Q&A: Sung-il Kim, Author of ‘Blood for the Undying Throne’
We chat with author Sung-il Kim about Blood for the Undying Throne, which is the sequel to Blood of the Old Kings and an epic fantasy adventure where the corpses of sorcerers power an empire and ordinary people rise up to tear it down.
Hi, Sung-il! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
I’m a Korean man who writes in Korean. I live in downtown Seoul with my wife Narim and two cats, Kira and Sisko. I’ve been here in Seoul most of my life, but I did spend a few years in Ottawa and a few months in the Eastern US during my teenage years.
I’ve been writing since 2016, mostly science fiction with some fantasy and horror. Narim and I also publish and translate tabletop role-playing games for Korean readers.
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
I can’t even remember. The first written evidence of my aspiration to write appears in a book report on Raspe’s Baron Munchausen’s Narrative that I wrote when I was eight. But it was already an old dream by then. My family moved around a lot, so books were the only constant in my life. For a very long time I was convinced that I would write my own books someday. But it wasn’t until I was over forty that I finally got around to writing professionally. Blood of the Old Kings was my very first work of fiction.
Blood for the Undying Throne is the sequel to Blood of the Old Kings, and it’s out October 28th! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Look back, then march on.
For those who haven’t picked up Blood of the Old Kings, what can they expect?
Blood of the Old Kings is the most straightforward book in the trilogy, fast-paced and action-oriented. It follows the three protagonists from the conquered Imperial Province of Arland. Each of them is in a unique situation, but all their problems come from the same source: the subjugation of the world by the Empire. The book is about the individual struggle of each and the parallels to each other they draw.
And for those who have, what’s to come in Blood for the Undying Throne?
You will see the steppe province of Mersia before it was part of the Empire and after it was devastated by an alleged superweapon. You will see the Empire’s politics shift following the events of Blood of the Old Kings. You will understand the world more, and maybe even sympathize with it. All of these will happen through the eyes of three protagonists: Emere and Arienne, both of whom you met in the previous book, and Yuma, the Chief Herder of Mersia 170 years ago.
The first book was about triumphs. The second one is more about regrets and reckoning. It’s quite a bit darker in my opinion.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring further?
Writing Arienne was one of the most rewarding parts of the work. She is the one who grows the most in the trilogy and is the only character who gets a PoV in every book in the series. It has been almost ten years since I wrote Blood for the Undying Throne, but I can still remember the jolt I felt when her ending came to me.
Did you face any challenges whilst writing the sequel? How did you overcome them?
In the first book, Loran was a favorite of mine and many readers. It was natural to want to have her again in Blood for the Undying Throne. But her arc was very complete in Blood of the Old Kings, so to give her a new one back-to-back would not have been the best thing to do. Acknowledging that and coming up with something else must have been the biggest challenge. Overcoming it was as easy as making the very hard decision of not including her as a PoV character in the sequel. Still, my original wish to have Loran in it was not wasted, as it was translated to Emere’s longing for her.
What’s next for you?
So many things! But most of them are happening in Korea.
The English translation of the third book in the Bleeding Empire series is to go into editing very soon. I am very eager to begin working on it. The editors have been meticulous, professional, and invested, all of which I really appreciate.
My Lovecraftian apocalypse novel Our Time Ends will probably be my next Korean book. It is an extension of three earlier, linked short stories about a suicidal space mission to stop a cultist plan to end the world. I want to develop that setting more. I love the weirdness I can eke out of it.
Right now I am working on a sci-fi novel about a spacefaring orca in a galaxy where humans have driven themselves into extinction through devastating interstellar wars. I should be done by the end of the year.
I’ve been away from fantasy for a while, so I would like to get back to that as soon as I am able. There’s a fantasy spy thriller with a nifty spin that I had shelved a few years ago. I might take a look at that again. I am fiddling with some ideas for short stories in the Bleeding Empire universe as well.
My agent is pitching my award-winning, not-quite-cyberpunk novel Wolf Hunt (no relation to the movie) to overseas publishers. It’s set in the near-future solar system run by AI-owned corporate cartels where people and animals accidentally develop psionics through Martian gene-grafting. I am very fond of this book, and I hope it gets translated into English and other languages.
Lastly, what books have you enjoyed reading this year? Are there any you’re looking forward to picking up?
This year I mostly read Korean books. A collection of Kim Won-woo (김원우)’s stories, It’s good that I loved (좋아하길 잘했어) was excellent, and so was Lee Sanhwa (이산화)’s Twelve Worlds, Completely Different (전혀 다른 열두 세계), a collection of twelve sci-fi flash fiction. They are both immensely talented writers and I hope they get translated into English and more.
On the top of my to-read list are John Wiswell’s Someone You Can Build a Nest In and Indrapramit Das’s The Devourers.
