Flawed heroes in myths retold
He wrote his first book at 14. Damien Black: The Battle of Lost Ages (Diamond Books, 2011) was about a boy from a clan of hunters, who sets off on an adventure to hunt down dark creatures. “My friends hated it,” laughs Kevin Missal, 24. “Looking back I realise it was a total mishmash of Percy Jackson and Harry Potter… with not much original thought.” Missal has written seven works of young adult fantasy fiction since. Most draw on Indian and Arabian mythology. “I feel all fantasy writing stems from mythology,” Missal says.
Dharmayoddha Kalki: Avatar of Vishnu (Kalamos Literary Services, 2018), the first book in his Kalki trilogy, became a bestseller, selling about 1 lakh copies. Missal’s latest, Sinbad and the Trumpet of Israfil (Penguin Random House India, 2021), casts the legendary sailor Sinbad, of the Thousand and One Nights, as neither villain nor hero, but as a striving adventurer, a flawed man always chasing his next triumph.
On fantasy and inclusivity
“Harry Potter and Percy Jackson books taught me how to be a good person. Harry, Ron and Hermione’s friendship taught me loyalty and the important of friends. The way Rick Riordan made ADHD and dyslexia part of Percy’s powers in …The Lightning Thief (2005) made a lasting impression. I wanted to write something that would have a similar lasting effect during these impressionable years of my YA readers’ lives,” Missal says.
His own books seek to be inclusive. “In Sinbad, one of the characters is queer and one is non-binary.”
It’s nice how many of today’s YA fantasy books are inclusive and diverse, he adds. In Six of Crows by American author Leigh Bardugo, two of the main characters are people of colour and some of the smaller characters are queer. Percy Jackson author Rick Riordan has evolved, adding to his books non-binary characters such as Alex Fierro, a gender-fluid teenage demigod in the Magnus Chase and Gods of Asgard series since 2016.
“YA fantasy is a getaway to a world of fantasy and reality both. It keeps the readers both grounded and dreaming,” Missal says. “It’s exciting that the genre is unpredictable, just like its readers.”