Edward Cox

The Essex author’s debut is set in a world where magic is forbidden

What wou ld you write as The Relic Guild’s cover blurb? At the heart of a mammoth labyrinth, in a giant city hidden behind walls a hundred feet high, young Clara knows that an age- old menace has returned to her home. Only the last of a secret band of magickers called the Relic Guild can help Clara save the lives of one million humans. Together they must find a way to contact the lost worlds that lay outside the boundary walls.

How did you go about building the wor ld of the Labyrinth?

A good starting point was knowing what was outside the city’s boundary walls. Because the Labyrinth’s glory days are long gone, and it has been abandoned, those that got left behind needed to be able to survive. I don’t want to ruin the plot by saying too much, but I arrived at a place where people are governed by rationing, scavenging, recycling. It had to be a dangerous sort of society, with a populace that knows it has already got everything that it will ever get.

The Relic Guild itself sounds like fantasy’s answ er to the Avengers…

I was inspired to create a band of magickers by my love of tabletop RPGs and superhero groups. I’ve always enjoyed how these kinds of fellowships find a balance in terms of the kinds of abilities that characters require in order to succeed. I also like that these groups are formed from individuals, and that the members don’t always get along. If there’s one thing that the Relic Guild has, it’s conflict.

Which SF/ fantasy authors wou ld you like to be compared to in a dream review?

I’d have to go for writers who inspired me as a young man. David Gemmell, Neil Gaiman and Tad Williams. That’s not aiming too high, is it? The Relic Guild is published by Gollancz on Thursday 18 September.