The Bookshelf with Clíodhna O'Sullivan

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The Hard Shoulder with Ciara Kelly and Shane Colman on Newstalk with Kiya.

Ciara Kelly (0:23)

And joining us this week to place her reads on The Hard Shoulder Bookshelf, we are delighted is author Clíodhna O'Sullivan. Clíodhna, you're very welcome to The Hard Shoulder. Thank you so much. And you picked some great books as well. But we might start, because you are an author, with your own book, because you have a book out only in the last week, since the 5th of November, last Thursday. Tell us a little bit about Her Rising Flame. This is part of a trilogy.

Clíodhna O'Sullivan (0:45)

It is, yeah. So it's book two. So book one came out in March, Herring Fire, and it's a romantic fantasy, like it's a young adult romantic fantasy, and it's Irish inspired. So it's kind of set in a fantasy version of Ireland, and Herring Fire came out in March, and now we're publishing, we published book two there. We published in the US last Tuesday, and then in Ireland and in the UK there on Thursday, and it's the sequel then to the first book.

Ciara Kelly (1:08)

I was very much enjoying reading the description of it, because I haven't had a chance to read it as yet, but it says, book is filled with themes of anti-establishment, oppression, power imbalances and a healthy dose of romance and dragons.

Clíodhna O'Sullivan (1:21)

Yes.

Ciara Kelly (1:22)

I may not be young, but I like the idea of this myself.

It's set in a kind of a sort of a school where people have magical power. It's nothing like Harry Potter. I don't mean that at all, but it is a fantasy thing. And people have magic powers and there's all sorts going on.

Clíodhna O'Sullivan (1:37)

Yeah. So it's awful when you're trying to talk about your book and you're desperately trying not to spoil it, but at the same time make it sound vaguely interesting.

Ciara Kelly (1:44)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Clíodhna O'Sullivan (1:45)

So the magic system is basically based on the idea that the world, which is called Darwin, is ruled by these channelers and their magic is drawn from the life force of ordinary people. So it's kind of an allegory for exploitation and whatever. And the central character, Ea, is unusual in the sense that she is actually able to draw magic from inside herself. So in other words, she doesn't need to drain other people in order to have power. And so her existence is actually a massive challenge to the masters who kind of run the whole place, because she gives the lie to their argument that they need to be able to drain the life force out of people in order to grow the crops and build the buildings and so on, because she can just draw magic from herself. So in the first book, there's a lot of kind of her trying to come to terms with her power. She gives her power to the guy that she's in love with, because that's the only way that he can do it. We've all been there, Clíodhna. And it's very much that kind of not seeing you as a girl, a young girl, kind of not seeing yourself as the main character. The guy is the main character. And so she gives her power to him. And sort of a lot of the way through the book is kind of how the first book is like, how far will she go to protect him and not stand up to the awful things that the masters are doing? So I suppose it isn't a spoiler to say that kind of the first book ends with her kind of maybe accepting her power and standing up to the bad guys. So book two is very much then all about consequences, because I've always been interested in that kind of there's this idea that, you know, the hero stands up to the bad guy finally, and everybody claps and then the credits roll and it's like, well done. But then the lesson I've had to learn kind of in my own personal life is that actually that's only the halfway point. You know, so what had happened to me was that a good few years ago, I was quite badly bullied and I wouldn't have had the term at the time, but it was gaslighting basically, where someone was telling me something, my memories were and it really wrecked my head.