As romantasy continues to be in vogue for YA readers, author Amber Hamilton makes her debut with Seven Deadly Thorns, a YA fantasy that hits shelves on November 4.
Camille Kellogg, senior editor at Bloomsbury U.S., bought world rights to Seven Deadly Thorns, and a follow-up book, from Caitlin Blasdell at Liza Dawson Associates. Alex Antscheri, editorial director of Bloomsbury Children’s in the U.K., will serve as the U.K. editor.
“To say I was shocked is an understatement,” said Hamilton of the deal. “Before going on submission with Seven Deadly Thorns, my agent told me to hunker down and work on a new project, that it could be months before we had a deal. But after only six days on submission, we were with Bloomsbury. I can’t put into words how amazing or life-changing that was for me.”
Seven Deadly Thorns is set in the fictional world of Aragoa, where shadow wielders are outlawed. Teen Viola does her best to conceal her powers as a wielder but when she’s discovered, she crosses paths with Prince Roze, setting them on a star-crossed journey: if Roze doesn’t kill Viola in seven days, he will be the one to die instead.
Hamilton, a former middle school English teacher, says that romance and fantasy were always her bread and butter as a reader. “Even as a kid, if it didn’t have magic in it, I was not interested.” Her reading tastes seem tailor-made for the romantasy genre, as Hamilton said she enjoys the “push and pull between the fantasy and the romance. I become bored with romance if there isn’t enough action, and I get bored with fantasy if there isn’t enough emotional tension,” Hamilton said. “In romantasy, they balance each other and play into one another.”
The classic fairy tale “Snow White” acted as a major inspiration for the author, who was drawn to the story’s dark roots. “I was so intrigued by how different the original Brothers Grimm fairy tales are compared to our modern ideas of them, because they’ve been so sanitized and romanticized,” Hamilton said. “And in that fairy tale in particular, there’s so much poisoning and death. I wanted to see what it would be like to make [that story] dark again.”
Hamilton finds that literature that doesn’t shy away from “so-called negative emotions [can] help us process the worst moments of life.” In Seven Deadly Thorns, Hamilton questions of the concept of villainy and what truly makes someone the villain of a story. Her central characters Roze and Viola, despite their vastly different outward personas, act as “mirrors of each other,” she said.
“Roze has a villainous exterior—he’s an elitist bully at school and the royal assassin in secret. But inside he’s just and righteous and compassionate. Viola is a good student, is admired and loved, and has plenty of friends, but she’s hiding her inner darkness. They’re both meant to challenge the idea that true villains really exist,” she explained.
In exploring this concept, Hamilton wanted her characters to face the difficult decisions that come with being labelled as a villain. “Do you cower? Do you hide that part of yourself?” Hamilton asked. “Or do you decide that you’re going to be a problem—you’re going to let yourself be the terrible monster under the bed that they all think you are because you deserve to exist.”
Exploring how society can quickly mischaracterize and villainize people was also an opportunity for the author to discuss queerness, which Hamilton wanted to take a look at through the magic system in the book.
“There’s a quote that I really think is the beating heart of the book, where Roze tells Viola that if your existence disturbs their peace, they never deserve peace. And that’s really the central message of the book.”
Readers can anticipate more from the world of Seven Deadly Thorns, with a new book on the way. “It’s another standalone, but set in the same universe,” Hamilton hinted. “It’s a different kingdom and different characters, but they are tied together in interesting ways.”
