Kester Grant

One of the most interesting things to me is that when people finish reading Court of Miracles, they immediately say, oh, I love this.

It reminds me of, and they list a couple of amazing books, The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch, Nevernight by Jay Kristoff, and Les Bardugo's Six of Crows.

I had never actually read any of those.

So the idea of having a criminal underworld and guilds and thieves in a fantasy setting did not actually come from those sorts of sources.

What I have been hugely influenced by was one of my favorite authors of all time is Terry Pratchett, who wrote the Discworld series.

And if you know the Discworld really well, then you can really see it in the Court of Miracles.

Firstly, because Discworld has a very grimy city, which the criminals are split into various different guilds.

It's very different, far more humorous.

Pratchett is an absolute genius.

But there are things that you can just tell influenced me.

The other aspect of Court of Miracles that was influenced by contemporary fantasy would be through the works of Guy Gavriel Kay and George R. R. Martin.

Because when I sit down and read a fantasy novel, which I don't do so much, but I have done for all of my life, is I'm really drawn to stories which are about...

political machinations, highly historical, very low, actually low fantasy, low magic, that those sorts of things don't interest me.

I'm interested in all of the different

people scheming against each other and the spy masters and the people who are trying to win the throne and all of these sorts of things.

Even in the way that the guilds are formed in that they have their strict hierarchy, that they each have a motto, that they each have an emblem, that they each have words that they recite.

I took that straight from

from George R.R.

Martin because I said to myself, what do I like?

Well, I really like these different factions and I really like that they have their own saying and I really like that they are forced by duty to be loyal to each other more than anyone else in any other circumstance and that often comes up against