1. Mr. Stroud, did you write this book to be a satire of modern government?
2. Do you believe that the ideal government that the resistance hoped for would come to be after the events of book three?

Thank you.

Hi Nouda,

Sorry about the delay replying.

Well, the short answer is no, but the long answer is more equivocal. Satire was never the central intention, and it is certainly less important than a lot of other elements - such as writing a good narrative and characters etc. But having said that, right from the beginning I wanted to set the story in an equivalent London, with magicians in government, and that meant that satire was immediately part of it too. I had a lot of fun adding jokes in that vein throughout; the important thing is that it was secondary - if the political satire came to the fore, the books would suffer for it and quickly become outdated.

The Resistance of Book Two had a rather woolly idealism that I certainly don't believe will come to pass at the end of Bk Three. I think it is much more likely that some kind of compromise comes to pass - a grubby mix of the surviving magicians (none of whom are particuarly strong or evil) and the commoners. You can see from the last Kitty chapter that they are likely to spend most of their time arguing - but that's more or less the way that real government works. It's not very idealistic, but it might produce a better future.

All the best,

Jonathan