FROSTBORN retrospective #1

Note that this post has !!!SPOILERS!!! for the first fourteen books in FROSTBORN.

I have to admit that finishing the FROSTBORN series made me nostalgic. After all, it was fifteen novels and a whole lot of short stories in four years. Also, I re-read a bunch of the previous books while writing FROSTBORN: THE SHADOW PRISON, and I listened to the first two audiobooks, so it was a bit of a trip down memory lane.

I really liked this scene in FROSTBORN: THE IRON TOWER:

“We won,” said Mara. She sounded stunned.

“We did,” said Ridmark.

“Was this…was this your plan?” said Mara.

“Not at all,” said Ridmark.

“Then…then you really are just a madman with a stick, aren’t you?” said Mara. She began to laugh, and then covered her face.

I always liked Ridmark’s and Mara’s interactions. They sort of take turns playing the protective older brother or the wiser older sister as the situation demands.

But! In the original outline for the FROSTBORN series, Mara wasn’t supposed to appear again after THE IRON TOWER. I had planned her as Jager’s vaguely good-natured girlfriend, and she would stay behind when Jager accompanied Ridmark and the others to Urd Morlemoch.

But when I got to her first scene in THE MASTER THIEF, I was bored with her character, so I threw in the detail that she was half dark elf without thinking it through. Because of that, the path of the whole rest of the story changed – the Traveler, Nightmane Forest, the Anathgrimm, and the character of Third all came from that snap decision.

-JM