There is, after all, the possibility of future volumes. Though the rise of the sun worshippers and the fading of the old empires seems fairly final, the survival of an enclave of the old civilisation on the southern isle and the very idea that we have reached a period of interregnum like the one where the series began allows fertile ground for future growth when the stories are there.
Because, as I said, there is something cyclical here in the series as well as in the world of the Inda within. At the beginning, with book one, the empire had changed utterly following the demise of a mad emperor, and the lord Avitus had risen to power with his vicious megalomania. Something very similar has now happened. One could almost go from this book back into Interregnum. And perhaps there is room to expand one day on the next stage of civilisation, which would be the empire under its new faith, something like moving from writing about pagan Rome to early medieval Christian Byzantium.
But for now the series is finished, though I am far from done with other tales.
I am hoping not to have offended any group with this story. It is in the very nature of writing historical fiction to risk giving offence to someone, and this plot I know has run rather close to the edge in some respects. I have created a very stylised view of medieval China in my Jade Empire, and my western empire is based upon ancient Rome, so will offend only those long in their grave. The Inda are clearly based loosely upon later medieval India, though drawing on elements from the entire spectrum of the history of that subcontinent. I hope that I have done them justice in style, and with hints of a very ancient and civilised culture. And then there are the Faithful. The followers of the sun. I suspect there will be a number of people who automatically assume this to be an analogy of the rise of Islam, perhaps identifying the Sizhad with Mohammed. I acknowledge that there are elements of that here. But there are also elements of the rise of Christianity, of the blossoming of the worship of Elagabalus, Sol Invictus, Mithras and Helios in the ancient world, and even of the rise of a number of pre-Abrahamic Persian cultures. The Faithful are something of a composite and, though in this tale they are the villains of the piece, I hope that in the brief flashes I have portrayed him, the whole reason for the Sizhad’s zealotry is rather sad and sympathetic.
There is, of course, no correlation between the events of this book and any historic campaign. Where with Insurgency I extrapolated on the potential of the Huns or Mongols against the west, and in Invasion I built upon the Roman invasion of Britain, this one is a story born of pure imagination. If it has any root it is in the question that often floats into my head of ‘what would have happened if Rome had come into conflict with China?’, they being two of the world’s greatest ancient powers.
The geography of this book is fairly clearly based upon the Indian subcontinent, with the Isle of the Dead being Sri Lanka (former Ceylon) at the southern tip. There is something indefinably different about that island compared to the rest of India, and that is part of what led me to placing my necessary place of refuge there. The idea of a people who disappeared is not new. Even ignoring the probably fictional Atlantis, the colony of Roanoke, the Kingdom of Aksum and perhaps the Pueblo peoples like the Anasazi were all thriving centres that disappeared under either mysterious, or more likely violent, circumstances.
My land of ghosts is also something of a nod to the haunted land of Maragor in the late, great David Eddings’s Belgariad.
I hope you’ve enjoyed the book. I shall be moving onto fresh and exciting ground next, with a whole new historical series in a whole new era.
For now, though, adios. Until the next cycle…
Simon Turney, July 2017
First published in the United Kingdom in 2017 by Canelo
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Copyright © S.J.A. Turney, 2017
The moral right of S.J.A. Turney to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781911591658
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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