Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
5 minutes with Gav Thorpe (03/01/2014)
We talked with Gave Thorpe during the Black Library Live 2014.
He told us about the current trilogy he is working on.
So, the trilogy is called
The Legacy of Caliban.
and the first book is called Ravenwing.
The idea behind the trilogy is that
The Dark Angels discover a conspiracy by the Fallen,
and from book 1 up to the end of book 3
the nature of that conspiracy and the importance of it escalates.
so in book 1, in Ravenwing
we concentrate on Grandmaster Sammael,
who is the commander of the Ravenwing.
They uncover this conspiracy
and then hunt down one of the Fallen.
In the second book, the news of what they found spreads to the rest of the chapter
and bring the Deathwing on.
And also, members of the inner circle
the higher ranks of the Dark Angels,
so that's in book 2, the Master of Sanctity
you have the Ravenwing and the Deathwing fighting together.
And then book 3,
it's called The Unforgiven
and essentialy that's the whole chapter
plus some of the other successives chapters
all of them fighting toward this goal of
quelling this...
this conspiracy, this plot by the Fallen.
We follow sort of handfull of characters throught the three books,
they were introduced in Ravenwing, but also
each book has different principal character
Ravenwing, Sammael is one the principal characters.
in Master of Sanctity, two principal characters are
Asmodai, the Chaplain, and
Grandmaster Sapphon is also another chapter
and they are very different in sort of their approaching style.
And in third book, Asrael, Supreme Grandmaster of the Dark Angels,
the guy in charge of it all
he becomes one of the viewpoint characters as well, so we get to see
the events from sort of the groundup from the Space Marines
and the guys in the Ravenwing and Deathwing
but also from the commanders, and the difference between what they know what's going on...
Did you use the same construction as in the Path of the Eldar trilogy ? Rocusing on a single character per book
No, each book has multiple characters
and its story moves on.
It's not just told from the different perspective.
The narrative action moves on,
but what we see is, I suppose
because of one of the thing with the Dark Angels is
theses layers of secrecy and kind of stories and lies,
we get to see some of the characters as they get peeled away
and then learning more what it is to be a Dark Angel
in the history of the chapter, but also
while they are ignorant and lost, we have these higher levels characters
who do know their history already, and we get to see these two point of views
of what the Commanders and the Chaplain see as the truth
and what the guys who they are lying to think is the truth
so it's nice, we can misdirect the characters without misdiretecting the reader,
but maybe we are doing, maybe i'm doing both.
So that these layers of truth get revealed to the reader while they don't get revealed to the characters.
And it also just kind of allows me
with the action, it's still very action oriented
and fiction because it's 40k
it allows me to vary the action and the battles
throught the series as well.
We concentrate on the Ravenwing, and their bike-mounted, Land speeders and lots of warfare
and then you bring in the Terminators, the Deathwing
and that sort of close-fighting things
and the third one you got all the toys to play with
so the battles, even thought they might be fighting similar antagonist
in each novel, the fighting can be very different as well as
the characters in this action
and they understand how the chapter fights
until the point - like I said - to bring it maybe the successive chapters as well
so you can have hundreds of Space Marines fighting in theses huge battles.
When you started writing Ravenwing, did you already planned on a trilogy ?
Yes, yes that was the way to plan this all, not necessarily in details but that was
the vision for the three books was
that escalation, Ravenwing, Deathwing, Chapter.
I didn't know the details in all the characters stories
I still haven't worked out the third book
I can't even thought about how it ends and how it started, but we will see as the rest goes
Will we be able to see Luther or The Lion in this trilogy ?
No, this is a contempory 40k story
but It won't involve The Lion, I can't necesseraly won't involve Luther
Ravenwing (French) - Gav Thorpe Coming Summer 2014