The Kira Chronicles

The Kira Chronicles (trilogy); The Kira Chronicles series; The Kira Chronicles - Complete 6 Book Series

The Kira Chronicles was first published as a trilogy by Allen and Unwin, Australia (2007-2009), and is still available in various formats. After rights were reverted, I revised and augmented the books and reinstated material cut from the trilogy to make a six book series. The expanded story now ends much later. 

The Kira Chronicles series was launched in 2018 as six individual books: The Whisper of Leaves, The Silence of Stone, The Secrets of Stars, The Thunder of Hoofs, The Crying of Birds and The Music of Home.

The Kira Chronicles - Complete 6 Book Series was launched in 2019 and is the six individual books pf the series complete in a single book.

The Story

A gold-eyed Healer, a prophecy, two brothers at war.

In seasons long past, twin gold-eyed princes sundered a kingdom. Rejecting his brother Terak’s warrior ways, Kasheron led his people deep into the great southern forests and established the healing settlement of Allogrenia. The Tremen flourished, upholding Kasheron’s legacy of peace and healing, and protected by the vast, trackless trees.

All Tremen delight in the healing arts, but Kira is the greatest Healer of them all.

To the north of Allogrenia, drought ravages the Shargh’s land, and as their suffering escalates, the chief’s younger brother seizes on an ancient prophecy to snatch the chiefship for himself. The prophecy links the Shargh’s doom to a gold-eyed Healer, and Kira has gold eyes.

The Shargh attack with devastating consequences and Kira must fight to save the wounded, but the Shargh wounds rot, no matter her skill, and Kira finds herself in a deadly race against time. As the slaughter continues, she makes the horrifying discovery that the Shargh hunt her. To halt the attacks and save her people, she sets off for the North to seek aid from her long sundered warrior kin.

But the dangers beyond the forests exceed even the Shargh attacks. The Tremen detest their warrior kin but Terak’s descendants have inflicted a worse fate on the Tremen. Kira’s new-found love is torn apart by ancient hostilities and when trust turns to betrayal, it risks everything she has fought for.

As the battles rage on, Kira becomes increasingly sickened by the bloodshed. Desperate to end the suffering once and for all, she sets out on a quest that could cost her everything and everyone she loves.

The Idea

The Kira Chronicles was inspired by J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. In the early 1970’s, The Lord of the Rings became very popular and, like many people, I was a fan and read it many times. However the story is almost devoid of romance, something that Peter Jackson’s film versions rectified. Tolkien’s text has only brief accounts of the relationships between Aragorn and Arwen (most of the details are in the Appendices), between Faramir and Eowyn, and between Sam and Rosie.

In my late teens, I spent many happy hours conjuring stories of an Aragorn-like character and an Eowyn-like character having noble and romantic adventures together. Over the years, these imagined stories strayed a long way from Aragorn and Eowyn and morphed into what became The Kira Chronicles trilogy. I wrote Book 2 of the trilogy first, followed by Book 3 and then Book 1.  For years my imagined story began with Kira on the edge of the Azurcades where she meets Caledon. It took me far longer to work out how and why she was there!

When I revisited the trilogy to convert it to a series, I thought it would require just a few tweaks, but the characters’ motivations needed to be far more fully developed and I think the series is much stronger as a result.

The Secondary World

The story begins in Kira’s lands, the forest world of Allogrenia. The Tremen’s hatred of killing means they live on what the plants and trees in the forest provide. This, and their passion for healing, moulds their lives. The original eight clans that established Allogrenia live a half day’s travel from each other in communal longhouses spread out through the trees like the spokes of a wheel. They cannot live in a single group because there is insufficient forage to feed them. The ‘hub’ of the wheel is occupied by the Bough, the centre of healing, where the healer-leader and his family live. Apart from herbing sickles and the swords carried only by Protectors, the Tremen spurn all metal, which represents the violence of the northern kin they fled.

The small, closed community means the Tremen bond, not marry, because bonds can be broken and they cannot afford to have people locked in loveless, childless marriages. Tremen cannot bond with those from their mother or father’s clans in order to limit inbreeding. The forest impacts every part of Tremen culture. The scourge of heart-rot (a putrid-smelling fungus that fells trees without warning) becomes a curse uttered in frustration and the soaring alwaysgreens, with their evergreen canopies, assume the sacred. The dead are buried among the alwaysgreen roots so their voices are heard in the whisper of the trees’ leaves and so become immortal.

The lands beyond Allogrenia are composed of plains and forested mountains. Kira is initially disoriented by seeing the horizon after leaving the closed world of Allogrenia. She spends time in the Tain city of Maraschin, which is walled; has wooden houses; and is poor in places. While the city’s noise, crowds and unequal wealth shock Kira, it is fear she feels when she first sees the northern city of Sarnia. This is also walled with grand domed buildings of stone and the home of the barbaric northern kin her ancestors fled.

She feels more at home in Kessom, a mountain settlement at Sarnia’s back, which is unsurprising given her line originated in Kessom. The Kessomis live in longhouses and healing is strong there. Kira speaks like a Kessomi because the Tremen’s isolation in the forests means their speech has not altered over time like that of their northern kin.

The Music

The Kira Chronicles was written to music by Bolivia Marka from their Poesia Andina album. Track 1, Por que estas triste (linked)reflects Kira’s sadness in the early part of the story, and Track 2, Palomitay (not linked) gives a sense of Kira’s amazement at the sight of galloping horses.

Deep Fantasy

The story starts with a prophecy, which is nothing unusual in fantasy, but I have long wondered whether a prophecy would unfold if it were ignored. I have also wondered whether a pacifist community that comes under attack would abandon its principles and fight back or let itself be destroyed.

In Shakespeare’s play Macbeth, Macbeth acts on the prophecy (that he will be King) to bring it to fruition, and he dies in the bloodshed that follows. In The Kira Chronicles, Arkendrin acts on the prophecy to prevent it unfolding and, in doing so, unleashes the very events he seeks to avoid.  Of course, had there been no drought and no rivalry between brothers born too closely together, things might have turned out differently.

The prophecy was one of the first things I wrote and it came to me easily (even the last 4 lines which I added later) and oddly, in writing the prophecy before I knew the story, it became my guide as well. 

The choices of a pacifist community under attack are limited: die without a struggle or defend themselves by fighting back. Kira’s dilemma is exacerbated by her ancestor Kasheron having fled the north's brutality to establish the healing community of Allogrenia. Kira must navigate her way through the complications as best she can, compromising but never abandoning healing. It is the worldly Caledon who points out that the Allogrenia Kira knew ended the day the Shargh found it.

I wanted to avoid a simplistic story about mindless ‘baddies’ being mindlessly bad and, as Kira slowly discovers, the Shargh’s aggression is understandable in the light of historical injustices.     

The Kira Chronicles tells both Kira and Palansa’s (the partner of the Shargh leader) stories, which mirror the stories of many women who find themselves in wars.  Kira and Palansa have neither the skills nor aggression to fight as men do, but they use the weapons of female heroes to save themselves; those they love and, in Kira’s case, to sow the seeds of something that one day might break the cycle of violence. 

As I extended the story into a series, I thought long and hard about Tierken’s behaviour and why Kira returns to him. I wanted to make it clear that, despite being a warrior, Tierken is damaged by the fighting (as are all those exposed to violence), and this has consequences for those he loves. His long uncertain wait to inherit the leadership; the tragic death of his parents; his gold eyes that remind those around him of the historical schism, all add to his need for certainty (marriage) with Kira. But when his frustration becomes violent, Kira is right to leave him, but she is also right to return.

She is no longer the naive girl who fled Allogrenia or the lonely young woman who outran her guards to escape Sarnia. She understands Palansa’s pain in losing her partner and of her child growing without a father; things that Kira still has the chance to avoid. And she is aware of Tierken’s efforts to undo the wrongs he inflicted on her. But this is no simplistic happy-ever-after ending. Kira understands the challenges that still confront them and while Tierken is confident in her love and commitment to him, he knows it will take a long time to rebuild her trust.

Happy reading.