Fear: the True Evil - Guest Post by Raina Nightingale
Who here likes stories about dragon riders?
Oooh, ooh! Pick me! Pick me!
How about stories that address the universal idea of good vs evil? Or stories that delve even further into “what is good?” or “what is evil?”
Today’s guest author is here to chat about her trilogy of books that incorporates dragon riders and questions about good vs evil and how to know the difference between what is good and what is evil and also themes of how fear can be our own personal villain.
Please give a warm welcome to Raina Nightingale, author of the Return of the Dragonriders trilogy!
Fear: The True Evil
by
Raina Nightingale
When I first set out at thirteen to write DragonBirth – what would soon become the Return of the Dragonriders trilogy – I hoped to do something I had not seen done before, namely, write an epic fantasy, a good vs. evil story, where the villain wasn't other people, where the plot did not revolve around fighting or killing humans.
Or fantasy races that you could more or less think of as “like humans.”
What is evil? What is the actual villain? And what is the villain in my life – my own personal enemy?
I can answer that question easily enough. Fear. And I have known the answer for a long time, too, even if the final triumph is not yet a lived experience and even if I, like Silmavalien – who is not a self-insert, though there are a few aspects of her that strongly reflect my journey – have not always been certain that I even want to win that war.
It's always been fear that keeps me from finding happiness, from being true to myself, from following what I know is right – even from knowing truth, that I could know, if only I could step out of that fear. Fear of rejection and loneliness, fear of not being enough and fear of my own failure, fear of torture: if I do this, if I say thus, if I live as who I am, in obedience only to my conscience and what I believe, without regard for the punishments other people might choose to react with – and have threatened a few times – where will it take me? How can I even find that path, to live only in obedience to the light I see, without fear of the suffering that might result? Even when I know it would make me happier if I could do so, and that the greater part of the horror in torture might be fear itself?
And it's been fear, fear and humiliation and shame at my fear and helplessness, that leads me into anger and hate that only makes me more miserable – and doesn't help me love anything or anyone around me or do anything I believe in. There might be a place for righteous anger, but this was definitely not it, however evil the thing I hated might be.
I'm not sure I'd thought much of this through when I was writing DragonBirth. I was where Silmavalien is for a good part of the story: divided in my own soul, since fear is miserable, and yet to win the battle against fear might take me into the heart of what I fear and greater misery. But I did know that fear was a villain and a tormentor in my life. And so my villain took shape as the nightmare, a spiritual force of fear – and the hatred that comes of fear – that is sometimes apparent in nightmare creatures, but those visible, tangible monsters are far from being its only influence.
This is a good vs. evil story. I don't think you will find a story where that theme of an ancient battle between good and evil, one fought for the fate of every soul and in which the heroes are taken up whether they want to be or not, is stronger.
In this story, there is a very real good, and a very real evil. We might not know whether some things are good or evil, and our protagonists might even be wrong at times, but what we do know is that good and evil are very real. Some things are clearly, definitely good – and others are evil. And even if we're wrong about what some of those are, that the confusion can exist at all is only a further sign that good and evil are real, and we know that.
But it's a story where the conflict is fundamentally a spiritual one, and the war between good and evil is one that our characters must fight for and within their own souls. Other people might sometimes seem like the enemy, especially when Silmavalien's whole society would see her burned alive simply for bonding to a harmless, lovable dragon hatchling – but they are not the fundamental enemy or the fundamental evil. That enemy, that evil is fear: the fear that is behind their willingness, even eagerness, to kill, and the fear that could turn our protagonists, Silmavalien and Noren, into monsters themselves if they will let it.
About the Author
Raina has been writing slice-of-life and epic stories about dragons (and other fantasy creatures) since she learned how to read. She calls her fantasy dawndark and enjoys magic that might have a personality of its own. Return of the Dragonriders is her debut trilogy and an MG-ish cozy X epic fantasy.
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