Shané Oosthuizen

the fact that it's in a school doesn't now make it literary fiction.

And it also doesn't take away from what the rest of the genre is doing in similar spaces.

Like, one of my favourite series is, like, the Between Earth and Sky series by Rebecca Roanhorse.

It kind of deals a little bit with, like, similar issues of, like, power and world building and how that all relates, like, empires and how they fall and villains and how they're made.

And that, like...

Mm.

I think that's kind of one of the things that fantasy is best for.

It's such a safe space to explore some really like terrible, horrible realities that we live with every day and often don't talk about.

I find her selfishness so interesting to read.

I think she's like such an ego driven character.

And like, she does get to a point where she's kind of like doing what we might consider good in the world.

And sort of fighting for change, like on behalf of the Queen.

And it's like...

I don't know, like Sienna is driven by like the need to be the best of the best and her God tells her that the best of the best is seeking like the highest possible truth that you can and like at the highest possible truth, like racism is not going to exist there.

And so now she's like fighting for the queen, but it's like.

if that wasn't the case like if her god's like ideal wasn't like absolute truth would she care I'm not sure that she would I'm not sure she would have made it to that place where she would have cared about the suffering of the others in that city I think it's so interesting because like she tells us that she's like that from the start right like I think you can never really be sure if in a different circumstance she would have still done the same thing um but even when she's kind of saying no you know I want to be the first female high mage

It is very gory.

And I think that's one of the things I really enjoyed about this novel, is how gory it is.

And even when there is the big surprise reveal at the end, it's done in like...

the most gory way possible.