I'm not a big fan of prophecies in fantasy books. Firstly because they usually give away the plot. Secondly because I prefer characters win the day (or not) out of effort, determination and cleverness rather than the inevitability set up by a (often badly-written) piece of poetry.
The kind of prophecy I like, however, arrived in my letterbox this week, sent by my publisher. In DeathRay magazine, and it's not because it isn't written as poetry.
"Hardback to the Future" is an article predicting the next six months of speculative fiction reading matter, and along with some exciting new titles I was rather chuffed to find this lovely write-up about The Magician's Apprentice:
"Canavan's Black Magician trilogy took the fantasy world by storm a few years ago, turning her into a Sunday Times best-selling author in almost record time. This prequel, set several hundred years before the events in the The Magician's Guild, should please her legions of fans, and doubtless add to their ranks."
To which I squeaked in delight not just because it says nice things about my book, but it's quotable. I've read plenty of good reviews over the years, but somehow they never contained really good quotable phrases. Every time my publishers have asked for quotes to promote my books I ended up saying: 'Well, there's that one from five years ago...". I'm going to write "...should please her legions of fans, and doubtless add to their ranks" on a piece of paper and stick it to my pinboard behind my desk, ready for when the marketing people call.
So THANKYOU to reviewers/prophets who write not just nice things about my books, but keep my marketing people happy, too!
