Blog Archives
Cultural Imperialism
Talismans: Quathiels Dance follows the son of a potter whose ability to complete a Water talisman determines the fate of not only his betrothed but ultimately the land. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?
My experience with the inspiration of stories is deeper than one incident. I’ve been an avid reader of fantasy and science fiction since primary school. I’m not sure if there was a single inspiration. Some elements were purely reactionary. I can’t recall a single fantasy story based in the Southern Hemisphere. As an Australian, I’m subjected to a huge amount of Northern Hemisphere cultural imperialism. Down here, when the north wind blows, it’s hot, full of dust, and a likely precursor to bushfires. There’s no snow at Christmas – but all the shops are decked out with mock snow crystals and fake frosting.
Another aspect of living in the antipodes is the history of colonization. While I did not want to focus on that aspect, it is an underlying element in the Quathiels Dance world building. Living in New Zealand for many years, I saw how indigenous and colonizers could live in harmony (but only after the British had their imperial noses bloodied).
Is there a particular scene or passage in this book you are particularly proud of?
I’m proud of any section that was good enough to escape the editor’s red pen. 😁 Although not a major dramatic moment, I’m pleased with Maeve’s introduction while she’s out on the hunt with Sqwarker.
In many coming-of-age novels, authors often add their own life experiences to the story. Are there any bits of you in this story?
The story is all me!
All the characters are drawn from either who I am or who I hope I’m not. I’d love to be an experimentalist, like Ross, and a hunter like Maeve. I’ve fantasized about being a warrior, like Damon, and a sorcerer like Hallen, and a careful, caring person like Elam who can keep her anger in check.
Can you give us a peek inside the next book in this series? Where will it take readers?
It is difficult to give a peek into book two without spoiling the climax of book one.
East! Go east, young man! 🙃😁
There is mud. Ross builds on his success despite his failures and the increasing burdens the Quathiels lay upon him.
Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook | Website | Amazon
Although helpless to stop Salena, his betrothed, from being dragged away and Bound to the sorcerer, Ross held to a glimmer of hope. What could be done, could be undone.
Legend and the law said only death could free the sorcerously Bound, but Ross refused to relinquish the bright spark of his belief even though learning the sorcerous arts came at a high price: exile and enslavement, or death. But if he could learn enough to save his beloved, he could release the land from the bloody nightmare that dealing with the Bound presented.
The Quathiels, ancient elemental beings, had a plan. Steps were laid before Ross’s feet and the cadence set. To save the woman he loved, Ross must learn this new dance—and risk becoming the very thing the world feared.
Talismans
Talismans drops readers into a continent with a long memory and a short temper: bent-backed Lord Borman maps a land route through the Northern Desert so Craig P. Miller’s Makari “True Lords” can strike at Tambourtynne, while far from the Peer’s silken war-tent a potter’s son, Ross Cambridge, is yanked into the living mathematics of Quathiels Dance, where talismans, Bindings, and old gods-with-calluses tug on the same threads. The story braids courtly cruelty (and its logistics) with a ground-level friendship-and-survival line, then snaps tight in a flood-born crescendo: Ross completes a Water talisman that helps crack ancient Bindings and turns the invaders’ fire into a problem the river can finally solve.
What hooked me first wasn’t a prophecy or a chosen-one glow, it was the book’s appetite for consequences. Borman’s opening chapters feel like watching a careful man do dangerous arithmetic in sand: he’s not the biggest predator in the Hunt, so he survives by being precise, by noticing, by building “subtler means” into the world’s seams. And when the Peer’s campaign machinery comes into view, the novel doesn’t flinch, there’s a nauseating efficiency to how power is maintained (the projection tower fed by Bound men, refreshed on schedule like lamp oil). It made me angry in the good way: not “this is edgy,” but “this is what domination looks like when it’s normalized.”
My other big reaction was delight, the kind that creeps up on you while you’re trying to stay skeptical. The Quathiels magic isn’t just “spellcasting with new nouns,” it has a tactile, almost musical structure (Pukana, Dance, stanzas, codas) that makes Ross’s learning curve feel earned rather than granted. The climax, especially, worked on me: Ross’s Water talisman lands like a hard-won instrument finally tuned, and the fallout is messy, physical, and morally complicated. Even the “after” carries weight, Maeve’s survival depends on slow, exacting unbinding, not a cinematic pop of light, and that restraint made the hope feel sturdier.
If you like your epic fantasy, secondary-world fantasy, magic-system fantasy, political intrigue, and military fantasy with a vein of ecological myth, this is for you, especially if you enjoy protagonists who win by craft and stamina rather than destiny. Readers who vibe with Brandon Sanderson’s engineered magic or Robert Jordan’s multi-POV sprawl will recognize the pleasure here, though Miller’s tone is earthier, more mud, less marble. Talismans left me with one clean conviction: power breaks things; mercy rearranges the river.
Pages: 305 | ASIN : B0G9KTNL5K
