We chat with author G.R. Macallister about Sestia, which is the final book in this epic fantasy trilogy, in which a centuries-long peace is shattered in a matriarchal society when a decade passes without a single girl being born.
Hi, G.R.! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
Hi! I’m G.R. (Greer) Macallister, author of the Five Queendoms series, set in a matriarchal world where a centuries-long peace is threatened when girls suddenly stop being born. I’ve been publishing historical fiction centered on women’s stories since 2015, but a few years ago I got a bee in my bonnet that someone needed to write a matriarchal Game of Thrones-style epic fantasy series, and it turned out that someone was me.
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
Long, long ago. I was writing poems in second grade, short stories in fourth. I’ve been a writer almost as long as I’ve been a reader. Stories have such power.
Quick lightning round! Tell us:
- The first book you ever remember reading: OK! As a kid, I went gaga for The Monster at the End of This Book by Grover. (That twist!)
- The one that made you want to become an author:In fifth grade, our teacher would read aloud to us a chapter at a time after recess, and one of the books she read was Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time. It was the first time I understood how powerful a carefully constructed fantasy world could be.
- The one that you can’t stop thinking about: There’s just something about Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo that keeps it always on my mind. I think it’s Darlington.
Sestia is the final installment in your Five Queendoms trilogy and it’s out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Classic epic fantasy, but matriarchal.
For those who haven’t picked up the Five Queendoms trilogy, what can readers expect?
It’s a big juicy old-school epic fantasy series—wide-ranging, with multiple viewpoints and a complex plot that converges in a major showdown—set in a matriarchal world where women are and always have been in charge.
And for those who have, what’s to come?
The challenge with a series is to keep everything readers loved about the previous book going, but without letting the plot or characters get stale. So while there are lots of familiar faces in Sestia, a big chunk of the action moves to the titular queendom, which hasn’t been explored that much in the previous books. Plus, an old nemesis is working to break down the barrier between the worlds of the living and the dead, and that’s obviously a dangerous proposition.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring further?
No spoilers, but there are characters who started out this series completely powerless who now have immense power, and how they wrestle with that has been a real joy to explore. And there’s a long-awaited reunion in Sestia that brought tears to my eyes. I hope it does the same for fans.
Did you face any challenges with the final installment? How did you overcome them?
Sometimes, writing this book felt like nothing but challenges! The main one was writing a third installment that provided a satisfying ending to the series, while still leaving the door slightly open for further books if the reader demand is high enough. One of the best emails I’ve ever received was from my editor saying, “You did it. You landed the plane.”
The first installment published in 2022. What was the timelime like from concept to completion for the series?
When the last season of the TV adaptation of “Game of Thrones” was announced in 2018, I started wondering what it would be like to read a wide-ranging epic fantasy with all queens and no kings, once that didn’t follow the familiar lines of men having all the military and political power and women forced to scrap for a narrow slice of influence behind the scenes. I dug deep into the world of speculative fiction but didn’t find exactly what I wanted to read—a matriarchy that was neither a utopia nor a dystopia, but a society that had developed completely differently from our own. It took more than a year to write the initial draft and rewrite it into something manageable, but once my agent took it out on the market, it sold relatively quickly… right as the pandemic lockdowns hit in March 2020. So Scorpica came out in 2022, Arca a year later in 2023, and then for various and sundry publishing reasons, Sestia took an extra year and came out in hardcover in 2025. It’s so satisfying to have all three together on my shelf now.
What’s next for you?
Now that I’ve written both historical fiction and fantasy, I’m kind of addicted to writing both. So I have a completed historical novel that’s a big change for me that I’m really excited about, and I’m also deep into a draft of a standalone that’s a new direction in fantasy.
Lastly, what books have you enjoyed reading this year? Are there any you’re looking forward to picking up?
It’s been a great year for reading! V.E. Schwab’s new one, Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil, is a barn-burner. I also recently enjoyed Anna Rasche’s twisty, high-stakes The Stone Witch of Florence, and after repeated recommendations, I’m really looking forward to diving into Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s Chain Gang All Stars.
