Interview with Carol Berg

SFFW: The scheme of magic in the Bridge of D'Arnath trilogy is unlike any I have come across in the genre. It is both subtle and beautiful, and has its dangers. Could you explain a little of the basic concept behind the magic and discuss the motivations, origins or influences that put you on this path?

CB: Seri's people are mundane ¾ born with no talent for magic. The Dar'Nethi (J'Ettanni) people are sorcerers. From an early age, almost every Dar'Nethi can do small things such as creating light, easing the discomfort of small wounds, or summoning birds. But sometime around the sixteenth birthday, a young person comes into one of a hundred major talents, such as Healer, or Word Winder (one who devises enchantments from the meanings of words), or a Singer (one who can make a song take on physical reality.)

Of course, along with the talent to work enchantments of a particular kind, the Dar'Nethi sorcerer must have power to execute it. Power is inborn as well, and expended power is replenished as one goes about the business of living, interacting with people and nature. But using one's innate power alone is very limiting, as it isn't very much, and expended power is replenished quite slowly. And so over the centuries, the Dar'Nethi have learned to maximize their power by living in an "enhanced" way...observing, accepting, and savoring the experiences of life, large and small, good and bad together, and viewing these experiences in the larger context of the world. This is a spiritual and philosophical path that derives from their religion and mythology and the beauties of their world. One problem is that this mode of gathering power is somewhat "confining" for someone who is greedy or in a hurry, as it requires commitment and a certain balance and openness of mind.

The concept of Dar'Nethi magic, and particularly Dar'Nethi healing, grew as I developed Karon's character. Karon was a Dar'Nethi Healer, and we learn in the opening chapters of Son of Avonar, that he was our heroine's husband, burned at the stake in the mundane world where sorcery is a crime. I wanted Karon to be an exemplar of the Dar'Nethi Way, a person who is entranced with the way a raindrop is poised at the edge of a leaf and savors arguments with his wife. He is a very powerful sorcerer. But the particular belief that he derives from the Way, that as a Healer he is prohibited from causing injury or death to another being...even to save his own life...lead him to disaster. There is always a price for power.

SFFW: From Transformation to Son of Avonar, you have favored first-person accounts. What do you find appealing about this method of storytelling? Have you stumbled on any difficulties?

CB: I just seem to have fallen into it. First person narrative feels very natural to me, perhaps because many (though not all) of my favorite books are told in first person. Mary Stewart's Merlin books, for example, and Mary Renault's Theseus books and "The Persian Boy", Roger Zelazny's Amber books, Wilkie Collins' "The Moonstone" (a great example of multiple, distinct narrative voices.) Perhaps it is because I enjoy living a story with my characters, and I find this easier when the characters themselves are telling the story. This closeness can certainly be achieved with third person, but I just haven't developed the technique as yet. Some of my early writing was third person, and I felt like the characters stayed at arm's length.

The difficulty with a single first person narrator, of course, is that your narrator must be present at all events, which can limit your ability to recount all aspects of a complex story or to show a single event from multiple perspectives. I solved this by using multiple first person narrators in "Song of the Beast", and in the second and third books of the D'Arnath series. I don't know that I will ever again be able to do what I did with Seyonne, having him narrate the entire 500,000+ words of the books of the rai-kirah¾a very complex story. No wonder he had such a hard life!

Another difficulty with first person occurs when you want to instill some ambiguity about the motives and behavior of your protagonist. If you are in the character's head, it is infinitely more difficult to hide things from the reader. One example where I had to work quite hard was near the end of "Restoration" when Seyonne makes a choice that literally changes his personality. A very difficult piece of writing, which would have been much easier if I'd been able to switch into someone else's point of view. But I was determined not to do that for one chapter at the end of a long three books.