to chip away at the problem through official, legal streams and prove that fathomfolk are not a source of danger. 

Of course neither method is entirely effective, which is what made it more interesting to write.

You mentioned half-elves in fantasy as one thing you’re responding to. What did you want to do differently with this type of character?

Half-elves are often used to be tour guides to an exotic culture that is otherwise too strange and inaccessible. They are acceptable exactly because they are half-human, and therefore more relatable than full elves. I loved half-elves and traditional fantasyland books growing up, but once I started seeing the links to the real world, it became harder to ignore. My pet peeve is also that half-elves are always half-humans: not half-dwarf, half-orc, half-halfling. I really wanted to show a version of modern multiculturalism that isn’t centred around Western Europe as the default.

We also get two characters who are focused on protecting their families or their businesses in the form of Cordeia and Serena. They’re unpredictable and yet hard to take your eyes off. How did these two amoral characters get into the story and how much fun were they to write?

Nami and Mira, although having different opinions, both want to support the fathomfolk community and rights. There’s a fallacy that all minorities are will support each other and I introduced the other viewpoint characters to show a diversity of attitudes. Knowing that my book had nods to The Little Mermaid, I wanted to write more about the seawitch. The seawitch is seen as a villain when, in my opinion, she explains the terms and conditions quite clearly from the outset and is a shrewd businesswoman! Cordelia therefore was a great foil, a character who cares more about her business interests than the greater good. Serena equally puts her family first, even if it means backstabbing other fathomfolk. It’s true that antagonists are great fun to write as they get to do awful things nice people (myself included!) wouldn’t normally do.

Tiankawi is a fascinating city of spires and submerged parts. How did you go about creating such a city – are there big blueprints or does it evolve with the story?

Tiankawi evolved over the drafts but I can now visualise it quite clearly! I took a lot of inspiration from Hong Kong, Singapore and the Mekong Delta around the mid-20th Century. In particular I looked at boat houses, stilt houses and how communities survive in areas of flooding, monsoon rain, near rivers and islands. The spires and towers are obviously nods to skyscrapers but the structures around them such as the skybridges and aerial trams were very much drawn from ideas I read in science articles about living in a post-climate change world. As for the submerged parts, I can only thank the visual artists who have imagined underwater worlds, diving photography, BBC’s Blue Planet and my very active imagination!

Can you describe the next book in three words?

Love, Grief and Mothers

What else can we look forward to from you I the future and in this world of weird social media how can we find out more?

Fathomfolk book 2 should be out in Spring 2025. I’m also pottering away at another book after that for fun, which is loosely Buffy the Vampire Slayer in Opium War era Hong Kong. Who knows if it’ll get published but I’m enjoying the drafting process. I will also have a short story out in Nova Scotia Vol 2, edited by Neil Williamson and Andrew J Wilson from Luna Press, launching at Glasgow Worldcon this year. You can find me on my website www.elizachan.co.uk, also Instagram and twitter @elizachanwrites.

If there was one book, not your own, that you wish you could get everyone to read what would it be and why?

I had to think about this long and hard. Many of my favourite adult fantasy books are ones people know about already (She Who Became the Sun, Jade City, Dune, The Fifth Season). So I’ve chosen a YA book, because I feel like many adult fantasy readers turn their noses up at YA as being immature and only about love triangles. The Astonishing Colour of After by Emily X.R. Pan is a book that took me by surprise. It’s about a biracial Asian-American girl dealing with grief, choosing a career, learning about her estranged Taiwanese family and first love, all in the aftermath of her mother’s recent suicide. There are notes of the fantastical in there, but what drew me in is how well in dealt with heavy themes without providing flippant answers. A book that had me both in tears and filled with hope, a delicate balance that I am in awe of, and which I aim for in all my own work.