Jaine Fenn is joining us today with her conclusion to the Shadowlands duology, Broken Shadow. Here’s the publisher’s description:
The sky is falling, and only one dilettante scientist can save the world, in the startling finale of the Shadowlands duology
Rhia Harlyn risks death for science. Accused of heresy for promoting an unorthodox cosmology, she must defend herself, her work and her House alone. If only she could rely on her feckless brother Etyan, transformed through the combination of an occult scientist’s experiments and the harsh rays of the skyland sun. But she knows she cannot.
When Dej, Etyan’s half-alien lover, finally uncovers Etyan’s dark secret she runs off into the perilous skyland. She is looking for peace in a world that has rejected her; what she discovers instead will change everyone’s lives.
Meanwhile, overhead, the very stars themselves are shifting. Rhia is about to find herself proved disastrously right…
What’s Jaine’s favorite bit?
JAINE FENN
It probably comes as no surprise that I found it hard to pick a favourite bit from my latest book. Most authors have several – ideally many – moments they love in their novels; we spend a lot of time shaping these stories, so if we aren’t loving what we do – at least some of the time – then that’s a sad state of affairs.
In this case, there is also a higher-than-average risk of spoilers. Broken Shadow is the second of two books in a science fantasy duology and although I’ve done my best to make it stand alone, there are certain plot-threads set up in the first Shadowlands book, Hidden Sun, which pay off here.
My first choice favourite bit would probably be when Rhia, my enquiring and unorthodox protagonist, wakes up about two thirds of the way through the book to find that overnight the world has… yeah, that’s a massive spoiler, so whilst I loved writing that scene of realisation and reaction feeding into action only she would take, I can’t really share it here.
The bits I love most in Broken Shadow most are character moments – again, probably true for most authors – when these people we’ve spent so much time with implement their cunning plan or find out what’s really go on or pull off the seemingly impossible. And if I have to pick a non-spoilery favourite bit for Rhia it would be her heresy trial.
In Hidden Sun, Rhia discovered something about the universe that the reader already knows to be true but which no one else in her world believes. Now, the Church is challenging her over it.
In writing Rhia’s trial I took a lot from the real world. Firstly, as straight plunder: I shamelessly copied details from the real-life trial of Galileo, though I upped the stakes for Rhia. Rather than house arrest and having her book banned, she faces a brutal execution and the suppression of her ideas before they’ve even been made public. Secondly, explorations of what truth is versus what people choose to believe have been at the forefront of my mind for a while. They say you can date any SFF book to within a decade regardless of when and where it is set and this book is definitely a product of a ‘post-truth’ world.
Rhia values knowledge above else, and wants to believe that if you can prove a truth, it will be accepted. This refreshing if somewhat naïve view already puts her in a minority, as this exchange early on shows:
“Calculations produce proofs that cannot be argued with!”
Francin’s response was gentle, “Or, sadly, understood. Not by most people anyway.”
At her trial she rests her defense on trying to prove her theory, whilst also demonstrating that it doesn’t challenge the extant religious teachings. And she’s right of course. However, I took a perverse pleasure in sharing her slowly dawning realisation that too many people see ‘truth’ not as a provable concept with objective reality but merely as a tool to further their own ends. The irony for Rhia is that if her theory is ruled not to be ‘true’ then it can hardly be considered heretical, an argument which unfortunately only works when dealing with rational people.
Having finally been forced to acknowledge the truth about ‘the truth’, and to face the consequences of daring to challenge it, for Rhia to then wake up and find that the world has…done what it has done…well, that goes beyond irony.
LINKS:
Broken Shadow Universal Book Link
BIO:
Jaine Fenn studied linguistics and astronomy before becoming a full time writer. Her first book, Principles of Angels, started the Hidden Empire series of character-driven space opera novels. She won the British Science Fiction Association’s Shorter Fiction Award in 2016 for Hidden Empire, and now divides her time between original fiction, teaching creative writing, and writing for tabletop and video games. She lives in Devon.
