Mark Lawrence is a novelist best known for The Broken Empire trilogy. He also won the David Gemmell Award for For Fantasy. His latest novel, Daughter of Crows, is the first of his new series, The Academy of Kindness. We caught up with him to find out more.
How would you pitch Daughter of Crows to someone who loved The Book That Wouldn’t Burn?
I would say that it starts a trilogy that, like all my trilogies, is pretty different from my others. Give it a go if you enjoyed my writing – don’t go in expecting more of the same.
It shares a somewhat literary edge with TBTWB and has some thoughtful moments on the themes it has in focus – in this case a person’s whole life, and how the years change us and how they don’t. It also looks at how experience shapes us and how we resist shaping.
On the other hand, it’s a much darker and more violent book with far less charm and whimsy on display.
And how would you pitch it to someone new to your work?
I am allergic to pitching. Yet here I am. There’s the surface level excitement of a badass old lady with a background that could be described as ultra-dark academia, getting pulled back into conflicts she thought she had escaped. And there’s the somewhat deeper examination of a life and how age changes us, not just physically, but at the core.
Which character would you want to avoid being trapped in a lift with, and why?
Being trapped in a lift sounds so unappealing that the question of “with whom?” becomes secondary. I guess I would want to avoid being trapped in a lift with someone skinny because if we were trapped for a long time someone with more meat on their bones would be more likely to sustain me until rescue arrived.
How long does it take you to get to a first draft?
I generally only do a first draft, and that typically takes between 6 and 9 months.
Sunshine or Lollipops?
Dragons or Death Stars?
Truth or Beauty?
I was a research scientist for 20 years, my first degree was in physics and my Ph.D in an area of statistical mathematics. Truth or Beauty makes me think of quarks. Sunshine or lollipops, here I’m too busy trying to work out the connection to answer the question. Dragons or Death Stars reminds me that I’m always being asked why a scientist chose fantasy over scifi. But it’s dragons every time. Though I don’t really like dragons in my fantasy books that much.
