Raymond E Feist

The american fantasy novelist begins a new chapter

- Jonathan Wright

By his own estimation, Raymond E Feist is the author of “the world’s longest fantasy trilogy”. By this he means the 33 stories of the “Riftwar Cycle” that have taken up most of his professional life since the publication of The Magician in 1982. Nonetheless, all good things must come to an end – or at least be put on indefinite hiatus.

So it was that when Feist finished Magician’s End (2013), he had mapped out the five Riftwars he had always envisaged writing about and, when people asked him what happened next, he simply didn’t know. It was time to start something new. “I felt it a good jumping-off place for a different world with different rules,” he says.

Which is how, in his early seventies, Feist is speaking to SFX to promote King Of Ashes, the first volume in his “Firemane” fantasy trilogy. It’s a book that’s fresh, full of the energy of a writer exploring new territory, but also the work of a mature writer who knows how to engage his audience. In particular, as we see the wretched, bloody aftermath of a battle, it’s a book that doesn’t mess about but throws you straight into a new world, Garn. It’s a technique Feist borrowed from his stepfather, filmmaker Felix E Feist.