Welcome back to Shattered Wings Thursdays, the weekly feature of art related to The House of Shattered Wings. 26 days to release of the Roc hardcover edition (and 28 days to the Gollancz trade paperback). Getting closer and closer!

So, by popular (well, twitter) request, the last few episodes of this will focus on the different magical factions of the city of Paris: I won’t have time to do them all, as I’ve only got 3 of these left, but I hope to tackle some ground!

House Silverspires is the heart of the book: its setting, and a place a lot of characters in the book call home. It stretches, as said before, over Ile de la Cité: only the eastern part is inhabited, the Prefecture, Commerce Tribunal and other buildings in the West are only sparsely populated. Though founded by Lucifer Morningstar (oldest and most powerful among Fallen), House Silverspires is currently headed by his Fallen student, Selene, after the disappearance of Morningstar twenty years before the start of the novel.

As said previously: the colours of Silverspires are red and silver, and its coat of arms is the sword of Morningstar (one of those big, unsubtle two-handed swords) against the silhouette of Notre-Dame. Its motto is “Aspicete solem ortum” (“look to the risen sun”). Its philosophy of life can best be summed as “whatever works”. Anything is acceptable as long as it keeps intact its dominant status in the city, and the House has a (well-deserved) reputation for ruthlessness and playing fast and loose with rules (though Selene has pursued a gentler policy). It is also, unquestionably and even in decline, the foremost House in the city, an impregnable fortress with an iron grip on politics.

Notable characters from Silverspires: Selene’s lover, the archivist Emmanuelle; Javier, the House’s priest (and resident Spanish-French) who acts as Selene’s right hand; Madeleine, the geeky alchemist who provides the House with its magical artifacts; and Isabelle, a newly arrived and naive Fallen.

Previous iterations of this:
1. Meet nuked Paris
2. The Fallen
3. The Houses
4. The Immortals
5. The Colonies

Read Chapter One!
Read excerpt from Chapter Four!

Full Pinterest board:
Follow Aliette de Bodard’s board House of Shattered Wings on Pinterest.

(and there’s a map of the book’s key locations at the bottom of the novel’s page)

Just a quick heads-up that the RT Books website has a large chunk of The House of Shattered Wings, featuring a third point-of-view character who isn’t in Chapter One: Madeleine, the geeky alchemist of House Silverspires. And it comes with a chance of winning an ARC of the book with the pretty “burning feathers” cover ^-^

Go check it out here!

I’ve been really, really remiss with these:

• My Xuya story “Crossing the Midday Gate” will appear in Athena Andreadis’s awesome looking To Shape the Dark (full TOC here), an anthology about women scientists and a successor to her Other Half of the Sky (which had “The Waiting Stars” in it). Mine is a biologist dealing with the fallout of a plague, and how to earn favour once again…
• My sort-of-Xuya story about virtual realities and access control “First Presentation” will be in David Brin’s and Steven W Potts’ Chasing Shadows, alongside work by Neal Stephenson, Robert Silverberg, Sylvia Spruck Wrigley, Stephen Gaskell, Nancy Fulda… *gulp*
• “The Death of Aiguillon” will be published in Yanni Kuznia’s A Fantasy Medley 3, with work by Jacqueline Carey (!), Kevin Hearne, and Laura Bickle. This is set in the universe of my upcoming novel The House of Shattered Wings, and follows a kitchen girl after the fall of the House of Aiguillon and the refuge she finds in a Paris torn apart by the Great Houses War. I’m pretty psyched about this one: it’s coming out from Subterranean Press and will be published at the end of 2015.

Just a quick heads-up I’ve posted a (quick) recipe for a stir-fry with pork belly and shrimp. If you haven’t seen it already, check it out!

Welcome aboard for another episode of Shattered Wings Thursdays, the time of the week where I pick a particularly nice or evocative picture from the Pinterest board for the novel, and provide some teasers on plot, worldbuilding and characters. 47 days until the release of the Roc edition of The House of Shattered Wings in the US, and 49 days until the Gollancz edition in the UK/Commonwealth!

Today is this picture:

Spire of Notre Dame

In the world of The House of Shattered Wings, life revolves around the Great Houses: once safe havens built to protect the Fallen in their infancy from those who would prey on them, the Houses in post-war Paris have become fortresses, hoarding their wealth and dependents and fighting each other for scraps of power.
A House actually encompasses a small area of Paris: it’s not a building, but generally a series of streets and associated buildings. For instance, House Silverspires, the setting of much of the novel, covers the entirety of Ile de la Cité. Each House has a formal uniform with different colours, a coat of arms (and a motto etc.), as well as a … slightly different philosophy in its dealings with others, which is mainly due to the policy pursued by the head of the House. House Silverspires’s colours are red and silver, and its motto is “Look to the risen sun” (yeah, House founder Morningstar wrote the motto. You can rely on him not to be subtle in the least).

More next week!
Previous installments of this:
1. Meet nuked Paris
2. The Fallen

Read Chapter One!

Full Pinterest board:
Follow Aliette de Bodard’s board House of Shattered Wings on Pinterest.

Welcome back to Shattered Wings Thursdays: your weekly picture and teaser text about The House of Shattered Wings, excerpted from the Pinterest board I’m running for the novel. We are now 55 days away from the release of the Roc edition (and just a teensy bit more away from the Gollancz edition).

Here’s today’s picture:

Aka, pretty close to my mental image of Lucifer Morningstar, pre-Fall…

One of the key differentiators in The House of Shattered Wings is the presence of Fallen angels. Fallen are immortal, ageless, and sterile: they have no memory of anything before their Fall. When they Fall, they lose their wings and manifest as human; and for a brief moment until their innate magic heals them, they are at their most vulnerable: amnesiac and wounded and struggling to understand what they are doing in the mortal world. Needless to say, in a world where Paris is a devastated city where everyone struggles to survive, this makes newly Fallen particularly sought after–and generally not to give them hugs or flowers…

The firstborn and foremost of Fallen is Lucifer Morningstar, the founder of House Silverspires on Ile de la Cité; his power, invested in wards and other protective spells, kept the House at the top of the hierarchy of power, even in a devastated city. However, Morningstar has been missing for twenty years, and Silverspires has slowly declined in importance and strength…

There are other magical beings besides the Fallen, but this is a topic for another blog post ^^

More next week!

Read Chapter One!

Previous iterations of this:
1. Meet nuked Paris

Full Pinterest board:
Follow Aliette de Bodard’s board House of Shattered Wings on Pinterest.

(Picture: Fran Wilde, Navah Wolfe, Alyssa Wong and me)

Just a quick note that I’m still around but completely completely buried in explody real life (aka “not serious, but time consuming” events).

I had a lovely time at the Nebulas; and finally got to see Mad Max: Fury Road with Navah Wolfe, Fran Wilde, Alyssa Wong and her boyfriend Don (and it was great, OMG. First off, the last movie I saw was Interstellar, which a. wasn’t *very* good from my point of view, and b. was a long time ago! *sigh* toddlers). Now I feel like I’m all caught up with what everyone was saying on the internet! Also, it’s a fantastic 2-hour chase movie with a couple great leads (Charlize Theron is badass awesome, and Tom Hardy too, in a different way!).

And then there was this:

(Kat Tanaka Opoknik, Alyssa Wong, Ken Liu, Liu Cixin, and me)

Yes, there was tailcoat goodness 🙂 (for those who haven’t been following the adventures of the tailcoat: I basically got it for my book launch, aka “cosplaying my own characters”, in this case Selene, the head of House Silverspires and a dab hand with tailcoats, men’s clothes and general bad-assness. This was my first serious spin with it, and it went very well. Except I had to google how to tie a cravat because it’s been so long since I last did it ^^)

Didn’t actually win a Nebula, but had a great time at the banquet (Sheila Williams organises awesome table seating!) and was very happy for the winners.

Now I’m back in Paris, looking with apprehension at the mass of things I’m supposed to be doing (do not overcommit do not overcommit etc.), and gearing up for the summer before book release (*gulp*). More when my head is above water (hahaha who am I kidding).

So, the giveaway winners are:
Sakura and Virginia Preston! Congratulations–I’ve emailed you.

Thanks to everyone for entering. I’m, er, blown away by the number of entries, and the imagination–finding places to shelter in devastated Paris certainly took you to interesting places! Out of sheer curiosity (and for pure fun), I’ve run stats on the answer to this question. They’re below.

Very clearly the Catacombs come out *way* ahead 🙂 There were also factions holing up in The Louvre (a sensible choice. The Louvre is in the hands of House Samothrace, which doesn’t feature in the book but is a minor House and therefore a sensible place to be, away from the big political intrigues that shake Paris from time to time), the Eiffel Tower (good choice, there’s a House on the grounds of the monument, though it doesn’t feature in the book!), and in book-related places (bookstores and libraries. You will love Emmanuelle, the archivist of House Silverspires and a pretty badass woman generally speaking).

(I haven’t decided what the catacombs will hold yet. The H is agitating for zombies, I think that might be a little too on-the-nose :p)

Also a pretty sizable faction being eminently sensible and avoiding Paris altogether (sheltering in the suburbs, countryside or abroad. It would be slightly close to cheating, except that pretty much the whole of Europe and America took a very bad hit in the Great Houses War, so I’m not really sure you’d be as well protected as you think outside of Paris…). And finally clever people in the metro or underground places (I didn’t count the sewers in that category or it’d be even larger). The tunnels are probably ruined and booby-trapped, but I should think no one is fighting you for those. Or maybe the catacomb zombies (just kidding!) And a lot of other really awesome ideas (embassies, crypts, operas, museums, restaurants and pastry shops…) that made me smile 🙂

Anyway, thanks again everyone. I was very very psyched by the interest, and I hope you had fun, at least with the “devastated Paris” question–sorry, not everyone can be a winner as I’ve got only a limited number of ARCs to give out 🙁

As you might have gathered if you follow my twitter or FB, the Advance Review Copies of the Roc edition of The House of Shattered Wings have landed at headquarters (aka my office, increasingly invaded by the snakelet’s toy cars, plush toys and board books).

Want an ARC of your very own? A chance to immerse yourself in a devastated, decadent Paris with fallen angels, alchemists and Vietnamese immortals?

You’re in the right place! All you have to do is enter below (disclaimer: this is my first time using Rafflecopter. I hope this works out). This is open to anyone regardless of where you live. This is open until Monday June 1st–I’ll announce winners Tuesday, but possibly I will mail the prizes when I get home from the Nebulas. I’ll sign and personalise the ARCs.
(if you’ve already subscribed to my mailing list, just click the button, give me the address you’re subscribed with, and I’ll count that as +1 point for you)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

(Also, if you’re curious about where I’d find shelter in devastated Paris: Notre-Dame, any day. Because a. it’s on an island, and b. consecrated ground, which always comes in handy! (you don’t have to be as detailed in your answer or even to justify it. It’s just a way of having a “fun” option to the giveaway. Though I do reserve the right to post some of the best ones 🙂 )

More info about the book (out August 20th from Gollancz in the UK/Commonwealth, and August 18th from Roc in the US):

A superb murder mystery, on an epic scale, set against the fall out – literally – of a war in Heaven.

Paris has survived the Great Houses War – just. Its streets are lined with haunted ruins, Notre-Dame is a burnt-out shell, and the Seine runs black with ashes and rubble. Yet life continues among the wreckage. The citizens continue to live, love, fight and survive in their war-torn city, and The Great Houses still vie for dominion over the once grand capital.

House Silverspires, previously the leader of those power games, lies in disarray. Its magic is ailing; its founder, Morningstar, has been missing for decades; and now something from the shadows stalks its people inside their very own walls.

Within the House, three very different people must come together: a naive but powerful Fallen, an alchemist with a self-destructive addiction, and a resentful young man wielding spells from the Far East. They may be Silverspires’ salvation. They may be the architects of its last, irreversible fall…

Praise for the novel:

THE HOUSE OF SHATTERED WINGS is a Gothic masterpiece of supernatural intrigues, loves and betrayals in a ruined and decadent future Paris — wildly imaginative and completely convincing, this novel will haunt you long after you’ve put it down.

Tim Powers, author of The Anubis Gates

If the image of Lucifer sitting on a throne in the ruins of Notre-Dame strikes you as awesome, then this is the book for you.

Marie Brennan, author of The Memoirs of Lady Trent series

Darkly entertaining. de Bodard makes Fallen Angels entirely her own in this post-apocalyptic Paris near the turn of the century. The personal politics of necessity blend and clash with the politics of the powerful as people—mortal and immortal—attempt to survive.

Michelle Sagara, author of the Chronicles of Elantra

I’ve posted the recipe for an almond, orange blossom and lemon cake that’s just lovely–we made this weekend, and it’s both tart and sweet, rich with the smell of almonds.

You can find it here.