by Paul E. Horsman
The night before his Coming-of-Age, Ghyll and his two friends escaped their castle on a clandestine hunt that would forever change their lives. They returned just in time to see their island castle destroyed by strange warriors from a dragonboat and flocks of burning birds.
Ghyll’s birthday turned into a nightmare as they fled into the night. This begins an epic journey to find out who is trying to kill them… and most importantly, why? Fortunately, they can count on colorful new friends to assist, including a sometimes overly enthusiastic fire mage, an inexperienced paladin and a female beastmaster who is a ferocious mountain lion. In a world filled with jealous priests, corrupt magistrates, bored aristocrats and power-hungry magicians, they try to survive dark wizards, murderous golems, and fire bird attacks. It soon becomes apparent that not one but several assassins are after them. Who are these members of an obscure, long-forgotten organization?
And whose cold hand reaches across the boundaries of space and time to threaten weakened Rhidauna?
While the time is running the friends undertake a quest that takes them to a large part of Rhidauna. Following them, the reader is carried along on an exciting journey through a colorful world, whose people, culture and atmosphere are described with great attention to detail without the story losing momentum.
Experience the quest! Grab your best travel clothes, strongest backpack and sharpest sword … or failing that, take an easy chair, a drink and this exciting book.
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Thanks to author Paul Horsman for stopping by to give us this interview:
Since you write sci fi/fantasy, are there any books in that genre that particularly influenced you?
My interest in F&SF dated from the middle Sixties. I started with Science Fiction. I read all the greats, but those whose work influenced me most, were Jack Vance, a man with a brilliant fantasy; Frank Herbert, for the scope of his work; Isaac Asimov. André Norton, Michael Moorcock, and many more. Then I switched over to Fantasy. David Eddings, Raymond Feist, Anne McCaffrey, are some of the names that influenced me. In addition I must mention the Brother Cadfael works of Ellis Peters, for the authenticity of her medieval characters. And OK, Tolkien.But I’m not into his elves and orcs at all.
What do you like best about your main character, Ghyll?
Difficult to say. At the beginning of the adventure, Ghyll is a lad with a lot of growing up to do. He is perfectly honest, a bit too trusting; with a strong sense of what is right. He is also impatient, emotional, and leans too much on Olle, his foster brother with whom he had grown up. He is brought up in seclusion, but he isn’t a farmboy-made-king at all. His late uncle, who had raised him from babyhood, was not the simple baron Ghyll had believed. Jadron Halwyrd was a past Marshall of the Kingdom, close friend of the last two kings, etc. So Ghyll got the same education he would have had as a prince in the Royal palace.
At the start, he is an open, likeable boy. I hope I can keep him that way.
You’ve said you’re often reluctant to kill off characters in your books, and it is in fact a rarity in your writing. Why is that?
There are writers who make it almost a sport to have most of their main characters die. To show the uncertainty of life, to add some sort of realism, etc. Well, that is not my style. I want my readers to be glad that the characters they invested in survive in the end. That they managed to conquer the trials fate throws at them.
Up to now (writing book 4) I had to kill two main characters. One I did with a bleeding heart, the other because her staying alive would have turned the story into the wrong direction.
Mostly, when a character has played their role, I let them retire. After all, you never know when you need them again.
What, if anything, influenced your creation of the setting of this book? Any place that you’ve been that impacted how this world was drawn?
The world of Rhidauna is a part, is based on a range of cultures. To begin with, old European ones. The land of Rhidauna itself is a mixture of Dutch and German landscapes. After all, I live in a land full of castles (the Netherlands alone count some 1300 castles), medieval houses, churches, etc.
The Yanthe River, where the story starts, is like the Rhine with its burgs, villages and mountains. The neighboring country of Opit is more like ancient North Africa, part desert, part fruitful lands. The people there still have tribal leanings, with their own chiefs, although Opit is a centralized kingdom. Torril’s homeland the Nhael is comparable with the Shetland Isles, or, so you wish, Newfoundland. Only with much more snow. Hardy people, who used to be pirates but are now fishing seadrakes. Vavaun is a mountain duchy in the style of the old Balkan countries.
Other countries (introduced in book 2, Zihaen) have Mongolian steppes, with a nomad culture; trader princes with a Hungarian background; the Ordelanden, based on the militant knightly orders, etc.
Some of the countries I’ve visited, but most of them I’ve read about, gathered photos, and relevant information to build up a convincing picture.
What would you say is the overarching theme of THE SHADOW OF REVENAUNT?
Very old-fashioned: Good Overcomes Evil.
There is a tendency in modern Fantasy to write darkly; everybody does bad deeds and there is little hope of a better life. But what is life without hope? What is the use of the book, of the struggle, if in the end everyone is either dead or down?
As an author, what is your favorite part about writing a book?
The start, when all the world is open to you and all ideas are possible. (And to be honest, I do like that final moment I can add the printed book to the others in my bookcase, too.)
Have you found any differences between American audiences and those in the Netherlands?
I have been told there are differences. The USA as a whole is said to be more conservative than we Dutch are, so I was afraid, in all innocence, to offend readers. But up to now, I haven’t had any negative reactions. I think both audiences are great people and I’m happy to write for them!
About the Author:
Paul E (Erik) Horsman (1952)
Lives in Roosendaal, The Netherlands.
I was born in the year 1952, in the Dutch town of Bussum, a sleepy, well-to-do place that was home to many artists, musicians, writers and publishers. As my family were neither artists nor well-to-do, we moved when I was nine.
When I was seventeen, I started my career as paperclip counter with a worldwide Dutch producer of baby food. After some months, I was finished counting, and I looked around for something more interesting.
A love of books drove me to work in a small bookstore in Rotterdam. An ancient establishment, since 1837, in an old building just too far away from the city’s modern shopping center. It was a nice job, but there wasn’t any future in it. Still, I left it a licensed bookseller.
In 1972 I had to do my stitch for Queen and Country, and as a bad back tied me to a desk job, I applied for a posting overseas. For the Army, that meant Surinam, then still a member of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and one of the most beautiful. Once you’ve seen the jungle, you will never forget it.
To keep it short, I stayed in business, slowly climbing the ladder, until in 1995 I changed direction. That year I joined a large educational institution, at a school specialized in Dutch language and integration courses for foreigners. That meant immigrants, refugees and international businessmen, an interesting mix. It was great work, on the one side teaching crash courses Dutch to high-powered people (we got a lot of very well-educated refugees) and on the other teaching reading and writing to people who had never ever held a pen before, let alone a computer. To see them growing was a reward in itself.
Unhappily, due to changed legislation the language school closed in mid-2012.
In the meantime, I had started my first book (Rhidauna) in 2009 and it got published by Zilverspoor Publishers just before I got laid off. As my age, five years from retirement, made it nigh on impossible to find something else, I started building a career as an independent author.
SF and Fantasy have fascinated me since my high school days, but apart from some juvenile trash, I never seriously tried to write anything. But after several false starts and associated discouraged intervals, a spark began to grow and mid-2010, the first two parts of Shadow of the Revenaunt were more or less written.
My style is probably a bit old-fashioned, Fantasy as a heroic tale with sympathetic heroes/heroines and black villains, in which good always triumphs in the end.
I don’t use my characters as cannon fodder; they get hurt, but their dying is rare.
One of the other elements in my writing I think important is, that both male and female characters have their own lives and goals. Most of them exist primarily for themselves, not as a prop or a love interest for other MC’s. The only character who did die, was actually a prop and I had him killed just to take that away from my lead MC.
Original Rhidaunan wax tablet
This is the same writing tablet main character Ghyll Hardingraud carried with him on his quest through Rhidauna.
It’s the local equivalent of the iPad, made of wood with a re-usable wax layer. It measures ca 20 cm x 12 cm (when closed). Incl. bronze stylus.
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