Get excited for THE LANGUAGE OF THORNS, Leigh Bardugo’s new Grishaverse fairytale book!
Leigh Bardugo‘s fascinating Grisha Trilogy and Six of Crows duology has everyone hooked and wanting for more about the enchanting Grishaverse, the world Bardugo’s books take place in. So it was cause for great excitement when The Language of Thorns, a new book about the Grishaverse was announced!
The Language of Thorns: Midnight Tales and Dangerous Magic is a collection of fairy tales and folk tales of the Grisha world. It consists of six stories, three of them brand new. The stories will also come with richly illustrated companion art, which should be quite stunning in itself. The stories are both friendly to new readers and fans of the Grishaverse books.
According to The Language of Thorns‘ Goodreads page, the description for this book is bewitching, stating “Travel to a world of dark bargains struck by moonlight, of haunted towns and hungry woods, of talking beasts and gingerbread golems, where a young mermaid’s voice can summon deadly storms and where a river might do a lovestruck boy’s bidding but only for a terrible price.”
Bardugo discussed The Language of Thorns, the Grishaverse, the appeal of fantasy fiction and her other upcoming projects to the Los Angeles Times, as shown below:
What was it about short stories that appealed to you?
I had written a few of the short stories in years past. They were part of the promotion that we did for the Grisha trilogy, but as my publication schedule ramped up, they kind of fell by the wayside and I stopped doing them.
I had a bunch of ideas for stories that I wanted to do and they’ve always been compelling to me because I think you learn a lot about a world by the kind of stories that become entrenched as folk tales and fairy tales and legends.
I think they tell you things about the characters and the places they come from that almost exist on another layer of story than the narratives we’re used to in the novels.
Were these stories part of your initial world building? Or did they come to you as you were writing your novels?
Some of them existed in my head before I started writing the books. Others, like “The Too-Clever Fox,” really arose from the dialogue that I wrote and the story.
I remember writing, referring to a story Alina [a main character from the Grisha trilogy] had heard as a kid about a too-clever fox who keeps escaping so many traps that he thinks he’ll always get out of them. And I thought, “Oh, I’m going to write that.” Eventually I did, and it became a part of the way I thought about Nikolai’s character.
Check out the full interview here.
The Language of Thorns is in bookstores on September 26.