Afterword
HELLO, I’m Dawn of the Mapmaker’s author, Akira Nashiki.
My love of reading awoke when I came across Jules Verne as a child, and as someone who grew up consuming literature translated from English into Japanese, I’m deeply moved to have my novel cross the ocean into your hands like this.
Thank you very much for picking up my novel!
The original plot for this story was based on a key image: a duo made up of a swordsman and a mage unveil the world’s secrets at the end of their journey.
A dynamic duo with completely different personalities, skills, and area of expertise—this is the golden combo you will often find in mysteries, such as the characters Sherlock Holmes and John H. Watson, or Richard Jury and Melrose Plant. As someone who loves buddy stories, I just had to make a similarly fascinating pair play a major role in my own novel.
And that is how Swordsman Ori and Mage Mouru came to life. But as I was working out the story’s plot, the number of secrets that needed to be kept from the reader continued to grow! Why were the two men on a journey in the first place? How did they come to learn there were even such mysteries and secrets for them to unveil? Yes, they had ended up too closely tied to the core of the story.
Thinking there needed to be someone to connect this duo to the reader, I created the heroine Unen. I had her represent an ordinary person to pull the reader, who would be clueless about her world, into it.
But, as you know, she also has secrets she can’t divulge to anyone. Intuitive readers may have picked up on several hints in the strange things Unen says before her secrets are revealed by the narrative in the third arc. Stories where you are writing from the main character’s point of view are very difficult to write when your character is continually lying, so I was very relieved and exhilarated when I finished writing the key scene that exposes her lies.
Unen’s secret and Ori and Mouru’s goal have become clear, allowing the stage to switch completely over to the Royal Capital City of Kujh.
Serving as attendants for the princess on her trip to escape the summer heat, Unen comes across a clue on the whereabouts of her missing teacher Hereh in the plateau town of Pavarna, but things are never that easy…
I hope you will enjoy the continuation of their adventure as the distance between Unen, Ori, and Mouru steadily decreases, confronting one another at times, and working together at times too.
See you in volume 2!
-Akira Nashiki