Warning: Spoilers for \u201cThe Night Ends with Fire\u201d ahead.<\/p>\n
This summer, alumnus K. X. Song is heating up bookshelves with the thrilling sequel to her Mulan-inspired fantasy novel, \u201cThe Night Ends with Fire.\u201d<\/p>\n
Song is a diaspora writer whose debut young adult novel, \u201cAn Echo in the City,\u201d won the Freeman Book Award and was named a Best Book of 2023 by the Financial Times and Kirkus Reviews. The duology follows Hai Meilin, a young woman who will stop at nothing to achieve her freedom in the midst of a war between the Three Kingdoms. \u201cThe Dragon Wakes with Thunder\u201d is the second and final installment of Meilin\u2019s story, which will chronicle her acquisition of unimaginable power as she decides where her loyalties lie after the war.<\/p>\n
Song spoke with the Daily Bruin\u2019s Sydney Gaw about \u201cThe Dragon Wakes with Thunder\u201d and its publication process ahead of the book\u2019s release Aug. 19.<\/p>\n
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.<\/p>\n
Daily Bruin: <\/b>Where did the idea for a duology inspired by the legend of Mulan come from?<\/p>\n
K. X. Song: <\/b>The idea came to me in this half dream state where I thought, \u201cWhat if I write this really fun escapist fantasy adventure that pays homage to all the Chinese dramas I grew up watching and loving and that has all those tropes of star-crossed romance and angst and longing and adventure and dragons?\u201d That was sort of the impetus for how I began writing \u201cThe Night Ends with Fire.\u201d When it crystallized for me that I was writing a Mulan retelling, that\u2019s when I wanted to lean into a lot of the pivotal, iconic themes.<\/p>\n
DB:<\/b> The tension is definitely higher in this book, and it\u2019s building off all the different events of the first book. What stood out to you in that relationship between Meilin and the love interest, but also with the other powers she was dealing with in this sequel?<\/p>\n
KXS:<\/b> This was my first time writing a sequel, and I realized I love them so much because you have such a rich and fertile history to be drawn from for your characters. Sky and Meilin have already had so much screen time together from book one, and their relationship can reach deeper and more complex levels in book two.<\/p>\n
In book one, we had a very strong wartime setting where a lot of it is physical, brute force, getting your way through just charging ahead and being really persistent and stubborn and strong willed. Within the palace setting of book two \u2013 when you\u2019re in this court and there\u2019s so much political intrigue \u2013 the way that you get what you want is very different, and there are different skill sets required to be the smartest person in the room. One of the characters that I loved showcasing was Winter, Sky\u2019s older brother. In book one, he has to be someone who\u2019s more of a background figure versus in book two \u2013 now we\u2019re in his court. He becomes much more of a mastermind and a central force that is an ally to Meilin in helping her achieve her goals. That was, to me, very exciting.<\/p>\n
DB:<\/b> In the acknowledgements section of \u201cThe Night Ends with Fire,\u201d you end with a question: What does our ambition cost us? What was it like working with that question of ambition, and how did you see that pan out in the sequel?<\/p>\n
KXS:<\/b> Book one is about this girl who has never been given power and who has, for much of her life, been very helpless and powerless. So it\u2019s about her desperation to obtain power and the lengths she will go to achieve this power. Book two is about how once she\u2019s obtained the power, how does it change who you are at your core, no matter how pure your original intentions are?<\/p>\n
For me personally, I grew up in an East Asian background, oftentimes feeling like my ambition was this negative thing that I should not have or that I should be more content with what I already had. I had this weird toxic relationship with it (ambition), where I would be jealous of other people who were ambitious, but also not willing to admit to myself my own ambitious goals or desires. I wanted to put that into Meilin\u2019s personality because I think it\u2019s quite common for people from East Asian backgrounds to feel in some ways that you should just be happy with what you have as opposed to always aspiring for more.<\/p>\n
DB:<\/b> How would you describe \u201cThe Dragon Wakes with Thunder\u201d in five words?<\/p>\n
KXS:<\/b> High stakes, trust no one.<\/p>\n
DB:<\/b> How did you react to your first book being out on bookshelves, and what reflections do you have since then?<\/p>\n
KXS:<\/b> I remember sitting at Bruin Plate in that little corner booth area thinking to myself, \u201cI just really, really want to publish,\u201d and I felt as though things weren\u2019t working out. I was such a slow writer, and I was very hard on myself.<\/p>\n
When my book, \u201cAn Echo in the City\u201d came out, it was such a different response that it truly felt so surreal. I remember my friends who would be in Singapore or even in some random shop in Dubai would send me a picture of the book that they saw in their bookstore, and just knowing that it was reaching people all over the globe and hearing that the story resonated with them was so meaningful to me. It really helped me remember why I loved writing in the first place.<\/p>\n
DB: <\/b>What are you most excited for readers to experience in \u201cThe Dragon Wakes with Thunder?\u201d<\/p>\n
KXS: <\/b>I\u2019m most excited for two things. One is Meilin\u2019s growth and her arc as a character and how she will change over the course of the series. The second thing I\u2019m really excited for is all the twists and turns and the different ways in which you think one thing will happen and then something completely different happens because I actually surprised myself when I was writing it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Warning: Spoilers for \u201cThe Night Ends with Fire\u201d ahead. This summer, alumnus K. X. Song is heating up…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":164839,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[1022,171,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-164838","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115068984759935644","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164838\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}