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FIONN: Stranger at Mullán Bán – First Reviews

The first reviews from the paperback are just starting to trickle in. Usually, by the time I release a book I’m far too close to tell if its any good or not. As a result, it’s always a bit of a relief to find the reviews are positive.

The digital version gets released on on 15 December.

The first review from Padraig O’Mahony can be found here:

The second review, from Wayne McAuliffe is here:

Huge thanks to Wayne and Padraig. Go raibh mile maith agaibh!

Another Fionn mac Cumhaill Book

I’m currently in the process of outlining the next book in the Fionn mac Cumhaill Series, which will finish up the adventure commenced in ‘Fionn: Stranger at Mullan Ban‘ (but not the series).

All going well, I’m aiming to have this out in Oct/Nov 2023.

This current arc develops the ongoing direction of the series a little further. Demne/Fionn – the titular hero – is growing up and takes a more proactive role in the adventures but his three guardians (his aunt Bodhmhall, the woman warrior Liath Luachra, and the gregarious Fiacial mac Codhna) have their work cut out for them as they try to identify who’s behind the latest threat against their charge.

Cue more adventure, betrayals, and violence with a sprinkling of friendships and romance.

Liath Luachra III Cover Image

One of the early variations from artist Brian Mahy when developing the cover for Liath Luachra: The Seeking.

This was at a point where we were still playing with the colour palette and we hadn’t reached the final ‘look’. I’d asked Bryan to get me a somewhat shocking/bracing cover that reflected the anger/frustration of the character and his final version image certainly delivered.

So much so, that Facebook banned the image from its shop front (one of the many reasons I don’t bother adding anything new there). Hilariously, the initial reason given was because they didn’t permit the sale of animals (the screening programme thought she was a zebra). When I appealed that, the decided the image was too lewd.

That’s why I love running this on their newsfeed (where such apparently lofty regulations appear to be dispensed with)!

Wilding ‘The Great Wild’

With ‘Fionn: Stranger at Mullan Ban’ now sorted and ready for release next month I’ve been focusing more on ‘Liath Luachra: The Great Wild’, which I’m hoping to release in the first half of 2023.

Usually, when I’m starting a new book, I play around with the first chapter for a time as this cements the overall mood and theme of the story. I’m currently on the fifth or sixth rough draft of ‘The Great Wild’ and although I’m still shifting various sequences and descriptions around, I’m getting close to locking it in.

This work was always going to be something of an experimental piece as you can see from the attached mood/theme images I’ve been working with (mostly from artist Leila Amat Ortega but also from Reza Afshar and Julie Cherki).

Because I tend to feel my way intuitively with a lot of this stuff, I can never really tell whether the final product is going to work or not. Fortunately, the process seems to have worked so far with other books.

The Romans in Ireland (and how to interpret them)

There’s not a great amount of evidence about early Roman interaction with the island now known as Ireland but there are a few tantalising items.

Unlike Great Britain and most of the European Continent, Ireland was never controlled by Roman interests, although the Roman Empire was almost certainly aware of its existence even at that time.

Writing in the sixth century B.C., for example, Himilco the Carthaginian, made vague references to an enigmatic island he called ‘Iernei’ and to ‘Celtic’ tribes based on the North Sea. In 50 B.C. meanwhile, in the account of his campaigns in Gaul, Julius Caesar referred directly to the distant land of ‘Hibernia’.

Around the same time, Greek philosopher Strabo marveled at the shadowy country of ‘Ierne’ located on the limits of the known world, and the stories he’d heard of the savage, man-eating inhabitants and their sexual practices. This latter reference highlights some of the problems with early … er … ‘historians’.

Ptolemy, the famous geographer and astrologist, produced the first map of ‘Hibernia’ in the middle of the 2nd century A.D. This listed native tribes said to live upon its distant shores, which included the Erdin, the Nagnate, the Menapii, the Iverni and others.

A few decades earlier however, in his book ‘Agricola’, the Roman historian and politician, Tacitus, famously described how Gnaeus Julius Agricola, a governor of Roman Britain from AD 78-84, considered conquering Ireland. In that book, Agricola apparently claimed that the island could be held with a single legion. The number of soldiers in a legion tended to vary over time but it’s generally estimated at somewhere between 4000 to 5000 legionaries, and auxiliaries (non-citizen troops). Agricola was Tacitus’ father-in-law however, and Roman politics was a dicey game, so just because Tacitus wrote this, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true.

What most historians and academics do seem to agree on, was that at least some interaction (predominantly trade) existed between the island of Ireland, modern day Great Britain, and the European continent over the first and second century. Given the huge social disruption caused by the expansion of the Roman Empire over this time, it’s almost certain those tribes on Ireland’s eastern coast would have heard of the Romans, even if they weren’t directly affected. It’s also likely that at least some of the displaced people in modern-day Great Britain would have fled across the waves to escape the impacts of Roman invasion and colonization.

Interpreting Romans from an Ancient Irish Perspective

Most ‘Irish mythology’ presented through English language media tends to reflect a very Anglocentric view of ancient Irish culture. When it came to creating an Irish story that introduced culturally foreign ‘Roman’ elements therefore, I was keen to try and present the events from a more authentic perspective of ‘native’ people in first century Ireland.

When I started working on the book (one from my ‘Liath Luachra’ series) however, this proved something of a challenge. When you’re describing the impacts of a non-Irish culture on Ireland at the time, I knew it would be a mistake to start thinking of the ‘foreigners’ as ‘Romans’. If you start off with that concept, that immediately blinkers any further interpretation from a native Irish perspective and you end up with the usual monocultural, English-language tropes.

Given the lack of records from pre-fifth century Ireland, we don’t know how Ireland’s early inhabitants would have referred to the people of the Roman Empire – but they certainly wouldn’t have called them ‘Romans’. We can surmise however, that they would have referred to them using terms that articulated key behaviours of these new arrivals, behaviours interpreted in a way that made sense from the native Irish cultural perspective.

Like all authoritarian regimes, to fulfil the ambitions of its leaders (and the greed of its politicians), the Roman Empire had a constant need to subjugate other cultures and appropriate their wealth and resources. This predominantly meant taking control of their lands and other natural resources but it also meant using the subjugated populations for slave labour.

Other cultures would have looked on this behaviour – the ‘Great Roman Dream’ – and the scale of it, with a mixture of astonishment and horror. As a result, I opted for the name ‘The Hungry People’ as I felt this captured how this distressing cultural characteristic of the Romans might have been expressed from a native Irish perspective. This, however, is really only a best guess on my part as the truth is we’ll never know. In the final book (Liath Luachra: The Metal Men), I haven’t used the Gaelic term as I felt the book (and the series) was already sufficiently loaded with Irish concepts/language for a mainly English-speaking audience.

The naming of the ‘The Metal Men’ – the military forces of’ ‘The Hungry People’, uses the same creative approach and is, I think, self-explanatory.

CON MÓR

Macnas have put together another impressive art creation for the Halloween celebrations in Galway (down at Fisheries Field, on the banks of the River Corrib) this year. It’s accessible on Saturday 29th & Sunday 30th October. [Images from Macnas]

The blurb is as follows:

Inventors and explorers from all over the world are baffled by startling evidence of an ancient giant living underneath the Fisheries Field in Galway city. Professor Marjorie Morrigan, an expert on “Giants & Where They Come From”, reported – “This giant seems to have been here for centuries. There is a very large iron nose, so big and rusty, you could park a car in one of the nostrils.”

Professor Marjorie Morrigan went on to confirm that this big giant is called Con Mór and originates from the ancient ‘Island of Giants’ off the coast of Connaught. Con Mór was so famous across Ireland for his love of birds and nature, his friends used to call him ‘The Bird King.

Some of the fantasists are probably going to miss the fact that this is a production with kids in mind, so I’ll just clarify here … This is not true!  

But it’s still worth a visit!

The Stone Of The Yellow Truth

I really enjoy making landscape and topography part of a story but of course in ancient Ireland you also have neolithic structures and other features that add a new level of resonance to the land.

When writing the Fionn or Liath Luachra series, this kind of inclusion is critical, not only for imbibing the landscape with a character but also to add atmosphere or when setting up a plot.

This short segment from ‘Liath Luachra: The Grey One’ is the first mention of Carraig An Fhírinne Buí? (The Stone of the Yellow Truth), an ancient standing stone of importance to the Éblána tribe. This particular scene sets up some of the background context for later plot development but also allows a bit of dialogue to further develop the characters of Liath Luachra and her band of mercenaries.

It was quite fun to write.


Liath Luachra grunted. ‘And Carraig An Fhírinne Buí? Does this hold significance for the Éblána?’

Flannán shook his head. ‘No particular significance. Although there are some who say the stone is a marker.’

‘What does it mark?’

He shrugged. ‘Boundaries. Spaces that are different. I don’t know. You’d have to ask the draoi.’

There was a snigger from the others at this and even Liath Luachra had to wonder at the Éblána man’s obtuseness. A draoi was the last person anyone would approach for information. Jealously possessive of their restricted knowledge, they resented any efforts to make them share their secrets. Powerful in terms of magic and tribal authority, everyone knew they were best avoided.

Flannán bristled, misunderstanding the reason for their laughter. His lips formed a thin line and his forehead furrowed so deeply that the circular tattoo halved in size. ‘You can laugh but I tell you sites like Carraig An Fhírinne Buí are best avoided. That stone marks the entrance to a pretty little valley and yet none of the Éblána dare to venture there.’

‘How do you know?’ asked Sean Fergus, scratching his beard with thick fingers.

‘What?’

‘How do you know there’s a pretty valley? You said your tribe do not venture there.’

Flannán looked at him askew. ‘A kinsman of mine entered the forest beyond the stone by accident, when he was hunting and veered astray. He saw the valley through the trees but he was too fearful to go there for he swore it was haunted.’

‘Haunted?’

The Éblána man paused, as though struggling to recall something he’d been told a long time before. ‘He said the air was wrong. My kinsman is not a man prone to false embroidery of a tale. Neither is he one to panic easily so his words bear the weight of truth for me.’

‘What did he see?’ asked Canann, his eyes bright with nervous curiosity. ‘Your kinsman. What did he see?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Hah!’ roared Conall Cacach.

Flannán tossed the large warrior a heated look, infuriated by his blatant disrespect. ‘My kinsman did not see anything but he felt something.’

‘He felt something? What did he feel?’ Canann was leaning forward eagerly now, like a child hearing a ghost story for the very first time.’

‘He felt a coldness, an unnatural texture to the air. It frightened him deeply.’

Conall Cacach snorted. ‘Your kinsman must shit himself every time the wind shifts to the east.’

Flannán reddened. ‘If you are a man of such courage perhaps you would spend the night at Carraig An Fhírinne Buí by yourself.’

Conall Cacach sneered. ‘I have better things to do than sit around a piss-coloured rock, Éblána man.’

‘Of course, of course. You are so very, very busy.’

The bickering continued until Liath Luachra growled at them both to shut up. Furious, Flannán retreated into himself and said nothing more. Conall Cacach, for his part, led a fresh discussion on a subject that was the fénnid’s unfailing favourite: their plans for their newfound wealth and reputation following the completion of their service.

Future Productions

The 4th book in the Fionn mac Cumhaill Series (Fionn: The Stranger at Mullán Bán) is now a close to final draft (another three to four weeks are required to complete the reviewing and editing process).

Irish Imbas Patreon supporters should be contacted by the end of October. The book gets officially released on 14 December.

Meanwhile, work has commenced on Liath Luachra: The Great Wild which we’re hoping to complete by March/April 2023.

‘The Great Wild’ will be a shorter novel that outlines the beginning of the future woman warrior’s adventures and the events that made her the person she is.

As 2023 progresses, Irish Imbas outputs should increase with two additional publications. That will most likely include one of the following:

  • Fionn: The Betrayed (Book 5)
  • Liath Luachra (Book 5)
  • Beara (Book 2)

Production will also commence on a number of audiobooks (probably the Beara Series) and one or two additional non-book projects.

Overall, 2023 is looking like a busy year.

Fantasy Tapestry

It’s fascinating to see what happens when fantasy becomes strong enough to merge with reality (or vice versa where Amazon, hobbits, and Ireland are concerned).

When the LOTR movies were first released a few years back, Tourism New Zealand was busy branding New Zealand as ‘Middle Earth’. When the first few series of Game of Thrones came out however, Northern Ireland started to give them some serious competition.

This 80-metre, ‘Bayeux Tapestry’ styled linen piece was part of that branding exercise and can still be found in the Ulster Museum in Belfast.

It really is quite cool!

Floored with the Rings

I don’t know how many readers have been following that LOTR spin-off (‘The Rings of Power’) but from an Irish perspective, I can tell you that a lot of people are angry at the creators’ appropriation of Irish accents for their Hobbit/Hapfoot (or whatever they’re called) characters.

Misrepresentation of someone else’s culture has a longer-term detrimental impact on that culture when it occurs on a sufficiently large scale – definitely the case with Irish culture. The fact that the Amazon show runners have demonstrated such little understanding or appreciation of the Irish struggle to shuck off the impact from centuries of colonization (and the undermining of our culture) is incredibly disappointing. 

I really get the sense that this one was really that ‘step too far’ and its going to come back and bite fantasy creators on the butt. 

Irish people are often told by such creators that this misuse of their culture is ‘in homage’.

As a result, I’ve decided to make a little homage of my own with this short, sharp review of the Rings of Power Series.

“Téigh trasna ort féin, a Amazon!”