THE BOOKS THAT INSPIRED THE WORTH OF SCARS

Anyone who reads The Worth of Scars will very quickly notice that I wear my inspirations on my metaphorical sleeve, so to speak, with nods to my favourite novels and other media dotted throughout. From calling squads of magic users 'coteries' to the use of a certain writer's favourite archaic expression 'mayhaps', the novel is filled with so many references I've likely forgotten I used many of them (and some, no doubt, are even unconscious!). I know some readers dislike this, and regard it as blatant plagiarism and blind unoriginality or whatever. I regard these, rather, as slight tip of the hat to those that have come before me, as well as a way of letting the reader know of the writers and pieces of media I regard, and as a bit of a game for those 'in the know' to do the Leo Di Caprio Once Upon a Time in Hollywood meme. If that bothers you, sue me (please don't!). No author writes in a vacuum, and no novel is ever wholly original, there's no point pretending otherwise. These are the five novels (six, really!) that most influenced my writing of The Worth of Scars, all in different but important ways.

(It's worth noting that this is a not a 'if you like this... you'll like The Worth of Scars' list - I hope to do that closer to release. While there will be one or two crossovers, certainly in terms of author, more than a few of the entries below are very different in execution from my finished novel, even if their DNA is very much in there.)

#1 THE LORD OF THE RINGS BY J.R.R. TOLKIEN

A fantasy novel inspired by Tolkien? Who would have thunk it? Alright, so I'm getting the really obvious influences out of the way first. Like most, or even all fantasy media, The Worth of Scars owes a hell of a lot to The Lord of the Rings (and The Hobbit, too!). There'll be more on this in the next entry below, but from the ancient wizard gathering a group of disparate people together to go on a quest, to the bleak and desolate landscape at the end of the world that group is questing towards and the corrupted monsters that infest it, there's masses of Tolkien here.

More than that, though, is Tolkien's influence on every other author on this list, and on the genre of fantasy as a whole. As Terry Pratchett once put it: 'J.R.R. Tolkien has become a sort of mountain, appearing in all subsequent fantasy in the way that Mt. Fuji appears so often in Japanese prints.' The Worth of Scars is no exception, and I'm proud to acknowledge the influence The Lord of the Rings has had on my writing, and on my life in general.

#2 THE EYE OF THE WORLD BY ROBERT JORDAN

Connected to The Lord of the Rings, I remember reading/hearing once that the first entry in The Wheel of Time was Jordan's attempt to produce 'his own version' of Tolkien's classic. Now, I don't know how true this is – it may well be total bollocks, and I steadfastly refuse to research it further – but the story of him doing so, as well as the book itself, is part of what inspired me to write The Worth of Scars, and to mirror Tolkien's quest structure in particular, so closely.

Starting from the familiar and branching out further and further from that (as The Wheel of Time most assuredly does as it goes on), gives both the author and reader (but most importantly the author, in this context) a framework, a reference point to cling onto as the story begins before striking out into greater originality and the unknown. This was so helpful for me as I set out writing my first novel. Ambitious though The Worth of Scars undoubtedly is in many other ways, that classic quest narrative and the touchstone of Tolkien (and Jordan, and countless other authors who have done similar) was so, so vital as I took my first shaky steps into the world of fantasy writing, providing a foundation from which I could and can now push further away from. It's a little like how, without the memory and love of the Shire or the Three Rivers, Frodo or Rand might never have been able to get to Mordor or the Blight to succeed in their quest, isn't it? No? I'm pushing it too far? OK, moving swiftly on.

#3 A GAME OF THRONES BY GEORGE R.R. MARTIN

So if you haven't already got the gist, this isn't going to be an incredibly niche list of esoteric fantasy cult classics. Apologies if that was what you were after (the 'if you like... you'll like The Worth of Scars' post I'll put out in a few weeks might be slightly more your cup of tea, so keep an eye out!), but I'm trying to be honest here, rather than impress the die-hards.

A Song of Ice and Fire is, to me, the gold standard of modern fantasy, even unfinished. It is probably the series I have re-read the most, certainly as an adult, and the only work of fiction I am deeply obsessive about to an unhealthy degree – topics such as what happened to Ashara Dayne or discussions over the width of Jeyne Westerling's hips and the implications of that will entertain me for hours upon end (let alone reading the actual novels). The chapter POV structure in The Worth of Scars is lifted straight from Martin, and the overall outlook and some of the themes definitely overlap. Most importantly, though, the standards set by A Song of Ice and Fire and A Game of Thrones are what I aspire towards, my guiding light (or red comet, if you will) in terms of quality and the intended effect I hope to have on my readers. I will never reach these heights, of course, but that's what I'm aiming for, and why A Game of Thrones cannot not be on this list.

#4 GLUE BY IRVINE WELSH

Aha! A curveball! Take that, snobs who were judging my extremely obvious fantasy picks!

This one is more of a hypothetical representation of my non-fantasy influences, rather than a declaration that the book itself was a direct inspiration for The Worth of Scars. Most well known as the author of Trainspotting (which I also love), Welsh is probably my favourite author (and definitely is outside of the fantasy genre). His combination of gritty, graphic and grounded subjects and settings; colloquial prose and dialogue; complex, extremely flawed characters; and a flair for delving into themes and circumstances so dark they make most actual supposed 'grimdark' novels look like childrens stories by comparison, I can't not include one of his works on this list just because they're set in the real world and don't contain any magic (some short stories aside).

Why Glue? Why not Trainspotting? Or my other favourite of his, Filth? There's a few reasons, but the main one is the genuine, totally un-cynical camaraderie I wanted to depict (at least eventually) in The Worth of Scars. The protagonists in Trainspotting and Filth in particular are pretty irredeemable, and the friendships they have (while complex and featuring a lot of nuance) are largely cynical and superficial, based (at least on the surface) off of what each friend can get out of the other. Glue, on the other hand, features characters that genuinely, unashamedly care for one another, even though the characters are almost as complex and flawed as those seen in Welsh's other work (it's the best example I've ever read of male friendship, I always say). This was the effect I wanted to create as the protagonists get to know one another in The Worth of Scars, and thus I thought Glue a good proxy to include here to represent my passion for the grounded kitchen-sink drama.

#5 THE LIES OF LOCK LAMORA BY SCOTT LYNCH & THE BLADE ITSELF BY JOE ABERCROMBIE

While both great books in their own right, these two come as a package for me. Both provided very similar inspiration for not just The Worth of Scars but my writing as a whole. I like to describe it like this: Tolkien is Mozart or Bach or Beethoven - indescribably brilliant, but also slightly alien to me and impossible to ever hope to aspire to. Then, Martin and Jordan are The Beatles, or other British invasion bands of the sixties and seventies like the Stones, The Who, Zeppelin, Bowie and so on - also amazing, and more approachable, but still with a certain genius that I feel I could never hope to even imitate. Reading Lynch and Abercrombie, then, for me, was like seeing the Sex Pistols at the Manchester Lesser Free Trade Hall in 1976. Still brilliant, still genius, but down to earth and DIY, more like mates you might know who used to play the local pubs, rather than otherworldly world-famous rock stars selling out stadiums every night. Simultaneously approachable and inspiring, they managed to combine my love for more dramatic, grounded literature as spoken about above, and fantasy. It was shortly after reading these two books during COVID, in fact, that I decided I wanted to try my hand at writing a fantasy novel of my own. The tone, the colloquial dialogue, the humour and the more everyday nature of the characters in these novels all undoubtedly bleed into The Worth of Scars, as well – Abercrombie in particular is probably the author I like to say my book is most equivalent to (not quality-wise, of course, but in its characteristics) – but it's the inspiration they provided that proved the catalyst for The Worth of Scars existence as much as any other entry on this list.

There are a few other authors or novels that can feel hard done by not to have made it into this blog post, particularly writers I enjoyed as a child, such as Pullman, Le Guin, Paolini, Phillip Reeve, and many others. I could only fit a certain number in before this blog post got too long, however (and I didn't even manage that!) so I'll have to save singing their praises and describing their influence on The Worth of Scars for another time.

Meanwhile, there are now less than three weeks to go until release! I've locked in the final draft, and reviews (good ones!) for The Worth of Scars are slowly trickling in. Exciting – and terrifying – times!

Cheers,

Gabe