Today I’m excited to join the blog tour for Wing, the fifth book in Tara Maya’s The Unfinished
Song series. Now, while I am not personally a fan of epic fantasy, I know that many of you are, and the Amazon reviews for this series look pretty great. Today, Tara is going to tell you all about why she chose NOT to set her fantasy in a Euro-Medieval World.
WELCOME TO FAEARTH...where humans are trapped between the immortal fae and the minions of
Death. But one woman and the warrior who loves her will defy every taboo to protect their people.
This is the fifth book in The Unfinished Song epic fantasy series. Haven’t read the other books yet?
Come taste the world of Faearth... The first book is available right now for FREE.
The Unfinished Song (Book 1): Initiate
The Unfinished Song (Book 2): Taboo
The Unfinished Song (Book 3): Sacrifice
The Unfinished Song (Book 4): Root
Three Reasons I Chose Not To Set My Fantasy in a Euro-
Medieval World
Here’s a shameful secret: Back when I started my Unfinished Song fantasy, I wasn’t trying to be
fresh, original or non-Western. In fact, I wanted to write a “classic” fantasy. I knew I wanted ac-
tual pixies and faeries in it. I wanted it to be both epic and a fairytale—an epic faerie tale. I knew I
wanted the magic to be based on dancing and color, and that the ability to dance the whole rainbow
would be almost extinct in their world. Other than that, I just planned to include all the tropes of the
genre. Young scion of farmers sets off on a quest, finds a magic doo-hickey, and turns out to be the
only one with the power to save the world. The setting was cliché because I didn’t feel like investing
the time in world-building for a mere “practice” story. My original heroine, Dindi, was a peasant girl;
my original hero, Kavio, was a prince.
I wrote three chapters in this frame of mind, seat of the pants, no plan, no world-building, not really
taking the story seriously.
Surprise! I stalled.
It turns out I love world-building. It’s one of the reasons I read and write fantasy. Without that in-
vestment in a unique and gorgeous world, I just couldn’t find the enthusiasm I needed to write the
story. I set it aside for a while.
What knocked sense into me? I don’t know. A fairy whispered in my ear that I needed to change the
setting. It needed to be set in a time I had never seen a fantasy set before: with Neolithic rather than
medieval technology. The Neolithic Era was a particular time period in human history, but it also re-
fers to a stage of civilization, and I use it in the later sense. Neolithic, or “new stone age” technology
means that the people primarily use flint and obsidian tipped arrows and spears. They don’t
have bronze or iron. They don’t have swords. They don’t have castles. They don’t have scrolls or
books or libraries. They don’t have lamps or arches or sails. They aren’t cavemen, however. They
have sophisticated pottery, weaving, rugs, sewing and dyes. They smelt gold. They don’t have kings
or feudal lords or priests, but they do have the beginnings of a more caste-divided society and hier-
archy. While I don’t know how this idea came to me, I do remember how it energized me. The whole
story excited me again. The early time period worked for three reasons.
One, the main storyline was inspired by a Polynesian myth, so this was a tip of the hat to that non-
European setting. Two, it fit my fancy that the events of The Unfinished Song were the “original” and
“primordial” events which are the secret roots of all our fairy tales. We know that the story of Cinder-
ella as recorded by the Brother’s Grimm was not the only or original story. What if it were a distorted
version of something that happened during the Dreamtime of the human race, when all myths and
fairytales were real? I don’t actually use the term Dreamtime in my story (which is from Aboriginal
legend), but I drew on that concept in how I thought about the story.
Two, every culture around the world has gone through a stage of Neolithic level technology. Some
cultures, like Asia and Europe and the Incas and Aztecs and great empires of West Africa, later
moved on to more sophisticated technologies, involving iron and feudalism, but everyone at one time
used spears and swords.
Every place on earth has immense, mysterious monuments made from dragging big stones around.
This meant that I could easily mix and match my cultural inspiration. I could use Hopi agriculture,
Celtic pig-farming and musical traditions, Zulu warfare, West African Initiation ceremonies, and so
on. For the hero and heroine’s people, I drew strongly on Hopi and Zuni cultures, which has led
some readers and reviewers to think that the entire culture is based on Native American history. One
reviewer expressed disappointment when horses turned up. That was actually a difficult choice for
me, and sometimes I do wish I had left them horse-less. However, I included it because there are so
many interesting horse-centered cultures in the world, and I wanted to explore that with one of the
tribes.
Three, the excuse to research obscure and exotic Neolithic cultures ignited my enthusiasm for the
story, and has kept me excited about it ever since. The biggest problem with the standard fantasy
pseudo-medieval-pseudo-European setting is not that it is medieval or that it is European or even
that it has been done before. It is because the writer doesn’t take the time to study real history (or
“real” mythology) as a model, but simply bases their own world on worlds in other fantasy books.
The result has much the same problem as cloning a clone, or xeroxing a xerox. The quality fades the
more derivative your product is. The original research behind Kushiel’s Dart by Jacqueline Carey or
The Hallowed Hunt by Lois McMaster Bujold, shines through, and those stories don’t come across as
McClones of McFantasyLand at all.
I have a Master’s Degree in History, admittedly, so that’s a clue about how deeply I adore history. I
adore research in musty old libraries and when I do internet research, it’s in JSTOR, not Wikipeadia.
I’m a glutton for eight hundred page tomes on the kinship systems of Melanesian islanders. I also
love anthropology, archeology, sociology, just about any –ology you can think of. I’m a nerd’s nerd, in
the liberal art’s spectrum of the Geek Rainbow.
This is not to say that there weren’t challenges in leaving the beaten path. Do you know how many
times I would have a character about to open a door, or knock on a door, or slam a door before I
remembered that they don’t have doors! Oy. People! Invent hinges already! It’s also hard to give my
hero a truly Cool Weapon of Power when they don’t have swords. But even challenges can create
interesting opportunities. I gave a supporting character a Singing Bow, which can also be made
into a harp. This idea came from a historian who speculated that the first stringed instruments were
actually bows that warriors plucked when they were sitting peacefully around the campfire, bored
and (almost certainly) drunk.
There’s so much human history and so many different cultures to study for inspiration for fantasy
which have yet to be mined. The real is so much more fantastic and bizarre than most of what is
portrayed in fantasy and science fiction as exotic or alien. One of the reasons to read these genres is
to stretch our imagination and our empathy. We shouldn’t shortchange ourselves by re-treading the
same worn paths, but should be brave enough to follow history back along rarely explored by-ways
for inspiration.
To learn more about Tara and her Unfinished Song series, check out these links:
Tara's Blog
Twitter
Facebook
In the darkest places, even love is deadly.
Sixteen-year-old Rayna
sees angels, and has the medication and weekly therapy sessions to prove
it. Now, in remission, Rayna starts fresh at a new school, lands a new
job, and desperately tries for normalcy. She ignores signs that she may
be slipping into the world she has tried so hard to climb out of. But
these days, it’s more than just hallucinations that keep Rayna up at
night. Students are dying, and she may be the only one who can stop it.
Can she keep her job, her sanity, and her friends from dying at the
hands of angels she can't admit to seeing?
