Before I was a writer, I was an avid reader. I got into writing at quite a young age, but it was the stories that I read as a child that influenced me to start to make my own. And at a young age I was already drawn to the fantastical. Sometimes throughout my life I’ve thought that fantasy novels were just my escapism into a world that felt more accepting than the real one I lived in – and that has some truth to it – but even before I felt ostracized for having no social skills and also later in life now that I’m more comfortable (comparatively) in my skin I still love the genre deeply and truly. I read quite a few long running fantasy series when I was a teenager. I read through most of George R. R. Martin’s A song of ice and fire, as well as David Eddings’ Belgariad and sequels. The first fantasy series I got into – but only read a few books from, was the legendary Brian Jacques’ Redwall series. In case you’re not familiar, think of fantasy novels, but all the characters are small animals. I have some of the books and should really read them again to reminisce. I loved Robin Hobb’s books as well as Tolkien’s books. I enjoyed Terry Goodkind and even J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter, although I’d be loath to admit it these days. But one series shaped me more than any of the others combined. It influenced my writing, it pushed me to grow in both language learning and in social skills and it got me to broaden my horizons much more than any other work ever did. And that series was the incredibly long running Riftwar Cycle by Raymond E. Feist.
The Riftwar Cycle – starting with its very first book Magician – tells the story of two boys from a keep on the outskirts of the kingdom, Crydee. Pug is a young orphan who ends up becoming the most powerful sorcerer to ever live and Tomas is his boyhood friend and brother who ends up inheriting the might of the Valheru, the long banished dragon lords of legend. Both boys start from humble beginnings but due to the meddling of the sorcerer Macros end up being incredibly important figures in the lore of Midkemia and other worlds. Their story takes place with a large war as the backdrop. The alien world of Kelewan has opened a rift between the two worlds and is now hellbent on conquering this new kingdom as part of a political game based around honor and rules that are alien to the people on Midkemia. Many incredibly storylines are weaved together in the first three books and if you would believe it, it continues on from there, with Feist still writing books as this post goes live, nearing 50 total published books. As I have been dipping into this series again, rereading the early books and eventually reading the later one-third for the first time, as I fell out of love with reading while the series was ongoing, I realized very quickly how much of my own writing is influenced by these works. So just for funsies, I wanted to look at it from that perspective a little bit.
Before I fully dive into that, I said earlier on this post that it pushed me in my social skills and you might be wondering what I meant with that. Perhaps I looked at the romantic success of Pug and Tomas and learned those same skills for my own. I just needed an ancient dragon lord’s armor to inherit. But no, the reason I think this series helped me grow in that aspect is because back in the day, there was no social media, but there were mailing lists. You could join these mailing lists to talk about topics with other people who signed up. I would come home from school to dozens if not hundreds of emails about the world of the Riftwar Cycle and read them all, amazed that all these other people around the world were just as invested in these stories as I was. I would participate in the discourse until I eventually spoiled a pretty big narrative point without intending to do so – I was young and very, very dumb – and left the emailing list out of embarrassment. But I remember vividly how at the time I was already talking about how influential this series was for my own writing, and I even naively proclaimed to be taking inspiration from specific aspects of the story while talking to these hundreds of strangers.
Anyway, what sort of things in this series influenced my writing the most? Well, for starters, it was during my reading of the Riftwar Cycle that I first realized how much I love long running, in depth stories. A world that feels alive and continuously moving while keeping some mysteries in tact. I love having something that lasts. I have that same mentality when it comes to anime and manga. I love having a thousand chapters of One Piece. Makes sense right, if something is good, you’d want more of it. Now obviously more isn’t always better, but I do like it when things are grand in scale. It’s part of why I’ve always been obsessed with multiple worlds in the same setting. You don’t really see that in The Hesitant Hero and that’s fine, not every idea needs to go into every story, but in my upcoming sevenmillionth attempt at writing a good version of The Necromancer’s Daughter there will be separate worlds, spirit realms and even alien planets. But let’s not get into that, that’s not interesting to anyone. What is interesting is how we get from world to world. For the longest time I was planning to carbon copy a concept from Feist’s work. The hall of worlds. Just a bunch of doors that lead to different worlds. A simple yet fun concept. Someone could master how this realm operates and use it to travel everywhere. I’ve since changed the way this would work in my own worlds significantly, but I still love the idea of a realm between realms that allows skilled arcanists to travel between worlds.
Speaking of skilled arcanists, the character of Fesquera, that is dominant in my Necromancer’s Daughter story, was originally going to be like Macros the Black in the Riftwar Cycle. A powerful mage who is manipulating all sorts of things from the shadows and keeps popping up. Spoiler alert for my future stories, Fesquera is going to be different. For starters, he dies in the very opening scene of the story. I thought it’d be more fun and complex to have people deal with the ramifications of his passing and the confusing web of lore and love he left behind. Also, I started using the name “Fesquera” as my online display name after thinking of the character and have been using it for so long now that it feels weird to make it a prominent character now. I have other mages and sorcerers in my story doing crazy stuff behind the scenes, but nothing to the scale of what Macros does in the Riftwar Cycle. Okay, maybe one character comes close, but that will be at the core of this story later on, so let’s not dwell on that yet. It’s got to be incredibly boring listening to me talk about stories that only exist in my head.
Lastly, the inspiration I took from Feist was that it’s fun to use multiple characters and have their adventures weave in and out of each other. Obviously that’s not a novel concept, many others have done so. But it was in Feist’s work where I first noticed how it happened. It’s again something I forwent (is that word?) (it is, although Google docs disagrees) in The Hesitant Hero, but I want to incorporate it in future works. I already have a Google Docky full of ideas and stories that will take place in that world. The son of a mob boss turned ice cream vendor in a desert oasis, the young attendant of the Lady Dessa who quickly gets caught up in the chaos of her court, a beggar woman who hears the voice of an arcanist of ages past and slowly starts to wonder how trustworthy he is. And of course a young woman with fox features who finds out much of her heritage which just gives her more questions she wants to answer. All this and more to come when I finally stop slacking off and write the story. But at least I promise that I’m genuinely hard at work turning the world that it all is going to take place into something more concrete. I’m working out continents, history and deities, and it’s taking form. I’ve ranted for long enough. I took a break from anime posts this week and couldn’t find the inspiration to get enough words on paper for the day, so I apologize for just vomiting my thoughts onto paper. If you take away one thing from this post, it’s that it really should be a high priority for you to at the very least check out the first book Magician by Raymond E. Feist. It is the start of an epic saga, but it can certainly stand on its own as well. Thanks for reading.
Opal Kaharis 