February 8, 2024 • 44 mins
Hello everyone, and welcome to Books Undone. I'm your host, Livia J. Elliot. Today we are starting a new series--Authors Spotlight! Here, I interview authors to do deep-dives into the themes in their works... and we are starting with Joshua Walker, one of #thebreakins and debut author of The Rest of the Gods, a prequel novella to his world The Song of the Sleepers.
Full disclosure: there are spoilers in this podcast, but more importantly, they only cover The Rest to the Gods--so no spoilers for the series here!
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► Website: https://www.joshuawalkerauthor.com
► Twitter/X: https://www.twitter.com/JWalkerWrites
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► Get the novella for free: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Joshua-Walker/author/B0CQJR6WQS
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Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hello everyone and welcome to Books Undone.
(00:11):
I'm your host, Livia J. Eliot, and today we are starting a new series, Authors Spotlight.
Here I interview authors to do deep lives into the themes in their works.
To kickstart the series, let me introduce you to the viewer author and fellow Aussie Joshua
Walker.
Thank you so much for joining me.
You want to introduce yourself?
(00:32):
Thank you, Livia.
Absolutely.
Yeah, my name is Josh Walker.
I have been writing for many, many, many years, but my first book recently came out in January,
which is a novella.
It's called The Rest to the Gods, and it's kind of my attempt at doing a really character-focused
epic fantasy that's primarily driven by a theme.
(00:55):
The main series that this novella relates to is called The Song of the Sleepers, and
it comes out, well, the first book is going to come out hopefully in the middle of this
year around June or July.
That book is called An Exile of Water and Gold, and for me, that book is a bit of an exploration
of a few different things.
It's an exploration of love, firstly, but also it's an exploration of science.
(01:19):
There's a lot of science in that book, which is something that you see glimpses of in the
novella that I want to carry forward through the series.
That sounds amazing, honestly.
I'm even more hyped now.
Before diving into the talk, let me do the usual disclaimers.
First, there are spoilers in this podcast, but they only affect Joshua's debut novella,
(01:41):
The Rest to the Gods.
We want to go into spoilers for his upcoming book or the series.
Second, remember that what we discussed here is our subjective opinion, even the authors.
You are allowed to disagree with us.
That's it.
Can we start with Nisha?
I found her to be very intriguing.
We get to see her both as a young and insecure girl, but also as a powerhouse of a war hero.
(02:06):
I want to know how was it for you to explore the psyche of both the young and the older
Nisha, and if you find it hard to make the character grow believable and earned?
That's a really good question.
For me, Nisha is probably the character that if I think about, and you have to remember,
I wrote this novella after writing book one actually.
(02:27):
This is a really recent write for me, so I'd already explored Nisha a little bit through
that lens.
But for me, she is definitely quite similar to myself.
I've painted a portrait of myself in many ways in her character, not necessarily in
her background or anything like that.
You don't want to read too much into it, but her personality definitely speaks to me the
(02:48):
most.
I think seeing that the character reflects the author meant that it was quite natural
for me to be able to write two storylines that represented her childhood and her young
adulthood because I just had to self-reflect.
With other characters, you don't get that privilege, right?
With Nisha, it was pretty special.
I felt that way even going back now and editing book one, I've felt that connection to that
(03:11):
character, which I definitely don't have with the others, which is pretty special.
If we follow that theme in the present timeline, we see Nisha that is very adult and she's
close to 100 years, I think, and she's still carrying some things from her childhood.
So I would like to explore the childhood, the young Nisha first.
(03:33):
I found her to be very mature for her age, especially as you reveal the situation of
her mother being verbally abusive to her, the father being a drunkard and her being
responsible for her sister.
I found that quite realistic.
It felt that her maturity wasn't due to life experience, but it was enforced because of
(03:57):
her situation.
It felt like a need.
I think that you did that superbly.
So would you like to share a bit more of what went into it?
Yeah, once again, I think it goes back to that natural tendency as part of the human
condition that when you are forced into a situation, you have to respond with the best
that you can.
Right.
(04:17):
And so she's really a character that for me, when I was writing the novella, I was trying
nearly in every scene to push the stakes up as quickly as I could.
And part of that is story structure.
Like, this is a very short story.
So the stakes need to rise quickly.
But in doing that, it means that she has to keep up with it.
It worked out well because when I was going back through the first round of edits on the
novella, I quickly realized that, yeah, she's adapting quickly, but it's realistic and it's
(04:42):
hard.
It's a portrait of a hard life.
And I think there's also this kind of this interesting dichotomy where she is very quickly
moved from being a common person in her society to becoming essentially a noble woman.
And it's not something that she understands.
And it's an interesting thing to play with because typically you see people go from riches
(05:04):
to rags.
You see that opposite story where maybe they start off in a position of wealth and they
end up in a position of poverty.
And not to say that that's not as hard, but I think going the other way with her was important
because she starts so young.
And so you see that natural evolution of how she deals with challenges, right?
And how she grows in resilience.
(05:24):
There is also the disbelief that she had at several points that she was still the same
person as before and it keeps carrying on to the point in which her tutor takes her
back to her family and they see her in a completely different light.
And it's not until that point that she doesn't realize or at least that's how I interpreted
that only then she actually realizes that new position that she has.
(05:48):
I think there's also that thing of, I really wanted to capture naivety, but it's hard to
do that in a book that's not written for children.
Do you know what I mean?
So this is obviously aimed at adults and I was trying to find ways to tell a complex
story without dumbing it down too much.
Like I didn't want it to read like we were coming, I guess, directly from her point of
view because she doesn't know at that point how hard things are or what the reality of
(06:13):
her situation is until she's faced with it.
And that's part of being a child and that's something that definitely resonates with me.
So yeah, for her it was all about getting that resilience to come through slowly in a
believable way, it did mean that I had to distance the reader a little bit from being
directly in her eyes because I felt like if I got too close, you'd start to lose a bit
(06:34):
of that believability, right?
Because later when you see her as an adult, the story does read quite differently and
I wanted her character to be consistent from the start to the end.
If I can read one of the sentences, I actually really like this one and it ties everything
to what you were saying, this is when she goes back to her family and her tutor had
said they don't want you here and so on, but she was still not believing them and she says
(06:58):
she hadn't believed them, but she also knew she didn't want to find out the truth.
Not then, not now either, if the truth was to be the one she feared the most.
It captures that naivety that you mentioned.
But to me it also kind of captured a traumatic response.
She had this idea of her parents loved her even when through the situation, we can clearly
(07:20):
see that that's not the case.
And then at this point, a few paragraphs after you get the shock of reality of the tutor
was actually right.
Yeah, and I think you touch on a really good point there.
I think like when I was writing that scene in particular, I tried to figuratively associate
exactly what you're talking about with that physical moment of her stepping between the
(07:41):
door of the home and the outside world or vice versa, right, when she comes into the
house, there's a change, there's a tonal change where she gets to be the girl who doesn't
quite understand on one side of the door and on the other, she has to grow up and do it
quickly, you know, because if she doesn't, that really threatens her coping mechanisms
(08:02):
essentially.
And I think there's also that interplay between sibling love, right?
Like I didn't get to probably develop it as much as I would have liked just because
of the length of the story, but it was definitely something I wanted to show the reader was this
is this is not just about the parents, you know, Nisha's response to her parents, I think
she's pretty good at adapting to how challenging they can be.
But adapting to how that affects her youngest sister is an entirely different matter.
(08:26):
And that does come from past trauma as well.
So the death of her brother is a part of that.
But yeah, like, like, like I was mentioning before, I think there's that physical moment
where she steps beyond the barrier of the door and that's where everything kind of changes.
It actually even changes the narrator, like the voice becomes a bit more formal as soon
as she starts.
When before she even she was even saying that she couldn't move part of her was just moving
(08:48):
without her controlling it.
Once she closes the threshold, it's far more formal.
It's that voice that doesn't feel like a child.
It feels like someone forced to grow up.
And the sisterly love, it was very nice.
And it also conveyed how responsible Nisha felt.
Absolutely, I think it's also that human thing where it's hard to put this into words, but
(09:11):
there are moments, I think in everyone's life where there's someone that you're particularly
close with.
And sometimes it doesn't matter who the person is, they could be, you know, a boyfriend or
girlfriend or they could be just a friend or they could be a parent, it doesn't matter.
But if you do have a relationship breakdown with that person, there's that scary moment
where they become someone that you don't quite know anymore.
(09:34):
And that's really unsettling, right?
Because you feel like you're a part of this person in some way.
And when they take that step back, I think that's personally quite confronting.
So I really wanted to show that with her where her sister, when she comes into the house,
is so normal and excited to see her.
But the rest of the tone in that house is so dreary, dark, foreboding nearly.
(09:58):
And it's that moment where I think she sees her parents in a different light and it makes
her realize why she can't be there anymore.
But at the same time, there's that conflict of, well, I can't be there anymore, but I
still want to go back.
And so Colin had to basically force her to go and see what the other side of life is
like.
Yeah.
(10:18):
And even before that, still in the then timeline in the past one, she was constantly thinking
that the children had lied to her, that the family still wanted her.
And when she goes there, it feels, you know, even when with what he says, I told you so
in a more elegant way, it actually feels like that.
And when I read it the first time, I was actually dreading the scene because I could see that
(10:42):
the mother was going to unleash on her.
I think you conveyed the whole scene very well without getting explicit, without actually
making something that could be a trigger, but it actually has the whole emotional power.
Some question regarding that, how did you manage not to be so explicit, but actually
put all the emotional value in it?
Yeah, I think, I mean, if we go back to that idea of writing naturally, right, and writing
(11:06):
what you know, for me, if I evaluate myself as a person, I'm, I mean, I'm a creative
person and a lot of creative people, not everyone, but a lot of creative people are melancholic
in their temperament.
And what that means is that, you know, I tend to be very reflective.
I tend to ruminate a lot on the bad stuff and reflect a lot on the good stuff.
And I tend to kind of, you know, overthink.
(11:28):
And I think with Nietzsche, I really wanted to convey that.
But at the same time, there's a contrast there where there is self-imposed ignorance on her
character, right?
There's, there's a level of she just doesn't want to go there, you know, and that self-imposed
ignorance.
Actually, I can reference a text, the, the name of the wind by Patrick Rothfuss is actually
what it's one of my favorite book.
I've read that book probably six or seven times.
(11:50):
Maybe more than that now that I think about it.
But the thing with Quoth in that book is that he, he's so ignorant and, and so many of his
problems come from his ignorance.
And I think with Nietzsche, I didn't want her to be as kind of bravado as Quoth at all.
I wanted her to be more human.
It's funny that I'm saying that because she's technically not a human, but you know what
I mean?
But, but she, she is very ignorant and that gets into trouble.
(12:12):
And I think there's that interplay of naivety, which is something that she can't help.
And then ignorance, which is something that, you know, she knows the truth, but she doesn't
want to go there.
And that stuff comes back to haunt her in the present timeline in the Mavella as well.
Regarding the present timeline, I didn't notice when I read it the first time on the second
reel, she only thinks of her sister.
When she thinks of her family, it's only the sister.
(12:33):
She never mentions the parents.
I found it lovely in the sense that after everything that happened, after so many years,
because it's after a century, she still has her sister in her heart.
She's still caring about her.
I really appreciate that you said that because I think one of the things that I find a lot
of times, especially with the, the Aeobian people in this series is that because they
age so much slower than humans, sometimes it's hard to, to make their emotions believable.
(12:59):
Because in a human sense, you kind of get past this stuff much quicker.
Whereas with her, she's, you know, yeah, like you say, she's nearly a century old at the
end.
And, and, and yet she's still struggling with this stuff.
I think I was considering a lot the weight of being a, a sufferer of post traumatic stress
disorder, right?
(13:19):
And I guess that ability, ability that the brain has in trauma situations to actually
block entire parts of your history out.
And so I think that's kind of where we leave Nisha at the end is, is yeah, there's, there's
definitely healing that's happened.
There's definitely also protected love, sisterly love.
She hasn't seen her sister in years.
(13:40):
But then at the same time, she still cares for her.
But exactly as you say, I did not want to draw attention to the parents at all.
I kind of wanted to show that and leave it up to the reader ultimately to decide whether
she has blocked that out subconsciously or whether she's actually chosen to step past
that pain.
Even in the, in the present timeline, she has still, she reads more mature and different
(14:02):
and with different life experiences, but she still has some stocks that link back to those
traumatic responses or learned behaviors, those coping mechanisms from her use.
Like she's always very perfectionist and has this tendency to feel responsible for everyone,
even when everyone else are adults making their own decisions.
(14:22):
And she's at some point, it felt distressingly motherly, you know, in the sense of very protective,
but it also felt linked to that past.
I think you said something very clever there when you, when you mentioned that motherly
instinct thing, I definitely wanted to draw an illusion to her mother and show how, how,
how I guess her influence still precedes her, right?
(14:45):
And not, not that it entirely governs Nisha's character at all, but there is that aspect
of, is she living in the shadow of her parents, right?
Or I guess where she came from.
In addition to that, she's very headstrong.
She is very brooding kind of and, and, and, and yeah, and, and yeah, you do know what
I mean?
And so she's definitely a glass half empty kind of person as well, which is once again,
(15:07):
it's a similar trait of mine, and I think there are moments where, you know, she, she,
she probably thinks that, that yeah, she does have to look after everybody.
That's entirely her responsibility.
It's completely unfair.
Once again, it's self-imposed ignorance, right?
But it's of a much, I guess, worse kind or high, you know, the worst gravity there because
of her age, her maturity and what she's dealing with in the present timeline.
(15:32):
The stakes are so much higher and so many other people's lives are on the line.
So there's that natural feeling of, well, I need to do the best I can, but also the
more you tell yourself that the worst of a job you're going to do.
Yeah.
And there is this thing in the present timeline that I think actually represents that she
has a wounded person, the enemies are incoming and she has this idea of helping one, not
(15:53):
helping the others and helping everybody at the same time until she gets another dose
of reality that somebody else says, like, okay, leave them be.
Let's focus on the moment.
She's always struggling and I find that compelling, but also human, you know, in the same sense
that you mentioned before.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I think there's that moment where, you know, in the climax of the present timeline
(16:15):
where she pulls the mountain side down and that's kind of that defining moment where,
and once again, I was playing with that figuratively.
The idea of dismantling the mountain from the top down is a response to all of this
kind of trauma and pain that she's built up over the years.
And so when she tears that down, that's meant to be that kind of moment of enlightenment
where it's like, yeah, like to look after everyone, I've got to look after myself, but
(16:37):
I also have to just make sure I'm kind of doing it pretty prescriptively.
Like at some point I've got to stand back and not put my heart into every single person
individually when I'm faced with this much, right?
Like you kind of just have to roll with the punches a little bit.
Yeah.
And there is also an ongoing discussion on trust on all timelines and not only the trust
of those around you, even when they have different cultures, but also trusting her own abilities.
(17:02):
She's always struggling.
She's always, as you said, looking at everything like a half empty cup and has this very perfectionist
approach to herself.
Like you see her doing amazing stuff in the past timeline and in the present timeline
and for her, it's never enough.
I think with trust, I think what's interesting and this comes from someone who is also a
(17:23):
perfectionist, but a lot of times trust can be worn down in relationships with other people
if you don't trust yourself.
And so what I wanted to show with Nisha is that the less she trusts herself, the more
things spiral out of control.
And because she's a perfectionist, if she lacks control and that situation is getting
away from her, she can't handle it.
(17:44):
So there's definitely that kind of stress where, yeah, there's kind of these physical
stakes in the story, but at the end of the day, the stakes that are in her mind are really,
to me, what I was trying to drive the plot with.
And part of this was also for me a reaction to how I wrote her in book one.
And this is not really a spoiler for book one, but in book one, she's more of a side
character and she's in a mentorship kind of role.
(18:06):
She does need to have stepped up quite a bit by then.
And so I really wanted to show how she got there because she's still pretty rough around
the edges in that book.
And I needed readers to see what that through line was, right?
So yeah, trust in the book, the whole kind of idea of trust in the book is that if you
don't trust yourself, trust is not going to reciprocate between you and another person
(18:27):
either.
It's also sad because she trusted so many times and through the novel we see character
after character breaking the trust.
First the parents, then the queen, who was also a very important mentor figure for her
as well.
I was thinking about the queen, Phaeludra.
And I think one of the interesting kind of things that's going on there is that Nisha
(18:48):
has poured so much trust into that mentor figure.
And it's nearly, you know, it felt nearly unfair of me to take Phaeludra away from her
because that should have been that kind of curb, you know, for a lot of Nisha's insecurities,
is the queen.
And so when that's removed, she doesn't have much left.
And there is that idea of at that point in her life where she became a sleeper, Phaeludra
(19:11):
is really all she had.
Joan is there, he's a mentor, he's her direct kind of report, but he's a bit kind of brash,
you know, he's hard to talk to.
She can't get on a deep level with him.
Whereas with the queen, she kind of reflects on their relationship and they seem to get
each other a little bit more.
So when that goes away, that's incredibly hard.
The other problem that she has is that she put too much into that relationship rather
(19:33):
than focusing on herself.
And so there's that idea of you really have to make sure as a person that you round yourself
out.
And so this is reflected, I know you're probably going to ask me about the tree later, but
part of this is reflected in the structure of the tree, right?
So the tree, the great tree is split into three divisions.
You've got the heart, the mind and the soul.
And it's based on essentially Plato's theory of the soul.
(19:58):
So that classical kind of Greek idea that the soul cannot exist without the heart to
feel in the mind to reason.
And so Nisha is a reflection of a person who doesn't have all three of those things.
It's also another reason why the sleepers live in the mind primarily.
They're there to do governance of the people.
But a lot of times that means that they lack the empathy to kind of see their shortcomings,
(20:19):
right?
So there's that level of it as well.
It's also a bit heartbreaking, you know, like Eldrack could actually have changed Nisha's
life.
And it's also ominous in the sense of in how much your own actions or reactions of a single
person can affect so deeply another.
We see Nisha, just after when she finds out she goes from denial to this is not happening,
(20:43):
to anger, to feeling sad and all of these emotions that she can't handle.
And then shut them up completely.
They are gone in a moment and she goes back to being how she was before at the start of
the book, that very grown up child.
Yeah.
And that's kind of that moment in the story, you know, where we say all is lost, right?
Like how is the character to come back from this?
And I think what I was trying to do in that scene as well was, was show by contrast what
(21:06):
Prisma was like.
Prisma is obviously experiencing the same emotions as Nisha, but she doesn't let them
overcome her.
At the end of the day, every single person that's running out of that magisteria, but
the moment where the Queen kind of arrives and starts to take over, everyone's feeling
the same thing as Nisha.
But Nisha's primary thinking is that her feelings matter the most.
And that's a problem, right?
Because she can't get to the core of her responsibility.
(21:28):
Even for Cole, and I think what I wanted to do with him was show Nisha that even though
he's this rough guy, he's pretty hard to kind of get on board with.
But even he is able to curb his emotions.
You know, Cole has a tremendous amount of respect for the Queen, obviously is in disbelief
about what's happened as well, but he's able to manage that and do what he needs to do.
(21:48):
And so, you know, hopefully you think that Nisha is going to kind of respond through
all that stimuli and how people are acting, but she doesn't.
And I think I was also thinking about, you know, there's that cliche saying in Spider-Man,
right?
Like with great power comes great responsibility.
She definitely doesn't have that concept.
She doesn't have those two things put together in her mind.
(22:10):
Part of that is because she rejects the fact that she has great power.
She wishes she never had the great power.
Part of that is because with responsibility comes the need to face yourself and she doesn't
have that either.
Yeah, no.
And I think it's because nobody taught her how to, you know.
Everybody is always telling her, you can do this or you should try this or you shouldn't
(22:30):
feel this instead of validating her and actually trying to teach her what she didn't learn
as a child.
And it just reinforces the feeling because when Corn just ties her, she actually closes
herself even more, you know, and goes more into the denial of I can't do this.
Which again, it felt like those coping mechanisms or going back to what she sadly learned when
(22:54):
she was a child.
And this is realistic.
Like this is the psychology of children in many ways.
Like in my professional life, I'm a primary school teacher and the number one thing that
and I tell the kids this as well, the number one thing that I try to do in the classroom
is to celebrate the success because the second that you take that away, chastising a child
because they've done the wrong thing is not necessarily going to get you the answer that
(23:18):
you want.
It's also not going to teach them anything.
In fact, it's going to make them push away more.
So they need a place to go back to for validation.
And I think that's what I wanted to show in nature is this is a child that should have
been looked after a lot more the way that she was looked after, even after becoming a
sleeper was nowhere near good enough.
And you know, at the same time, there are elements of personality where she should have
(23:40):
done better as well.
But she did not necessarily have the means to get there.
Something that I really liked how you managed it is that even when you are jumping between
timelines, because that's how the book is written, it feels consistent, you know, like
both stories are interwoven, and as you are exploring her past, you get to understand
what she why she behaves in one way in the future and again into the past and more gets
(24:03):
revealed.
And it also speaks of a complexity of people.
They see her in the future in the present timeline actually as this very powerful person.
And she feels completely different than it.
If you only take that, she has no grounds to actually feel that way.
But then when you explore the past line, it makes sense.
And it was woven in a very nicely way.
(24:24):
Thank you.
I think I was reflecting a bit on characters from Brandon Sanderson's books.
I don't know if you're brand new Brandon Sanderson.
I'm a fan of the Stormlight Archive.
You do like the Stormlight Archive?
I love it.
Yeah, the Stormlight Archive is one of my favorite series ever.
And Words of Radiance is probably my favorite book in recent history, I think, in terms
(24:45):
of sci-fi fantasy.
But I think something that Brandon does well in Stormlight is he grows a lot of his characters
out beyond their basic traits.
Whereas on the flip side, and this is probably like in Miss Born, right?
I don't know if you've read the Miss Born books.
One of the reasons I don't like Miss Born as much is that the characters there never
(25:07):
seem to grow beyond their initial traits.
They seem kind of to me like they're always held or bound by something that he's told
us about them at the start of the series.
So that development feels standard.
And to me, it meant that the ending wasn't as satisfying.
The redemption wasn't as big besides one key character, which I won't talk about because
(25:27):
it's a major spoiler for that series.
But you know, in the rest of the gods, I think what I wanted to do with Nisha was show a
situation where there are traits she can't grow beyond.
And that's real of all people.
But I also wanted to show that there were places where she saw the line or she saw a
way to move beyond that.
(25:48):
And so there are clear redemption moments in the present timeline.
But I wanted to really end on a resonant note by finishing the novella in the past.
And actually, I'd be interested to know what your thoughts were about that because that
was something I was struggling with when I was writing the story was am I doing the
right thing by ending this on such a bleak note?
(26:09):
It was quite small, but I think it fit her perfectly.
It rounded up her socks at the end and the conversation, even if it happens in the past,
it still provides some kind of closure to the present timeline because of how the events
are interworn.
I really liked it ending in the past rather than in the future.
It felt like the future was there and it didn't need to go further than ending, which was
(26:35):
quite a cliffhanger as well.
Yeah, no, I appreciate that.
Yeah, that was something that I was really trying to determine was how much do I want
her to grow beyond these things that hold her back and how much do I want the reader
to kind of reflect on how hard it is for someone in her position to grow beyond those things.
So it was about getting that balance there.
And I think you did it very well, honestly.
(26:56):
So before you mentioned that the grade three was actually based on a bit of ancient philosophy
and play-doh, and I was going to ask, how did you come up with that concept?
My first degree when I came out of high school was a bachelor of liberal arts.
And so when you do a bachelor of liberal arts, I guess the key premise of that is an integration
(27:16):
of literature, philosophy, history, and science.
And so the philosophical part of my degree, especially right at the beginning, was looking
at Platonic philosophy, play-doh, as we know, is a student of Socrates.
But play-doh had a lot of theories, but the concept of the soul to me is the one that
resonated with me the most when I was a student.
And part of this is because I grew up religious.
(27:38):
So there is that aspect where I'm thinking about that as well.
At the same time, the idea that without a soul, we're not human is very important, I think,
to all of us, right?
It doesn't matter whether you're religious or not, but there's something about a human
that makes us different to an animal, right?
There's that ability to reason.
When I was putting together AOB, I really wanted to figure out a way to make these people
(28:02):
interesting on a societal level by considering the relationship they have with the tree and
then considering how the tree embodies the three aspects of the soul according to play-doh
and then how the people live that out subconsciously.
So there is kind of a philosophy there.
It's more in the background for me so that I can orchestrate the story, but that's kind
of how I came up with it.
(28:22):
How the people actually live it out is obviously entirely different.
You'll see characters who are very well-formed people, and you'll see characters that aren't,
who are living in different parts of the tree, and that doesn't really matter as much.
But the idea that there are these three areas really plays into their society.
And that goes back to what I was saying before about the Magisterium and how Nisha and the
other sleepers all live in the mind.
(28:43):
And there's a very distinct separation between them and the people who live in the heart
and the soul.
The people who live in the heart and the soul are the common people.
The common people are who I resonate with, right?
They're the people that all of us resonate with.
That's part of the reason why I wanted Nisha to be that bridge between the common people
and the upper class because I think it's important sometimes to see how hard it is for people
(29:07):
sometimes in the upper class to do the right thing.
Part of it is because they're so kind of narrow-minded by their overall vision.
They've got a good vision.
They've got good intentions.
But carrying it out can be so difficult if you don't have a perception of how everybody
else is reacting to what you do.
Regarding that division of the three parts in the tree, something that actually amazed
me is that it represents classes or different societal levels, but it doesn't feel classicist.
(29:33):
They are an integrated society that they move from one side to the other.
There is an understanding that the machisterium is different level, but it's still integrated
and it didn't feel the classical society or they are very separate pieces.
I think it's interesting that you say that because for Nisha, and this is part of why
I had her perspective, right?
(29:54):
As a child, she wouldn't be aware of differences in class either.
Look, on a realistic level, the people who live in the heart and soul are very similar
to one another, but the people in the soul tend to celebrate art more.
They tend to, you know, that's where you go for the marketplaces and stuff like that.
So there's very literal connections that I make with that, but with the mind.
(30:14):
Eventually I want to actually publish a map of the tree itself, but the mind is situated
higher in the tree.
And so there is a bit of a literal connection there in terms of how the magisterium is viewed
and how they view others.
And it's a problem.
It's actually going to be a problem that comes back and it's a crucial part of the main conflict
in the main series as well.
That's interesting that you say that because we get the whole story through Nisha's eyes.
(30:37):
So the narrator is very biased.
Exactly.
And that doesn't mean that there aren't any problems, just that in this part of the story,
she doesn't see.
Yeah.
And I think that's really important.
Like sometimes when we think about the unreliable narrator, we put so much stock into them being
incorrect because it's their intention.
Yeah, yeah.
But like, with Nisha, I didn't want her to be actively telling the story incorrectly.
(30:59):
I just wanted us to see the story through her eyes and a combination of her naivety and
her self-imposed ignorance like we were talking about before builds the world from her perspective.
When you see it from someone else's perspective, it might look entirely differently.
Yeah.
And that also happens in real life.
Exactly.
Like two people living at the same time in different countries and they will see life
completely different.
(31:21):
Something else with the tree and the AOB and see, they are very attuned with the tree and
they feel it even and on this scene towards the end when they go out of a tree, almost
out of a cannabis and everything, Nisha makes some comments as if she feels out of it or
disconnected.
So I wanted to ask you more about that.
(31:42):
If she's, it's only a perception or if they really have that connection.
Yeah, this is a good question.
I think there's a few aspects here.
There's a spiritual aspect and the spiritual argument says that if Nisha is spiritual in
a sense that we have religion in our world, then she can believe that whether it's real
or not.
At the same time, there is a science behind the workings of the tree, which I don't want
(32:05):
to go into all the details on because I don't want to spoil the entire series.
But as part of my research for the series, I read a book called The Hidden Life of Trees.
I don't know if you've heard of it.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's a really good book.
It's by a guy called, I think you say his name, Peter Wallabon, I think is how you say
his name.
I could be completely wrong.
I hope I didn't butcher that.
But essentially, there's some ideas in that book which link life in forests to trees via
(32:31):
symbiosis.
And there are some real things that are playing out between the Aorubians and the tree, but
they're not aware of it.
At the same time, there's also a spiritual aspect of, well, I do want people to have
the autonomy in this world to choose whether they believe in something greater or not because
that's reality, right?
And so you see Colm is kind of like this overzealous believer because he has to be.
(32:56):
That's kind of how it gets by.
But Nisha doesn't resonate with that.
And I think that's completely natural.
I think a lot of spirituality is fueled by questioning.
And so you have to kind of question what you believe to get to the core of whether you
think it's true or not.
And I want her character to be a picture of that because that's a reality for a lot of
people.
Whereas the overzealous person, especially when you meet these kind of people in real
(33:16):
life, you feel like you can't get closer to them because they've got that kind of holier
than their attitude.
It's part of the reason why the intro quote to the novella is what I picked for it.
So that first quote that I've got on the very front page is, do your duty and leave the
rest to the gods.
And that's where I got the title from.
That's from a play called Horace by Pierre Cornille.
(33:37):
And it's a French play that was written hundreds of years ago.
But essentially that play is kind of a retelling of the story of Horace in Rome.
It's about a battle between two families.
And essentially this gets said to the main character, do your duty and leave the rest
of the gods.
And the main character chooses to kind of embrace ambiguity, chooses to also embrace himself
(33:58):
and what he's good at and use his, I guess, God given talent, so to speak, to emerge victorious
at some point in the story.
And so I wanted that quote there to kind of be a constant contrast between nature and
other people who just kind of choose to just believe in it, right?
And they also, even if the Aeobians don't have that attitude of holy dando, they do have
(34:23):
some bias towards the other races, especially towards the humans who appear.
Absolutely.
At least from what is hinted in this book.
They don't have that connection to the tree.
And it's like more of a, not segregating them, but not considering them at the same level.
And we can see that in the chat at the end, in the last chapter that goes back to the
past.
(34:43):
And there's that different relationship between them and how a human makes a mistake on the
title and then Nisha breaks him in her mind, like, don't blame him.
Yeah, absolutely.
And like, and I wanted that moment to be really important because, or to punctuate this, because
this is the king, right?
This is the king of Adira.
(35:03):
He's a pretty big wig, you know, like, and Nisha's kind of sitting there in her mind,
as you say, berating him for making a mistake.
He actually just has no clue how her society works.
He's so naive.
And that naivety, once again, is something that he chooses and that a lot of humans in
this world actively choose.
And part of that is, is part of an ongoing conversation, I guess, that will come up in
(35:26):
the rest of the series.
But one of the driving themes here is colonialism.
So if you have a look at the chapter headings in this book, each chapter gives you the year,
but then underneath it says, right next to the year, sorry, it says, AS.
And that stands for after settlement.
I think part of this is my wanting to explore this more as an Australian person, thinking
(35:46):
about how colonialism has affected our country and what we are today.
And also, you know, wanting to share, I guess, a deep respect that I have for the original
people that I hope everybody has, but it's just not the way the world works, unfortunately.
But I think, you know, the Aorubians are like that, right?
They're the original custodians of this land, and they innately understand it.
(36:09):
They innately understand how to care for it.
And in Australian society, we've got that as well, right?
Like the original people innately understand how to care for the land.
And we don't see that even today.
Like we just don't see it.
We try to understand, or people say they try to understand, but they don't.
And so that's part of that.
Yeah, not segregation so much, but they just don't get each other, you know?
(36:29):
The Aorubians don't understand the humans.
Humans don't understand them.
Both parties kind of don't want to choose to understand the other one either.
They just want to coexist so that there's no fighting.
And they also come from different places while the Aorubians, you know, it's good that you
mentioned the original in Australia, because when I was reading it, I thought the same
(36:51):
thing about the Aorubians.
They seem to have this culture of respect towards the environment to trying to work
in tandem with it.
While the humans are, of course, always being humans, they want to overpower the world.
And you see it as a resource.
And the contrast is very clear during the present timeline when they talk about the
humans and during the final conversation as well.
(37:12):
I was just thinking there's a pastoral care that the Aorubians have to the land.
And you do see this a lot more in Book One, but that pastoral care is just part of who
they are.
It's completely part of who they are.
Whereas the humans, as you say, they've gone there to seek power, you know, or to seek
some kind of alternate life that they've built up in their minds that's not necessarily,
(37:35):
you know, going to give them anything that they really truly desire.
Yeah.
So there's definitely that contrast.
We don't get that much of a contrast with the Nestlers.
It feels like the Aorubians and the Nestlers, they actually get along and understand each
other.
Would you like to elaborate a bit more on them?
Yeah, there's a few things there.
The first thing is very simple, which is that as a kid, I loved the Red Wall books.
(37:56):
And I loved anything with anthropomorphic animals.
So Watership Down was another big one.
I also love Mrs. Frisbee and the Rats of Niamh.
I don't know if you've heard of that one.
That's a really good movie as well.
But all of these stories for me just captured that sense of imagination and escapism in
fantasy.
So reading Red Wall as a kid just really spoke to me.
(38:17):
So there was part of that where I wanted to figure out a way to inject that into an adult
fantasy series.
At the same time, the, I guess, the more realistic thing with the Nestlers is that they are,
again, an original custodian of the land.
So they've been there forever and they've shared the land with the Aeobians for different
purposes.
But once again, they've got that natural ability to nurture and tend for the environment around
(38:39):
them.
And they've got a deep respect for the environment around them.
But it's very different to the Aeobians.
And I won't go into too many details because I haven't revealed it fully.
But there are Nestlers and there are borrower.
And the Nestlers do live in trees, but they don't live in trees like the Aeobians.
They just live in normal trees.
And then the borrower's actually live underground.
And so they've kind of got this cyclical way of looking after the earth, which you'll find
(39:00):
out more about in the future books.
I honestly can't wait.
Everything that you say makes it just more interesting.
But we only talked about three of the races.
And in the book, it's mentioned that there are four.
So you've got the humans.
So you've got the Aeobians and then you've got the hidden ones.
And the hidden ones are broken into two peoples.
They are slightly different to one another.
Like they have very different, I guess, cultures.
(39:22):
They in some cases even speak slightly different languages.
So I've made references to them having slightly different accents and stuff like that.
And Nisha is not really quite sure.
They kind of all say the same, but not.
And so, yeah, they do interact quite often, but it's nearly like having two nations living
in living underground and living above the ground.
It's kind of the idea.
Yeah.
I did pick up that about the language.
(39:43):
Kavtil always speaks in third person and they all seem to speak like that.
I felt it like they were trying to translate their language.
You know, I believe, well, I always feel that sometimes some things that sound reasonable
in Spanish, they are unusual in English sometimes.
Yeah.
And the way you wrote them, it felt like they were speaking not the native tongue.
(40:03):
They were speaking a different one.
And this is how it translated.
It gave them this, yeah, I gave them this personality of a culture, you know, like the
shared culture between them on top of the individual personalities.
Yeah.
I really appreciate that.
I think, yeah, with them, like there's once again, there's kind of two answers there,
like initially I was doing it in a bit of a cutie way, like I wanted them to come across
(40:25):
as very charming and I thought that was a fun way to kind of, yeah, just make them fun,
you know, fun anthropomorphic creatures.
At the same time, I think you're completely right.
Like there are these language barriers that I wanted to be realistic.
So I do want to show off those language barriers more actually with some of the other humans.
So you'll see a bit of that with Theridor when you actually hear from them a little bit
(40:45):
more later in the series too.
Yeah.
There was something else that I wanted to ask you regarding the races, going back to
the three analogues, they are quite protective, you know, or against some of the discoveries
that humans brought in.
Like it's very visible with the fire and it makes sense because they are on a tree, but
it also the way Nisha and everybody else talks about it, it's like, this is exactly
(41:10):
thing that humans brought in.
It's more than a danger, you know, it's something very repulsive even.
That's how she feels it or how it reads.
I wanted to paint a picture of a world where I was thinking about how, you know, we always
say that the two things that humans first invented were the wheel and fire.
And I was thinking about a world in which fire could not be invented because it would
(41:33):
be viewed as destructive to the environment.
And that is this world.
At the same time, the Aeobians, and I've hinted at this in one section in the book, that they
are nomads, right?
So they've kind of crossed the land in many different tribes and cultures.
And eventually settled in these trees.
And so they haven't counted fire before because it's a natural cleansing, but haven't embraced
(41:55):
it as a tool.
So that's kind of where I was thinking with that.
It really felt this way.
They really didn't appreciate, you know, the things that the human brought in.
And it made it feel more that there were tensions between the races, it added into the present
timeline.
You can see that whatever happened or triggered the war that we don't really know comes in
(42:16):
from several years ago or even more.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
And I think there's also this idea of self-imposed boundary.
They want to preserve their culture.
And so they tend to not step out of the tree unless they have to.
And so the only reason that that that Aeobians would leave the tree are to make diplomatic
negotiations with other nations.
And that's because they want to keep the peace.
(42:36):
And so the forefront war is exactly that conflict, right?
Coming to a head.
It's a pretty big deal for these people because they have to leave their home.
And once again, that kind of goes back to what I was thinking in the Australian connection
there as well.
I was trying to really think about how it would feel to uproot someone from their home
in that way.
And Nisha being uprooted from her home as a child is a very small reflection of the people
(43:00):
being uprooted from the tree to have to fight this war.
Yeah.
And the tree also has some effects on them because they have this limitation of being
outside of it for only, I think, a month.
And even when they leave the canopy towards the end, it's implied that she feels something,
that she's losing something for living.
The tree is linked to how long they live, but that's all I'll say.
(43:24):
Yeah.
That's fine.
It's been a terrific discussion.
So if you liked it, please consider subscribing to my podcast, Books and Done, and liking
this video.
Also, before we leave, I want to give a shout out to Esme Rosalind from Before We Go Vlog,
who kindly sent some of the questions we touched in this discussion.
So Yosha, thank you so much for joining me.
(43:46):
Thank you, Livia.
In terms of where to find me, you can find me on Twitter at J. Walker Wrights, Instagram
at JLW.Authar, and on my website, JoshuaWalkerAuthar.com.
And if you head there and sign up to my mailing list, you can actually get the rest of the
gods for free as a digital download as well.
So if you do like the sound of it after this, I know we've spoiled a little bit of it, but
(44:07):
if you do like the sound of it after this, go ahead and give it a try.
Perfect.
Thank you so much.
So you will find all the links he mentioned in the description and also links to my own
writing.
I hope you enjoyed it.
So thank you so much for listening and happy reading.
Hello everyone and welcome to Books Undone.
(00:11):
I'm your host, Livia J. Eliot, and today we are starting a new series, Authors Spotlight.
Here I interview authors to do deep lives into the themes in their works.
To kickstart the series, let me introduce you to the viewer author and fellow Aussie Joshua
Walker.
Thank you so much for joining me.
You want to introduce yourself?
(00:32):
Thank you, Livia.
Absolutely.
Yeah, my name is Josh Walker.
I have been writing for many, many, many years, but my first book recently came out in January,
which is a novella.
It's called The Rest to the Gods, and it's kind of my attempt at doing a really character-focused
epic fantasy that's primarily driven by a theme.
(00:55):
The main series that this novella relates to is called The Song of the Sleepers, and
it comes out, well, the first book is going to come out hopefully in the middle of this
year around June or July.
That book is called An Exile of Water and Gold, and for me, that book is a bit of an exploration
of a few different things.
It's an exploration of love, firstly, but also it's an exploration of science.
(01:19):
There's a lot of science in that book, which is something that you see glimpses of in the
novella that I want to carry forward through the series.
That sounds amazing, honestly.
I'm even more hyped now.
Before diving into the talk, let me do the usual disclaimers.
First, there are spoilers in this podcast, but they only affect Joshua's debut novella,
(01:41):
The Rest to the Gods.
We want to go into spoilers for his upcoming book or the series.
Second, remember that what we discussed here is our subjective opinion, even the authors.
You are allowed to disagree with us.
That's it.
Can we start with Nisha?
I found her to be very intriguing.
We get to see her both as a young and insecure girl, but also as a powerhouse of a war hero.
(02:06):
I want to know how was it for you to explore the psyche of both the young and the older
Nisha, and if you find it hard to make the character grow believable and earned?
That's a really good question.
For me, Nisha is probably the character that if I think about, and you have to remember,
I wrote this novella after writing book one actually.
(02:27):
This is a really recent write for me, so I'd already explored Nisha a little bit through
that lens.
But for me, she is definitely quite similar to myself.
I've painted a portrait of myself in many ways in her character, not necessarily in
her background or anything like that.
You don't want to read too much into it, but her personality definitely speaks to me the
(02:48):
most.
I think seeing that the character reflects the author meant that it was quite natural
for me to be able to write two storylines that represented her childhood and her young
adulthood because I just had to self-reflect.
With other characters, you don't get that privilege, right?
With Nisha, it was pretty special.
I felt that way even going back now and editing book one, I've felt that connection to that
(03:11):
character, which I definitely don't have with the others, which is pretty special.
If we follow that theme in the present timeline, we see Nisha that is very adult and she's
close to 100 years, I think, and she's still carrying some things from her childhood.
So I would like to explore the childhood, the young Nisha first.
(03:33):
I found her to be very mature for her age, especially as you reveal the situation of
her mother being verbally abusive to her, the father being a drunkard and her being
responsible for her sister.
I found that quite realistic.
It felt that her maturity wasn't due to life experience, but it was enforced because of
(03:57):
her situation.
It felt like a need.
I think that you did that superbly.
So would you like to share a bit more of what went into it?
Yeah, once again, I think it goes back to that natural tendency as part of the human
condition that when you are forced into a situation, you have to respond with the best
that you can.
Right.
(04:17):
And so she's really a character that for me, when I was writing the novella, I was trying
nearly in every scene to push the stakes up as quickly as I could.
And part of that is story structure.
Like, this is a very short story.
So the stakes need to rise quickly.
But in doing that, it means that she has to keep up with it.
It worked out well because when I was going back through the first round of edits on the
novella, I quickly realized that, yeah, she's adapting quickly, but it's realistic and it's
(04:42):
hard.
It's a portrait of a hard life.
And I think there's also this kind of this interesting dichotomy where she is very quickly
moved from being a common person in her society to becoming essentially a noble woman.
And it's not something that she understands.
And it's an interesting thing to play with because typically you see people go from riches
(05:04):
to rags.
You see that opposite story where maybe they start off in a position of wealth and they
end up in a position of poverty.
And not to say that that's not as hard, but I think going the other way with her was important
because she starts so young.
And so you see that natural evolution of how she deals with challenges, right?
And how she grows in resilience.
(05:24):
There is also the disbelief that she had at several points that she was still the same
person as before and it keeps carrying on to the point in which her tutor takes her
back to her family and they see her in a completely different light.
And it's not until that point that she doesn't realize or at least that's how I interpreted
that only then she actually realizes that new position that she has.
(05:48):
I think there's also that thing of, I really wanted to capture naivety, but it's hard to
do that in a book that's not written for children.
Do you know what I mean?
So this is obviously aimed at adults and I was trying to find ways to tell a complex
story without dumbing it down too much.
Like I didn't want it to read like we were coming, I guess, directly from her point of
view because she doesn't know at that point how hard things are or what the reality of
(06:13):
her situation is until she's faced with it.
And that's part of being a child and that's something that definitely resonates with me.
So yeah, for her it was all about getting that resilience to come through slowly in a
believable way, it did mean that I had to distance the reader a little bit from being
directly in her eyes because I felt like if I got too close, you'd start to lose a bit
(06:34):
of that believability, right?
Because later when you see her as an adult, the story does read quite differently and
I wanted her character to be consistent from the start to the end.
If I can read one of the sentences, I actually really like this one and it ties everything
to what you were saying, this is when she goes back to her family and her tutor had
said they don't want you here and so on, but she was still not believing them and she says
(06:58):
she hadn't believed them, but she also knew she didn't want to find out the truth.
Not then, not now either, if the truth was to be the one she feared the most.
It captures that naivety that you mentioned.
But to me it also kind of captured a traumatic response.
She had this idea of her parents loved her even when through the situation, we can clearly
(07:20):
see that that's not the case.
And then at this point, a few paragraphs after you get the shock of reality of the tutor
was actually right.
Yeah, and I think you touch on a really good point there.
I think like when I was writing that scene in particular, I tried to figuratively associate
exactly what you're talking about with that physical moment of her stepping between the
(07:41):
door of the home and the outside world or vice versa, right, when she comes into the
house, there's a change, there's a tonal change where she gets to be the girl who doesn't
quite understand on one side of the door and on the other, she has to grow up and do it
quickly, you know, because if she doesn't, that really threatens her coping mechanisms
(08:02):
essentially.
And I think there's also that interplay between sibling love, right?
Like I didn't get to probably develop it as much as I would have liked just because
of the length of the story, but it was definitely something I wanted to show the reader was this
is this is not just about the parents, you know, Nisha's response to her parents, I think
she's pretty good at adapting to how challenging they can be.
But adapting to how that affects her youngest sister is an entirely different matter.
(08:26):
And that does come from past trauma as well.
So the death of her brother is a part of that.
But yeah, like, like, like I was mentioning before, I think there's that physical moment
where she steps beyond the barrier of the door and that's where everything kind of changes.
It actually even changes the narrator, like the voice becomes a bit more formal as soon
as she starts.
When before she even she was even saying that she couldn't move part of her was just moving
(08:48):
without her controlling it.
Once she closes the threshold, it's far more formal.
It's that voice that doesn't feel like a child.
It feels like someone forced to grow up.
And the sisterly love, it was very nice.
And it also conveyed how responsible Nisha felt.
Absolutely, I think it's also that human thing where it's hard to put this into words, but
(09:11):
there are moments, I think in everyone's life where there's someone that you're particularly
close with.
And sometimes it doesn't matter who the person is, they could be, you know, a boyfriend or
girlfriend or they could be just a friend or they could be a parent, it doesn't matter.
But if you do have a relationship breakdown with that person, there's that scary moment
where they become someone that you don't quite know anymore.
(09:34):
And that's really unsettling, right?
Because you feel like you're a part of this person in some way.
And when they take that step back, I think that's personally quite confronting.
So I really wanted to show that with her where her sister, when she comes into the house,
is so normal and excited to see her.
But the rest of the tone in that house is so dreary, dark, foreboding nearly.
(09:58):
And it's that moment where I think she sees her parents in a different light and it makes
her realize why she can't be there anymore.
But at the same time, there's that conflict of, well, I can't be there anymore, but I
still want to go back.
And so Colin had to basically force her to go and see what the other side of life is
like.
Yeah.
(10:18):
And even before that, still in the then timeline in the past one, she was constantly thinking
that the children had lied to her, that the family still wanted her.
And when she goes there, it feels, you know, even when with what he says, I told you so
in a more elegant way, it actually feels like that.
And when I read it the first time, I was actually dreading the scene because I could see that
(10:42):
the mother was going to unleash on her.
I think you conveyed the whole scene very well without getting explicit, without actually
making something that could be a trigger, but it actually has the whole emotional power.
Some question regarding that, how did you manage not to be so explicit, but actually
put all the emotional value in it?
Yeah, I think, I mean, if we go back to that idea of writing naturally, right, and writing
(11:06):
what you know, for me, if I evaluate myself as a person, I'm, I mean, I'm a creative
person and a lot of creative people, not everyone, but a lot of creative people are melancholic
in their temperament.
And what that means is that, you know, I tend to be very reflective.
I tend to ruminate a lot on the bad stuff and reflect a lot on the good stuff.
And I tend to kind of, you know, overthink.
(11:28):
And I think with Nietzsche, I really wanted to convey that.
But at the same time, there's a contrast there where there is self-imposed ignorance on her
character, right?
There's, there's a level of she just doesn't want to go there, you know, and that self-imposed
ignorance.
Actually, I can reference a text, the, the name of the wind by Patrick Rothfuss is actually
what it's one of my favorite book.
I've read that book probably six or seven times.
(11:50):
Maybe more than that now that I think about it.
But the thing with Quoth in that book is that he, he's so ignorant and, and so many of his
problems come from his ignorance.
And I think with Nietzsche, I didn't want her to be as kind of bravado as Quoth at all.
I wanted her to be more human.
It's funny that I'm saying that because she's technically not a human, but you know what
I mean?
But, but she, she is very ignorant and that gets into trouble.
(12:12):
And I think there's that interplay of naivety, which is something that she can't help.
And then ignorance, which is something that, you know, she knows the truth, but she doesn't
want to go there.
And that stuff comes back to haunt her in the present timeline in the Mavella as well.
Regarding the present timeline, I didn't notice when I read it the first time on the second
reel, she only thinks of her sister.
When she thinks of her family, it's only the sister.
(12:33):
She never mentions the parents.
I found it lovely in the sense that after everything that happened, after so many years,
because it's after a century, she still has her sister in her heart.
She's still caring about her.
I really appreciate that you said that because I think one of the things that I find a lot
of times, especially with the, the Aeobian people in this series is that because they
age so much slower than humans, sometimes it's hard to, to make their emotions believable.
(12:59):
Because in a human sense, you kind of get past this stuff much quicker.
Whereas with her, she's, you know, yeah, like you say, she's nearly a century old at the
end.
And, and, and yet she's still struggling with this stuff.
I think I was considering a lot the weight of being a, a sufferer of post traumatic stress
disorder, right?
(13:19):
And I guess that ability, ability that the brain has in trauma situations to actually
block entire parts of your history out.
And so I think that's kind of where we leave Nisha at the end is, is yeah, there's, there's
definitely healing that's happened.
There's definitely also protected love, sisterly love.
She hasn't seen her sister in years.
(13:40):
But then at the same time, she still cares for her.
But exactly as you say, I did not want to draw attention to the parents at all.
I kind of wanted to show that and leave it up to the reader ultimately to decide whether
she has blocked that out subconsciously or whether she's actually chosen to step past
that pain.
Even in the, in the present timeline, she has still, she reads more mature and different
(14:02):
and with different life experiences, but she still has some stocks that link back to those
traumatic responses or learned behaviors, those coping mechanisms from her use.
Like she's always very perfectionist and has this tendency to feel responsible for everyone,
even when everyone else are adults making their own decisions.
(14:22):
And she's at some point, it felt distressingly motherly, you know, in the sense of very protective,
but it also felt linked to that past.
I think you said something very clever there when you, when you mentioned that motherly
instinct thing, I definitely wanted to draw an illusion to her mother and show how, how,
how I guess her influence still precedes her, right?
(14:45):
And not, not that it entirely governs Nisha's character at all, but there is that aspect
of, is she living in the shadow of her parents, right?
Or I guess where she came from.
In addition to that, she's very headstrong.
She is very brooding kind of and, and, and, and yeah, and, and yeah, you do know what
I mean?
And so she's definitely a glass half empty kind of person as well, which is once again,
(15:07):
it's a similar trait of mine, and I think there are moments where, you know, she, she,
she probably thinks that, that yeah, she does have to look after everybody.
That's entirely her responsibility.
It's completely unfair.
Once again, it's self-imposed ignorance, right?
But it's of a much, I guess, worse kind or high, you know, the worst gravity there because
of her age, her maturity and what she's dealing with in the present timeline.
(15:32):
The stakes are so much higher and so many other people's lives are on the line.
So there's that natural feeling of, well, I need to do the best I can, but also the
more you tell yourself that the worst of a job you're going to do.
Yeah.
And there is this thing in the present timeline that I think actually represents that she
has a wounded person, the enemies are incoming and she has this idea of helping one, not
(15:53):
helping the others and helping everybody at the same time until she gets another dose
of reality that somebody else says, like, okay, leave them be.
Let's focus on the moment.
She's always struggling and I find that compelling, but also human, you know, in the same sense
that you mentioned before.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I think there's that moment where, you know, in the climax of the present timeline
(16:15):
where she pulls the mountain side down and that's kind of that defining moment where,
and once again, I was playing with that figuratively.
The idea of dismantling the mountain from the top down is a response to all of this
kind of trauma and pain that she's built up over the years.
And so when she tears that down, that's meant to be that kind of moment of enlightenment
where it's like, yeah, like to look after everyone, I've got to look after myself, but
(16:37):
I also have to just make sure I'm kind of doing it pretty prescriptively.
Like at some point I've got to stand back and not put my heart into every single person
individually when I'm faced with this much, right?
Like you kind of just have to roll with the punches a little bit.
Yeah.
And there is also an ongoing discussion on trust on all timelines and not only the trust
of those around you, even when they have different cultures, but also trusting her own abilities.
(17:02):
She's always struggling.
She's always, as you said, looking at everything like a half empty cup and has this very perfectionist
approach to herself.
Like you see her doing amazing stuff in the past timeline and in the present timeline
and for her, it's never enough.
I think with trust, I think what's interesting and this comes from someone who is also a
(17:23):
perfectionist, but a lot of times trust can be worn down in relationships with other people
if you don't trust yourself.
And so what I wanted to show with Nisha is that the less she trusts herself, the more
things spiral out of control.
And because she's a perfectionist, if she lacks control and that situation is getting
away from her, she can't handle it.
(17:44):
So there's definitely that kind of stress where, yeah, there's kind of these physical
stakes in the story, but at the end of the day, the stakes that are in her mind are really,
to me, what I was trying to drive the plot with.
And part of this was also for me a reaction to how I wrote her in book one.
And this is not really a spoiler for book one, but in book one, she's more of a side
character and she's in a mentorship kind of role.
(18:06):
She does need to have stepped up quite a bit by then.
And so I really wanted to show how she got there because she's still pretty rough around
the edges in that book.
And I needed readers to see what that through line was, right?
So yeah, trust in the book, the whole kind of idea of trust in the book is that if you
don't trust yourself, trust is not going to reciprocate between you and another person
(18:27):
either.
It's also sad because she trusted so many times and through the novel we see character
after character breaking the trust.
First the parents, then the queen, who was also a very important mentor figure for her
as well.
I was thinking about the queen, Phaeludra.
And I think one of the interesting kind of things that's going on there is that Nisha
(18:48):
has poured so much trust into that mentor figure.
And it's nearly, you know, it felt nearly unfair of me to take Phaeludra away from her
because that should have been that kind of curb, you know, for a lot of Nisha's insecurities,
is the queen.
And so when that's removed, she doesn't have much left.
And there is that idea of at that point in her life where she became a sleeper, Phaeludra
(19:11):
is really all she had.
Joan is there, he's a mentor, he's her direct kind of report, but he's a bit kind of brash,
you know, he's hard to talk to.
She can't get on a deep level with him.
Whereas with the queen, she kind of reflects on their relationship and they seem to get
each other a little bit more.
So when that goes away, that's incredibly hard.
The other problem that she has is that she put too much into that relationship rather
(19:33):
than focusing on herself.
And so there's that idea of you really have to make sure as a person that you round yourself
out.
And so this is reflected, I know you're probably going to ask me about the tree later, but
part of this is reflected in the structure of the tree, right?
So the tree, the great tree is split into three divisions.
You've got the heart, the mind and the soul.
And it's based on essentially Plato's theory of the soul.
(19:58):
So that classical kind of Greek idea that the soul cannot exist without the heart to
feel in the mind to reason.
And so Nisha is a reflection of a person who doesn't have all three of those things.
It's also another reason why the sleepers live in the mind primarily.
They're there to do governance of the people.
But a lot of times that means that they lack the empathy to kind of see their shortcomings,
(20:19):
right?
So there's that level of it as well.
It's also a bit heartbreaking, you know, like Eldrack could actually have changed Nisha's
life.
And it's also ominous in the sense of in how much your own actions or reactions of a single
person can affect so deeply another.
We see Nisha, just after when she finds out she goes from denial to this is not happening,
(20:43):
to anger, to feeling sad and all of these emotions that she can't handle.
And then shut them up completely.
They are gone in a moment and she goes back to being how she was before at the start of
the book, that very grown up child.
Yeah.
And that's kind of that moment in the story, you know, where we say all is lost, right?
Like how is the character to come back from this?
And I think what I was trying to do in that scene as well was, was show by contrast what
(21:06):
Prisma was like.
Prisma is obviously experiencing the same emotions as Nisha, but she doesn't let them
overcome her.
At the end of the day, every single person that's running out of that magisteria, but
the moment where the Queen kind of arrives and starts to take over, everyone's feeling
the same thing as Nisha.
But Nisha's primary thinking is that her feelings matter the most.
And that's a problem, right?
Because she can't get to the core of her responsibility.
(21:28):
Even for Cole, and I think what I wanted to do with him was show Nisha that even though
he's this rough guy, he's pretty hard to kind of get on board with.
But even he is able to curb his emotions.
You know, Cole has a tremendous amount of respect for the Queen, obviously is in disbelief
about what's happened as well, but he's able to manage that and do what he needs to do.
(21:48):
And so, you know, hopefully you think that Nisha is going to kind of respond through
all that stimuli and how people are acting, but she doesn't.
And I think I was also thinking about, you know, there's that cliche saying in Spider-Man,
right?
Like with great power comes great responsibility.
She definitely doesn't have that concept.
She doesn't have those two things put together in her mind.
(22:10):
Part of that is because she rejects the fact that she has great power.
She wishes she never had the great power.
Part of that is because with responsibility comes the need to face yourself and she doesn't
have that either.
Yeah, no.
And I think it's because nobody taught her how to, you know.
Everybody is always telling her, you can do this or you should try this or you shouldn't
(22:30):
feel this instead of validating her and actually trying to teach her what she didn't learn
as a child.
And it just reinforces the feeling because when Corn just ties her, she actually closes
herself even more, you know, and goes more into the denial of I can't do this.
Which again, it felt like those coping mechanisms or going back to what she sadly learned when
(22:54):
she was a child.
And this is realistic.
Like this is the psychology of children in many ways.
Like in my professional life, I'm a primary school teacher and the number one thing that
and I tell the kids this as well, the number one thing that I try to do in the classroom
is to celebrate the success because the second that you take that away, chastising a child
because they've done the wrong thing is not necessarily going to get you the answer that
(23:18):
you want.
It's also not going to teach them anything.
In fact, it's going to make them push away more.
So they need a place to go back to for validation.
And I think that's what I wanted to show in nature is this is a child that should have
been looked after a lot more the way that she was looked after, even after becoming a
sleeper was nowhere near good enough.
And you know, at the same time, there are elements of personality where she should have
(23:40):
done better as well.
But she did not necessarily have the means to get there.
Something that I really liked how you managed it is that even when you are jumping between
timelines, because that's how the book is written, it feels consistent, you know, like
both stories are interwoven, and as you are exploring her past, you get to understand
what she why she behaves in one way in the future and again into the past and more gets
(24:03):
revealed.
And it also speaks of a complexity of people.
They see her in the future in the present timeline actually as this very powerful person.
And she feels completely different than it.
If you only take that, she has no grounds to actually feel that way.
But then when you explore the past line, it makes sense.
And it was woven in a very nicely way.
(24:24):
Thank you.
I think I was reflecting a bit on characters from Brandon Sanderson's books.
I don't know if you're brand new Brandon Sanderson.
I'm a fan of the Stormlight Archive.
You do like the Stormlight Archive?
I love it.
Yeah, the Stormlight Archive is one of my favorite series ever.
And Words of Radiance is probably my favorite book in recent history, I think, in terms
(24:45):
of sci-fi fantasy.
But I think something that Brandon does well in Stormlight is he grows a lot of his characters
out beyond their basic traits.
Whereas on the flip side, and this is probably like in Miss Born, right?
I don't know if you've read the Miss Born books.
One of the reasons I don't like Miss Born as much is that the characters there never
(25:07):
seem to grow beyond their initial traits.
They seem kind of to me like they're always held or bound by something that he's told
us about them at the start of the series.
So that development feels standard.
And to me, it meant that the ending wasn't as satisfying.
The redemption wasn't as big besides one key character, which I won't talk about because
(25:27):
it's a major spoiler for that series.
But you know, in the rest of the gods, I think what I wanted to do with Nisha was show a
situation where there are traits she can't grow beyond.
And that's real of all people.
But I also wanted to show that there were places where she saw the line or she saw a
way to move beyond that.
(25:48):
And so there are clear redemption moments in the present timeline.
But I wanted to really end on a resonant note by finishing the novella in the past.
And actually, I'd be interested to know what your thoughts were about that because that
was something I was struggling with when I was writing the story was am I doing the
right thing by ending this on such a bleak note?
(26:09):
It was quite small, but I think it fit her perfectly.
It rounded up her socks at the end and the conversation, even if it happens in the past,
it still provides some kind of closure to the present timeline because of how the events
are interworn.
I really liked it ending in the past rather than in the future.
It felt like the future was there and it didn't need to go further than ending, which was
(26:35):
quite a cliffhanger as well.
Yeah, no, I appreciate that.
Yeah, that was something that I was really trying to determine was how much do I want
her to grow beyond these things that hold her back and how much do I want the reader
to kind of reflect on how hard it is for someone in her position to grow beyond those things.
So it was about getting that balance there.
And I think you did it very well, honestly.
(26:56):
So before you mentioned that the grade three was actually based on a bit of ancient philosophy
and play-doh, and I was going to ask, how did you come up with that concept?
My first degree when I came out of high school was a bachelor of liberal arts.
And so when you do a bachelor of liberal arts, I guess the key premise of that is an integration
(27:16):
of literature, philosophy, history, and science.
And so the philosophical part of my degree, especially right at the beginning, was looking
at Platonic philosophy, play-doh, as we know, is a student of Socrates.
But play-doh had a lot of theories, but the concept of the soul to me is the one that
resonated with me the most when I was a student.
And part of this is because I grew up religious.
(27:38):
So there is that aspect where I'm thinking about that as well.
At the same time, the idea that without a soul, we're not human is very important, I think,
to all of us, right?
It doesn't matter whether you're religious or not, but there's something about a human
that makes us different to an animal, right?
There's that ability to reason.
When I was putting together AOB, I really wanted to figure out a way to make these people
(28:02):
interesting on a societal level by considering the relationship they have with the tree and
then considering how the tree embodies the three aspects of the soul according to play-doh
and then how the people live that out subconsciously.
So there is kind of a philosophy there.
It's more in the background for me so that I can orchestrate the story, but that's kind
of how I came up with it.
(28:22):
How the people actually live it out is obviously entirely different.
You'll see characters who are very well-formed people, and you'll see characters that aren't,
who are living in different parts of the tree, and that doesn't really matter as much.
But the idea that there are these three areas really plays into their society.
And that goes back to what I was saying before about the Magisterium and how Nisha and the
other sleepers all live in the mind.
(28:43):
And there's a very distinct separation between them and the people who live in the heart
and the soul.
The people who live in the heart and the soul are the common people.
The common people are who I resonate with, right?
They're the people that all of us resonate with.
That's part of the reason why I wanted Nisha to be that bridge between the common people
and the upper class because I think it's important sometimes to see how hard it is for people
(29:07):
sometimes in the upper class to do the right thing.
Part of it is because they're so kind of narrow-minded by their overall vision.
They've got a good vision.
They've got good intentions.
But carrying it out can be so difficult if you don't have a perception of how everybody
else is reacting to what you do.
Regarding that division of the three parts in the tree, something that actually amazed
me is that it represents classes or different societal levels, but it doesn't feel classicist.
(29:33):
They are an integrated society that they move from one side to the other.
There is an understanding that the machisterium is different level, but it's still integrated
and it didn't feel the classical society or they are very separate pieces.
I think it's interesting that you say that because for Nisha, and this is part of why
I had her perspective, right?
(29:54):
As a child, she wouldn't be aware of differences in class either.
Look, on a realistic level, the people who live in the heart and soul are very similar
to one another, but the people in the soul tend to celebrate art more.
They tend to, you know, that's where you go for the marketplaces and stuff like that.
So there's very literal connections that I make with that, but with the mind.
(30:14):
Eventually I want to actually publish a map of the tree itself, but the mind is situated
higher in the tree.
And so there is a bit of a literal connection there in terms of how the magisterium is viewed
and how they view others.
And it's a problem.
It's actually going to be a problem that comes back and it's a crucial part of the main conflict
in the main series as well.
That's interesting that you say that because we get the whole story through Nisha's eyes.
(30:37):
So the narrator is very biased.
Exactly.
And that doesn't mean that there aren't any problems, just that in this part of the story,
she doesn't see.
Yeah.
And I think that's really important.
Like sometimes when we think about the unreliable narrator, we put so much stock into them being
incorrect because it's their intention.
Yeah, yeah.
But like, with Nisha, I didn't want her to be actively telling the story incorrectly.
(30:59):
I just wanted us to see the story through her eyes and a combination of her naivety and
her self-imposed ignorance like we were talking about before builds the world from her perspective.
When you see it from someone else's perspective, it might look entirely differently.
Yeah.
And that also happens in real life.
Exactly.
Like two people living at the same time in different countries and they will see life
completely different.
(31:21):
Something else with the tree and the AOB and see, they are very attuned with the tree and
they feel it even and on this scene towards the end when they go out of a tree, almost
out of a cannabis and everything, Nisha makes some comments as if she feels out of it or
disconnected.
So I wanted to ask you more about that.
(31:42):
If she's, it's only a perception or if they really have that connection.
Yeah, this is a good question.
I think there's a few aspects here.
There's a spiritual aspect and the spiritual argument says that if Nisha is spiritual in
a sense that we have religion in our world, then she can believe that whether it's real
or not.
At the same time, there is a science behind the workings of the tree, which I don't want
(32:05):
to go into all the details on because I don't want to spoil the entire series.
But as part of my research for the series, I read a book called The Hidden Life of Trees.
I don't know if you've heard of it.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's a really good book.
It's by a guy called, I think you say his name, Peter Wallabon, I think is how you say
his name.
I could be completely wrong.
I hope I didn't butcher that.
But essentially, there's some ideas in that book which link life in forests to trees via
(32:31):
symbiosis.
And there are some real things that are playing out between the Aorubians and the tree, but
they're not aware of it.
At the same time, there's also a spiritual aspect of, well, I do want people to have
the autonomy in this world to choose whether they believe in something greater or not because
that's reality, right?
And so you see Colm is kind of like this overzealous believer because he has to be.
(32:56):
That's kind of how it gets by.
But Nisha doesn't resonate with that.
And I think that's completely natural.
I think a lot of spirituality is fueled by questioning.
And so you have to kind of question what you believe to get to the core of whether you
think it's true or not.
And I want her character to be a picture of that because that's a reality for a lot of
people.
Whereas the overzealous person, especially when you meet these kind of people in real
(33:16):
life, you feel like you can't get closer to them because they've got that kind of holier
than their attitude.
It's part of the reason why the intro quote to the novella is what I picked for it.
So that first quote that I've got on the very front page is, do your duty and leave the
rest to the gods.
And that's where I got the title from.
That's from a play called Horace by Pierre Cornille.
(33:37):
And it's a French play that was written hundreds of years ago.
But essentially that play is kind of a retelling of the story of Horace in Rome.
It's about a battle between two families.
And essentially this gets said to the main character, do your duty and leave the rest
of the gods.
And the main character chooses to kind of embrace ambiguity, chooses to also embrace himself
(33:58):
and what he's good at and use his, I guess, God given talent, so to speak, to emerge victorious
at some point in the story.
And so I wanted that quote there to kind of be a constant contrast between nature and
other people who just kind of choose to just believe in it, right?
And they also, even if the Aeobians don't have that attitude of holy dando, they do have
(34:23):
some bias towards the other races, especially towards the humans who appear.
Absolutely.
At least from what is hinted in this book.
They don't have that connection to the tree.
And it's like more of a, not segregating them, but not considering them at the same level.
And we can see that in the chat at the end, in the last chapter that goes back to the
past.
(34:43):
And there's that different relationship between them and how a human makes a mistake on the
title and then Nisha breaks him in her mind, like, don't blame him.
Yeah, absolutely.
And like, and I wanted that moment to be really important because, or to punctuate this, because
this is the king, right?
This is the king of Adira.
(35:03):
He's a pretty big wig, you know, like, and Nisha's kind of sitting there in her mind,
as you say, berating him for making a mistake.
He actually just has no clue how her society works.
He's so naive.
And that naivety, once again, is something that he chooses and that a lot of humans in
this world actively choose.
And part of that is, is part of an ongoing conversation, I guess, that will come up in
(35:26):
the rest of the series.
But one of the driving themes here is colonialism.
So if you have a look at the chapter headings in this book, each chapter gives you the year,
but then underneath it says, right next to the year, sorry, it says, AS.
And that stands for after settlement.
I think part of this is my wanting to explore this more as an Australian person, thinking
(35:46):
about how colonialism has affected our country and what we are today.
And also, you know, wanting to share, I guess, a deep respect that I have for the original
people that I hope everybody has, but it's just not the way the world works, unfortunately.
But I think, you know, the Aorubians are like that, right?
They're the original custodians of this land, and they innately understand it.
(36:09):
They innately understand how to care for it.
And in Australian society, we've got that as well, right?
Like the original people innately understand how to care for the land.
And we don't see that even today.
Like we just don't see it.
We try to understand, or people say they try to understand, but they don't.
And so that's part of that.
Yeah, not segregation so much, but they just don't get each other, you know?
(36:29):
The Aorubians don't understand the humans.
Humans don't understand them.
Both parties kind of don't want to choose to understand the other one either.
They just want to coexist so that there's no fighting.
And they also come from different places while the Aorubians, you know, it's good that you
mentioned the original in Australia, because when I was reading it, I thought the same
(36:51):
thing about the Aorubians.
They seem to have this culture of respect towards the environment to trying to work
in tandem with it.
While the humans are, of course, always being humans, they want to overpower the world.
And you see it as a resource.
And the contrast is very clear during the present timeline when they talk about the
humans and during the final conversation as well.
(37:12):
I was just thinking there's a pastoral care that the Aorubians have to the land.
And you do see this a lot more in Book One, but that pastoral care is just part of who
they are.
It's completely part of who they are.
Whereas the humans, as you say, they've gone there to seek power, you know, or to seek
some kind of alternate life that they've built up in their minds that's not necessarily,
(37:35):
you know, going to give them anything that they really truly desire.
Yeah.
So there's definitely that contrast.
We don't get that much of a contrast with the Nestlers.
It feels like the Aorubians and the Nestlers, they actually get along and understand each
other.
Would you like to elaborate a bit more on them?
Yeah, there's a few things there.
The first thing is very simple, which is that as a kid, I loved the Red Wall books.
(37:56):
And I loved anything with anthropomorphic animals.
So Watership Down was another big one.
I also love Mrs. Frisbee and the Rats of Niamh.
I don't know if you've heard of that one.
That's a really good movie as well.
But all of these stories for me just captured that sense of imagination and escapism in
fantasy.
So reading Red Wall as a kid just really spoke to me.
(38:17):
So there was part of that where I wanted to figure out a way to inject that into an adult
fantasy series.
At the same time, the, I guess, the more realistic thing with the Nestlers is that they are,
again, an original custodian of the land.
So they've been there forever and they've shared the land with the Aeobians for different
purposes.
But once again, they've got that natural ability to nurture and tend for the environment around
(38:39):
them.
And they've got a deep respect for the environment around them.
But it's very different to the Aeobians.
And I won't go into too many details because I haven't revealed it fully.
But there are Nestlers and there are borrower.
And the Nestlers do live in trees, but they don't live in trees like the Aeobians.
They just live in normal trees.
And then the borrower's actually live underground.
And so they've kind of got this cyclical way of looking after the earth, which you'll find
(39:00):
out more about in the future books.
I honestly can't wait.
Everything that you say makes it just more interesting.
But we only talked about three of the races.
And in the book, it's mentioned that there are four.
So you've got the humans.
So you've got the Aeobians and then you've got the hidden ones.
And the hidden ones are broken into two peoples.
They are slightly different to one another.
Like they have very different, I guess, cultures.
(39:22):
They in some cases even speak slightly different languages.
So I've made references to them having slightly different accents and stuff like that.
And Nisha is not really quite sure.
They kind of all say the same, but not.
And so, yeah, they do interact quite often, but it's nearly like having two nations living
in living underground and living above the ground.
It's kind of the idea.
Yeah.
I did pick up that about the language.
(39:43):
Kavtil always speaks in third person and they all seem to speak like that.
I felt it like they were trying to translate their language.
You know, I believe, well, I always feel that sometimes some things that sound reasonable
in Spanish, they are unusual in English sometimes.
Yeah.
And the way you wrote them, it felt like they were speaking not the native tongue.
(40:03):
They were speaking a different one.
And this is how it translated.
It gave them this, yeah, I gave them this personality of a culture, you know, like the
shared culture between them on top of the individual personalities.
Yeah.
I really appreciate that.
I think, yeah, with them, like there's once again, there's kind of two answers there,
like initially I was doing it in a bit of a cutie way, like I wanted them to come across
(40:25):
as very charming and I thought that was a fun way to kind of, yeah, just make them fun,
you know, fun anthropomorphic creatures.
At the same time, I think you're completely right.
Like there are these language barriers that I wanted to be realistic.
So I do want to show off those language barriers more actually with some of the other humans.
So you'll see a bit of that with Theridor when you actually hear from them a little bit
(40:45):
more later in the series too.
Yeah.
There was something else that I wanted to ask you regarding the races, going back to
the three analogues, they are quite protective, you know, or against some of the discoveries
that humans brought in.
Like it's very visible with the fire and it makes sense because they are on a tree, but
it also the way Nisha and everybody else talks about it, it's like, this is exactly
(41:10):
thing that humans brought in.
It's more than a danger, you know, it's something very repulsive even.
That's how she feels it or how it reads.
I wanted to paint a picture of a world where I was thinking about how, you know, we always
say that the two things that humans first invented were the wheel and fire.
And I was thinking about a world in which fire could not be invented because it would
(41:33):
be viewed as destructive to the environment.
And that is this world.
At the same time, the Aeobians, and I've hinted at this in one section in the book, that they
are nomads, right?
So they've kind of crossed the land in many different tribes and cultures.
And eventually settled in these trees.
And so they haven't counted fire before because it's a natural cleansing, but haven't embraced
(41:55):
it as a tool.
So that's kind of where I was thinking with that.
It really felt this way.
They really didn't appreciate, you know, the things that the human brought in.
And it made it feel more that there were tensions between the races, it added into the present
timeline.
You can see that whatever happened or triggered the war that we don't really know comes in
(42:16):
from several years ago or even more.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
And I think there's also this idea of self-imposed boundary.
They want to preserve their culture.
And so they tend to not step out of the tree unless they have to.
And so the only reason that that that Aeobians would leave the tree are to make diplomatic
negotiations with other nations.
And that's because they want to keep the peace.
(42:36):
And so the forefront war is exactly that conflict, right?
Coming to a head.
It's a pretty big deal for these people because they have to leave their home.
And once again, that kind of goes back to what I was thinking in the Australian connection
there as well.
I was trying to really think about how it would feel to uproot someone from their home
in that way.
And Nisha being uprooted from her home as a child is a very small reflection of the people
(43:00):
being uprooted from the tree to have to fight this war.
Yeah.
And the tree also has some effects on them because they have this limitation of being
outside of it for only, I think, a month.
And even when they leave the canopy towards the end, it's implied that she feels something,
that she's losing something for living.
The tree is linked to how long they live, but that's all I'll say.
(43:24):
Yeah.
That's fine.
It's been a terrific discussion.
So if you liked it, please consider subscribing to my podcast, Books and Done, and liking
this video.
Also, before we leave, I want to give a shout out to Esme Rosalind from Before We Go Vlog,
who kindly sent some of the questions we touched in this discussion.
So Yosha, thank you so much for joining me.
(43:46):
Thank you, Livia.
In terms of where to find me, you can find me on Twitter at J. Walker Wrights, Instagram
at JLW.Authar, and on my website, JoshuaWalkerAuthar.com.
And if you head there and sign up to my mailing list, you can actually get the rest of the
gods for free as a digital download as well.
So if you do like the sound of it after this, I know we've spoiled a little bit of it, but
(44:07):
if you do like the sound of it after this, go ahead and give it a try.
Perfect.
Thank you so much.
So you will find all the links he mentioned in the description and also links to my own
writing.
I hope you enjoyed it.
So thank you so much for listening and happy reading.
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