Author: Stephen Deas

In the Memory of Flames trilogy, I wanted to write a story about monsters, and the people who keep us safe from them, and what happens when those people lose sight of that responsibility. Oh, and plenty of wholesome murder, betrayal and poisonings, a fistful of cataclysmic consequences and dragon battle-scenes that would fill the sky with fire. Think of it may be a bit like the TV series Rome or Spartacus, only with angry dragons thrown in instead of angry slaves.

King of the Crags is the middle book of this series. In the first book, The Adamantine Palace, there’s a lot of frantic intrigue and did I mention the murder, betrayal and poisonings? Yes, plenty of all that. The nine kings and queens of the dragon realms have been fighting one another tooth and claw for the right to be the arbiter of their disputes. One of them has won (for now), but in the midst of the back-stabbing, a dragon has gone missing. Few of them even have an inkling of quite what this is going to mean.

The King of the Crags slows the pace down a little to a notch under breakneck. Here I wanted to give some of the characters a little time to breath. There’s the mercenary Kemir, spleen full of revenge, who now has to come to terms with the free dragon Snow. It’s a partnership neither of them particularly wants. Snow, after all, has sworn to destroy all the little ones who keep her kind in their alchemical stupor, and what is Kemir if not one of the little ones. Neither of them is quite sure why they stay together, yet when push comes to shove, neither one quite wants to be alone. The question is always between them: will Snow relent? Can a dragon learn to compromise? Can Kemir?

Meanwhile, in the aftermath of The Adamantine Palace, the partnership of Queen Zafir and Prince Jehal is crumbling. There’s a deranged zealot on a dragon who believes he’s the herald of the apocalypse, there’s a legion of ten thousand Adamantine Men, trained from birth to fight and led by a man driven by duty, even if it’s to a queen he despises. A mage who doesn’t care what happens to anyone else as long as he gets what he wants. An alchemist who knows the truth behind the servitude of the dragons, but has sworn not to share.

It was always my intention (for better or for worse), for each book in the trilogy to creep steadily further under the skin of the core characters and of the world and of the nature of its monsters. The intrigues from the first part continue, but in the King of the Crags, the mystery and the tension of the characters lie more in their nature. Which ones have the strength to confront their own fears? Can any of them change their spots and rise above themselves?

And will that be enough? [1]

[1] (For the answer to this question, refer to the final instalment, The Order of the Scales, due out in February 2012)

 

Tags: Dragon stories, King of the Crags, Memory of Flames trilogy, Stephen Deas, The Adamantine Palace

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