Concerning Buried Fire...was that written before or after Bartimaeus Trilogy? The ending seems similar--- almost undefeatable thing coming out, and hero must use a weapon to destroy it, except for the difference between the two characters with the weapons and what they do. Also, I do not understand the amazon reviews for it...it was interesting and the prose was better than Bartimaeus' in my opinion.

Where'd the idea for the souls come from? They are described vividly, I suppose it was just a spark of creativity? And what is the meaning, if any, behind the soul being bright but the body grows progressively faded as you go down? The show that the body doesn't matter? Or is this just something you decided to add, perhaps for the sake of just getting more indepth with the abnormal occuring?

:krim:

Hi Krim,

This was my first novel. I wrote it in the mid/late 90s and it was finally published in 1999, some while before Bart was born. You're right that it, like PG, features a scrap between a terrible foe and the seemingly weak heroes; the fact that we're perhaps more interested in the characters than the monster is another similarity. One of the challenges facing a fantasy writer is making your end conflicts satisfying, but not all the same. Within the Bart trilogy also, I tried to make each book end in a slightly different kind of battle.

Buried Fire and my other two non-Bart novels are quite different in tone from the Trilogy, and from each other. They don't have Bart's humour, but they all explore the frontier between fantasy and reality in one way or another.

Blimey, I can't remember now where the idea for the souls came from. I think a lot of inspiration for BF was visual - it began with an image of the dragon coiled on its treasure, and its thoughts rising through the ground and out into the open air. I really liked the notion of being able to see souls (there's an echo here I guess of Bart's ability to see hidden layers of things...) and I thought that they were likely to be centred on the head - where the brain is, the core of what we are, for good or evil. I liked the idea that each person has a soul that corresponds to some kind of animal - sometimes you do meet people who very strongly suggest an animal in their personality - a cat, for example, or a timid creature such as a deer or rabbit.

Anyway, thanks for your question: it's good to get one on Buried Fire!

Jonathan

Aye, thanks for the quick answer.