Interview with RJ Barker (GODS OF THE WYRDWOOD)
RJ Barker is a critically acclaimed and award-winning author of fantasy fiction. He won the 2020 British Fantasy Society (BFS) Robert Holdstock award for Best Novel for his fourth novel, The Bone Ships.
His debut trilogy The Wounded Kingdom (Age of Assassins, Blood of Assassins and King of Assassins) was nominated for the David Gemmel Award, the Kitschie Golden Tentacle, The Compton Crook and the BFS Best Debut and Best Novel awards. It was called ‘Thoroughly entertaining and constantly impressive’ by the Fantasy Hive, ‘One of the best fantasy series you will ever read’ by the BFS, and ‘A singular sensational new voice in epic fantasy’ by Kings of the Wyld author Nicholas Eames.
He followed this with the award-winning Tide Child Trilogy: The Bone Ships, Call of the Bone Ships and The Bone Ships Wake. These books have been hailed as “One of the most interesting and original fantasy worlds I’ve seen in years” by Adrian Tchaikovsky, and “Brilliant” by Robin Hobb, alongside rave reviews in Starburst, SFX, and a starred review in Bookslist: ‘A unique and memorable world – harsh and brutal and full of fully realized, powerful female characters. Barker has managed to craft a story inspired by Moby Dick, Game of Thrones, and pirate lore, and readers will be drawn in and fascinated.’
RJ lives in Leeds with his wife, son and a collection of questionable taxidermy, odd art, scary music and more books than they have room for. He grew up reading whatever he could get his hands on, and has always been ‘that one with the book in his pocket’. Having played in rock bands before deciding he was a rubbish musician, RJ returned to his first love, fiction.
Welcome back to the Hive, RJ!
Congratulations on the release this week of the first book of a brand new trilogy – Gods of the Wyrdwood!
Firstly, what can readers expect from your new world? (And you can’t just say a wood that’s wyrd)
Hello, hive! Good to be back!
Wyrdwood is probably my darkest and strangest book yet, though those who’ve read my work before will feel a certain sense of familiarity at being thrown into a world they have no familiarity for and gradually discovering it with the characters. In that way it’s very much what I do. At the same time it’s something entirely new, a different world and a different writing style that will slowly envelop you in this strange place. A world where people like us live, but in a way that’s quite alien to us. This is a superstitious land of vast forests and constant danger, where the folklore of those forests is uncomfortably real, constant and dangerous.
Jasper Fforde talks about giving himself a ‘narrative dare’ when he writes and it sounds like a similar approach to how you talked about creating the world for your Tide Child trilogy – a world with very little wood.
In the case of the Forsaken Trilogy, did you set yourself a similar challenge? A world without metal?
Yeah, there’s no metal in the world of Crua, and no wheels either. I don’t think of it as a dare really, just that when you remove something commonplace it forces you to take different paths with your imagination. No metal gives armour and swords a different look, no wheels probably has a bigger impact actually, they don’t really have roads as we know them, Crua is a land of winding paths through forests and grasslands. You have to find your own way.
Were there any other springboards to writing this story? What was the spark that sent you into the Wyrdwood?
I’m not really a ‘springboard’ type of person, ideas are more of a slow seep that one day turn up fully formed but I’m not entirely conscious of where they come from. I was sort of thinking about Robin Hood as I started, although it’s a long way from Robin Hood. But the 80’s show Robin of Sherwood had a big impact on me and there’s probably a fair bit of how I remember that making me feel in Wyrdwood.
There’s a strong sense of folklore running throughout the book; spirits and children of the forest, a sentient forest that fights back.
Were there any specific influences behind this? Or are we simply closer to your natural state of being this time around?
Folklore and forests are something that have fascinated me since I was a child, so it’s probably very much me running through things that are already in my head. Those vast trees, I think I’m trying to catch being very small and looking up at trees, “how can something alive be so big?” So yes, probably my natural state.
Tell us a little about your protagonist Cahan du Nahere. And who else can we expect to meet?
There’s a great piece of writing advice I was once given, that a character should want something and they should need something. They are only aware of what they want, but what they need is more important. It’s even better if want and need are diametrically opposed to each other.
Cahan is a pretty classic example of this. He’s been terribly betrayed and wants to be left alone and to run from his past, but he needs other people and he needs to confront who he is. It’s similar with Venn, who is a member of the ‘third sex*’ of Crua. Like Cahan, they’ve also been betrayed but they aren’t running from themselves, they don’t know who they are. So they want to escape, but they need to find out who they are. To some degree, they are both intentionally frustrating characters, because we can see what they can’t.
Then there’s Udinny, who isn’t running from anything, she has what she needs even though no one else can understand it, and that’s why she is who she is.
*For want of a better way of describing it.
As you discuss in your acknowledgements, the idea of trying to run away from something inescapable is a driving theme of the story; it’s true not just of Cahan but most of your other characters also. What made you want to confront this theme?
I dunno, maybe is part of being chronically ill. There’s something there I can never escape and although I can pretend it’s not there it always is. I was writing this while my health took a down turn and it was towards the end of lockdown, maybe there was a sense of huge and inescapable things all around me. It’s definitely my darkest book. In fact I took a break after writing book two to write something that was a complete 180 degree turn from this, positively light hearted.
Of course to be able to stop running, our hero needs to learn to accept themselves. Tell us more about the Hero’s Journey and why self acceptance is such an important part of it to you?
I think it’s central to happiness. “Know thyself” was written on the temple of Apollo and it’s powerful advice, although advice that’s been interpreted in many ways over the years. So much unhappiness I’ve run into during my life involves people desperate not to be who they are, there’s a deep well of satisfaction to be found in excepting what you are and what you love – and accepting the same of others.
Gods of the Wyrdwood had, for me, the sense of something that grows verdantly without you noticing – the hedgerow you pass day after day and don’t realise the height until the farmer has gone round and cut the verges. It’s a seemingly simple enough story which actually has a great deal of depth; do I dare ask if you had a process in achieving this?
Well, I know a lot more about Crua and its gods than the reader does, so there’s a whole load of stuff in this that will only come into focus as the trilogy moves on. There’s a real temptation (pressure, maybe?) to make everything explode in the first book but I like to take my time, get all the pieces into play and ready. In some ways Wyrdwood is an exploration of the world, Cahan’s inability to move on is mirrored by the fact he keeps returning to the start of his journey and we start his journey again.
It’s been quite a serious interview this time around, so before we wrap up, just for fun, how would you pitch Gods of the Wyrdwood as a 1-star review?
* A man doesn’t go anywhere.
And finally, what is the one thing you hope readers will take away from their journey into the Wyrdwood?
I’m very wary of telling readers what to find in a book. Once I’ve written it it’s not mine anymore. I suppose that I hope they find a sense of wonder, at getting to explore this new world with a very grumpy man.
Thank so much RJ!
Gods of the Wyrdwood is out today from Orbit Books!
Beth’s review | Available from Bookshop.org