Let’s start with an introduction: Who is James Islington?

I’m 35, Australian, married and with a daughter who’s just turned one. I’ve been writing for about five years now (I originally self-published in 2014 before getting picked up by Orbit)… prior to that, I was running a tech startup, which I really didn’t enjoy at all.

I’m into board games (I own more than 200), video games (I own… too many in my Steam account to admit), TV, movies and the occasional anime. Sometimes books, too!

Your debut novel, The Shadow of What Was Lost, was published recently by Orbit. It looks rather interesting, and I’ve been hearing great things about it (it’s near the top of my ever-tottering TBR mountain). How would you introduce it to a potential reader? Is it part of a series?

It’s heroic epic fantasy – think more traditional / less grim and gritty than something like A Game of Thrones, but it’s certainly not the elves, dwarves and dragons of The Lord of the Rings, either. It’s the first book in a trilogy, and my go-to introduction is usually that it’ll appeal to fans of The Wheel of Time and/or Brandon Sanderson’s various series. Continue reading →