Kester Grant

And there was something about the Jungle Book that just I think I would almost call it seductive.

I love the idea of this wild jungle, but they have a very, very strict regimented law that everyone has to adhere to.

Kipling's language is just one of the things that made it so magical to me.

I mean, Kipling, of course, is a poet as well as being an author.

And he also brings in this aspect which is rooted in old traditions of folktales, of telling these animal folklore.

And each of the animal clans and packs...

has their own rules and their own laws and how they interact with the rest of the jungle.

And all of these things pulled straight into the Court of Miracles because if you look at the Miracle Court itself, the criminal underworld, it's split into guilds.

It has its law, which is the law for all of the guilds.

And then each individual guild has its leader, its hierarchy, its rules, its motto.

All of that comes straight from the Jungle Book.

Yes, it is.

One of the things I looked into when I was creating the world of the Miracle Court was that I wanted to create a subculture that felt different to other cultures that we have today.

The question was how to do that.

And I thought, well, a subculture comes with its own.

Firstly, I studied a lot of subcultures, whether it would be people in prisons or people on a tiny island somewhere that had never been in touch with other societies.

And it comes down to things like our traditions, our manners, what we say, what we do, our laws, the things we believe.

And a lot of it is in expression and in language and in religion.

So the way I create, I try to make the Miracle Courts seem like a different society, but something that you would not be familiar with.

was to bring in kind of a history, a mythology that was based on animal folklore, but put into a human setting.