You’re known as an epic fantasy guy. Why the change-up?
I like to do different things. It’s what keeps me productive—switching projects. And usually after I’ve finished something big, I want to do something very different. And so I like to try different genres. Granted, the speculative aspect, the science fiction/fantasy aspect of things, is what really interests me. I basically have never written a book without some at least hint of the science fiction or fantasy element because that’s what I love, so that’ll show up in everything. But I also do like thrillers. And writing this book—it’s been called dystopian now—I viewed it as action-adventure. Dystopian in the same way that some of the darker superhero films are dystopian.
Is it my first YA? I have another YA called The Rithmatist . This I wrote as an older middle grade novel, which is a very fine distinction that really only matters to literacy professionals, and to authors, and things like that. Middle grade ended up getting published as a young YA novel instead—the line there blurs very much. So, yes and no. I mean, Mistborn , which I’m best known for, stars a sixteen-year-old girl. That’s shelved in ‘adult’ because there are adult characters as well, but the story’s about her. So is it my first YA, is it not? I’m really honestly not sure. That’s sort of a distinction I’ll let the librarians and the booksellers argue over.
If you are viewing this on github.io, you can see that this site is open source. Please do not try to improve this page. It is auto-generated by a python script. If you have suggestions for improvements, please start a discussion on the github repo or the Discord.