We chat with The Heart of the World author, Amie Kaufman.
A&U: Hey Amie! Thanks so much for chatting with us! We are counting down the days until The Heart of The World releases, and we can’t wait to find out what happens next! Can you first tell us a little about both The Isles of the Gods, and its upcoming sequel, The Heart of The World?
AK: Thanks for having me! And yes – I sure can. The Isles of the Gods is a 1920s-tinged seafaring fantasy about a roguish magician prince and the sailor girl who has to help him reach a forgotten temple on a distant island. There, he’ll make a sacrifice that will prevent a war between the gods. Only everything goes wrong.
The Heart of the World is the sequel and the conclusion to the duology—it picks up directly where the first book left off, and I can’t give away too much, but I will say there’s a very eventful ball, and readers will get to visit the greatest library in the world.
A&U: How did you find returning to write The Heart of the World? Was it easier as you’d already done a lot of the world building etc, or did it present its own set of challenges?
AK: Writing the first book in this duology took me a full ten years. In the interim I wrote a dozen other books, but I kept coming back to this one, determined to find a way to make it work. The problem, at the start, was that I simply wasn’t good enough yet to convey everything I knew about the world. Eventually I got there!
By comparison, writing book two was a breeze! I really enjoyed it—one of the best things about a duology is that you don’t need to leave anything for later. You can blow it all up, because there’s no book three! Beware, readers…
A&U: We absolutely adore the concept of the magicians and the way the magic system in this world works. Can you walk us through how you came up with that system?
AK: I knew I wanted element-based magic, because a lot of the series is set at sea, and I was interested in how magicians who can control wind and water would impact sailing ships. But the first rule of any magic system is that there must be a cost, to keep it under control—so that’s where the idea of sacrifices, large and small, came in. Anything from a penny in your pocket on up will do, but if the sacrifice you offer isn’t big enough, then the spirits will take a part of you, instead.
A&U: We got to see some incredible locations in The Isles of the Gods, and we also have a feeling we might be visiting even more locations in The Heart of the World. What was like it crafting this world?
AK: Worldbuilding is one of my favourite things to do—I love thinking about the tiny little changes I’m making, and all the ways that they might ripple out to create a world that’s different to our own. Whether that’s considering geography—what might change about a country that has a large population and barely any farmland?—or adding in magic, which in this world has kept sailing ships around much later than they were in our own world, because the weather can be controlled.
A&U: You often feature a lot of POVs in your books. What is it about multiple POVs that appeals to you?
AK: One of my favourite things about multiple points of view is the chance to show you an event from several different angles—and to create those moments when you’re so sure you know who’s on the right side and who’s on the wrong one, who’s done something you could never forgive, who deserves your unflinching support… and then it’s all turned upside down, and you realise the situation is wildly more complex than you realised. It’s that way in real life too, of course.
A&U: This is a cheeky one… can you give us a spoiler that we won’t know is a spoiler until we get to it? Then we can all go, “Oh! That’s what Amie meant!”
AK: Hmmm. Here’s one: when creating a seating plan for a ball, be very careful about who sits next to whom!
A&U: With this sweeping fantasy adventure concluding in The Heart of the World, could you see yourself ever returning to this world sometime in the future perhaps?
AK: I would absolutely love to. There’s a new character readers will meet in book two, and I’d love to create a spin-off just for her. Maybe one day!
A&U: And finally, do you have any advice for writers out there who may be reading this Q&A?
AK: So much advice! If any aspiring writers want lots and lots of it, my podcast, Amie Kaufman on Writing, has forty-five writing lessons on subjects ranging from how to create an unreliable narrator to how to end a chapter. If I had to pick just one piece of advice for today, I’d say that if your story has an ending, it’s already better than 99% of stories out there, just because you made it to the finish line – so write to the end, and then you can edit it and make it better.
The Heart of the World
by Amie Kaufman
Magic and sacrifice will collide as lovers and gods, enemies and allies vie for the fate of the world in this heart-pounding sequel to The Isles of the Gods.
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