Jen Williams is an award-winning author from London. Her Copper Cat and Winnowing Flame trilogies have been nominated for British Fantasy awards several times, with The Ninth Rain and The Bitter Twins each winning the Robert Holdstock Award for Best Fantasy Novel. Her debut crime novel Dog Rose Dirt was published in 2021, and Jen has two new novels out in 2023: Talonsister, a return to fantasy published by Titan, and Games for Dead Girls, a true crime inspired horror novel, published by HarperVoyager. She’s also partly responsible for the creation of the Super Relaxed Fantasy Club and is partial to mead, if you’re buying.

I’m beyond excited today to welcome back one of my absolute faves, Jen Williams, to chat about what has been once of my favourite reads of the year, Talonsister…

Welcome back to the Hive, Jen! Firstly, congratulations on your glorious return to fantasy in Talonsister. Can you tell our readers a little about it? What can they expect?

Hi! It’s great to be back at the Hive, thanks for having me.

I always want to do something different with each book that I write, and Talonsister is a slight step in a different direction – not exactly away from the Copper Cat and Winnowing Flame trilogies, but perhaps along a parallel path. Talonsister takes place in a world oddly similar to our own but significantly different too; I have been thinking of it as a dream of our world, and specifically a dream of ancient Britain before the Romans arrived on our shores. It’s certainly the sort of dream where you might have eaten a lot of cheese beforehand…

The central storyline concerns a magical super soldier called Leven, who has been experiencing strange visions of a mysterious island she has never been to, but it spirals out to encompass a girl raised by griffins and an assassin doing dark jobs on another continent – not to mention druids, an unending war, a giant talking bear, political backstabbing, and a long-buried horror from another age…

The world of Talonsister, unlike your previous fantasy worlds, has a lot of recognisable similarities to our own. What inspired that decision this time?

I was reading Under Another Sky by Charlotte Higgins, an excellent book about Roman ruins in Britain, and I was really struck by how little we truly know about the place before the Romans arrived and started making records of things. There were these tiny glittering glimpses of a world that felt deeply strange, and it occurred to me that I would like to write a fantasy book set during this unknowable time. Not historical fantasy; I wanted to treat ancient Britain like a secondary world, if that makes sense. And then I read a line about griffins supposedly guarding their gold in the far north, and that was it, I was hooked.

Makes a note for the TBR

You wrote a fantastic guest post on folklore for us during Women in SFF, in which you expressed how excited you were to include British folklore and mythology in Talonsister. What was your favourite aspect of doing this?

Drawing from folklore is so much fun because it’s such a weird and wild resource. I decided early on that I was going to use it however I saw fit, which meant I could name the giant bear Titans after Britain’s legendary giants, or take druids and make them fantasy rangers with horns and a supernatural connection to the earth. Using folklore and mythology as a jumping off point for my own imagination has been enormous fun, and it gives everything this extra layer of familiarity; I hope that when people read Talonsister they will feel that little echo of strangeness, like deep down in their collective unconscious they might have known these stories once before, in another life. 

Let’s talk about your characters! Your multiple POVs give us the perfect opportunity to explore plenty of your world… did you find yourself being drawn to any particular characters over others though?

There’s always a character or a couple of characters who are really up and running without any effort from you the writer, and they are always a lot of fun. Talonsister was really blessed with a small cohort of secondary characters that persistently tried to steal the show – the unpredictable Princess Epona; Belise the infinitely pragmatic assassin’s apprentice; T’rook, the griffin who is one hundred percent done with your shit. I loved writing them all. As usual I have grown deeply fond of all my ‘point of view’ characters and could not possibly pick a favourite, but I will admit I took a particular pleasure in writing Kaeto, the Imperium’s most senior Envoy (for Envoy read assassin and spy). His role is an archetype that turns up a lot in fantasy, and it was fun to subvert it a little. Kaeto is loyal to the Empress on the surface, but scratch that surface even a tiny bit and it’s clear his loyalties are actually very complicated.

Also, y’know, griffins…

The griffins were a joy, of course. They could have had books and books just to themselves really, with their complicated mythologies and history. One of the things I enjoy the most about writing fantasy is that opportunity to write beings that aren’t human and create a whole culture from scratch. 

As promised, and I’ve chosen to be mean and do a tour of your fantasies –

Tor. Sebastien. Leven. Fuck, Marry, Kill. Show your workings. 

Ah this is indeed extremely mean. Okay. Tormalin spent decades of his very long life learning how to be, uh, uniquely skilled, so without shame I must say he would fall into the ‘fuck’ category.

Solid choice

It’s very difficult to choose between Sebastian and Leven in terms of marriage, because I love them both very much. Seb is just one of the most good-hearted characters I’ve ever written, so I couldn’t possibly kill him – he is gay so our marriage would be one of mutual convenience perhaps, where we each live our own lives but would fight to the death for each other at a moment’s notice.

100% would read

Which unfortunately leaves Leven in the ‘kill’ category, which I can only live with because she is an unstoppable killing machine herself, and honestly whoever might attempt to bump her off is going to find themselves in big trouble. 

One of my favourite things I always end up doing in your books is shipping characters – this time round I was very much invested in Cillian and Leven. What’s the most surprising character ship you’ve heard of for your books?

I’m not sure that I can think of any surprising ones, but certainly far and away the most popular seems to be Bern and Aldasair from the Winnowing Flame trilogy; people are just very invested in those sweeties. I did have someone who thought that Sebastian and Lord Frith from the Copper Cat should have gotten together, which I think would certainly be a ‘hate-sex’ situation – in the first book, at least. 

Oh I can kind of see it, it would have been a super entertaining read… but I feel like that situation would have been emotional torture for Sebastian and he must be protected at all costs.

Also, ask Anna Stephens who she was shipping in Talonsister…

A strong theme running throughout Talonsister is the exploration of family ties and, well, is everything ok or is this just a theme that calls to you?

I think I’ve always been interested in the things that connect us to each other, whether that be blood or lived experience. When I’m feeling particularly introspective, I tend to believe that we need those connections to survive – no one can get by entirely alone, after all – and that perhaps they might even be the entire point. Of existence. See, you probably weren’t expecting a heavy philosophical answer, but there you go.

I absolutely wasn’t, I was fully expecting a defence on how lovely your mum is, actually, and how none of your books are a reflection on her

If you were to put yourself in your story, where would you see yourself? Soaring in the sky with T’rook, exploring jungles with Kaeto, or traversing the Wild Wood with Cillian?

I am deathly afraid of flying so almost certainly not flying with the griffins – I couldn’t trust myself not to fall off – and although I would love the exploration aspect of stomping around Unblessed Houraki with Kaeto, I am not all that keen on giant bugs (despite putting them in every one of my fantasy books).

e v e r y   o n e 

Over the last few years I have developed an intense interest in trees (trying hard not to say obsession here) and spend my days trying to identify any new ones I spot, so I would very much love to be in the Wild Wood with Cillian. I bet he knows the names of all the trees.

My favourite is Alan

Just for fun, could you pitch Talonsister as a 1-star review?

‘This deeply inaccurate history of pre-Roman Britain had a lot of simmering sexual tension and because I am a joyless husk I did not like it, one star, would not recommend’

You’re currently working on the sequel, can we expect even more bickering griffins??

Oh yes, more griffins, more Titans, more giants and a lot more weird folklore. It’s early days for this draft but I’m already having a lot of fun with it, and since it’s a duology we’re straight into all the action.

Following Talonsister, what’s next for Jen Williams? 

It’s a good question and the truth is I don’t really know! As I mentioned previously I like to tackle something slightly different with every book and I currently have an urge to write that rarest of unicorns in the fantasy world, the standalone novel… On the other side of my career, the one where I write scary folk horror tinged thrillers, I do have a new book coming out next year called The Hungry Dark; it’s my most explicitly supernatural book so far and includes some of my favourite things: horrible murders, weird local history and the Lake District. 

Looking forward to working out where to shelve it in the store!

Thanks so much for joining us today, Jen! Talonsister is out now, and you can order your copy on Bookshop.org

Be sure to check out the blog tour: