The Throne of The Crescent Moon

Writing involves a lot of research and reading. One tip I will not tire of repeating is that you should read… a lot! I’m not joking, it really improves your writing.

The Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed follows several characters in the grand city of Dhamsawaat. Doctor Adoulla Makhslood and his assistant Raseed, fight monsters called ghuls until a mission from a former love forces Adoulla into the most dangerous battle of his life. With the help of his friends and an Angel blessed girl, I won’t spoil that for anyone, they face a cruel and mysterious foe hell bent on their deaths. Things get even more exciting when the prince of thieves weaves his fate with the heroes.

One lovely technique Ahmed uses which I am thinking deeply about is his time and narrative shifts for each chapter. With each new chapter, time reverts to the previous event, and the reader experiences the action from another character’s viewpoint. The reader reviews short, important events in a different light. I was thinking of doing something similar after reading The Age of the Five trilogy by Trudi Canavan. Canavan does not split the chapters into characters or rewinds time for brief moments. She splits events within a chapter–the narrative shifts whenever the story requires a different viewpoint or something important is happening elsewhere–time is also continuous. I was thinking of giving each of my characters a chapter, as in Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of The World by Haruki Murakami, but then what would I do if multiple events happened at the same time or if a character had little to do in that moment? My chapters would have irregular lengths and I felt that would dissuade my readers. So, I followed Canavan’s example by moving from one character to another as time ticked away. However, I shifted narratives slowly at the start–Canavan’s constant shifts were confusing when I first started reading her novels because there were many places and characters to follow. As for Ahmed’s time rewind, I’ll consider it for the really juicy bits. It could help develop my characters and help my readers keep up with the events. One of my professors said good writing means I know what’s going on at any point in the novel. Has anyone else noticed that writers sometimes repeat bits of information all over a novel? It’s obvious when reading a book cover to cover, but not if you stopped reading it for a while or if you read books in between. The repeated information can really jump-start the memory if done right.

The pace of the novel slows down considerably in the middle of The Throne of the Crescent Moon. I was getting worried by then. It was all talk. At that point, I remembered what my dissertation professor pointed out. If nothing happens or the pace doesn’t stay the same, then I could lose my readers. He wanted me to write nonstop action and cut out a considerable amount of description. However, when I presented the same passages to my colleagues, they were confused and asked to slow the pace and add more description so they could picture what was happening. I stuck with the description for two reasons: It evened my pace, and I was writing about a fantasy world that didn’t exist, therefore description was necessary to visualise the scenery. Even though the pace was very slow in the middle of The Throne of the Crescent Moon, Ahmed never lost me. I always knew what was happening. The pace picked up 60% into the book (I was reading the Kindle version). Near the end I was reading furiously–so much so that I lost a battle with fatigue and woke up at 3am with the kindle on my right and the lights still on. The end was not disappointing.