Interview with Carol Berg

SFFW: Your new book, Son of Avonar, launches a new, much-anticipated trilogy. Tell us a little of your main character and her story.

CB: I don't always like the female protagonists in fantasy. It seems as if in our zeal to rectify the simpering heroines of times past, we make our female protagonists too strong, too talented, too young, and incapable of making serious mistakes. And, though I do like strong and capable women, I have just never been interested in warrior princesses or chicks in chainmail.

I began thinking of Seri many years ago¾a woman of thirty-five, living in exile from her own life. She had grown up as an intelligent, self-confident, and passionate young woman who believed that, no matter history, custom, or evidence to the contrary, she would always be able to shape the world to her desires.  And then she failed.  Totally and tragically.  She had made the mistake of falling in love with a sorcerer in a society dedicated to the extermination of sorcery. And despite everything she could do, he was caught and executed, and their infant son slaughtered as well.

How would this change her?  How would she react to an event that demanded she somehow regain her confidence and determined engagement with life?  What kind of incident would it take to jar her out of her self-imposed exile?  A mystery, I decided.  A mystery that touched every nerve that had led her to tragedy before and forced her to look back into her past horror and come to terms with it. That's the story of "Son of Avonar".

SFFW: The fantasy genre is arguably notorious for its portrayal of women. The two protagonists of the Rai-kirah books were male. They were rich personalities - three-dimensional, realistic, complicated, with depths to plumb. In your next release, The Song of the Beast, a man and a woman shared center stage with equal success. Your latest, Son of Avonar, is seen entirely through the eyes of Lady Seriana, a woman. Would you consider this an intentional progression? If so, what has it meant to you and how has it influenced your experience in writing this book?

CB: It is certainly not an intentional progression, but simply different protagonists, any one of whom could have come first. "Guardians of the Keep", Book 2 of the Bridge of D'Arnath, will have multiple narrators, both male and female, as will "The Soul Weaver", Book 3. I try to create complex and interesting characters. Heroes and heroines who have both strengths and weaknesses, who are afraid, who make mistakes, have regrets, and pay serious prices for their talents, magical or other. Villains that have redeeming qualities or complex motives. I like to think I always give a villain a chance for redemption. (Being the villain, that chance just doesn't always work out.) Once I choose a character whose voice will tell the story, I place these characters into an adventure that will explore all the aspects of their personalities.

What I have found is that I have to work much harder at writing women. Writing Son of Avonar wholly from the female perspective was extremely difficult, which explains why Seri has been around for a number of years before finding her way into print. Getting into her head, getting the right balance of reason and emotion, trying to avoid clichés...

I worried about this difficulty for a while, as it seemed strange for a woman to struggle with female characters. But since then, I've heard the same from many other women authors. We seem to agree that we've spent a lot more time observing men in our lives. Thank goodness, Seri finally decided to reveal herself to me. She is an argumentative person and very stubborn, but if you get on her good side, she will stay with you.

SFFW: Another pitfall of the genre you have gracefully sidestepped is the art of balancing magic elements with the mundane and familiar. What are your thoughts on this subject? Is there sometimes the temptation to use more magic than necessary or the opposite - any hesitation to use it at all?

CB: I write fantasy because I enjoy expanding the natural laws of the worlds where my stories occur and challenging my heroes and heroines with extraordinary circumstances. So, no, I don't hesitate to use magic, and I'm never tempted to forego it. But I don't like to overwhelm the characters and plot with the magical architecture of the story, and I certainly don't like to give characters so much power that they can solve their problems too easily. I do like to set readers down in worlds that feel familiar, so they can fill in the gaps of detail subconsciously¾worlds that are close enough to "real" that readers can feel like they could walk down the streets. I believe this keeps the reader closer to the characters and enables readers to follow the characters into the more unusual dimensions of their reality and accept those as well. My stories are first of all stories of people. I strive to make my non-magical characters as interesting as the magical. And I like to think Seyonne would be an interesting man of extraordinary compassion, strength, and good humor, whether he could shapeshift or not.