With more than twenty books released over nearly thirty years, Catherine Asaro’s Saga Of The Skolian Empire series must seem rather intimidating for people just discovering this sci-fi saga.
But in the following email interview about the newest installment, The Down Deep (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook), Asaro explains that this novel — which is the start of a new subseries called Dust Knights — also serves as a new entry point.
In an earlier interview we did about your novel The Vanishing Seas, we talked about your ongoing series, Saga Of The Skolian Empire, and about how Vanishing was the fourth book in a subseries called Major Bhaajan Mysteries. Now you have The Down Deep, which also features Major Bhaajan, but is the start of a new subseries called Dust Knights. Is that right?
The new series looks at the Major Bhaajan universe from a new view, that of the characters called Dust Knights. It doesn’t require readers know anything about any previous books; it’s a new take on the universe.
I wrote the Major Bhaajan Mysteries in a first person point of view from the protagonist, Major Bhaajan, or Bhaaj for short. The new Dust Knights series is written in third person and alternates among the view of several characters. That of course includes Bhaaj, who founded the Knights, but I’ve also brought in several of her top people as narrative characters. This first book, The Down Deep, still focuses more on Bhaaj, but as the series expands, it will include more and more from the viewpoint of other characters, the Knights of the series title.
Another difference: The Major Bhaajan books were all science fiction murder mysteries, with Bhaaj as the PI solving the crime. Although the Dust Knights novels involve puzzles the characters must solve, they won’t necessarily be mysteries in the classic sense. I don’t want to give too much away; suffice it to say, The Down Deep, offers a mystery the knights must solve unlike any they’ve encountered before.
So then what is The Down Deep about, and when does it take place in relation to both the fourth and last Major Bhaajan Mysteries novel, The Jigsaw Assassin, and the Saga Of The Skolian Empire series as a whole?
The story starts with the preparations of Colonel Lavinda Majda, a member of the royal Majda family, preparing to visit the notorious underworld culture called the Undercity. In modern Skolian civilization, the Majdas no longer rule any civilization — at least not “on paper.” Financially, they are one of the wealthiest families in human history, with immense power and reach in their dealings with the rest of humanity. They keep Bhaaj on retainer to work for them. It isn’t safe for Lavinda to visit the Undercity alone; she will be escorted by Bhaaj and her Dust Knights.
Why is Lavinda Majda taking such an immense risk? The Skolian government and military has learned that the people who live in the Undercity — Bhaaj’s people — have something they desperately need, certain mental abilities that over the millennia have become concentrated within their genetic make-up by inbreeding. Those abilities are vital to using ancient machines that modern civilization no longer understands, but that are crucial to their survival against their enemies.
So where does The Down Deep fit in? It takes place a few months after the end of The Jigsaw Assassin, but nothing in it relies on anything that happened in Jigsaw.
In terms of the Skolian universe overall, the Dust Knights series takes place earlier in the chronology than the Ruby Dynasty books. For those familiar with the tales of the Ruby Dynasty (The House Of Skolia), the Major Bhaajan stories happen a few years after Roca, the mother of most in the Ruby Dynasty, married her husband from the world Skyfall.
None of the Ruby Dynasty characters appear in the Dust Knights books, at least not yet. The Ruby Pharaoh did appear briefly in one of the Major Bhaajan books, The Bronze Skies, so you never know what might happen. However, nothing in either the Major Bhaajan books or the Dust Knights series require the reader know anything about the Ruby Dynasty. Bhaaj and her Dust Knights would be meeting them for the first time, just like new readers.
Where did you get the idea for The Down Deep?
That’s a tough one to answer. I started writing a summary of the story for my publisher, and that is what came out. I didn’t plan it. It felt right, though, when I put the idea to paper.
And what was it about this story that made you realize it wouldn’t work as the fifth installment of Major Bhaajan Mysteries, but would work as the start of a new series?
I’m going in a different direction with the Dust Knights books. I wanted to tell more about their stories, and I couldn’t do that writing in first person from the view of Major Bhaajan. Also, I wanted to extend the type of puzzles the characters tackle beyond murder mysteries.
The Dust Knights started as a martial arts club Bhaaj set up for kids in the impoverished Undercity. As a six-degree black belt, she has fighting skills they wants to learn. Over the course of the books, the group grows from a few children taking informal classes with Bhaaj to an intensive organization of young adults who protect the Undercity. Hints in the books appear that someday the Dust Knights will become an elite, legendary order of protectors known throughout an interstellar civilization. In the Major Bhaajan Mysteries, however, the Knights are a subplot. It was time for them to get their own books.
The Saga Of The Skolian Empire is a science fiction series, while the Major Bhaajan Mysteries are sci-fi mysteries. What kind of story is The Down Deep and, by extension, the Dust Knights series?
Well, I suppose technically all my books are science fiction adventures. The Major Bhaajan series focuses on mysteries in the classic sense, that is, a PI solving murder whodunits. The Dust Knights novels may sometimes involve such mysteries, but they have a wider range of plots. For example, The Down Deep isn’t a mystery in the traditional sense — but to say it turns out that many, many lives are at stake is an understatement.
In the aforementioned interview about The Vanishing Seas, you said people could start exploring the Saga Of The Skolian Empire series by reading the Major Bhaajan Mysteries novels, that they didn’t have to go all the way back to the first Skolian novel, Primary Inversion. Is the same true for The Deep Down?
The Dust Knights books stand alone. It’s a good place to start reading. The Dust Knights and Major Bhaajan books take place before the books in the Saga Of The Skolian Empire, so it isn’t necessary to read any of those for either series. They are separate series involving different people. The Bhaaj novels and the Saga novels all take place in the Skolian universe, but I write the books all as stand-alone novels so readers can start with any book.
It’s a new entry into the universe! I love when I receive emails from readers who know all the books; it means the world to me. So I’m offering The Down Deep as another entry for them to enjoy.
Given that I write the books as stand-alone novels, I end up giving a bit of the same background in each book. Some of my long-time readers have pointed out that I used similar paragraphs in some books so I could give new readers the same grounding as those familiar with the universe. It’s only in a few places, but still, it can get repetitive. What I’ve looked to do in The Dust Knights is find new or shorter ways to offer that background, to vary the passages from previous books.
So then what is the plan for the Dust Knights series? Obviously, you’re planning on writing more books, but is The Deep Down the first book of a duology or a trilogy, or is this an ongoing series?
The series was proposed as three books. It’s not so much a trilogy as three books set in the Dust Knights universe about their adventures. The Down Deep takes place mostly in the underground civilization called “the aqueducts” where the Knights live.
Book two, which I’m working on right now, is different. It’s about what happens when some of the Knights join the Olympic track & field team for the world Raylicon and become involved with some unexpected complications. The book goes to different planets as the athletes compete, so the setting is markedly different from The Down Deep.
Finally, if someone enjoys The Down Deep, what novel by someone else which features a main character in the same vein as Major Bhaajan would you suggest they check out next?
Well, my readers tell me they often read Lois McMaster Bujold, Anne Leckie, David Weber, and N.K. Jemisin.
