A longlistee for the 2022 Bath Novel Award and 2020 Pitch Wars mentee, Jules Arbeaux graduated summa cum laude from a no-name college with a major in English, minors in creative writing and studio art, and the full knowledge that those areas of study would likely lead to starvation. As a writer and reader, Jules enjoys visceral, wrenching poetry and prose, multi-faceted characters, and powerful relationships of every sort. When not writing, Jules sells water-colour paintings and strange handmade jewellery at a local open-air market. Lord of the Empty Isles, forthcoming from Hodderscape in 2024, is the author’s debut novel.

Twitter: @julesarbeaux | Website

Hi, and congratulations on your debut novel! I was super excited to read Lord of the Empty Isles, even when all I knew about it was its title and that it was about space pirates. To start off, can you tell Fantasy Hive readers more about your book?

Absolutely! The basic concept is that the main character is a grieving young man who death curses the outlaw who killed his brother but that completely backfires and the curse rebounds onto him. And so because of the nature of the curse he has to work together with the outlaws and discovers all sorts of things that are going on that he didn’t know about.

I think space pirates is a really fun combination of genres, kind of drawing upon sci-fi and more period adventure. Are there any stories that influenced this book, that you kind of meshed together to create the setting and aesthetics?

I don’t think anything in particular drove that aspect, that was almost accidental. It actually started out as a more straightforward fantasy concept. When I was beginning the outline, I was like, “Well, pirates.” But as I was doing some “what if” brainstorming — originally the Empty Isles were actually going to be islands — I was doing some brainstorming, and I was like “No, no, what if they were pseudo-moons instead?” And so the whole concept shifted all at once. But one book that I read around the time I finished the draft, because people were like, “You have to read this,” was Essa Hansen’s Nophek Gloss. And it was really really good, the found family was exquisite, and so I really liked that one.

I also, from the beginning, thought that Lord of the Empty Isles was such a great title; its very elegant, and I was wondering if there was a specific moment where you knew that was going to be the title, possibly when the setting started to come together.

I have a confession to make: It was not actually the original title. We decided that, a little bit before the announcement was made, that the previous title was a little bit too poetic. And so, when we were talking new titles, Lord of the Empty Isles came up and it was obviously the top contender. It was a lot more catchy. It’s a term that shows up in the book itself. It refers to one of the characters; it’s sort of a title that has been given to them. It was definitely the top contender.

That’s so funny that you say the previous title was “too poetic” because I just think this one’s very poetic already.

Oh no way!

So Remy is at the center of your story; specifically how did you develop his character and what did you like about writing him?

Oh! Remy is… One of those things I liked a lot writing about him was foregrounding a character who is asexual and aromantic. Remy, he’s not particularly interested in romantic relationships, and so both through Remy and the world-building itself, the concept of tethers, I was able to really bring platonic and queerplatonic relationships and sibling relationships and families and friendships and stuff like that to the foreground. So I was really happy to do that. It was also just really fun writing a character who was sort of angry and impulsive but also grieving and I think it leads to some interesting situations.

That leads into another question I have which is, I love all of the little blurbs that say this book is a hate-to-queerplatonic love story because it feels like it’s kind of reinventing the enemies to lovers trope. Can you say anything more about writing that relationship and that storyline in a fantasy/sci-fi setting?

Sure! I do like the concept of hate to love, and while I like profound relationships of any variety I really wanted to have the opportunity to play around with one that was powerful and profound and intense and messy but also not romantic. And so what I wanted to do with Remy and Idrian, and the other characters as well, was to bring together characters with utterly different ideologies and experiences but with core experiences that were actually really similar and allowed them to get to understand each other. So I really wanted to do that with Lord of the Empty Isles.

Acespec characters are still less seen in fantasy but there’s been some titles coming up in the last few years and it’s made some big strides in the genre. Are there any particular fantasy books with acespec character you really like, or any observations you’ve made about how these characters show up in fantasy?

I think in some cases unfortunately they’re background characters, especially earlier on. But I’m liking that they’re getting to be main characters. I know I mentioned Essa Hansen’s Nophek Gloss earlier, but the main character is actually acespec, and so that was really cool to be able to see that in a sci-fi setting. And there are so many more books coming out […] that either have acespec characters or foreground queerplatonic relationships that I’m really excited for. There is one that is actually coming out this year that has just really really good character relationships and found family, it’s called Cascade Failure. That one’s come out; it’s a duology, the second one is coming out this July, it’s so good. But I was looking at a list of books with acespec characters coming out and it surprised me how big it was.

Yeah, I always get super excited when I read through those lists too, at how many there are coming out.

Yeah, and I feel like it’s growing all the time.

Yeah definitely. Going back to your book specifically, right now the only other character in the synopsis is Remy’s supposed mortal enemy and the other half of the hate-to-queerplatonic love story. What can you say about interstellar pirate Idrian Delaciel?

There’s probably a lot that I shouldn’t say, without spoiling things — I’m not actually sure what I can say without spoiling things, he’s a character who is basically a spoiler in himself. But it was really really interesting writing the whole — I mean the whole book itself is in Remy’s point of view and Idrian presents an utterly different perspective. And so giving readers Remy’s perspective for the first several chapters and then throwing them face-first into Idrian’s, who is grumpy and withdrawn and has lots of secrets. It was really really interesting and slowly peeling back the layers and showing both readers and Remy that things are a whole bunch more complicated than he ever assumed. I didn’t want the answers — I know with a lot of hate-to-love relationships it just ends up being one tiny little sticking point, one minor issue between the characters that is a misunderstanding and easily resolved — but I wanted to play with something a little bit more complicated with these two characters that was…that I also can’t say without spoiling.

Are there any other characters besides those two that you’re really excited for readers to get to know?

Yes, absolutely! I really enjoyed writing the whole cast, but one of my favorite characters, who I didn’t actually expect, came out of absolutely nowhere, was Yves Radenne, a doctor who’s not actually a doctor on the Empty Isles, and is also very eager to murder people. And so it was really interesting to write them, they’re also agender.

They sound interesting — and another really cool name!

Why thank you! At first, you know I needed a doctor character for the plot, but Eve just kind of came nowhere as a scalpel-wielding murderess but incredibly loyal character, and I had a lot of fun writing them.

Back to Remy; you have him as a protagonist who rushes into revenge without knowing the full picture beforehand, so what does your book have to say about the cycle of revenge trope?

I suppose it has to say […] There’s definitely the idea for the character specifically that they’re seeking revenge for atonement or whatever in hopes that it will make things better for them. That they can finally move forward because Remy, especially at the beginning of the book, believes that if he’s only able to kill the person who killed his brother, it’ll be fine, he’ll feel better, he’ll be able to move forward with his life because he’s been stuck for five years. But as things go on and he realizes that things were a lot more complicated than he thought, he has to take the hard way to healing. And so I know that revenge and just anger and healing after a traumatic experience is a really complex sort of thing and I wanted to give it the respect and the page time it deserves.

Are there any other subgenres of fantasy or sci-fi besides the space pirate adventure that you really love writing in?

Oh boy! I write a little bit of everything and especially, unfortunately with pretty much every book I blend together a whole bunch of different disparate genres and hope that it will work together as a book. With Lord of the Empty Isles it was, “we’re going to have space pirates, but we’re also going to have death curses and soul bonds and a complicated system of tethers where the color and location of the tether implies different things about the relationships between characters.” And so it’s a rather odd blend of science fiction and fantasy, and I do that a lot in other books as well.  And I think part of it, I realized I think after the third book I wrote that had that sort of clash between science and magic in some way, was that I grew up in a way between two different worlds. I was raised really poor, and I brought part of that to the portrayal of the Empty Isles here, but I was raised without electricity or running water until I was 14. And so the world around me had — you know I was raised in the 90s and early 2000s, so obviously things were growing and expanding at a wild rate but there I was out in the middle of the woods, barefoot. And so I was seeing things around me but I didn’t have them, and I think I bring a lot of that clash of weird things to the books I write as well.

It sounds like you have some future projects coming up, presumably with Hodderscape. Is there anything you can share about your next book? Or is there a story you’ve written in the past that you would still love to have published? 

Absolutely! I’ll have another standalone coming up with Hodderscape in 2025, and more works in progress than I know what to do with! I’m not sure how much I’m allowed to say about my next book (the details are still secret) but it’s a story that means a lot to me and one that’s had a pretty wild journey to get to where it is. I think authors are supposed to love all their characters equally—and I do, mostly—but this book has the unique distinction of featuring one of my favorite characters I’ve ever written. I’m really excited for the book’s cast to meet readers one day.

Then I had a for fun question: If you were a space pirate, what would the name of your ship be?

Oh gosh! It might have to be the Merlin, after my cat.

And lastly, what do you hope readers will take away from Lord of the Empty Isles?

That the road to healing is a messy one and that’s okay.

This interview has been edited from transcript for brevity and clarity.

Lord of the Empty Isles is due for release 6th June 2024. You can pre-order your copy HERE

Abigail Stevens

Abigail double majored in English and French at UC Santa Barbara and completed an MPhil in Medieval Literature at Oxford University. She loves writing about pop culture and travel and produces a newsletter on these subjects in addition to writing for Screen Rant and undertaking other freelance projects.

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