With The Teeth Of Dawn (hardcover, Kindle, audiobook), author Marina Lostetter is concluding the epic fantasy with “a dash of horror” trilogy The Five Penalties that she launched in 2021 with The Helm Of Midnight and continued two years later with The Cage Of Dark Hours.
In the following email interview, Lostetter discusses what inspired and influenced this series and this final installment.
For people who didn’t read the first two installments, The Helm Of Midnight and The Cage Of Dark Hours, or the interviews we did about them [which you can read by clicking here and here, respectfully], what is The Five Penalties trilogy about, and when and where is this story set?
The Five Penalties in an epic fantasy trilogy full of twists, subterfuge, evolving magics, and dogged characters. It’s set in a valley called Arkensyre, ruled by five city-states, and sealed off from the outside wastelands by a magical barrier erected by the five gods: Time, Nature, Emotion, Knowledge, and the Unknown.
The trilogy starts with a serial killer. Someone is using the enchanted death mask of the notorious mass-murderer Louis Charbon to bring his gruesome techniques back from the grave. But for Krona Hirvath, a Regulator who investigates crimes involving enchantments, this one case spirals out into a world-up-ending deep dive into forbidden magic, hidden history, and celestial awakenings.
Throughout, I explore the themes of bodily autonomy, family, and the violence inherent in high-authority.
And then for people who have read The Helm Of Midnight and The Cage Of Dark Hours, and thus can ignore me writing SPOILER ALERT, what happens in The Teeth Of Dawn, and when and where does it take place in relation to Hours?
Three years have passed for Krona and company since the end of Cage. They’ve lost their guide, Hintosep, but some of her secreted-away memories remain with the boy once known as Thalo Child. The Valley is in turmoil, the city-states are at war. Magic and Mayhem ebb and flow all around Krona. She’s on the trail of the gods, and seeks to wake them in hopes they’ll help fight against the Savior’s rule, and, perhaps, bring someone she loves back to life. But, as we all know, you should be careful what you wish for.
This is ultimately where myth and reality collide. Krona’s been told so many lies about how magic and the Valley function, and in Teeth she tries to break through all of the manipulation in order to set herself and her loved ones free.
When in the process of writing The Helm Of Midnight and The Cage Of Dark Hours did you come up with the plot for The Teeth Of Dawn, and what inspired it?
I’ve had the basics in mind since before completing the final draft of Helm, but there are some specifics that didn’t manifest until much later. For instance, this book was titled The Teeth Of Dawn before I had any idea what the Teeth were or did. A helm plays a big part in book one. The Cage is central to book two. I knew the Teeth had to be literal and pivotal. Often, an official title is one of the last things a book gets. For me, I had a couple of years to try to figure out exactly what this title would mean. In a way, I used the title as a prompt.
And what was it about this story that made you realize it needed to be told in three parts as opposed to one or, more obviously, five?
While I did at one point toy with making it five books, it’s really a story with a three-act revelation for Krona and for the world she lives in. Krona also goes through (trying to avoid spoilers, ahhhhh!) a three-act physical transformation across the trilogy.
I like to think of the world in The Five Penalties like a playhouse. In the first book, we get to watch the characters in their environment, while they’re unaware they’re on a stage. In book two, they become cognizant of the fact that things are not as they seem, and that their Valley is really a theater. In book three I let the characters out of the playhouse entirely and onto the streets of the “real world.” I pull back the curtain of lies for both the characters and the audience. We get to see the valley of Arkensyre for what it really is.
The Helm Of Midnight and The Cage Of Dark Hours were epic fantasy novels that, as you said in the interview about Midnight, have “a dash of horror.” And I assume The Teeth Of Dawn does as well. But how scary are these stories? And why was this the right amount of scariness?
I’m a big fan of existential horror and body horror, and both play important parts in Teeth. The goal with these horror elements isn’t to scare, exactly. I’m aiming for “sublime terror” more so than jump-scare style thrills (which can be awesome in their own right, don’t get me wrong). There’s something innately seductive and fun to me about toying with a sense of the sublime. The characters are facing forces beyond their initial comprehension, concepts that break their sense of reality and their understanding of their own bodies, which can all be terrifying and fascinating at the same time.
So, aside from being fantasy stories with “a dash of horror,” are there any other genres at work in The Teeth Of Dawn? Maybe ones not present in The Helm Of Midnight or The Cage Of Dark Hours.
It’s still primarily dark epic fantasy, though I think from chapter one in Teeth it’ll be clear we’re not in Kansas anymore, so to speak. Book three definitely takes a new turn, in that we are still largely in the present with Krona and company, tracking down the gods, but there’s also a storyline that takes place “in a time and place unknown.” And that unknown place might give off a very different genre vibe.
The Teeth Of Dawn is obviously not your first novel. Is there anything — literary or otherwise — that had a big influence on The Teeth Of Dawn but not on anything else you’ve written, and especially not The Helm Of Midnight or The Cage Of Dark Hours?
I feel like both [the videos games] Control and Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla had their hooks in my brain for Teeth specifically. The Oldest House [in Control] informed some of the architecture that appears for the first time in Teeth, and there are certain puzzle aspects to the Jotunheim region in Valhalla that made me rethink how to portray certain aspects of newly-discovered magic.
As we’ve been discussing, The Teeth Of Dawn concludes The Five Penalties trilogy. Some people, myself included, have held off reading The Helm Of Midnight and The Cage Of Dark Hours so they can read this trilogy in rapid succession. But now that they’re all out, is there any reason why we shouldn’t read them back-to-back?
No, please do! I think some of the revelations might be far more effective when reached in rapid succession. The openings of both Cage and Teeth are meant to be immediate contrasts to the endings of the previous book.
Some people who write trilogies will later expand upon them with prequels or sequel stories. Are you planning to do this with The Five Penalties, or is this it, The Teeth Of Dawn ends it all, leave me alone Paul!
This is the end for the moment. I do have an idea for a sequel story — especially since I leave the characters with expanded horizons — but for now I am quite happy with how I’ve wrapped up my time in Arkensyre.
So, is there anything else a prospective reader might need to know about The Teeth Of Dawn and The Five Penalties trilogy?
It’s very much a story about how gods and monsters are never what they seem. And though it deals with a lot of dark topics, it’s ultimately about the light we reach for and the people we reach for when things seem dire.
Finally, if someone enjoys The Teeth Of Dawn and The Five Penalties trilogy, which of your other novels would you suggest they read next?
I suggest fans of the trilogy try Activation Degradation next. Though it’s a sci-fi novel rather than fantasy, it has a lot of similar twisty world building, is action / adventure, and focuses on a found family of space pirates.
