Welcome to this Track of Words Author Interview, where today I’m talking to the fantastic Peter McLean about his latest novel, book 3 in the War For The Rose Throne series – Priest of Gallows. I’ve been following this series from the beginning, with the incredible Priest of Bones, and I can’t recommend it enough – so the release of a new instalment is always an occasion to celebrate! Priest of Gallows is out now in paperback, ebook and audiobook editions, so if you’ve been following this gritty, fantasy, gangster family saga then read on to find out more about the latest instalment…and then make sure you go out there and pick up a copy!
Before we get to the interview though, I should point out that this is pretty spoilerific if you haven’t yet read the first two instalments in the series. If that’s the case, I’d recommend checking out my reviews of Priest of Bones and/or Priest of Lies – and my interview with Peter about Priest of Lies – and reading the first two books, before coming back to this.
Assuming you’re up to speed with the series, without further ado let’s get on with the interview.
Track of Words: To start off with, could you give us a quick recap of what’s happened in the War For the Rose Throne series up to this point?
Peter McLean: Oh heck, that’s a lot of ground to cover! So far, in Priest of Bones Tomas Piety and his crew of conscript veterans have come home from a disastrous war they only just won, and returned to his home city of Ellinburg. Tomas was a gangster before he was conscripted into the army, where they made him a priest. Now back on his home turf, he finds his businesses have been lost to rival gangsters. With his sergeant and best friend Bloody Anne at his side, he sets about taking them back. He is contacted by an agent of the shadowy Queen’s Men, who he worked for in secret before the war, and enlisted into the behind-the-scenes fight against a new national enemy, the Skanians.
Meanwhile a young boy from Tomas’ regiment, Billy, develops the magical powers of the cunning folk. With the Skanians backing the rival crew who stole Tomas’ businesses, he turns his gang of Pious Men on them, wins back his interests and, at the behest of Ailsa the Queen’s Man, expands into the drug dealing world of the poppy trade. Ailsa wants more though, and Tomas does a deal with her to acquire enough explosives to destroy the rival gang and allow him to take over half the city.
In Priest of Lies, Tomas, now unwillingly married to Ailsa to maintain her cover, gets dragged deeper into her web of intrigue in an attempt to bring down the corrupt city governor of Ellinburg who Ailsa is convinced is in the pay of the Skanians. Together they adopt Billy as their son, and use his nascent magical abilities to battle the Skanians’ magicians.
Desperate to prevent another war he knows his country cannot win, Tomas throws his lot in with Ailsa and accompanies her to the capital city of Dannsburg, where he realises truly how deep the corruption runs. Now working for Ailsa in truth, Tomas returns to Ellinburg and incites a rebellion of the common people which enables him to fight the ever-present City Guard. After the first battle, Ailsa enlists him into the Queen’s Men as an agent in his own right.
Tomas recruits a loyalist Guard captain and with his troops on their side, he and Ailsa overthrow and arrest the city governor. Ailsa makes Tomas the new governor of the city, and promptly deserts him and Billy to return to Dannsburg. Tomas passes the Pious Men to Bloody Anne, lacking the time to be gang boss and city governor at the same time. We leave Tomas, bitter and broken, ruling his new city with an iron fist.
ToW: Fantastic, thanks! With that done, tell us a bit about Priest of Gallows, and what we can expect from this instalment of the series.
PM: Well, with all that’s happened to him Tomas isn’t quite the same man he was before. The bluff, blunt soldier and criminal has been forced into a completely different world, a world of intrigue and politics that he is ill suited for.
His battleshock (PTSD) and alcoholism are both getting steadily worse, and he can’t decide if he loves Ailsa or hates her. When the Queen is assassinated and he is recalled to Dannsburg and forced to take up the mantle of a Queen’s Man for real, he finds himself in a very different world indeed. Appalled by what he finds in the house of law, Tomas has to ask himself if the power his new life brings him is really worth the cost.
ToW: With Bloody Anne now the head of the Pious Men, what with Tomas being otherwise occupied, how has changed for the rest of the crew? What does Anne do differently, now that she’s the boss?
PM: Anne is head of the Pious Men but she’s still Tomas’ best friend, and she becomes his chief enforcer in the Queen’s Men. She appoints her new second to run the Pious Men while she is away in Dannsburg with Tomas and some of the rest of the crew, and soon comes to realise that while Tomas might not be her boss anymore, he actually still is. In the same way that Ailsa used Tomas and the Pious Men when she was his handler in the Queen’s Men, Tomas is now doing exactly the same thing to Anne. The Queen’s Men choose their assets wisely, assert their control over them, and never, ever give them up.
ToW: Priest of Lies expanded the world from Ellinburg out to explore Dannsburg as well. What are you exploring in this book, in terms of places or levels of society?
PM: In Priest of Gallows you’ll have intimate views of life inside both the house of law and the royal palace, and see how the royal family and the cream of Dannsburg high society actually function. You’ll attend meetings of the governing council, and journey to the distant port city of Varnburg on the northern coast. And most of all, you will come to see how justice is truly done in the capital, and how the Queen’s Men maintain their merciless stranglehold on the general population.
ToW: If Priest of Bones was about Tomas retaking what was his after the war, and Priest of Lies was about the consequences of those actions, what are you putting Tomas and the Pious Men through this time?
PM: Thematically Priest of Gallows is a much more political book than its predecessors. It’s about power, and the type of people who want it, how they get it and most of all how they keep it once attained. The classic gangster character arc can only really ever go three ways: he dies, he turns snitch, or he goes into politics.
So Tomas becomes, perhaps not a politician in any more than name, but definitely someone caught up in that world. I’m going for the full ‘fish out of water’ experience; taking a man used to being in complete control of his environment, to a man finding he has no idea what he’s doing or how to do it. And then, of course, discovering that skills learned in one role carry over very well indeed into another.
ToW: To me, Tomas always seems conflicted in that he wants power and control but once he has it he wishes he could then find some stability with his family (which, inevitably, proves difficult). Do you think, even in an ideal world, that those two sides of his character could ever coexist happily?
PM: No, and that’s exactly the point. Tomas is fundamentally broken, not only by the war but by the abuse he suffered as a child. Like so many of us, he lusts for one thing but longs for another, and the two will be forever mutually exclusive.
He’s a complicated and conflicted man, and although his bluff and straightforward narrative hides that to some extent it’s there if you look for it. At his core Tomas Piety is deeply unhappy, and the only real true joys he has in life are his friendship with Anne, and his love for his adopted son Billy.
ToW: This series does a great job of exploring the costs of power and the personal consequences of violence and war – do you think it’s a case that this sort of gangster family saga is particularly suited to dealing with these sorts of themes, or are they ripe for exploration in other styles of fantasy stories?
PM: Ah, I think one of the great things about fantasy is you can explore almost any theme in almost any setting. Look at RJ Barker’s Tide Child trilogy; he’s exploring friendship, and issues of building trust between different cultures, and above all the true meanings of loyalty and bravery, and he’s doing it in a high seas naval adventure where the characters are hunting sea dragons in Napoleonic-style tall ships made of dragon bone. Fantasy is an absolute playground of a genre, and that’s why I love it.
ToW: I love the contrast in this series between Tomas’ (relatively) regular family life and dramas, and the bigger picture of the ongoing narrative with all its dangers and violence. When you’re writing these stories though, how do you go about finding the balance between these two elements?
PM: I think the family aspects are really important, and not only because they’re such a staple of the gangster saga genre. It helps bring characters to life, for me, if you can see them just living their lives outside of the big action set-pieces. Tomas’ relationship with his equally (if not more) damaged brother is a big part of who he is, and his very unhealthy relationship with their aunt who effectively brought them up since they were little.
Interactions and relationships like that inform a character’s personality, in my opinion, and make their choices and reactions to certain situations more understandable.
ToW: Now you’re nearing the end of the series, do you have a favourite character from among the cast, or one that grew in the telling beyond what you’d planned for them? Has that changed from when you started the series?
PM: My favourite character in War for the Rose Throne will always be Bloody Anne. From the outset I wrote her to be the best mate I wished I had, much like I always used to wish Druss the Legend was my dad.
That aside, Billy the Boy has certainly grown in the telling, and Mina wasn’t even there at all when I was originally planning the books. She sort of appeared when I was writing Priest of Lies, but it looks like she’s here to stay now, lovely little foul-mouthed monster that she is. Billy loves her though, so there we are.
And that’s kind of how this works for me. I see them all as real people, not as characters. I’ve always said that if you read a character and they sound like a character in a book, you’ve messed up. They should sound and feel like a living, breathing person. That’s what I aspire to do, anyway.
ToW: Is the next book, Priest of Crowns, going to be the conclusion to the series? Can you tell us anything about it, and when we can expect it?
PM: Yes, Priest of Crowns is definitely going to be the conclusion. War for the Rose Throne was only supposed to be a trilogy to start with, and turning it into a quartet when the plot grew arms and legs and ran away from me caused me enough nightmares and plot gymnastics as it was. I am absolutely never doing that again!
As for when you can expect it, I can’t honestly say. It’s scheduled for 2022, but Covid and the subsequent delays to printing have already pushed Priest of Gallows back from the end of April to the end of May this year, so…. I don’t know. I think all publishers’ schedules have had to become a bit fluid to accommodate everything happening in the world right now, but you will definitely get it and I very much hope that will be next year!
Anyway, thanks for talking to me and I hope you enjoy the books.
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Peter McLean was born near London in 1972, the son of a bank manager and an English teacher. He went to school in the shadow of Norwich Cathedral where he spent most of his time making up stories.
He has since grown up a bit, if not a lot, and spent 25 years working in corporate IT. He is married to Diane and is still making up stories.
He is the author of the War for the Rose Throne series, beginning with Priest of Bones.
Check out Peter’s website for more information.
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Thanks so much to Peter for chatting to me for this interview, and for the lowdown on this fantastic book! Priest of Gallows is out now from Jo Fletcher Books in paperback, ebook and audiobook editions.
Check out my review of Priest of Gallows.
See also: all of the other War for the Rose Throne reviews and interviews on Track of Words.
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