Title: MORTAL HEART
Author: Robin
LaFevers
Pub. Date:
November
4, 2014
Publisher:
HMH
Books for Young Readers
Pages: 464
Formats: Hardcover,
eBook
Find
it: Amazon, Barnes
& Noble, Goodreads
Annith has watched her gifted sisters at the convent come and go, carrying out their dark dealings in the name of St. Mortain, patiently awaiting her own turn to serve Death. But her worst fears are realized when she discovers she is being groomed by the abbess as a Seeress, to be forever sequestered in the rock and stone womb of the convent. Feeling sorely betrayed, Annith decides to strike out on her own.
She has spent her whole life training to be an assassin. Just because the convent has changed its mind doesn't mean she has...
Now on to the post!
The Origins of Saint
Mortain
Oh that, Death! What a fascinating and misunderstood figure
he is, as both Ismae and Sybella have already discovered. One of the questions
I am most often asked is where did I get the idea for his character.
Well, the first answer is that the vast majority of cultures
had some sort of death figure or personification of Death. And Mortain, just
like the other Nine old gods in His Fair Assassin, was constructed from bits
and pieces of lore from earlier Celtic gods and goddesses and seasoned
liberally with embellishments of my own.
I knew absolutely that I did not want my god of death to be
vengeful or punishing, for there are many indications that those views of death
did not develop until the early middle ages. I have always been struck by how
death was once viewed as part of the fabric of life, but during the middle
ages, with the Black Plague and accounts of hell and damnation that grew ever
more elaborate, it changed into something more akin to punishment and filled
with terror.
Mortain in particular, was inspired not only earlier gods,
but by the Breton folktale of the Ankou, a personification of death. Other
influences upon which I drew heavily were: Arawn, lord and king of the Welsh
Otherworld and the Irish god of the dead, Donn, who was also considered the
father of the Irish people. He was known to be somewhat retiring and chose to
remain aloof from the other Irish gods. According to some Christian accounts,
the souls of the damned resided with him before departing for heaven or hell.
According to the Romans, the Gaulish Celts worshipped a god
the Romans called Dis Pater. He was one of their primary gods and thought of as
an ancestor to the entire race. What drew me in particular to the Dis Pater
material was that it tied him to even older beliefs that enveloped not only
death and the underworld, but the entire cycle of life and rebirth. He was
believed to derive from an earlier god who not only ruled over the riches of
the underworld, but fertility and regeneration, not unlike the Egyptian god
Osiris. I liked the fullness of that concept, that death had both a rich,
giving aspect as well as something that took loved ones away from us, which in
turn became a thematic thread of the trilogy.
Thanks Robin this was awesome!
About
Robin:
Robin LaFevers was raised on a steady diet of fairy tales,
Bulfinch’s mythology, and 19th century poetry. It is not surprising she grew up
to be a hopeless romantic.
Though she has never trained as an assassin or joined a convent,
she did attend Catholic school for three years, which instilled in her a deep
fascination with sacred rituals and the concept of the Divine. She has been on
a search for answers to life’s mysteries ever since.
While many of those answers still elude her, she was lucky
enough to find her one true love, and is living happily ever after with him in
the foothills of southern California.
In addition to writing about teen assassin nuns in medieval
Brittany, she writes books for middle grade readers, including the Theodosia
books and the Nathaniel Fludd, Beastologist series. You can learn more about
those books at www.rllafevers.com.
Where you can find Robin:
Giveaway
Details:
(1) One winner will receive a rustic arrow necklace, a leather
bound notebook and a hardcover of MORTAL HEART! US Only.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Check out the Tour Schedule for more awesome posts!
Week One:
10/27/2014- Two Chicks on Books- Guest Post
10/28/2014-Katie's Book Blog- Review
10/29/2014- Once Upon a Twilight- Interview
10/30/2014- Magical Urban
Fantasy Reads- Review
10/31/2014- Reading YA Rocks- Guest Post
Week Two:
11/3/2014- Mundie Moms- Review
11/4/2014- Tales of the Ravenous Reader- Interview
11/5/2014- The Starry-Eyed Revue- Review
11/6/2014- Step Into Fiction- Interview
11/7/2014- Parajunkee- Guest Post
