Crucible of Chaos
- Feb 6
- 5 min read
Interview with Sebastien de Castell
Q: When did you begin writing the prelude for the Court of Shadows series?
In August of 2020, during the pandemic, I found myself in Mont St. Michel in France. Mont St. Michel is a tiny island with a Medieval monastery at the top, connected to the mainland by a causeway that used to be submerged during high tide, cutting island off entirely. It’s one of those places that’s full of beauty and mystery that fills one’s imagination with visions of swordfights and scullduggery.
At this particular point in time, travel was permitted again and I’d gotten all my vaccine shots, but I still assumed the place would be mostly deserted. To the contrary, Mont St. Michel was absolutely packed with tourists. Everyone had to wear masks, but still, the sheer weight of numbers meant that ascending the roughly four blocks from the bottom of the island to my little hotel took almost half an hour. I was rather disheartened by the experience. Luckily for me, jetlag kicked in and at three o’clock in the morning I was wide awake. I decided to go out and take a walk to clear my head, and suddenly found myself in what felt like an entirely different world.
Most tourists don’t spend the night on Mont St. Michel, and those that do don’t venture out into the night. So there I was, strolling through the winding streets of this Medieval town, utterly alone except for the hordes of cats who live on the island but only come out at night. I felt as if I’d travelled back through time, exploring alleys and graveyards all by myself. It was positively magical.
When I returned home, I began writing Crucible of Chaos: a fantasy mystery set on an island inspired by that strange, wonderful night on Mont St. Michel.
Q: How many books do you plan to have for the Court of Shadows series?
Crucible of Chaos acts as a prelude to the series, which will have four more books, beginning with Play of Shadows coming out this March. However, each book works as a standalone as well, and can be read in any order, so readers aren’t forced to wait to get the end of the story.
Q: What will readers find inside of your new novel, Crucible of Chaos?
There’s swashbuckling adventure, of course, as that’s one of my favourite aspects of writing the Greatcoats novels, but Crucible of Chaos is also very much a mystery novel. Estevar Borros is my “swashbuckling Hercule Poirot”, and part of what I love writing about him is the way he investigates crimes, unconcerned whether the means by which those crimes are commited is a sword blade or a supernatural curse.
Q: What themes are explored inside your new novel?
Theme is such an integral part of a novel, but one best discovered by the writer rather than planned. I begin with a sense of a mystery or question I want to pursue, and let the themes reveal themselves through the characters. In the case of Crucible of Chaos, the question of faith and devotion are central to how the characters deal with the strange events threatening the island. Many of the monks come to blows over which gods they should worship, whereas Estevar’s allegiance is to the law – and specifically, to the entirely human notions of fairness and decency that underpin those laws. When he finally solves the mystery at the heart of the book, that question of faith becomes even more crucial to what happens next.
Q: Who are the cast of characters inside of Crucible of Chaos?
Crucible of Chaos features a relatively small cast compared to most of my books. This is by design: I wanted Estevar to feel alone, always at the edge of failure, never quite knowing who to trust. That said, once I began writing the book, I found he needed someone he felt was truly on his side, which is how Imperious the mule became such a vital – if unexpected – sidekick.
The main characters we meet are:
Estevar Velejan Duerisi Borros, also known as The King’s Crucible due to his duty as the Greatcoat sent to investigate crimes of the supernatural. Estevar is my re-imagining of a kind of swashbuckling Hercule Poirot with a dash of Fox Mulder from the X-Files. He’s fascinated by the supernatural, but his passion is solving mysteries, whatever the cause.
Imperious: Imperious is . . . well, he’s a mule. Perhaps the most cantakerous mule in all of Tristia. But he’s also loyal to a fault, and patient enough to listen to Estevar’s musings while offering an occasionally helpful grunt or bray.
Caeda: a high-spirited and enigmatic young woman who seems intent on assisting Estevar in his investigation and yet whose own motives are shrouded in secrecy.
Brother Agneta: a religious inquisitor whose own methods of investigation are rather more extreme than Estevar would like.
The Wolves, the Trumpeters and the Bone Rattlers: three factions of monks warring against each other over whose gods are the ones that should be worshiped in Tristia.
Q: Will most of the cast of characters be found in the upcoming books?
No, each book in the Court of Shadows is set in a different part of Tristia, a troubled country reeling from the aftermath of a long interregnum and a war that nearly turned its citizens in to slaves of an enemy nation. I wanted readers to be able to enjoy the books in any order, and so each volume of the Court of Shadows works as a standalone even as it slowly builds the broader mystery of who or what is plotting against the people of Tristia.
Q: Is it easy combining the historical and fantasy genres together?
Every genre has its benefits and challenges. Fantasy affords you the means to create a world perfectly suited to your themes. However, any narrative world, whether adapted from our own or entirely invented, has to have internal cohesion. You can’t introduce magic spells that can turn lead into gold without having that radically affect the economy. You can’t have orders of travelling, sword-fighting magistrates without inventing a cultural context in which trial by combat is more widely accepted than it was in our own world. So, it’s all a process of creating a world that’s internally consistent, not merely in terms of physics or geography, but also of culture and sociology.
Q: How would you describe your writing style?
I’ve always been influenced by noir (or hardboiled) writers like Raymond Chandler as well as by fantasy novelists who also borrowed from them stylistically like Roger Zelazny and Steven Brust. But I’m also a fan of William Goldman (the legendary screenwriter who gave us The Princess Bride) and Aaron Sorkin (whose lightning-fast dialogue was at the heart of The West Wing).
I try to bring those influences into my own style, aiming for something that’s readily approachable to most readers, but where every word is intentional. Writing schools and books often skim over prose these days, treating it as if it were simply a varnish you paint over the more important structural elements of character, plot and theme. But if you think about it, the prose – the words on the page – is the entirety of what makes up a book. The prose is the book. So, I try to craft my words so that there’s a flow and rhythm to them that the reader never needs to notice or think about, but which pulls them along on the journey from the opening words until the final sentence.
Q: Where can readers find you and your books online?
My books have been translated into fifteen languages and are in all the usual bookstores and online retailers around the world. The best way to reach me online is through my website at www.decastell.com, and if someone wants to write to me, they can do so at www.decastell.com/contact. I reply to every e-mail I receive.
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