‘This’ll be fun,’ Reichis said after a little while.
‘Fun?’
‘Yeah. I mean, now that we’ve got rid of those other three. They were really slowing us down. Well, you, mostly.’
‘How do you figure?’
The squirrel cat gave a little chortle. ‘Because of the way you keep drooling around Nephenia.’ He wrinkled his nose. ‘Bad enough the way you smell normally, but do you have any idea what kind of a reek you put out when you were trying to get her to mate with you?’
‘I didn’t—’
‘Besides,’ he went on, ignoring me entirely, ‘this makes for a better story: the young, noble warrior, setting out on a righteous quest, accompanied by his faithful – if a bit dense – human sidekick.’
‘You’re a little monster sometimes, you know that?’
The squirrel cat gave me a snarl. ‘Hey, I’m the biggest monster the world’s ever seen, and you better not forget it.’
I loosened my grip on the reins and let the horse pick up the pace as we made our way down the long, dark road towards whatever was waiting for us out there. ‘I’m starting to pity those demons,’ I said.
Acknowledgements
I get lost in shadow all the time. You’d think after having six novels published I’d get the hang of this writing thing, but I haven’t. People ask me about my ‘process’, and all I can say is that it’s a winding mess and without the help of patient and insightful guides, I’d stay lost forever. In that spirit, I thought you might like to know the path this book took to get to your hands.
Charmcaster got its title when Jane Harris, the brilliant publisher at Hot Key Books, informed me that ‘Hextracker’ just wasn’t as good a title as the others in the series. I responded by telling her to come up with a better one. She did.
Gitabria, along with its eight bridges, contraptioneers and coin magic, were brainstormed and debated with the help of my fellow novelists in the writing group of which I am privileged to be a member: Wil Arndt, Stephanie Charette, Brad Denhert, and Kim Tough.
The discordances, with their mechanical birds and crowned mages and other enigmatic details, were devised with the help of my editor, Felicity Johnston. The beautiful illustrations found in the book were drawn by Sam Hadley under the art direction of Nick Stearn. The amazing cover design (along with Reichis finally getting the prominence he deserves), is their creation as well.
Nephenia, one of my favourite characters, appears in this book in part because Matilda Johnson, my first editor at Hot Key, challenged me in Spellslinger to give her more voice and agency. In doing so, Nephenia went from a side player to someone who doesn’t let anyone but herself decide her own fate.
The mechanical dragons got short shrift in the earlier drafts of the books. It was my fellow novelist Eric Torin who warned me I was taking the easy way out – as he does with all my books. Oh, and if you like Shalla, you should know that she came into being years ago when Eric suggested there needed to be someone in the books that Kellen could never outwit.
Conspiracies, assassins, coin magic, Jan’Tep plots, deadly inventions, shadowblack paths, masked assassins … I swear there was a point where I thought it would be impossible to fit them all into one book. The truth is, it wouldn’t have been possible if Fliss (aka Felicity Johnston) hadn’t helped me work through the problems over innumerable trans-Atlantic Skype sessions. I couldn’t have gotten through the changes without the help of Kim Tough, who read countless versions, and my wife, Christina de Castell, who, when she says it’s good, I can finally breathe easy again.
Well … there’s one other voice who must be obeyed on the subject of squirrel cats getting their due: thanks, Simone Hay.
Of course, once the story was sorted out, then the real work began: Jim Hull of narrativefirst.com let me argue with him about story structure, Sarah Fuller spotted problems in the first act, Melissa Hyder graciously copy edited the book faster than anyone should ever have to, and Jade Craddock and Talya Baker are fixing my no doubt thousands of typos and grammatical errors as I write this.
That Charmcaster found its way into your hands is thanks to my agents, Heather Adams and Mike Brian of HMA Literary, and Mark Smith, CEO of Bonnier Zaffre, who took a gamble on the series and who I still owe a private jet. Jane Harris, Publisher of Hot Key Books, put together an amazing team including Jamie Taylor who turns it into an actual book, Nicola Chapman who markets it, Tina Mories who gets people to talk about it, and the fantastic sales team at Bonnier Zaffre for getting stores to carry it. If you’re reading this in a language other than English, it’s because Ruth Logan and Ilaria Tarasconi got publishers around the world excited about it and, of course, thanks to the translator of this particular edition.
If that sounds like a lot of people, that’s only the start. Remember that there’s a very good chance you heard about Charmcaster from a review by a kind, dedicated and likely unpaid blogger writing about books out of love for the genre. Your local booksellers fight to keep stories like these on the shelves so that you get the chance to enjoy them. Or maybe you borrowed this particular one from a library staffed by some of the best humans out there. Even Reichis likes librarians.
Oh, and the reason authors keep writing? It’s the readers – who don’t just accumulate books but talk about them, write letters and emails to authors and give meaning to our literary meanderings. Your enthusiasm means more to me than I can find the words to express. I’ll keep trying though.
If you’d like to write to me, you can find me at www.decastell.com or follow me on Twitter @decastell
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First published in Great Britain in 2018 by
HOT KEY BOOKS
80–81 Wimpole St, London W1G 9RE
www.hotkeybooks.com
Copyright © Sebastien de Castell, 2018
Illustrations copyright © Sam Hadley, 2018
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
The right of Sebastien de Castell and Sam Hadley to be identified as author and illustrator of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978-1-4714-0671-3
Hot Key Books is an imprint of Bonnier Zaffre Ltd,
a Bonnier Publishing company
www.bonnierpublishing.com
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