Where Do All Those Villains Come From?
Anyone who’s read EMPRESS – or any of the early reviews of the novel – will know that it’s a book with a very unsympathetic central character (and that there aren’t a lot of hugs to go around at the end.)
Over at Grasping for the Wind, John Ottinger talks to Karen about how the book upends the expectations of epic fantasy:
GFTW: Although Hekat is a sympathetic character at the beginning of the novel, we have come to dislike her very much by the end. How were you able to write a character that rather than having an upward spiral toward a “happily ever after” instead moved on a downward spiral filled with selfishness and hate?”