With The Dragon In Winter (paperback, Kindle, audiobook), author Jonathan Maberry is bringing his Kagen The Damned series to an end…
Well, sort of. As he explains in the following email interview, while Winter concludes this trilogy of swashbuckling fantasy novels, this is not the last adventure for Kagen Vale.
For people who haven’t read the first two books, Kagen The Damned and Son Of The Poison Rose, who is Kagen Vale, what do they do, what is this series about, and what kind of a world are these novels set in?
When we first meet Kagen Vale, he’s captain of the palace guards, specifically charged with overseeing the protection of the children of the Empress Of The Silver Empire. He wakes from a hard night of carousing and drinking to find the empire in flames and the children murdered. This tragedy angers the gods, who turn their backs on him, essentially damning him for all time. Kagen then goes half-mad (or maybe a bit more than halfway) and is nearly destroyed by despair. But then he gets his rage and heartbreak under control and begins assembling a team of very tough rebels to fight back against the Witch-King of Hakkia and his armies. He discovers that the Witch-King has managed to bring magic back into the world after the Silver Empresses had driven it out a thousand years ago. This begins a steady change in the fabric of reality, inviting gods, monsters, strange beings, and races of faerie folks back into this plane of existence. Kagen and his friends are caught up in an unfolding confrontation between the forces of light and darkness.
In Kagen The Damned, Kagen and his two closest allies — a tough female mercenary names Filia and a professional spy and thief, Tuke — attempt to assassinate the Witch-King. We also follow storylines dealing with two young women fleeing the conquest and who may hold the key to drawing powerful supernatural forces into the battle. At the same time, the Witch-King is laying the groundwork to bring his god, Hastur, into our reality — which would insure the total subjugation of all mankind. There is also a cabal of lords and scholars who were key players in the Silver Empire and who are building a coalition to support Kagen’s mad and daring plans.
In the second book, Son Of The Poison Rose, the war expands. Kagen and his friends hire a rowdy and dangerous group of mercenaries known as the Bloody Bastards. The nations that made up the old Silver Empire wrestle with the politics of supporting the Witch-King or rising in rebellion. And a wise and very manipulative woman, Mother Frey, sends Kagen on a suicide mission to find ancient books of magic that might help in the war. But the Witch-King is also gathering allies, including undead monsters, monks from bizarre orders, devious immortals, indestructible razor-knights, and more to try and stop Kagen.
Kagen’s world is our world, but fifty thousand years from now, after some unimaginable catastrophe has destroyed civilization as we know it. Our culture isn’t even a distant memory, though strange artifacts from our version of Earth become key elements on both sides of the magical conflict that unfolds around Kagen and the Witch-King.
And then for people who have read those books, and can thus ignore me writing SPOILER ALERT, what is The Dragon In Winter about, and when does it take place in relation to Son Of The Poison Rose?
The Dragon In Winter picks up several months after the bloody battle at the end of Son Of The Poison Rose. The Witch-King is at the height of his power and has gathered new allies to his campaign of conquest — among them are an army of vampire knights, legions of foreign mercenaries, nightmare animals created in the Witch-Kings appalling breeding farms, and deadly religious cults. Sent by Mother Frey, Kagen’s twin brothers, Jheklan and Faulker, have journeyed deep into the mysterious frozen north to find Fabeldyr, the last dragon left on Earth, whose tears and blood are the basis for all magic. But the Witch-King has tortured the dragon nearly to death, and her cries of despair are heard by the god of her kind, Vathnya, who races across the gulfs of space with vengeance burning in his heart.
The great war between Kagen’s army and the forces of the Witch-king plays spans the continent, with Filia and Tuke as generals of the field troops; Maralina going to war against the immortal vampire who condemned her to eternity in her tower; sea battles against pirate fleets; the Twins trying to rescue the dying dragon, and Kagen’s Bloody Bastards following him into the heart of the Witch-king’s stronghold.
Kagen The Damned and Son Of The Poison Rose were epic swashbuckling fantasy tales. Is it safe to assume The Dragon In Winter is as well?
Yeah, The Dragon In Winter has all the action, weirdness, fun, magic, politics, romance, passion, and plenty of devious plot twists. The series also includes elements of cosmic horror, drawn from the foundational writings of Robert W. Chambers [The King In Yellow] and H. P. Lovecraft.
There is also a romance at the heart of the trilogy, as Kagen meets Maralina, a beautiful, tragic, and ancient half-vampire princess of the faerie folk who has been trapped in a tower for thousands of years. She is drawn to his power and his heartbreak, and he sees in her a timeless grace, power, and undying beauty. This love affair is doomed, though, because she will live forever, and he is only a mortal man.
I also had fun making Kagen a different kind of hero. He’s a civilized man pushed out of every aspect of his comfort zone. Kagen is a skilled warrior who fights with matched daggers inherited from his mother, The Poison Rose, who was the deadliest knife-fighter of her era. I drew on my own background of sixty years in the martial arts to craft fight scenes that are dynamic, unusual, brutal, sophisticated, and absolutely accurate. We also get to see Kagen evolve from the somewhat coddled city dweller he was on page one of the first book, and into a seasoned, wise, cynical, yet optimistic warrior and general that the world needs to fight this kind of war.
Obviously, The Dragon In Winter is not your first novel. Are there any writers, or stories, that had a big influence on The Dragon In Winter, but not on anything else you’ve written, and especially not Kagen The Damned and Son Of The Poison Rose?
I’ve been a fan of sword & sorcery fiction since I was a kid. The very first book I ever bought was Conan The Wanderer, one of the Lancer Books series published in the 1960s. I devoured all of Robert E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, Michael Moorcock, and other landmark writers of that genre. I’ve also kept up with the changes in the genre, as sword & sorcery expanded outward into epic fantasy and high fantasy.
Joe Abercrombe is also an influence. Probably the strongest influence on the Kagen series, though, are the brilliant, dark, and nuanced short stories and novels by the late and much missed Karel Edward Wagner. His Kane character would feel right at home in the court of the Witch-King. Wagner’s character was, at best, morally gray, serving sometimes as the hero and sometimes as the villain of his own tales. Absolutely brilliant stuff.
How about such non-literary influences as movies, TV shows, or games? Did any of those things have a big influence on The Dragon In Winter?
I’m not much of a gamer, though I have written fantasy stories set in the worlds of Diablo IV and World Of Warcraft. And, The Lord Of The Rings books and movies are, inarguably, strong influencers on all of us who write fantasy.
For me, although I enjoy George R.R. Martin’s A Song Of Fire And Ice, they are not personal influences. However, several female writers have said, in one way or another, that Kagen The Damned is Game Of Throes without the misogyny. This is not a slight on George’s work…simply a different direction I took in my own.
And how about your dog, Rosie? What influence did Rosie have on The Dragon In Winter?
Rosie, who is a 14-pound middle-aged rescue dog (and arguably the cutest snuggle-bug on four legs) would not be comfortable in the world of Kagen. There is a combat dog in the series, though. Filia has a dog named Horse (and also a horse named Dog), and I based much of his personality on my very first dog, Spooker, who was a Doberman-Mastiff mixed who was born on Halloween and was given to me by my grandmother (my all-time favorite human being) when I was five. Spooker was quirky, funny, very smart, and enormous (225 pounds). Great dog and a great friend. Rosie is about the size of Spooker’s foot. That said, I am a dog lover and often include them in my books.
Rosie
Now, The Dragon In Winter is not just the third novel of the Kagen The Damned series, it’s also the last. Was that always the plan, was this always going to be a trilogy, or did something happen while writing Winter that made you think this would be a good place to stop?
When I first cooked up the idea for the Kagen books, I envisioned an ongoing series. The publisher recommended retooling it as a trilogy, and I can see the logic. Fantasy lends itself to trilogies, and it allows for a fairly tidy wrap to a complex storyline, while at the same time leaving things open for more stories to tell. Joe Abercrombe does this very nicely with his First Law books.
I do have, however, plans for future Kagen stories…perhaps even another trilogy. There’s a bit of a teaser for that in The Dragon in Winter, hinting at a possible invasion by the Serpent Men living from the hollow Earth.
I’ve also written a number of Kagen short stories and novelettes, and will likely keep doing so. I love the character and the world and see no reason at all to stop revisiting it. My head is full of stories wanting to be told.
Now, along with The Dragon In Winter, you also recently released another novel, a very different novel, called NecroTek. We did a deep dive on it when it came out a few months ago, but real quick, what is NecroTek about, and when and where is it set?
NecroTek is the first of what is likely to be an ongoing series of deep space cosmic horror.
Like the Kagen books, NecroTek draws on elements from Lovecraft’s cosmic horror framework established in short stories and novels published in the 1920s and ’30s. And, it’s interesting to note that while he was still writing those stories about Cthulhu and the various races of godlike monsters — The Elder Things, The Great Old Ones, The Outer Gods, etc. — Lovecraft invited all of his writer colleagues to freely use those characters and set-ups.
The concept of NecroTek is that during an experiment to try and prove the effectiveness of matter teleportation, instead of a test capsule of instruments from one side of Jupiter’s orbit to the other, it instead accidentally transports an entire space station to the far side of the Milky Way, 54,000 light years away. They learn, to their horror, that creatures like Cthulhu came to Earth not to conquer, but because they were terrified of what was out there, and now we’re out there. In the ensuing battle, a group of young star pilots are killed in wild space battles, but their ghosts are resurrected using a combination of necromancy and alien technology (hence Necro/Tek) to pilot ancient spacecraft capable of changing into gigantic combat robots. The story explores the philosophy of world religion in collision with cosmic truths, heroism, the collision of science and magic, and the nature of what it means to be human.
As you said, NecroTek is the first book in an ongoing series, with a second book already in the works.
Cold War is the second in the NecroTek series, and I have a third already in the works. We have no immediate plans to end that series.
Can you tell us anything about Cold War?
Cold War is both a prequel and sequel to NecroTek, beginning a few years earlier and in Antarctica and then expanding outward to become part of the war against the Outer Gods on the far side of the galaxy. I had some fun giving nods to a variety of works set on the frozen continent, including Edgar Allen Poe’s The Narrative Of Arthur Gordon Pym, Jules Verne’s An Antarctic Mystery, H.P. Lovecraft’s At The Mountains Of Madness, and John W. Campbell’s Who Goes There (which was the basis for The Thing). I wrote forewords to new editions of the Poe and Verne books a couple of years ago, and have been longtime fans of all of these influential works.
NecroTek, as I mentioned, is a very different from The Dragon In Winter. How do you think writing such different stories impacts how you write each of them?
I have a weird but useful brain in that I can switch gears pretty quickly without burning out my mental clutch. The only connective tissue between The Dragon In Winter and NecroTek is the influence of H.P. Lovecraft and Robert W. Chambers. Even though both books are in the extended world of cosmic horror, they do not in any way influence or depend upon one another. The same goes with Lovecraftian elements that appeared in one of my Joe Ledger thrillers, Kill Switch. I love the idea of a larger and darker universe populated by gods and monsters of all kinds.
You could say that I’m a fan of cosmic horror both personally (as a fan) and professionally. I edit Weird Tales Magazine, which is the pulp mag in which most of Lovecraft’s stories were published. Weird Tales is now in it’s 101st year.
When I switch from one genre to another, I seldom scavenge my own works for influences, but instead rely on the large body of strange literature I read. Poetry is a massive influence on the Kagen stories, with deliberate nods to Alfred Lord Tennyson’s The Lady Of Shallot, John Keats’ La Belle Dame sans Merci, William Butler Yeats’ The Stolen Child, Christina Rosetti’s Goblin Market, Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queen, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Erlkönig; as well as William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest.
If there are thematic similarities of any kind between The Dragon In Winter and NecroTek, it’s in how I draw my characters. Empathy plays a big role, because it can be both a liability and a superpower. Explorations of courage and how one defines him or herself as human play large roles as well.
Going back to The Dragon In Winter, earlier I asked if it was influenced by any movies, TV shows, or games. But to flip things around, do you think Winter and the Kagen The Damned series could work as a series of movies, a show, or a game?
I’m more a TV guy than anything else, and for the simply reason of character development. Much as I love films, TV series allows for deeper explorations of characters, relationships, situational reactions, and overall story development.
That said, I can easily see the Kagen novels as a video game or role-playing game, with the latter likely being more fun.
So, if someone wanted to adapt the Kagen The Damned series into a TV show, who would you want them to cast as Kagen, the Witch-king, and other main characters?
I dream cast everything I write. When creating Kagen, I had Karl Urban [The Boys] in mind for Kagen; and Tom Hiddleston [Loki] in mind for the Witch-King. Winston Duke [Black Panther] or Aldis Hodge [Leverage] would be perfect for Tuke; and either Felicity Jones [Star Wars: Rogue One] or Vanessa Kirby [The Crown] as Filia. For Maralina, I had Eva Green [Penny Dreadful] in mind from day one.
Each of these performers looks right, but more importantly I’ve seen enough of their work to believe they can handle the emotional range, the fantasy structure, and the action in ways that are both satisfying and believable.
So, is there anything else someone might need to know about The Dragon In Winter or the Kagen The Damned series?
The Dragon In Winter is very accessible. Yes, there’s horror and action and violence, but there is also empathy, compassion, humanity, a lot of humor, and a strong sense of hope — even in its darkest moments.
Finally, if someone enjoys The Dragon In Winter, which of your other novels would you suggest they read next?
Many fans of the Kagen books have said that it made them want to read my Joe Ledger thrillers. Despite being in wildly different genres, there are similarities in the way I use ensemble casts, and both feature lead characters who are emotionally / psychologically compromised. The books deal with PTSD in its various forms, and both series have that thread of hope…a belief that even in the darkest and most overwhelming moments there is a change that the good guys will prevail.
