David: Well, in fact that book is sitting on my shelf and I’m going to take it down over the weekend. So, let’s talk about Warbreaker . Was Warbreaker released earlier this year?
It was. It was released in June, so I’ve really been on tour for both that and the Wheel of Time at the same time. Warbreaker is a book I wrote back in 2006. It is a stand-alone single volume epic fantasy. I wrote this before I was even aware that I would be asked to work on the Wheel of Time, and so it’s kind of coincidental they’ve ended up coming out the same year. But that’s because the Wheel of Time book which I wrote in 2008 got fast-tracked and came out as soon as they could get it through production, where the other one had been waiting in the queue for a little while.
And so Warbreaker is my solo work. It’s about a number of things. Any good book, it’s about more than one idea coming together. People always ask me, where do I get my ideas? Well, I find that it’s hard to explain because you have to track down so many different ones to talk about where a book comes from. A lot of new or aspiring writers try to write a book with just one idea, and that never works for me. I’ve got to have a good dozen or so.
But what is Warbreaker about? It’s about me reacting against other things I’ve written, in a lot of ways. The Mistborn trilogy, which you mentioned, is what I was best known for before the Wheel of Time. And it is a series about a group of thieves struggling in a world where evil has won. A lot of epic fantasy deals with the same concept: you know, a young unknown protagonist discovers he has a talent for magic or a destiny and goes on this quest to defeat the dark evil. It happened in Harry Potter, it happened in Lord of the Rings, it happened in The Eye of the World , some of my favorite books. And when it came time to write my own books and break in, I was wondering. . .you know, these stories have been done so well, I want to go other directions. And so Mistborn became the story of what happens if good loses. What happens if the dark lord wins? What happens if Harry Potter would have gotten to the end of that story and Voldemort would have killed him and taken over the world? Or what if Sauron had gotten that Ring? And so that became the history of this book series, and the stories then are about a group of so-called rejects who aren’t the prophesied heroes, who aren’t following what’s supposed to happen, who are working in this world to try and overthrow this empire. So it is a very. . .it’s kind of a dark, oppressive series. I think it’s very good. People find it very exciting and enjoyable. But there are certain themes: the darkness certainly is one, and the instigating a rebellion against an oppressive force, and these sort of things.
And when it came time to write Warbreaker , I wanted to try something different. I felt that I’d spent so long dealing with darkness, I wanted to use color instead as a focus. And so one of the themes became color and how color represents life, and the magic in the world is based around the concept of color. Beyond that, I’d been thinking for a long time that anarchy and setting up a rebellion and these sorts of things could actually be a lot easier than the concept of stopping a war. Starting one, in many ways, could be easier. And I wanted to tell a story about someone who’s working against a ticking time bomb to try and stop two kingdoms which are just bent on going to war with one another because of different factions, and seeing if he could dig out what’s really going on and get to the root of it, and stop it.
And that’s part of the theme, but there are so many other things. In part, it’s about an agnostic god who doesn’t believe in the religion that worships him. It’s about two sisters who have to exchange roles in life. It’s about a sarcastic talking sword who really likes to kill people. I mean, there are a lot of things going on in this book.
I heard you say ‘an agnostic god’.
Yes. Yes, in this world, one of the things that happens is that a certain group of people with a certain magical powers. . . What will happen is, if someone dies in a way that’s very heroic, according to the religion, they will be brought back to life and will have visions of the future. And these people are worshipped by one of the cultures, someone who has been brought back to life, and then asked to give them divinations and things like this. And one of these people, he has no memory of his past life. All he knows is that he woke up and everyone told that he had died in a very heroic way and that he was now a divine figure. And they asked him for interpretations and prophecies, and he doesn’t believe in any of it. So while they’re worshipping him, he’s actually pretty agnostic himself. So it’s kind of an interesting situation for someone to be in.
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