The Twisting Path Of Caina Amalas: A Somewhat Rambling Retrospective

I have to admit, listening to the CHILD OF THE GHOSTS audiobook has put me into an uncharacteristically reflective mood.

(Note that this following post contains !!!SPOILERS!!! for all 21 GHOSTS books.)

Though I do know why. I didn’t know this until last year, but if you listen to someone else read (or, really, perform) your book, it lets you see the book from the outside, as it were, in the way that you never could otherwise. Like, I’ve been writing about Caina in some form or another since 2007. The series has sold over 230,000 copies since I started self-publishing in 2011. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about Caina and her world and the characters (eleven years!), but this was the first time in those eleven years I really got to see it from the outside.

I’ve had a lot of people tell me that Chapter 4 of CHILD OF THE GHOSTS is the make-or-break point for them. That’s the chapter where Maglarion harvests Caina’s blood for her bloodcrystal and leaves her barren in the process. I’ve had a lot of people tell me (or complain at me) that they threw aside the book in disgust at that point. Or they deleted it in disgust from their Kindles, since Kindles are expensive and throwing them is unwise and wasteful. That said, if people do get through Chapter 4, they’re usually hooked, and they’re so hooked that in a few weeks I’m going to start the 22nd book about Caina.

Some of you already know that I wrote GHOST IN THE FLAMES (book 2) and GHOST IN THE BLOOD (book 3) several years before I wrote CHILD OF THE GHOSTS (book 1). That’s why there are little bits of continuity drift between those three books. I thought I got them all but you always miss something. But, that’s just like life. The 2018 version of Jonathan Moeller weighs 120 pounds less than the 2008 version of Jonathan Moeller who wrote GHOST IN THE FLAMES? Clearly the writer got lazy and forgot details! 🙂

Caina’s attitude towards sorcery has softened somewhat during the series (albeit not by much), and that’s because I changed how it was portrayed in the books. In the first three books, I had the idea that all the sorcerers would be like the ones in the Conan of Cimmeria stories – ravening lunatics in league with dark powers, which meant Caina was right to hate them all. By the time I got to GHOST IN THE STORM (book 4), I decided to change the way sorcery worked. Rather than an inherently malefic power, it was in fact radiation drawn from the immaterial parallel universe called the “netherworld”. So when the Imperial Magisterium talks about studying “arcane science”, they’re talking about studying sorcery as a scientific, technical affair, without all the mummery and showmanship that people like the occultists of Anshan would use, or the martial traditions of the stormdancers of New Kyre, or the more responsible and service-oriented traditions of the loremasters of Iramis. And in terms of the worldbuilding, the Magisterium is actually correct to insist that they’re just studying a natural force that can be employed like any other, though the Magisterium’s internal culture tends towards massive corruption. It’s an organization in dire need of a serious reform.

(Though the Magisterium is NOT gonna be happy when they realize the valikarion have returned.)

Granted, the Magisterium is still an enormous bunch of jerks, but they’re not nearly as bad as the Umbarians. (All the really bad magi left to join the Umbarians when the civil war started.) And there are some forms of sorcery, like necromancy and pyromancy, that are inherently corrupting. Like if today we developed a machine that allowed for mind control, it would almost certainly lead to widespread abuse.

What led to this change was Kylon of House Kardamnos. In the original outline of GHOST IN THE STORM, he was definitely a bad guy, extremely thuggish and brutal. That said, when I actually started writing him, he was much more honorable and self-disciplined than he had been in the outline. Which made sense, because his water sorcery means he constantly senses the emotions of those around him, which means he would have to be enormously self-disciplined to function. (Which also means he’s often more emotionally stable than Caina, who tends to internalize things and deal with her emotions by doing things like overthrowing governments.) He did click with Caina in a way I hadn’t expected, so out of necessity I had to rethink the way sorcery worked in Caina’s world.

That also led to opportunities for character growth for Caina. In the first three books, her forming friendships with people like Claudia and Annarah and Seb (and Kylon!) would have been utterly unthinkable for her. But as Caina herself comes to realize, you can’t live on revenge forever, since she basically spent the ten years from CHILD OF THE GHOSTS to GHOST IN THE STONE doing just that. Nerina Strake, Damla, and Annarah are really the first female friends she has that are close to her own age. (Her relationship with Claudia is much more complicated.)

So while Caina still doesn’t like sorcerers (especially from the Magisterium) and doesn’t trust them, she doesn’t want to kill them all. Usually.

I do occasionally get criticism from people over the fact that Caina wants kids but can’t have them. I think it works really well for the character. Like, one of the best ways to have internal conflict for a character is to have them want something they can’t have for some reason. It also means that Caina’s biggest berserk trigger is someone harming the kids of someone she likes, though Caina being Caina, she tends to go berserk in a coldly methodical fashion. Like, Kylon and some other characters are always somewhat bemused to realize that the reason the Istarish and the Kyracians lost the Battle of Marsis was because Nicolai was taken captive. If Caina hadn’t been separated from Nicolai during the attack, she would have gotten him out of the city, and she might never have crossed the paths of Andromache and Rezir Shahan, and the Empire probably would have lost the city. Or Scorikhon would have made the city into his personal fiefdom when Andromache released him from his Tomb under the Citadel of Marsis.

Or in Istarinmul. Damla was kind to Caina on one of the worst days of her life. And that night Ulvan of the Slavers’ Brotherhood made the mistake of kidnapping Damla’s sons using forged documents…and that led directly to the Brotherhood’s destruction two years later. Granted, Cassander Nilas and the Red Huntress were the ones who actually killed off the Slavers’ Brotherhood, but that’s not widely known, and most people assume Caina killed them. Though she had already ruined their finances and driven them to desperation, which made them ask someone like Cassander for help.

###

“You’re right,” Caina said. “This is not my country, and these are not my people. But I promise you one thing. I give you one warning. If you come for Sophia Zomanek, I shall give to you what I do best.”

Razdan sneered. “And what is that?”

Caina smiled. “Ruin.”

The word hung in the air between them like a sword.

###

Heh. Caina did warn him. Razdan really should have listed, shouldn’t he?

I originally planned for Caina to have no love interests at all in the series, so GHOST IN THE FLAMES and GHOST IN THE BLOOD had no romantic sideplots whatsoever, and neither did GHOST IN THE STORM. CHILD OF THE GHOSTS had one ill-fated romantic encounter for Caina, but that was intended as part of her backstory and establishment of her character. What changed my mind about Caina having a love interesting was the THURSDAY NEXT series by Jasper Fforde. In one of the book’s sideplots (mild spoiler) Thursday’s husband is erased from existence by the series’ version of the Time Police, and she spends several books trying to get him back. I admired how skillfully Mr. Fforde executed the sideplot over several books, and so that changed my mind about romance subplots in books.

I did always intend for Corvalis Aberon to die in the final fight against the Moroaica, and Caina’s next love interest was originally supposed to be a valikarion she rescued from the netherworld at the same time she rescued Annarah. Except people kept emailing to ask when Kylon was going to return to the series. I had tried to write him out of the series several times, but people kept emailing to ask when he would return. So I shelved the idea of the valikarion, and instead sent the Red Huntress to kill Kylon’s family and get him exiled from New Kyre. (Poor Thalastre!) In hindsight that change worked really well! Sometimes it’s a good idea to listen to people.

One of the other interesting things about the series is that it can change genres. Like, CHILD OF THE GHOSTS is an epic fantasy coming of age story. GHOST IN THE FLAMES is a murder mystery. GHOST IN THE STORM is a military fantasy novel. GHOST IN THE FORGE is a political thriller – a renegade organization is threatening to sell weapons of mass destruction to the highest bidder. GHOST IN THE MAZE is a heist novel. I really need to do another one of those. GHOST IN THE THRONE, GHOST IN THE PACT, and GHOST IN THE WINDS together are an epic fantasy trilogy. I think GHOST IN THE TOWER is going to have another genre shift when I start writing it in a few weeks.

So, to wrap up this retrospective, I would like to thank you all for coming along on Caina’s journey. 21 books, people! Thanks for reading them all.

How many more? I have no idea. I used to joke that I wanted to write more Caina books than there were DRESDEN FILES books, but I did that a while ago. Now maybe my next goal should be to write more Caina books than there are Drizzt Do’Urden books – I think there are 31 of those. Or maybe JD Robb’s IN DEATH series – I think there are something like 47 of those and a bunch of short stories.

Either way, I’ve got some writing to do! 🙂

-JM