Quick trivia: When I was first plotting this book in more detail a couple years ago (I needed to know exactly what happened so that I could foreshadow it properly) I wasn’t sure if I was actually going to write the events as a published story, or if just knowing would be enough, and then if I had time might have a chance to write the story as potential bonus content.
As always, I thought the idea would be a lot shorter, wordcount-wise, than it turned out being—maybe a novelette. In the end, it’s well over the wordcount minimum for a novel. I felt like there was too much of importance to try to explain it within the current timeline without actually showing what had happened, and I couldn’t figure any way to structure this story within another book without throwing off that book’s story arc, so it became its own book.
So, at that time, I was going through ideas for titles, and as I made a list of them, I felt like they fit together in sequence. I added a few more, and then decided that many would work as chapter titles.
“A Hungry Sky” was one of the titles I considered at that time. It’s very rare for me that story events are guided by chapter titles rather than the other way around, but I drew a lot of inspiration from the title ideas I came up with.
Also, if anyone is interested, I drew inspiration for some of the tone and imagery from the work of the Polish painter Zdzisław Beksiński. (Beware disturbing images…)
That’s a really cool insight on the Hungry sky, thank you for sharing it
Whilst I’m missing S exploring and pushing the known limits of magic from the previous books I am really enjoying seeing the foundations of who she is and how she is starting to develop towards her current day self.
It is feeling more and more like her mum has become some sort of nightmare abberant/spirit thing which a penchant for dreams and is going to be sealed away in S’s mins soon.
A lot of this imagery in the dreams is familiar. Some from Siobhan’s experiences in the past, in the dream world she went into, and from her research. Running and running knowing something is chasing, was from an aberrant account, if I recall correctly.
And always, always the hungry sky that watches. The hungry sky that devoured her dream of flight.
We know Claudio attracted the attention of the Red Guard. I suspect the things he’s doing now are similar to what got him noticed before.
There’s a vague idea nagging at me. The spirit world, the dream world and the way they (it?) impacts upon reality when brought to bear. Myrddin was the one who mentioned about getting a better look at the Black Wastes through the spirit realm. And then the scar. The one that didn’t heal.
The fact that the villagers don’t find the dreams to be nightmares disturbs me. Confronting your fears in your dreams to feel more capable and confident in day to day life - but also allowing those dreams a chance to escape into the real world. It feels eerily plausible. Especially if Claudio himself is possessed.
What use could Grandfather have for a young shaman’s wishing dreams?
So the hungry sky is just the hungry void that explains things. Now I am curious if some what unintentionally Claudio is essentially forming a convegence with a particular spot of the spirit world, which is causing slowly increasing cascades of breaks due to that symmetry.
I had the thought earlier that in principle a spell is just a more defined tap into the spirit world than a break event. A event in of itself is more likely with new spells because their parameters are less enforced and so more likely to reach into related but less closely connected concepts.
There may be a gradient for stable inflection points where that rearrangment from a break doesnt change you that significantly, enough for changes or the new spell working without dying or changing more fully.
Well I have had a thought, what is a wish, if not a definement of exactly what one wants? And if one may attain impacts by aligning with the spirit world which is so interrelated to dreams what better partner for mapping and testing exact effects?
The villagers attitude toward the dreams bothers me for its unnatural calm. We have a world of magic, and all the villagers, who are superstitious folk, are not bothered by dreams that seem like dark omens? Claudio did something to them.
Raz didn’t ask about this, which seems like we might have several things going on at once.
Oh, i just realized why Raz didn’t ask more questions. He already knows about the dreams. Azalea has possibly already been foreshadowing it.
How about this a a hypothesis: The villagers are being used like a periscope to the spirit world. Instead of walking in their own dreams, Raz and Claudio are using the villagers “dreams”.
I never really thought Raaz was ignorant of what Claudio was doing…maybe just unaware of the full scope. It’s entirely problem, however, that Claudio is using his grief over Miakoda to misdirect him, knowing he’s not as sharp as he usually is.
I’m under no apprehension that Raaz is an ethical man
