Background of The Series
Working as a writer and a painter, Janny Wurts' work on her Wars of Light and Shadow is realizing her ambition of describing and illustrating a world born in her imagination. Her research included experiencing some of the work of her characters, adding a gritty realism to her novels. She included a magic system in which she strives for a continuity and logic that spans the entire series.
The idea for the Wars of Light and Shadow originated while researching tactics and weapons. A documentary film on the brutal Battle of Culloden Moor gave her the historical sense of the fighting stripped of any romantic patina. It also helped her realize that education, written history and entertainment serve to justify the actions of the winners and portray the losers as morally wrong and evil. The series attempts to portray the fictional conflict of Lysaer and Arithon in sympathetic terms, illustrating each side with equal pathos. The story tracks the martial, political and personal conflicts of the characters, and the different tactics used by each - a mass following in one case, and a solitary wandering in the other. Wurts narrates each character from their own perspectives, leaving the reader to draw their own conclusions about the morality of individual actions.
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