Once There Were Heroes: A Time of Dragons

"Once There Were Heroes is the first book in Quaintrell’s ‘A Time of Dragons’ series. It’s part of a wider universe by this self-published author, but you don’t need to read any of the other books to step into this one. It’s completely independent; there are no shared characters. It’s set in the land of Eridor. In this world, people who are heroes – who have done brave deeds and got their names down in history – earn the right to become a dragon rider. The eggs will sometimes wait thousands of years to find a warrior that’s worthy of bonding with them. I think that’s quite trope-y in general with dragon riding, but it bears repeating here because it’s one of the key themes. No heroes have arisen for quite a while and the existing heroes are dying out, so the dragon riders are a dying group. There’s very few of them around, and there’s a war going on between the dragon-rider territory Erador, and the alchemical, elf-like Andarens. They have their own mounts, which are these sort-of mutated eagles – part of their magic is mutation, they mutate themselves. So it’s almost like Top Gun! You’ve got mutated-eagle-riding dark elves and dragon rider heroes, battling in the skies for supremacy in this war. But it’s mostly at this point fought by foot soldiers. And then a dark ancient evil is awakening, and it takes no sides in this war – there’s various people trying to take advantage of it, but it’s ultimately it’s just a big bad evil that wants to kill everyone – and new heroes must arise. It’s told from multiple points of view. There’s no one main character. But you know one of them will become a dragon rider… I think that in the world of today, people are looking more for escapism than the dark and dreary. They want a fantasy to escape into. I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather dream of riding a dragon into battle and having this awesome, powerful, ancient companion to fight alongside me, than going out and killing something. I put dragons on a bit of a pedestal; I don’t like the idea of killing one so much as bonding and owning one. Maybe I’m biased because I grew up with Pokemon, and all these pet-related stories. And I wrote the ‘Summoner’ series , which is all about having creatures and bonding with them. I’m pro-companionship! I agree. Our old myths were more often slaying beasts. But I did so much mythological research when I was writing the ‘Summoner’ series – I wanted to take mythical creatures from cultures all over the world and place them all in my world, and be one of those horrible writer magpies that just steals from everything that’s shiny and cool – and I think when you do all this research on these fantastic and interesting creatures, the last thing you want to do is to make them the bad guy. Sure. Again, it’s a story about bonding with dragons. It’s my interpretation of the cultivation magic system in a dragon-rider story. The plot is loosely inspired by the life of Attila the Hun. He was from a pastoral, tribal people that were not as advanced as the great empire of Rome that was spreading, and after a war that was lost in the Roman Empire between the Huns and the Romans, Attila was effectively made a hostage. The Romans would take the firstborn sons of whoever they’d beaten and say, “They’re going to be raised in our court. They’re going to learn our culture. If you decide to war with us again and not pay your tributes, we’ll kill them all.” In much in the same way, this is the story of a Roman-esque empire that has defeated a pastoral people that led a rebellion. And Jai, the main character, is the son of Rohan, who was the leader of the rebellion, and was executed by Emperor Leonid of the Sabine Empire. The Empire is very Roman-like, with legions and with symbols of griffins, which is obviously like the Roman eagle. They have praetorian guards of a sort, called the ‘griffin guard’; they ride griffins and have their own sect where they study the art of cultivation – which in my story is called soul bonding, and majicking. Jai becomes Leonid’s personal servant. Leonid has given up his throne for his son, Constantine, and is now an ignored, elderly man living alone in his chambers, writing his memoirs. Jai is helping him write them; Jai’s treated pretty poorly in this world and is very much on the outs. And then Constantine decides that he wants to finally make peace with the Dansk, who are a northern Viking-inspired empire, and are the only group who know how to bond with dragons. Constantine’s son Titus marries Princess Erica, and in exchange there’s a dowry of a dragon that the prince will be able to bond with. Without spoiling things, there’s a lot of court intrigue and betrayal and there’s a big red wedding type scene, and Jai is forced to flee – and this is the story of Jai and an escaped Dansk handmaiden, the personal handmaiden to Erica. They have to escape to Jai’s homeland far in the east along the Kashmir Road, which is the Silk Road equivalent in my world. It’s all about them being on the run, being hunted – and Jai has a dragon egg that hatches, and bonds with this little dragon. It’s all about him rediscovering his culture, learning about this world that he’s been trapped out of, learning his magic. Along the way, he encounters a soul-bound warrior who is a grizzled, retired old man – very traditional trope-y hero’s journey…. I really wanted to have a foe that Jai could fight that is perhaps not as powerful as a dragon, but maybe there’ll be more of them, they’ll be more numerous – maybe the riders on the backs of these inferior beasts might be more powerful. So it balances itself out. The griffin riders have a lot of power and influence in this empire. They’re almost a faction of their own. That’s what the Roman flavour gave me. And I was just so inspired by the story of Attila the Hun. I’ve grown up in Europe as a half-Indian, half-Brazilian person. In many of the schools I went to, I was the one of the only non-white people in my school. So this experience of being a fish out of water in a culture that doesn’t necessarily see you as part of their heritage, at least to begin with, is something that I grappled with as a kid. And I think having that experience perhaps made me better qualified to explore this idea of being raised in a completely different culture and being seen as ‘other’ – but also not, perhaps not necessarily having a good sense of the culture that you’re supposed to be coming from, being third generation. Jai experiences that: everything he knows is in a culture that’s not necessarily one that he feels entitled to be part of. There’s a history of his people being seen as savage – they’re head takers, they’re cannibals, they’re blood drinkers… And he really doesn’t know what’s true. My ancestors are the Indo-Scythians – as I’m a Sikh from northern India, they claim ancestry to the Indo-Scythians. And they have a very interesting pastoral culture. I’ve tried to apply that in this story to these pastoral peoples."