Tag: joanna white

Princess of the Beasts Character Interview with Joanna White

Featured Ariel Paiement

Hi all! It’s been a while since I posted on here. But today, I’m doing a character interview with one of the characters from Princess of the Beasts, Joanna White’s newest upcoming release, which is part of the Children of Chaos series. Let’s dive right in with Sahri, our guest for today’s interview!

  • Can you introduce yourself for my readers?

Yes, of course. My name is Sahri, and I am Princess of the Kingdom of Ahri.

  • What role do you play in your story?

Most would consider me the main character, although I believe Jekre plays an important role as well. But I am the character who can talk to and heal animals, so if you consider all the hope of the kingdom riding upon my shoulders, then I suppose that would make me the main character. Yet, I could not have done it without Jekre.

  • What’s your philosophy when it comes to life?

I try to believe that people are basically good at heart, but most of my time is spent around animals—helping to heal pets that belong to other people. To be frank, I prefer the company of animals, on occasion.

  • What’s your favorite quote?

I am not entirely sure that I have one. Although, one of the Anati, Crim, can be witty when he speaks to me, which I quite enjoy.

  • Favorite part of your story?

When the Anati returned from their migration and we had the Festival of the Anati. It is tradition to celebrate their return, and for me to use my abilities to ensure that the creatures are safe and healthy after their migration across the Emerald Sea.

  • What’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to you?

When the Anati were killed. They were the only friends I had and I could not imagine why someone would be that cruel.

  • The best thing?

When Crim and this generation of Anati were born. I assisted Crim’s mother when she gave birth to him, and it was one of the best moments of my life.

  • Since much of my audience is composed of readers or writers, what’s your favorite book?

Do not tell my parents—for it is improper for a princess to be interested in herbs—but I thoroughly enjoy books on herbs and medicines.

  • Which other character from your story do you like best and why?

Jekre. He is my loyal bodyguard and I consider him a good friend—even if he does not like royals, understandably so. The Ahri Reformation is a cruel tactic that I oppose and would gladly defeat when I become queen.

  • Which other character from your story do you like least and why?

The hunters who killed the Anati—my reasons are self-explanatory.

  • What’s the one thing you regret the most and why?

This is a good question, and a difficult one. It is also a bit deep—for the readers, perhaps—but because of the Rune of Obedience, Jekre is forced to obey any order a royal gives him, including protecting me. Jekre has often told me I submit to my parents too much—I’m a passive person and do not truly believe in fighting back and he says that I do not use the freedom I have been blessed with—that he envies.

  • What is the one principle you will never compromise/break?

To never kill another person or creature. The King of Heaven created us all and therefore, it is His right alone to take a life, or not. Not ours.

  • And to end off the interview, what is the one thing you want my readers to know about you before we end today?

I would like them to know that I did the best that I could to save the last three Anati eggs, and thus, my kingdom, but I did not do it for the rich, elite, and royals. A famine is inevitable—until the eggs are grown, at least—but it will be the poor of the land suffering, starving, and dying. The royals, such as my family, the nobles, and elite will hold up and horde food. They will survive. I did not do this for them—I did it for the less fortunate, to save as many of their lives as possible.

Shifter – A Lesson In Story Building

Ariel Paiement

It’s been quite a while since I’ve done a review on here. In fact, I haven’t done one since the first one I did for Hunter by Joanna White. (If you haven’t read that yet, you can read it here.)

As with the review of Hunter, I’m going to split my review into two sections. The first is intended for my readers who simply want a new book to read. If you’re not interested in spoilers or seeing the craft in the book picked apart to learn from it, then this first review is for you! However, if you’re interested as a writer trying to learn what works well in writing (or what doesn’t in some cases with books), the second review is for you.

Let’s get started!

Reader’s Review

As a reader, I’ll be honest in saying that I enjoyed Hunter more. That said, I did eventually get into Shifter, and I really enjoyed it once I did. It just took me a bit. Part of the problem for me, personally, was that I was so attached to Jared and Averella from Hunter that I wasn’t really ready for a move to a new set of characters or a new ship. That said, I believe that Joanna has since published a short story, Sightless, that helps to give a bit more final ending to Jared and Averella’s story, at least for the time being. Had I read this before Shifter, I may have had an easier time transitioning. 

That said, I did enjoy the book. It made me smile, laugh, and cry. I’m not a big crier usually, so the fact that the book could make me cry is a good indication that it really got me invested in the characters. The struggles the characters went through really resonated with me, and I was rooting for them the whole way. I don’t want to spoil anything for anyone, but I will say that I thoroughly enjoyed the action scenes, the entire premise of different kinds of shifters, and the way she moved through the book. The plot took a variety of twists and turns that I didn’t expect, and the end was definitely no exception.

The end wasn’t my favorite. Be warned ahead of time that it’s a bit bittersweet. It definitely made me sad. I wouldn’t say it spoiled the book for me because there was clear evidence that it was only the beginning of a bigger story, but it took a while for me to accept how it ended. Then again, if a book can pull at your heartstrings enough to make you feel pain, joy, or anger, the author has done their job well. Assuming they’ve elicited the emotional response they were going for, that is! I feel the author knew what she was doing and wrote the ending the way she did intentionally, so I don’t feel it really took away from the book.

Overall, I would definitely recommend this to people who enjoyed Hunter or who are just looking for clean fantasy to read. As a bonus for those who are Christian, the book does have strong Christian ethical themes and a morally solid message. If you’re looking for that, this won’t disappoint there. Even if you aren’t, the story is still an enjoyable read.

Writer’s Review

**Spoiler Alert: If you want to read this book before you pick it apart to learn how to improve your own writing or if you just want to read the book for sheer enjoyment, do not read any further! Read the book first and then read this or just don’t read this at all. That said, if you aren’t intending to read the book, already have, or don’t care about spoilers, welcome to the section for those of you looking to learn more about the craft!**

So, Shifter had some interesting things in it that never showed up in Hunter. I wasn’t really expecting them, to be honest. I’d read other stuff by Joanna, but apparently, I hadn’t read anything that had these elements prior to reading Shifter. So, I have a few interesting points to pick out for you all today!

Languages

The first really big thing I noticed in Shifter that wasn’t present in Hunter was the use of another language. In Shifter, Joanna builds her own language for the Shifter clans (mostly for the dragon Shifters). This was entirely unexpected, frankly. She’s put awesome bits of world-building into her work before, but, as I said, there were elements I hadn’t seen before, and this was one of them.

This one was a bit of both positive and negative for me. On the positive side, I absolutely loved the level of realism it lent to the story. I mean, we have multiple languages in real life, so why not in fantasy on another planet? I appreciated that Joanna took the time to create a very consistent-sounding language to incorporate. She gave the words life and meaning, and she used similar or common sounds to help make the words feel like they could be part of a real language. This is a technique that I noted was useful in my post on building languages on Saturday Setups.

But here’s the negative side of it. The words’ sounds weren’t intuitive. This made it difficult to decide how a name or a word ought to be pronounced. Now, I know that as writers, we have to give our readers some creative license. We have to understand that readers won’t pronounce things like we do all the time. But the hope is they can get close. For Shifter, it took me over half the book to even get close to remember how different letter combinations should sound.

In Joanna’s favor, though, was the fact that she did have a main character who didn’t know the language. So, the male lead, Beroan, had to explain how things were pronounced and tell Nsi, our female lead, how to say words or what those words meant. This helped alleviate some of the frustration of not knowing how to pronounce the sometimes odd combinations of letters. I did appreciate that.

On the whole, I would say that this technique is one to use carefully. As you can see, Joanna’s use of it had some downsides but also some upsides. I don’t think she made a poor choice to include it, but when she built it, she might have, in hindsight, wanted to make the words a little more reader-friendly.

So that’s something all of us should keep in mind if we choose to create languages to become a part of the world-building. Use combinations of sounds that the reader can at least guess at. Use pronunciations that readers can get close to by looking at the word.

And if you aren’t going to do that, provide a glossary in the back with the foreign-sounding words and their meanings so that readers who might be bugged by this can have a guide to look at. (Trust me… As a reader who can get frustrated by an inability to figure out a pronunciation, a pronunciation and meaning guide is something I greatly appreciate.)

Ending With a Bang

Okay, so I understand why Joanna wrote the ending the way she did, but as a reader, the ending she used in Shifter didn’t really leave me satisfied initially. As a writer, I understand that it was a structurally sound ending, but emotionally, that didn’t really compute. What Joanna did with Shifter was to end it with Beroan, the dragon-shifter male lead, dying in the final boss fight. This, of course, broke Nsi’s heart. Mine too, frankly.

I was not expecting this ending at all! I mean, I expected injuries. Even severe injuries. But not this. An ending like this could majorly backfire because readers get attached to your main characters. Beroan, in particular, was a very likeable character. So this is another technique that I advise using with caution. You don’t want your reader to see the ending coming, but you may not want to go to these extremes. In some cases, such as Joanna’s, there’s a good reason and one that’s called for. But if you don’t have that good reason, don’t go here.

Here’s why. A reader who sees this ending and is upset can still look back through Shifter and recognize the signs that this was the ending. They didn’t see them while reading, but they see them now. If those reasons are not good, clear, and strong, the reader is going to feel cheated, not just upset. As writers, it’s our job to deliver an ending that sticks with the reader in some way. But if it’s a sad or bad ending, we have an extra responsibility to give the reader justification for that. Joanna has, I feel, done this in Shifter, but it could easily have gone the other way too. Make sure you think carefully before utilizing this technique!

Conclusion

Shifter was a great novel in my opinion. I would highly recommend reading it for anyone who likes clean fiction with Biblical themes and morally upright principles. You can find Shifter here or follow Joanna White on Amazon here.