Today it gives the Speculative Fiction Showcase great pleasure to interview Noah Lemelson, author of The Lioness and the Rat Queen (The Slickdust Trilogy, Book 2).
The second novel in The Slickdust Trilogy, The Lioness and the Rat Queen, has its debut on August 29. Your first book, The Sightless City, garnered high praise and received First Place Award in the 2019 OZMA Book Awards for Fantasy Fiction. How did you approach writing the “difficult second novel”?
Initially this whole trilogy was just one large brick of a book. You can thank my CalArts mentor Brian Evenson for putting me on the saner path of splitting it into three. Though I never quite finished that one oversized mega-draft, it did function as a very detailed outline, so it was relatively easy to get going on this one. The Lioness and the Rat Queen actually flowed much more smoothly than the first, as The Sightless City did the hard work of setting up the characters and the world. I could just focus my energy on moving the plot along and digging in deeper into my characters, examining their wrought relationships to each other, to their world, and to themselves.
Like The Sightless City, The Lioness and the Rat Queen begins with the city of Huile and its world, with conflict over the precious commodity, æther-oil. How much do you think contemporary environmental and (in the broadest sense) political issues influenced the novel?
Neither book is meant to be a parable, or allegory, but of course that are influenced by modern environmental and political issues. In some ways they’re optimistic, a near-apocalypse has happened and yet humanity continues on, the world survives, albeit in a scarred, mutated state. In other ways my novels are quite pessimistic, the world nearly ended and yet all the problems that led to that destruction continue on unabated. Greed, hatred, and prejudice remain. So yes, themes of conflict over resources and environmental destruction are central to the trilogy. Another core theme is the way seemingly decent people can be taken in by easy, false, stories, and how ideology can blind people to reality. Lazarus Roache is not meant to be a stand-in for any one person, but I would be lying if his development wasn’t at least influenced by a certain recent demagogue.
The Sightless City takes place in Huile itself. In The Lioness and the Rat Queen, your protagonist Marcel Talwar and his companions leave the city and enter The Wastes on a mission. What can you tell us about the Wastes, and what drives Talwar to leave on such a perilous errand?
The Wastes were once called Vastium, a verdant and cultured land, the heart of Æthmach civilization. Now it is ash and ruins, rust and dust and those things fierce or strange enough to survive the Calamity.
As for why Marcel is willing to chase Lazarus Roache into this desolate and dangerous land? The obvious one is to stop whatever future plans the murderous tycoon is crafting, and to bring him to justice. Marcel feels used and betrayed, so there is certainly a personal angle, he feels shame for falling for Roache’s deceit for so long, and guilt for all the evil he let slip by. There’s a desire for personal redemption in this hunt, though it remains unclear if shame and guilt can ever be cured by gunfire and bloodshed.
How much has Talwar changed since the events of the first book? What drives him now?
A lot has changed, though perhaps not as much as he thinks. Marcel’s eyes have been opened to the ways he has been used, how his desire for heroism and purpose allowed him to be manipulated. Yet he is still trying to play the hero all the same. There’s moral complexity to his choice to leave Huile. Marcel could stay and try to rebuild the city, but that would require him to sit with the grim, bloody results of his attempt at heroics. He sees his choice to hunt Roache as a departure from his previous complacency, but in many ways he is still the same person he’s always been. Does this quest for justice and revenge represent his bravery or is it a form of cowardice? I think this sequel explores those sorts of complexities.
When Talwar and his friends enter the Wastes, their mission is thwarted, and they have to make common cause with the Lioness of Vastium. Who is she and why is it a dangerous move?
Before the events of the first book, Marcel was part of a liberation campaign set on stopping a Principate invasion led by General Belona Agrippus, known colloquially as the Lioness of Vastium. To say there is bad blood between her and Marcel would be to call an intercontinental missile a “firecracker.” Which is why, early on, Kayip decides to keep their identities hidden from each other.
Still, even with her identity hidden, Belona embodies both danger and opportunity. She’s mercurial and bitter, but deadly in combat. She’s capable and erratic, smart and bloodthirsty. She might be just what they need to help take down Roache, but only if her rage is focused in the right direction.
How far is this a story about revenge and its consequences and flaws?
A big question the characters have to ask themselves in this book is whether they are seeking justice or vengeance, and for what end. Each has been wronged in a deep and personal way by Lazarus Roache, but will taking him down repair the damage done? And the conflict between the Principate and Resurgence, the conflict that blasted this world to ruin, was and is fuelled by a desire for vengeance. There are cycles of violence that are larger than any one character, and which threaten to tear our “heroes'' apart.
This is clearly a dystopian world but it has elements of “fantasy, dieselpunk, and sci-fi.” (Gary Goldman, screenwriter of Big Trouble In Little China, Total Recall, Navy Seals). What does that mean to you?
I’ve never used the label “dystopian” myself, I think I just tend to write stories with darker elements and those tend blend in with the dystopian. As for exact genre, I’ve always struggled with the exact label. I took a lot of inspiration from various books in the steampunk, fantasy, science fiction, and other genres. It’s industrial, but magical, with a bit of post-apocalypse and western thrown in here, a hint of noir, as well as some worldbuild details that fit more into sci-fi. I think that’s the fun of speculative writing, you have freedom to write outside of clear boundaries to craft distinct and unique worlds.
In your last interview, you talked about your love for The New Weird. Was that something you wanted to evoke in The Slickdust Trilogy?
I love New Weird because it’s the genre for writers who don’t care about what genre they’re in. In the pineapple-on-pizza genre, the throw-everything-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks genre, it’s a label for all things that are just too strange for current genre labels. I took a lot of inspiration from China Miéville’s Perdido Street Station, and though I think The Slickdust Trilogy is not quite as aggressively weird, it does share with the New Weird a love of taking ideas from disparate genres and shoving them together.
Now your second book has been published, how do you feel about the third (and final) book of the trilogy?
I’m excited for it, I’ve had the ending sketched out for years now, so it will be a relief to finally get it on the page. There’s a lot of plot threads that will finally get resolved, and some character-choices and plot swerves that I think will surprise people (hopefully in a good way!)
Will you write more novels set in this universe, or explore other worlds?
After I finish the trilogy I will definitely be writing some work in other worlds. But I wouldn’t be surprised if I find my way back to Æthmach. I have a few ideas for other stories that can be told.
How do you deal with the social media and marketing side of the business?
Honestly I struggle with social media, it has never been my thing. Writers love to live in our little writing holes, and are horrified to find out we actually have to leave, talk to people, and actually “sell” our books. I’m working on it!
If you could choose any director living or dead to direct the film of your books, who would you choose?
Oh geez, a lot of pressure. I might cop out and say that in an ideal world, I’d love to see my books as a TV show over a movie. I think having the space to sit with the characters for longer on their journey, to explore their relationships and personal struggles at a slower pace would better fit the story.
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About Noah Lemelson:
Noah Lemelson is a short story writer and novelist who lives in LA with his wife and cat. Lover of Science Fiction, Fantasy, New Weird, and Punk. He received his BA in Biology from the University of Chicago in 2014 and received his MFA in Creative Writing from the California Institute of the Arts in 2020. He has had several of his short stories published in both print and online magazines, such as Allegory, Space Squid and the Outsider’s Within Horror Anthology.
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