We chat with author Ed McDonald about Witch Queen of Redwinter, which is the satisfyingly epic conclusion to this dark and gritty fantasy trilogy.
Hi, Ed! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
Hi! I’m Ed McDonald, author of The Raven’s Mark and The Redwinter Chronicles fantasy series. I’ve always loved the epic fantasy genre, and like things to be on the more irreverent side. When I’m not writing I’m usually playing Dungeons and Dragons, MMORPGs, or training in historical European martial arts (the lange messer being my area of specialist study). I move around during the year, spending most of it in London, Los Angeles and southern France.
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
As long as I can remember I’ve been writing something. I had phases where I wanted to be a comic book writer, but I think I wrote my first fantasy “book,” (it would have filled about 10 pages in total) when I was around 9 or 10. My love of tabletop games and video games definitely fuelled that need to write.
Quick lightning round! Tell us:
- The first book you ever remember reading: The first book I remember reading as a child was called “Help!” but that’s all I remember about it.
- The one that made you want to become an author: The book that made me want to pursue writing professionally, stepping it up a notch from “I like doing this,” to “I want people to read what I write,” was Robin Hobb’s Assassin’s Apprentice. There’s something special about it.
- The one that you can’t stop thinking about: The book I can’t stop thinking about… I’m going to turn the question slightly and say that the narrated storyline that occurred between levels from the 1996 Bungee video game Myth: The Fallen Lords has ever been one of my greatest inspirations. I haven’t played that game since about 1998, but it has never left. You can watch the whole narrated story on Youtube. I only discovered many years that later that it has strong resemblances to Glen Cook’s The Black Company.
Witch Queen of Redwinter is the final installment in your Redwinter Chronicles and it’s out November 12th! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Apocalypse on a new scale.
For those who haven’t picked up Redwinter Chronicles, what awaits them?
The Redwinter Chronicles is an epic fantasy, but it’s also an in-depth character study of the protagonist, Raine, a young woman plunged into events far beyond her, but who has a certain power around the dead. I have always wanted to explore what happens when the only thing that can stop the greatest evil imaginable is a power that could be argued to be equally terrible. How much would you sacrifice? And at the same time, I wanted to portray a young and inexperienced protagonist as a real person – Raine acts as a young adult really does. She makes mistakes. She’s naïve, inexperienced, and she’s dealing with the harsh realities of life for the first time.
There’s a complex magic system, warrior mystics, a dark other-world, cults, conspiracy, politics, coming of age stories and all that kind of thing.
And for those that have, what’s to come in the final installment?
After the events of Traitor of Redwinter, Raine is trapped in the Fault – a netherworld outside of her own, where time stands still, distances don’t stay as they should, and only relics of the past and monstrous abominations still reside. She has to escape, because her own world is collapsing and she is the only one that can prevent it – but even as she does so, her own soul is tearing in two as the conflicts battle within her. Can she remain some semblance of humanity as she unleashes the greatest powers of death magic the world can endure?
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring one last time?
There’s a big high-concept involved in Witch Queen, which I don’t want to spoil, but it really made me up my writing game. That was a challenge. But overall, Raine was a character whose head I’ve been walking in a while. She means a lot to me. There’s a huge sadness to letting a character go – and letting them become what they have to…
What were some challenges you faced with the final installment in wrapping up the series?
I don’t always know where things are going when I start. I don’t always have the answers. Sometimes, creating a difficult set of situations that requires a truly spectacular explanation (but one that fits with everything that has already occurred) can force you to write something that literally nobody, not even you, saw coming. But when you do it right, it just feels right, and eventually you forget that you ever had to think about it at all. Witch Queen had a lot of wrapping up to do, and a lot of relationships to resolve. Doing them justice was a challenge.
When it came to planning out your series, was there always a vision in sight or does it continue to adapt and change as the series progresses?
I have literally no idea what’s going to happen. I find out as the characters do!
What’s next for you?
I’ve been working on a few things, but I always say “don’t let anyone taste the cake before it has been baked.” I might have been watching too much of that baking show.
Lastly, what books have you enjoyed this year and are there any that you can’t wait to get your hands on in 2025?
The book I enjoyed most this year was Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir, and the fantasy book I enjoyed most was The Sword Unbound, the second book in Gareth Hanrahan’s Lands of the Firstborn trilogy. I just received a special advanced copy of the third book in the series, but I’ll probably only get to it in 2025.
