FAQ on THE EYE OF NIGHT
Warning: Some Plot Spoilers Below
Q: Why is the map upside-down?
A: In the culture portrayed in The Eye of Night, they would never put north at the top of the map. North is associated with the Hidden Goddess, mistress of the depths of the sea and the darkness under the earth. North is the bottom. South is the direction of the Bright Goddess, associated with the sun and sky. South has to be the top. In an ideal world, the map would have been ringed round with pictures of the four gods, each in their proper direction, to illustrate this concept. But I'm not much good at sketching, so you'll just have to imagine it that way. And yes, I admit, the map is hard to follow. Coming from a north-up culture myself, I kept having to hold it upside down and squint at it to check the position of the cities.
Q: How do you pronounce "Hwyn"?
A: Like "win" with a little h-sound before it. Not unlike the first syllable of "whinny."
Q: Is that Welsh?
A: No, it's made up. I wanted the two major female characters to have contrasting names, one long and flowing, the other short and difficult. Hwyn is short and difficult.
Q: Are the four Gods on the Wheel based on Major Arcana of the Tarot?
A: The Upside-Down God is loosely inspired by the Hanged Man of the Tarot deck. I am not well versed in Tarot lore, but when I was an undergraduate at Barnard, I read the Madame Sosostris passage of T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland: "I do not see the Hanged Man. Fear death by water." Ever since then I had been intrigued with the image. I knew that Eliot associated the Hanged Man card with Christ, and the Upside-Down God bears some resemblance to a sort of liberation theology Christ (he is incarnated on earth, where he is rejected and even persecuted by his own priests; his sacrifice changes the world).
Some of my friends have pointed out resemblances between the other Gods on the Wheel and other figures of the Tarot, but those were unintentional. Blame the archetypes, I guess.
Q: Why don't the gods have proper names?
A: This one stumped me. I thought "the Hidden Goddess" was a pretty cool name, myself. But then again, maybe Jereth does know other names of the gods, secret names. Names have power in this universe, and I don't think Jereth would commit the secret names of the gods to writing.
Q: Why does it take so long to get Jereth & Hwyn in bed together?
A: Maybe I'm a bit of a prude. But I'm always skeptical of stories set in a preindustrial society where all the sympathetic characters have a modern, relatively carefree approach to sex. The sexual revolution happened when it did for a reason: the invention of the progesterone pill, a safe and reliable contraceptive under the control of the woman. Until you have reliable and widely available contraception, postponing sexual satisfaction is a matter of self-preservation for a woman, and for a man, a matter of consideration for the well-being of his lover. And yes, I know, there were contraceptives before industrialization -- the sheep-gut condom, for example -- but I don't get the impression that they were widely available. You get one sheep-gut condom per sheep -- a pretty expensive method, no? Besides, do you really picture going on a quest with a wallet full of sheep guts in case you get lucky?
Q: Will there be a sequel to The Eye of Night?
A: I have no plan to write a sequel. Certainly, the adventures of Jereth and Hwyn are already complete. If I did take up the later adventures of any other character in the book, it would probably be either Warfast the Outlaw or Ethwin the Hunter, or both of them. But I have no plans for that as yet, either.
Q: Will there be a prequel to The Eye of Night?
A: My second novel (as yet unpublished), The Ghost-Bearers, is a sort of prequel, earlier in the history of Swevnalond, involving the ancestors of the Folc, the origins of the worship of the four Gods on the Wheel, and the founding of the Tarvon Order.
Q: How could you kill off my favorite character? I'll never forgive you!
A: Fish the book out of the garbage and go on reading. Trust me.
Q: How could you bring a character back from the dead? That's a cheap trick!
Q: I've gotten more criticism about that than about any other aspect of the book. And I understand the criticism: I hesitated a long time about using that plot device. But if it's a cheap trick, it's a trick that worked for Tolkien; it's a trick that worked for the Gospels; and in the end, the more I thought about it, the more it looked like the ending toward which all the roads in the story were leading me. I like what Tolkien himself said in defense of bringing Gandalf back: it would be wrong to bring a character back unchanged from something you call death. Hwyn is not unchanged, but she is back -- or at least she may be. Jereth himself is not certain, but chooses to hope. This ending was important to the theology of the story. The gods of the World-Wheel are not cruel: they sometimes fail, but they are always motivated by the love of life and the love of the creatures they have created, and this was the ending they demanded.
If you feel dissatisfied with the ending, then use that feeling to fuel your own creative instincts and write a story of your own. Some of my best work has been in reaction against books I read that engaged my emotions powerfully, but dissatisfied me in some way. Happy writing!