Why It’s Fun to Write About What Happens After the World’s Been Saved
In So Let Them Burn, my debut Young Adult fantasy, the climax of my characters’ journeys has already happened. As is the case for many high fantasy novels, there was a war. An empire conquered. An island nation rebelled. A Chosen One, blessed with the magic of the gods, and a teenaged queen, orphaned by the war before she ever got to know her royal parents, freed their people and rebuilt their wounded country.
My book opens five years later, introducing readers to characters who have already become legends—and how poorly they’re dealing with the aftermath.
So Let Them Burn is far from the first book to look at what happens after the world’s been saved. Chosen Ones, by Veronica Roth, tackled PTSD and celebrity in a world very like our own. The Afterward, by EK Johnson, showed us queer characters drowning under their own reputations. And Strange the Dreamer, by Laini Taylor, focused on the scars that war left behind, no matter how justified that war might have been.
Stories like that fascinate me in the same way cozy fantasy novels fascinate people looking for more personal stakes in their magical worlds. Because the journey of recovery after a world-shattering, life-defining war is deeply personal. In So Let Them Burn, Faron and Elara were 12 and 13 respectively when they left for battle. At 17 and 18, they are both broken. Faron, unwilling to face the expectations her powers and actions have placed on her, has regressed as deeply as she could into childishness. Elara, incapable of dealing with being a footnote in her younger sister’s story, has adopted a mindset of toxic heroism.
Both of them left vital parts of themselves behind. Both of them are broken. Both of them are doing their best.
That, to me, is so rich with narrative possibility. And not just because I can’t stage a battle scene to save my life.
It is a tragic fact of the human condition that there is always a war, a conflict, a battle, a fight, somewhere in the world. But it is also a wondrous fact that life happens in and around those terrifying times. People can learn to live—sometimes even thrive—in unimaginable conditions. To come together to get one another through the day. To laugh. To love. To hope.
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If there’s one thing that human beings of all ages are, it’s resilient. As much bad as there is in the world, there are those who are filled with so much good. People who will give you directions in a new city or hand over their lunch to someone who’s hungry. People who will find you a first edition copy of a book you mentioned liking once and people who will take you in when your house has burned down. People who tell stories to console terrified children and people who give their seat to the elderly. The world spins wildly onward, and humanity continues to shine in ways large and small.
I wanted to write a book about that journey. About that space between wars, when there is nothing left to distract you from facing those jagged pieces of yourself you’ve been desperately holding together. About the consequences that must be faced and the growth that must be doing and the hope, that unflinching hope, that there is light on the other side of so much darkness.
I wanted to write a book about a Chosen One whose mission was complete, but that didn’t stop them from being trapped with the title and responsibility. I wanted to write a book about the damage and trauma that is dealt from fighting, at such a young age, for your own humanity. I wanted to write a book about two sisters who loved each other so much—fiercely, loyally, and perhaps a bit codependently—that they would do anything for each other. Even doom the world.
And as a Jamaican-American, born on an island that still bears the fingerprints of its colonizers and moved to a country with its own dangerous history of slavery and cultural erasure, I wanted to write a book about a country being created rather than destroyed. San Irie struggles with its national identity, struggles to rebuild all that the colonizers destroyed, and mourns the things they will never get back after the war—all struggles that I hope ring true to Black Americans of all cultural backgrounds.
I love books about looming war and evils triumphantly defeated at the end of a pyrrhic battle. I grew up on Song of the Lioness and Eragon, The Chronicles of Narnia and City of Bones. But for my debut novel, I wanted to take a glimpse at the after. I wanted heroes in recovery, fire-forged relationships put to the test of normalcy, and the joy and fear of having an adventure when you thought you’d retired from having adventures.
One day, I’ll write a book like the ones I grew up with. But, for me, the best part of So Let Them Burn is that it’s not about THE war or the next war. There will always be a war. So Let Them Burn is one look at how to keep living when you are the biggest threat to yourself, when you peaked at 12 and now the world is what you make of it, and when you have no idea who you are because everyone has always told you who they think you should be. It’s about learning to live in the world that you’ve saved, when you’ve spent so long just trying to survive.
So Let Them Burn is that first tranquil breath you take after danger has passed. I hope it brings readers that same kind of peace.
Check out Kamilah Cole’s So Let Them Burn here:
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