No one asked me to blurt all the feelings I’m having as I approach turning the first pages of Brent Weeks’s newest book, Night Angel Nemesis, onto the internet, but, no one asked me to start a blog, and no one ever asked me to start telling stories in the first place, either, so, here I am.
Maybe it’s something weird I ate, or the alignment of Mars in the night sky, or random neurons firing but, I can’t look at the cover of Nemesis without remembering where and when I was when Weeks’s last book came out. It was another universe. Another timeline. It truly feels like another life, disparate from my current existence in many fundamental and meaningful ways.
The Before Times™️
At the end of October 2019, when Brent Weeks’s last book, The Burning White, had released, I was on top of the world and starting to fall apart at the same time. At the end of September 2019, I finished the fourth complete draft of my adult epic fantasy novel. In 2019 generally, I was beginning to dip my toes into the short fiction speculative market. Submitting stories felt exciting, even rejections meant I was putting myself out there. Like a real writer. I had a plan to submit my aforementioned novel to Pitch Wars, I was learning about literary agents. Everything was new and laced with possibility. Life was good — hopeful. I had community, fellowship, friends, and a road map.
I even met Brent Weeks for the release tour of The Burning White. If you’re reading this, you may not know — but it’s pretty rare for me to go on spur-of-the-moment trips across the country solo. I typically need a certain friend to encourage me on adventures.
Not this time. I flew to Seattle, met him. He signed my book, “May I see you soon in print!” Can you imagine. That was October 23rd 2019. I was on cloud nine.
What Could Possibly Go Wrong After 2019?
It’s now April 27th 2023. Three years, six months, and three days have passed. An abyss of time. Since 2019, I’ve experienced loss and upheavals. The events of 2020 changed all of our lives. It irrevocably broke some ties and strengthened others. Stress and tragedy bring truths to burning light. I think most people can reflect on how the time we spent scared of breathing the same air as our loved ones changed our perspectives. And so much more happened in 2020 and 2021 than just a pandemic. I don’t have to tell you — you likely lived it. So when the dust more or less settled and the systems of our world forced us to find a new normal, communities I once held dear felt alien to me. I didn’t belong in the same space I had inhabited, before 2020. And in the years that followed I experienced more personal loss.
I also started this blog, and got a puppy! Amongst other things, like winning a local writing contest, and getting a flash fiction piece published online. It wasn’t all bad! But it has been exceptionally hard in many ways.
What Does Any of That Have To Do with Night Angel Nemesis?
Everything, obviously.
Books are not only words on the page. Or, said a better way: words in stories take on a life of their own when the reader adds their experiences to the page. We all experience books at moments in time. You might try to read a certain book before the story inside rings true to something you’ve been through. That story might fall flat for you. Or it might open up a world you never knew existed.
I’ve always been drawn to fantasy stories because of their ability to pull me out of the context of the daily grind and drop me in a new setting with new rules populated by imaginative beings — who all had relatable problems. High fantasy has always been the ultimate thought experiment. And yeah, it’s also a lot of fun, it’s exciting, sometimes there be dragons. But the truths at the center of fantasy novels always felt purer to me than the shadows fiction more grounded in reality tried to imitate. Fantasy doesn’t have to imitate. It creates.
When I first came to Brent Weeks’s writing, it was an impulse purchase in Barnes & Noble. I probably bought The Night Angel trilogy because the covers looked cool. Honestly. I hadn’t read any fantasy novels that truly hooked me and fired me up in a while; it was starting to feel like not-my-genre. Then I met Kylar Stern and Durzo Blint, and I was swept away. The contrast between the depraved, inhumane darkness of those books, and characters like Kylar, who just absolutely refuse to quit fighting, was what I needed at that moment in time.
I look at the cover of Night Angel Nemesis, and I remember the girl I was when I first met Kylar on the page. I remember the wake up call that trilogy gave her, the passion for stories it re-ignited. I look at myself now, with everything I’ve experienced in the thirteen years since, and I wonder what Nemesis‘s pages hold for me, now.
I’m excited, expectant. And a little apprehensive.
“It’s just a book,” some might say. (Though how someone who would say that would have found this blog and read this far is beyond me! If this is you, please drop me an email, I’m curious about you.)
It’s just a book. Hah. It’s just a book.
Have you met me?
-M