Interview with J. T. Greathouse (THE PATTERN OF THE WORLD)
J.T. Greathouse is the BFA nominated author of the PACT & PATTERN trilogy: THE HAND OF THE SUN KING, THE GARDEN OF EMPIRE, and THE PATTERN OF THE WORLD. In addition to writing, he has been a student in Beijing, an ESL instructor in Taipei, a bookseller, and a high school English teacher. His short fiction has appeared, often as Jeremy A. TeGrotenhuis, in Beneath Ceaseless Skies, PodCastle, IGMS, and elsewhere.
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UK: Gollancz Store | Blackwells | Amazon US: Auntie’s Books (signed copies!) | Amazon
Welcome to the Hive, Jeremy. We’re here to discuss your exciting finale in the Pact and Pattern trilogy, Pattern of the World! Firstly how does it feel to have a completed trilogy out there in the wild? Has it been hard to say goodbye to these characters and this world?
Having a completed trilogy out in the world is the culmination of a nearly life-long dream, and in that sense it’s very satisfying. I wanted to be an author from a very young age, and it feels outstanding to have accomplished that goal. As far as saying goodbye and moving on. . . I’ve always been someone with more ideas for books and stories than I have the time to write, and by the time I was working on revising The Pattern of the World my imagination had firmly fixated on a new world and a new story that I was itching to start working on. So in a way it hasn’t been hard at all. While I love the characters in the Pact & Pattern books and had a blast writing them, I’m ready to move on to something new, to stretch my creative muscles in new directions and work with some ideas I’ve had for a while that didn’t really fit in this world and story.
Can you tell our readers a little bit about the trilogy and what they can expect in this last book?
The Pact & Pattern series starts at a fairly grounded level, I think, with The Hand of the Sun King, but each book is an exercise in raising the stakes and pushing the worldbuilding further and further into the strange and magical. This is, for me, an exercise in trying to look at the same question – what is the cost of ambition, of desiring power and control over the world? – at multiple levels. First, in The Hand of the Sun King, that question is examined on the personal level, as Alder / Foolish Cur has to sacrifice certain aspects of his identity and morality in order to pursue magic and an imperial career. The Garden of Empire pushes that question to the political or social level by way of the Nayeni rebellion, Pinion’s grappling with his sudden authority over the army sent to quash it, and with Koro Ha’s attempt at social reform by way of his Toa Aloni school. These characters all suffer personally, psychologically, and, again, morally as a result of their attempt to influence the course of their world. The end of that novel, and The Pattern of the World, pushes that question even further into the cosmic or philosophical realm, asking what the cost of trying to change the fundamental or foundational rules that undergird the world might be.
So what can you expect from The Pattern of the World? Well, if you read the ending of The Garden of Empire you know that things are. . . unstable, to say the least. The first act of The Pattern of the World establishes the new, chaotic state of the world that these characters now have to reckon with. The second act concerns their various attempts to stabilise their situations, often requiring hard confrontations with the mistakes that led them to this chaotic moment. The third act then poses the question – how can we fix a completely broken world? And is putting things back the way they were a better option, maybe, than rebuilding from the foundations and trying something completely new?
Wen Alder is a complex, flawed, often naïve character and has been torn between the Sienese and the Nayeni since the first book, The Hand of the Sun King. How have you found shaping his story arc throughout each book? Were there any particular difficulties you encountered along the way?
I knew, more or less, where I wanted Alder’s arc to go from the time I finished The Hand of the Sun King. In some ways he’s a response to the idea of ‘power creep,’ a criticism sometimes levelled against fantasy series in which the characters become so powerful that they can just level an opposing army in an instant. The criticism goes that this ruins the tension in the story, as the protagonist can now deal with almost any threat with relative ease. Which is true. . . if you are telling a story in which violence or coercion are treated as valid solutions to problems. I’m generally not a huge fan of those types of stories, so I wanted to show how a character can become quite incredibly powerful (by the ending of The Hand of the Sun King, Alder is magically strong enough to single-handedly take on just about any army of normal humans), but rather than that power solving all of their problems it actually creates more. In The Garden of Empire, he has to do some delicate manipulation of the various would-be leaders and factions of the Nayeni Rebellion. He could solve that problem by killing or intimidating those leaders and installing himself at the head of the rebellion, but he recognizes that doing so would make him little different from the emperor he’s fighting against, so he has to find other solutions, which forces him to grow (or fail to grow) as a character. And, as readers of the series so far will know, when he does fall back on magic as a solution toward the end of Garden it does not go well for him, or anyone else. The Pattern of the World continues to examine that aspect of his character and his relationship with his magical skill and obsession. I think the most difficult part of writing Alder wasn’t so much Alder himself as finding the right blend of situations and motivations to constantly challenge him in ways that couldn’t be solved with a good old fashioned fire tornado.
In The Garden of Empire, you introduce three additional POV’s—Ral Ans Urrera, Koro Ha and Hand Pinion. Had you always planned to do this or did it naturally occur as you began writing? Can we expect any more additional POV’s in Pattern of the World?
From the moment I knew The Hand of the Sun King was the first book of a trilogy rather than a standalone, Koro Ha was always planned to become a point of view character. Not, in fact, because of what he does in Garden, but because of where his story goes in The Pattern of the World. To say more than that would be spoilers, I’m afraid, but suffice to say I knew I wanted to do a certain thing with the gods, and in order to do that thing I needed a point of view character in Toa Alon, and I had already created Koro Ha as Alder’s tutor for the first book and loved him as a character. His story arc in The Garden of Empire was essentially created to explain his presence back home in his own city, and to establish some facets of his character that become important in The Pattern of the World.
Pinion, too, was always going to be a POV character, though I had originally planned only to include him as a POV in The Pattern of the World. Honestly, his arc in this third book is probably my favourite character arc in the entire series, so readers have that to look forward to. In the early drafts of The Garden of Empire, Pinion was mentioned rather frequently, and Alder spent quite a few paragraphs wondering what Pinion was thinking while he led the Sienese army in retreat. It was actually my agent’s idea to introduce Pinion as a POV in Garden, and I think it worked particularly well, especially as it serves as an on-ramp into his character arc in the third book.
Ral was a bit more of a wildcard. She was always planned as a character, but originally her portion of the story was going to be told through Atar’s point of view. In the first draft of Garden the Ral storyline was told through Atar’s eyes rather than Ral’s, as the An-Zabati rescued this strange Girzan witch and then had to figure out what to do with her. But, ultimately, it made more sense to put Ral front and center, and doing so let me change some things in The Pattern of the World in a way that I thought was quite effective. As a result we get more of the Girzan culture, too, which I think was important to fleshing out the world a bit.
There aren’t any additional point of views in The Pattern of the World, and in a way it serves as a continuation of all of the storylines from The Garden of Empire. As I said, I had originally planned for Pinion to be the new POV in the third book, but moving him forward to Garden means that all of the points of view are established already by the time The Pattern of the World begins. I will say that there is quite a bit more of Ral in the third book, though. She graduates from interludes to full-blown chapters!
Whilst we’re on the subject of The Garden of Empire and this question will contain spoilers because I have to mention that epic ending! We were left with the Pact broken, monsters descending and the world being destroyed. How early on had you planned for this to happen? What inspired you to create such a shocking turn of events?
The big apocalyptic ending was always planned for The Garden of Empire. Part of the purpose of that book is to challenge Alder’s simplistic notions of right and wrong, and to put a final nail in the coffin of his belief that mastery of magic will necessarily equal mastery of his world. I’m extremely sympathetic to the Nayeni rebellion – obviously – and think that the Sienese empire’s project is fundamentally brutal and cruel, but it isn’t unmotivated cruelty and brutality. The emperor firmly believes that his empire is necessary to provide order and structure to the world, that a powerful, central, hegemonic authority can make the world a better place for those who live under its auspices. This is meant to parallel interpretations of historical empires that focus on the apparent good done by those empires as worth the horrors and degradations inflicted upon the conquered. Rome built roads and established Pax Romana, the British Empire jump started the industrial revolution, the unification of the warring states by Qin Shihuang brought peace to China and established a cultural identity that has survived for over two thousand years, American hegemony preserves global “freedom,” and so on. Now, obviously, I don’t really agree with that position, but I do think what we know of history bears out that the collapse of one of these powerful political entities creates chaos.
One nice thing about writing a fantasy novel is that I can literalize things that are, in the real world, quite abstract. In a way, the old gods and their ancient war represent the sort of primal power struggle that advocates of strong, hegemonic authorities are afraid of – the “war of all against all” in the state of nature that Thomas Hobbes saw as sufficiently horrifying to justify the existence of an autocratic ruler, his Leviathan. In The Garden of Empire, Alder is able to undermine the power of the empire – his world’s hegemonic Leviathan – but doing so unleashes those forces that the Leviathan exists to constrain, plunging the world into chaos. One of the proposed solutions to this, which is given some consideration in The Pattern of the World, is an alliance with the emperor for the purpose of killing those primal forces in a final, total victory for the empire. So Alder has to ask whether or not bowing to the Leviathan, absolutely and for eternity, is really worth protection from these forces of chaos. He has to decide whether or not Thomas Hobbes was right, basically. And, if he says no, he has to figure out another solution, one which might be even more personally costly, but more morally tolerable.
We see such varying opinions from authors when it comes to the time of editing their books. How have you found the editing process throughout each book in the trilogy? Enjoyable, stressful or satisfying?
The first two books were definitely more challenging to edit. The Hand of the Sun King went through something like six or seven versions before publication, and two of those were almost full rewrites. It was a satisfying process, because each draft would turn out better than the last and I could see and feel myself becoming a better writer. The Garden of Empire also went through a substantial rewrite, entirely redoing one POV character, adding another, and making some significant changes to Alder’s storyline, but once that part was done the revisions were much more straightforward. The Pattern of the World was, comparatively, a breeze. I wrote one draft, made some tweaks, sent it to my agent, made a few slight tweaks based on his feedback, and only had to make some minor additions and changes for my editor. It was sort of baffling, actually, after the first two books were so challenging to get right. I wasn’t really prepared to be done with a book that quickly after the first draft!
If you were transported into your own fictional world, who do you think you would fare best with, the Sienese or the Nayeni rebels? And why?
I’d like to think I would join the rebellion, since I’m ideologically aligned with them, but I think I’m more likely to be someone like Koro Ha in the second book – frustrated and at times horrified by the problems with the empire, trying to do some good in ways that I can within my sphere of influence, but not quite willing to pick up a sword.
Each of your books have had beautiful detailed cover designs! How involved in the process were you? Was there a particular aesthetic you hoped the artist, Patrick Knowles, would portray?
Thank you! They are spectacular. For each of the covers, my editor at Gollancz, Brendan Durkin, asked for any design ideas I had, and then passed them along to Patrick. For The Hand of the Sun King I suggested the idea of having a hand with the title in its palm and a sun in the background, but that was all. When Patrick came back to us with sketches I was blown away by what he’d come up with, and we ran with that general design aesthetic for the rest of the series. The Garden of Empire involved a bit more back and forth – my original idea was for a sword instead of the banner, but we couldn’t quite get it to work right, and Brendan and Patrick were very gracious in working with me to shift gears into something better.
What’s next for you Jeremy? Can you tell us a little something about your current work(s) in progress? Have you any upcoming projects which you can share?
The current work in progress is another fantasy, though something quite different from Pact and Pattern. The world is bigger, for one thing, and a little further away from Earth. A little closer to high fantasy, but taking a lot of notes from Iain M. Banks’ Culture novels in terms of structure and some high-level worldbuilding concepts.
While Pact and Pattern was largely about complicity in systems of power and oppression, this new series (which I’m tentatively calling Thaumedony or The City of the Wise depending on the day and who I’m talking to) is a lot broader in thematic focus, though still interested in power and conflicts arising over who should have it and how it should be used. It’s structured as a series of standalone novels in a shared universe. The first book is particularly interested in history – who gets to write it, how it can be used to suppress truths we’d rather not think about, and what happens when long-suppressed crimes come back to haunt the society that perpetrated them. It has ghosts, as well as ancient, mysterious, vanished elves, incomprehensible fae, and a medieval-esque kingdom fraught with intrigue and political instability. It uses a lot of points of view, at least in the current draft, but the main three are a father trying to protect his adopted daughter, a priest who sees opportunity in chaos, and a woman determined to prove herself by taking everyone else’s problems on her own shoulders. It also features a very expressive, very stupid magical bird named Frog who might be the greatest thing I’ve ever created in terms of pure entertainment. It’s also a lot funnier than Pact and Pattern, or at least my wife seems to think so.
If people want a little taste of the book, they can read my story “The Gwyddien and the Raven Fiend” in Beneath Ceaseless Skies magazine here: https://www.beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/stories/the-gwyddien-and-the-raven-fiend/ The first part of the novel is adapted from the novelette, though changed significantly.
Are you planning anything fun to celebrate your new release?
We’ll be having a release event at Auntie’s, my local bookstore here in Spokane, a week or two after launch. Other than that, I’ll probably take my wife out to dinner! And I’m sure my mother will send me a box of cookies decorated with the book cover, as she’s done for every book launch so far.
Finally, what is the one thing you hope readers take away from your writing?
Ideally, I’d like people to take away some thoughts or feelings about our own world and their place in it. How power moves through and has moved through the world, how it concentrates in some places and drains out of others, who benefits and who is harmed by that movement, and where they stand – with those who would seek to concentrate power for their own benefit, or those who would like to see it flow through the world to everyone’s benefit?
Maybe a lot to ask from a fantasy trilogy, but those are the things I think about all the time and the things that I try to put in my work.
At the very least, I’d like people to come away with some moment of contemplation or insight. Giving people those kinds of moments is the purpose of all good stories, in my opinion, and of literature in particular.
Thank you so much for joining us today!
The Pattern of the World is out today from Gollancz You can pick up your copy from Bookshop.org