The Book Plank

The Lady by K.V. Johansen, Marakand #2 In the days of the first kings in the North, there were seven devils… Possessed by a ghost who feeds on death, the undying assassin Ahjvar the Leopard has been captured by the Lady of Marakand, enslaved by necromancy to be captain of her Red Masks. His shield-bearer Ghu, a former slave with an uncanny ability to free the captive dead, follows Ahjvar into the war-torn lands of the Duina Catairna to release him, even if that means destroying what is left of Ahj’s tormented soul. Deyandara, the last surviving heir of the Catairnan queen, rides into a land ravaged by disease and war, seeking the allies she abandoned months before, though they have no hope of standing against the army led by the invulnerable Red Masks of Marakand and the divine terror of the Lady. In the city of Marakand, former enemies ally and old friends seek one another’s deaths as loyalists of the entombed gods Gurhan and Ilbialla raise a revolt, spearheaded by the ...

Author interview with K.V. Johansen Author bio: Mostly, I write fantasy (epic fantasy ... character-driven epic fantasy ... with shapeshifters, demons, gods, and ... Moth, around whom even the gods get a bit nervous). These days, I largely write for adults, though I've written many children's and YA fantasy novels and some children's science fiction, as well as picture books, plus I've been known to perpetrate literary criticism. 2014 is going to be a busy year. Marakand , a two-volume epic fantasy set in the same world as Blackdog , comes out from Pyr, The Leopard in June and The Lady in the autumn. My main scholarly interests are ancient and medieval history and languages, and the history of children's fantasy literature. What else can I say? My life is unexciting. I live with a wicked white husky-mix dog and aspire to an arboretum of my own.   ---------------------------------------------------------------- Hi Krista, welcome over to...

The Leopard and The Lady : What has shaped Marakand ’s epic fantasy? by KV. Johansen The Book Plank asked me to write about epic fantasy influences and why I used them the way I did in my story. I don’t really think about ‘whys’ much when I’m working. I write, first of all, for myself, and when I write fantasy I write what I like best to read. I like protagonists who are on the edges of humanity, one way or another: Ahjvar, cursed with immortality, possessed by a savage and soul-hungry ghost; Ghu, a deep well of calm who is a mystery even to Ahjvar; Moth, the devil forced to serve her enemies the Old Great Gods; the Blackdog, Holla-Sayan, who was possessed by a goddess’s guardian dog-spirit but became something else along the way and now finds himself again caught up in a war not his own; Mikki, the half-demon who is bear by day and man by night and has become the partner and the stability of the villain of his childhood stories . . . . I like worlds that are vast and deep in ...

The Leopard by K.V. Johansen, Marakand #1 In the days of the first kings in the North, there were seven devils… Ahjvar, the assassin known as the Leopard, wants only to die, to end the curse that binds him to a life of horror. Although he has no reason to trust the goddess Catairanach or her messenger Deyandara, fugitive heir to a murdered tribal queen, desperation leads him to accept her bargain: if he kills the mad prophet known as the Voice of Marakand, Catairanach will free him of his curse. Accompanying him on his mission is the one person he has let close to him in a lifetime of death, a runaway slave named Ghu. Ahj knows Ghu is far from the half-wit others think him, but in Marakand, the great city where the caravan roads of east and west meet, both will need to face the deepest secrets of their souls, if either is to survive the undying enemies who hunt them and find a way through the darkness that damns the Leopard. To Marakand, too, come a Northron wanderer and...