It features some of the minor characters in those books, before they appear there. I put Emer and Elenn into the Sulien books grown up and formed, and then discovered that fewer people know the Tain than I had imagined.
I wrote The Prize in the Game to elucidate this. This is the story of fifteen year olds in a warrior culture. Elenn and Emer are very different from each other, but each formed in reaction to their mother.
Conal is formed in reaction to his parents but also to Darag. Conal and Emer fall in love. The fourth point of view character is Ferdia, who was a fascinating challenge to write — gay, a warrior, just a little slower than his friends, and terribly in love with Darag. The Sulien books were written in first person, and I was determined to write this in third. I wrote the book in Most of it was written before 8am.
Goodreads page. Strange Horizons. The physical world is the same as our world, and the mythically significant things happen the same way. Oh yes. It took a lot of tweaking all over to get that. In this world they usually need human will to act through.
And the gods are connected to place and kings, except for the White God, of course, and we see Rhianna and Gangrader directly affecting things. I like complicated. And I have to do all this to be comfortable with a fantasy world that has people and horses, because otherwise I spend all my time trying to work out how it does.
