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Windspeaker.com Books Feature Writer
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
After 15 years of her mind being home to a fantastical world, award-winning Haisla and Heiltsuk author Eden Robinson has finally put it on paper.
The Sorceress of Sky Serpents is the first book in a trilogy that introduces readers to the apocalyptic world of clan battles, mythical creatures, shamans, seers, and sorcery.
“I've tackled it a number of times and it has stalled out. Usually when something stalls out, that means that I don't have a particular set of skills that's needed to tell the story,” said Robinson.
Fantasy, she explains, requires an extraordinary amount of exposition that needs to be relayed in an interesting and comprehensible fashion. Even the basics must be made clear.
Also challenging Robinson was the development of her central character Yuala.
“She was someone I had in mind for many, many years and I've made many attempts to write her into the story. She just wasn't coming. So I started interacting with my cousins and my nieces and some of them are just powerful little women. And they are so sassy. So, I came to Yuala through their stories,” she said. “She was so much fun to play with!”
Yuala is a strongheaded young woman who speaks her mind and doesn’t follow hierarchal cultural protocols. In fact, her actions at the beginning of the book cost her the arranged marriage she had agreed to in order to ally her Eagle Clan with another. Her empathy brings her friendships with various types of beings that are shunned by all the clans.
The Sorceress series is set in a world based on the Haisla-Heiltsuk culture with clans, longhouses, salmon runs, totem poles, matriarchal leadership and potlatches.
“To me, the northwest coast is normal and so the culture that I created fits my worldview. That's the way things work. I have to switch to a different brain to figure out the way mainstream culture works because I'm fluent in it, but I didn't grow up in it. This (northwest coast) social structure makes sense to me,” said Robinson.
The fantastical is not something new to her. She recalls her father coming to visit and waking her at three or four in the morning and sharing stories about Haisla supernatural creatures such as sasquatches and lesser-known beings like the bear seal of Jesse Falls that sank boats and canoes.
“I was trying to write a novel in the mythic times, and I just didn't feel comfortable. (The Haisla) have got a lot of story protocols, so it occurred to me that I could merge two of my passions; putting our supernatural creatures in a fantasy world…with Yuala (and) it became The Sorceress,” she said.
Robinson admits that she had intended The Sorceress to be a stand alone novel.
“But the book was so complicated that when I teased out the threads, it was very obvious that it was a trilogy. I was like, ‘No!’ Because that's a multi-year commitment. But it was a lot of fun to tootle around with,” she said.
It took her five years to write the first novel and she’s presently working on the second, which she promises includes “a really awkward romance” for Yuala. She hopes to complete the first draft by the end of 2026 or early 2027.
In book one, Yuala comes to realize she is a sorcerer. In book two, both she and the communities around her grapple with the fear of her powers. The third book brings to the forefront the politics that have been brewing below the surface in the previous two books.
“There are a lot of societal implications to Yuala being who she is, having the power she does,” said Robinson. “Sorcery is what broke the world and only sorcery can fix it. But because the sorcerers in the mythic times were so chaotic, they were so damaging, they were so destructive, it's one of the magics that no one wants to revive.”
Robinson is clear that sorcery in her fantasy world is not representative of anything in today’s world.
“I was trying to have a little escape from this world,” she said. “When Dad was telling me stories of magical fights, I thought they were wonderful and I wanted to have magical fights in my books.”
She says she has dealt with dark subjects in other novels, such as The Trickster trilogy (the first book Son of a Trickster was a Giller Prize finalist), Monkey Beach (also a Giller Prize finalist), and Blood Sports. And while The Sorceress series is “a little dark”, Robinson was looking at doing something different.
Even her writing process is different, she adds. With all the threads she has to follow in the various plotlines, Robinson has storyboarded, mind-mapped and snowflaked her plots and subplots, which are various techniques used by writers to keep details and timelines in place.
“I'll be happily writing along and then the characters will do something and then I'll have to shift everything. My process is messy. There's nothing clean about my mind. I've got a mind that hops around a lot. So that seems to be the way my process goes too,” she said. “But with something this complicated, I do need a lot of tools to keep all the little threads, so I have an insane amount of notes!”
The Sorceress of Sky Serpents is published by Penguin Random House. The book launch was held Sept. 28 in Vancouver with the book released on Sept. 29. It can be purchased at https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/760815/the-sorceress-of-sky-serpents-by-eden-robinson/9781039011656