Taran Matharu: Interview

Taran Matharu’s epic fantasy début, The Novice (Hodder Children’s Books, May), has all the essential hallmarks of the genre: good versus evil; dwarves, elves and demons; there are also lessons to learn, friends to defend and battles to win. 

But clearly something has made it stand out from the crowd. Three months and 11 days after Matharu put the first chapter on story sharing platform Wattpad—after writing it as part of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month)—the text hit one million reads. It has now surpassed an impressive six million reads, attracted offers from six agents within 24 hours of submission, went to auction in four countries and sparked the first ever UK-based Wattpad Convention, which was held in London in December. 

The story of Fletcher, a humble blacksmith who discovers he can summon demons from another world, Matharu describes The Novice as “the book I wanted to read, but couldn’t find, so I decided to write it myself”.

“I had learnt about Wattpad when I was interning at Penguin. I decided to put it on there just to get some feedback and by day 12 it had really started to pick up, with something like 60,000 reads. By the end of the month there had been 100,000 reads, so it was doing really well. That amount isn’t unusual on Wattpad, but it is for the genre I was writing in—fantasy doesn’t usually get the same level of attention that, say, One Direction fan fiction does. 

“I think people associate Wattpad primarily with fan fiction, but it’s not just that. Science fiction and fantasy stories on there are attracting more and more readers—including boys, which is great—and there are a lot of original writers on the site who are just trying to break through. In the first five days, writing a chapter a day was very tough. But right from the start a guy with the username ‘Achilles’ started commenting on and reviewing every chapter, and so I started writing for him. When it blew up and went viral, that sort of feedback kept me going, it was just so encouraging. It is an overwhelmingly positive community.”

The Novice, which is the first instalment in the Summoner Trilogy, is a fast-paced read. Fletcher is soon chased away from his backwater village, after being accused of a crime he did not commit. Forced to flee, and accompanied only by his new demon Ignatius, he ends up at the Vocans Academy, a school for the truly magical. It is there that the gifted are trained in the art of summoning and prepared for the Hominum Empire’s brutal battle against the Orcs. 

Fans, fantasy and fiction

A “massive fan of fantasy”, Matharu took inspiration from fantasy writers such as Brian Jacques, Ursula K Le Guin and J K Rowling, as well as drawing on the “passionate” world of fantasy video games. 

“I’m a massive fan of fantasy,” he says. “I used to read a lot of it and I took different elements of fantasy from different books that I love, but I took the idea of summoning demons from video games. In video games there is almost always a summoning character that you can play [as] but there are very few books about it. I love that ‘gamification’ side of it: how a particular magic system works and exists, the structure behind the magic, the rules, the boundaries and the ramifications of breaking those rules.” 

Discussions are under way about film rights to the novel, and Matharu says he would love to see the series adapted into a video game, as “there is an element of moving from one level to another in the book, like you would in a game. It has that structure to it. I always imagined the story potentially being a video game, because all of the summoners have different levels and the demons have different levels, in a similar way to many games. I think that really resonated with people who were reading it on Wattpad. A lot of fantasy fans are gamers, and I think it is nice to give a nod to the games that have inspired fantasy [fiction] and perhaps got people into reading it. 

“What I love about fantasy is that it is all about the world, and that world can be showcased in so many different ways, be it film, games, books or artwork. That’s part of the reason fans feel so passionately about fantasy. There are already 35 fan fictions about the Summoner Trilogy on Wattpad, for example, and right from the start I worked on concept art for the series with Polish artist Malgorzata Gruszka. Her image is now the cover of the book, which is amazing.”

The Outsiders

It is at the Vocans Academy—while butting heads and demons with those of the children of the most powerful nobles in the land—that Fletcher learns many of life’s biggest lessons, experiencing head-on the harsh reality of class and racial divisions, the importance of loyalty, the power of friendship and the struggle of becoming your own person. It is through the relationships he establishes with his fellow trainees that Fletcher starts to understand the world around him. From Othello, the first ever dwarf at the academy, to Sylva, an elf who is desperate to forge an alliance between her people and Hominum, Fletcher is caught in the middle of powerful and ambitious forces. 

These elements of the story are based on Matharu’s own experiences from his school days—including bullying, classism, privilege and racial tensions—and he now works with the National Literacy Trust, promoting reading for pleasure and celebrating diversity in schools. He says: “I think it will be beneficial to go into schools and for children to see an author that looks like them. I was one of three Asians in the first school I went to, in a school of around 300 children, and one boy would chant ‘poo-skin’ at me every day and the teachers never did anything about it. That was really traumatising for me. 

“In my next school there were a lot of racially motivated incidents too, as kids would put things into my bag and desk and then report them stolen, so that I was branded as a thief the entire time I was there, which was horrible. So I took the way that people can view people from other backgrounds—and those stereotypes that can be malicious and how people can overcome them—and put them into the book. A big part of the book is about overcoming prejudice and learning to deal with it. Othello, for example, is very stoic when he is called things like a ‘half man’ or treated as a sub-class person. He’ll stand up for himself but he won’t let it get to him, because he knows who he is and where he comes from.”

Metadata

Imprint Hodder Children’s Books
Publication 07.05.15
Formats EB/HB, £12.99
ISBN 9781444923971
Rights sold to 11 territories: the UK (HCB), the US (Macmillan), Germany (Heyne) France (Pocket Jeunesse), Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Poland, Russia, Spain, Brazil and Taiwan
Editor Naomi Greenwood, Hodder 
Agent Juliet Mushens, The Agency Group