Ian C. Esslemont Interview

Here we have my very first interview with an author, and I was lucky enough to get Ian C. Esslemont to agree to this.  So thank you ICE, and please forgive my unpolished interview technique.

TCD:    Your latest novel Dancer’s Lament (Path to Ascendancy Book 1) (currently available in the UK, and forthcoming in the US) is the first book of a prequel trilogy set in the Malazan world.  So, if you can forgive the bluntness, I wanted to ask a few questions about it and thought we would get some of the straightforward ones out of the way.  So what is Dancer’s Lament about?

ICE:    Firstly, many thanks for the opportunity to talk about the Malazan books. One of my main hopes for Dancer’s Lament is that any general fantasy reader who has previously never read anything from Steve or I can pick up the book and enjoy it, and perhaps become interested in the wider world portrayed.

For that reason what I will say about it is that it’s about character.  It is really, at its centre, a character(s) study – what choices they make and what the consequences are of those choices; how seemingly innocuous moves can have huge consequences later in life; and further, how the traditional history of “great events” and “great men and women” is to my mind completely misleading.

I will also say that I am very leery of the “prequel” word.  Don’t like it.  I see this as a new series in the Malaz world – the Path to Ascension – that (could) prove as long as it need be to tell its tale.

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