Kamilah Cole on So Let Them Burn and Exploring the Next Chapter of a Chosen One’s Story
Photo: Lauren Banner Books Features fantasy
Author Kamilah Cole’s debut novel So Let Them Burn follows the story of Faron, a young girl who can channel the power of the gods, and who used her magic to liberate her island from its enemies. And while the introduction of a Chosen One who has already completed her destiny prior to the events of this book is perhaps an odd framing device for a YA fantasy, but Faron’s story is far from over.
When her older sister Elara bonds with an enemy dragon, the very gods that singled Faron out five years earlier now insist that she must kill Elara in order to protect her people. What follows is an exploration of duty and sacrifice, recovery and healing that wrestles with some surprisingly dark themes—war, colonization, genocide, and trauma—as it asks whether a Chosen One can ever possibly choose a different path.
Here’s how the publisher describes the story.
Faron Vincent can channel the power of the gods. Five years ago, she used her divine magic to liberate her island from its enemies, the dragon-riding Langley Empire. But now, at seventeen, Faron is all powered up with no wars to fight. She’s a legend to her people and a nuisance to her neighbors.
When she’s forced to attend an international peace summit, Faron expects that she will perform tricks like a trained pet and then go home. She doesn’t expect her older sister, Elara, to form an unprecedented bond with an enemy dragon—or the gods claiming the only way to break that bond is to kill her sister.
As Faron’s desperation to find another solution takes her down a dark path, and Elara discovers the shocking secrets at the heart of the Langley Empire, both must make difficult choices that will shape each other’s lives, as well as the fate of their world.
We chatted with Cole herself about writing her debut novel, the inspirations behind the world of So Let Them Burn, and lots more.
Paste Magazine: So tell us about So Let Them Burn! What can readers expect from this story?
Kamilah Cole: So Let Them Burn is a book I pitched as a “Jamaican Joan of Arc with dragons”. It follows two sisters, one of whom was chosen by the gods as a child to wield their divine magic to free her island from a dragon-riding empire and one of which forms an unprecedented bond with an enemy dragon five years later.
It’s got dragons and ancestral magic, a strong anti-colonialist theme, lesbian (Elara) and demisexual (Faron) rep, and complicated relationships that show many different kinds of love as equally important.
Paste: One of the things I found so intriguing off the bat about this book is that it’s a Chosen One story that’s about what happens after the Chosen One does what they’re supposed to/made to do. What made you want to dig into Faron’s story from that angle? It’s not something we see a ton of in this genre.
Cole: When thinking about how to adapt the life of Joan of Arc for this story, one of the first questions I asked myself was, “What if she had lived? What if the war was over, and she was still hearing voices, but her purpose was accomplished? How do you move on?”
So Let Them Burn was, thus, always conceived as a post-purpose story, and by coincidence, there were a couple of books that came out around the conception stage that played with that same idea. I read Strange the Dreamer by Laini Taylor, and that made me hungry for more books that tackled the question of what happened after the traditional story was done, like Chosen Ones by Veronica Roth and The Afterward by EK Johnson. Each of them presented a different sort of answer, in a different sort of world, and So Let Them Burn is just another.
Paste: How would you describe Faron’s arc over the course of this book and the kind of person she becomes by the end of it?
Cole: At the beginning of the story, Faron is in a state of arrested development. She has PTSD, which makes her impulsive and self-destructive, paranoid and plagued by nightmares, and as a girl who was forced to face her own mortality several times when she was only twelve years old she exists only in the past and the present. The future is an amorphous, almost irrelevant thing.
Throughout the book, she makes several Choices with a capital C to preserve the one thing she cares about most and that has kept her sane: her sister. By the end, she sort of realizes the cost of her inability to move forward, and she is on a precipice where she could try to change for the better or double down into the darkness she’s never learned how to live without. And I’ve found that very interesting to play with in the sequel!
Paste: This is a story about many things but I think I love your complex and relatably messy depiction of sisterhood the most — talk to us a little bit about how you kind of see their relationship and what I inspired it (I read it’s at least somewhat based on your own with your sister.)
Cole: Elara and Faron are two very different people, who love each other very much but are also very jealous of each other. For Faron, she might be the one who saved the island, but Elara is the one that everyone—peers and parents, etc.—adores. The one they respect and the one that they trust. For Elara, she lives in the shadow of a younger sister who has accomplished more than she ever could from a very young age. She’s jealous of Faron’s notoriety but also her individuality, how Faron doesn’t care what anyone thinks and does what she wants. But because of those things, they are very protective of each other: Faron encourages Elara to think of herself instead of other people and Elara encourages Faron to pick her battles.
Elara and Faron are nothing like me and my younger sister, but I drew a lot upon our differences, our admiration for each other, and our silent resentments. Sisterhood, no matter how close, is an incredibly complex thing, and in trying to make Elara and Faron’s bond feel real and relatable I had to pull from personal spaces and study pop culture sisters like Anna and Elsa from Frozen, Wynonna and Waverly Earp from Wynonna Earp, and Abbie and Jenny Mills from Sleepy Hollow.
Paste: The world-building in this story is very creative — where did your ideas for it all come from? And how did your own heritage come into play while creating it?
Cole: When adapting the story of Joan of Arc for So Let Them Burn, I was inspired by Zendaya’s 2018 Met Gala outfit to really think about how this world and this story would look if such a figure were a Black woman. And, not just Black, but Jamaican. After all, Joan of Arc was trying to liberate France from England—and England was the last country to colonize Jamaica before our independence. Jamaica and England became, more or less, San Irie and Langley.
For the magic system, I saw a fanart of Zendaya by BossLogic in which she’s dressed as Joan of Arc and standing on the head of a dragon, which is how Langley became a dragon-riding country. (Also, I love dragons.) I love Pacific Rim (watch it!), so that helped with the conception of how dragon bonds in Langley are formed and in San Irie using giant metal dragons called drakes to fight back against the other countries. And ancestral worship is an important part of many Afro-Caribbean religions, which is how San Irie’s magic system of summoning ancestral spirits for help came about. Worldbuilding is my favorite part of the process, so I have pages and pages of little details that never made it into the story.
Paste: This book is described as a Jamaican Joan of Arc story — what part of her story helped bring this one to life?
Cole: What struck me the most about Joan of Arc is the tragedy of her youth. She died when she was nineteen, so not only did she never get to grow out of her childhood but she didn’t live to see her goals accomplished. Her story—the part of it that made her famous, anyway—began and ended with war, and I found that so sad.
My story specifically takes place after a war because, for So Let Them Burn, it’s not the war that matters. There’s always going to be a war. But how do you move forward? How do you find your new normal? We’ll never know what that would have looked like for Joan, but So Let Them Burn is, above all, a promise that life, in ways good and bad, goes on.
Paste: What are you most excited for readers to take away from this book?
Cole: Imperialism is bad. Dragons are cool. And your life does not have to be defined by the worst thing that ever happened to you. It won’t be quick, and it won’t be easy, and you may fall down and regress along the way, but on the other side of that hurt, there is healing. And you are worthy of it.
Paste: So Let Them Burn is your debut novel — first, congrats (I should have started with that probably!). How has the reality of publishing a book lived up to your initial expectations of what it would be like?
Cole: Thank you so much! Publishing a book has actually been beyond my wildest dreams so far, mostly because I never really dreamed beyond getting an agent. It took until I was almost in my 30s to even finish my first book, let alone do it again, and So Let Them Burn was the first one I wrote that I actually wanted to share with other people.
Getting an agent seemed insurmountable that, while I knew there was an important next step to getting on shelves, I didn’t dare imagine in. That I am able to hold my book in my hands, see it in stores, and see pictures of it taken by readers, is so incredible. I honestly feel so blessed.
Paste: Can you tell us a bit about the So Let Them Burn sequel? What’s next for Faron?
Cole: Without spoiling the first book, Faron is being influenced in a lot of different directions, and her arc involves weaponing her anger and her trauma in order to become the person she wants to be—whoever that is. Meanwhile, Elara is learning to be very careful what she wishes for… and that nothing hinders progress like conflicting political agendas.
Paste: My favorite question always — what are you reading right now? Anything our readers (cough me cough) ought to be keeping an eye out for this year? Or fellow debut we should make sure we don’t miss?
Cole: Right now, I’m reading Don’t Want You Like a Best Friend by Emma Alban, a sapphic historical fantasy that just came out in early January.
Some (OK, a lot of) books readers should look out for in 2024 are: The Honey Witch by Sydney J. Shields, True Love and Other Impossible Odds by Christina Li, If I Stopped Hating You by Colby Wilkens, Wish You Weren’t Here by Erin Baldwin, Everyone Who Can Forgive Me is Dead by Jenny Hollander, Medievally Blonde by Cait Jacobs, The Breakup Pact by Emma Lord, Here Lies a Vengeful Bitch by Codie Crowley, Masquerade by O.O. Sangoyomi, Your Blood My Bones by Kelly Andrew, A Reckless Oath by Kaylie Smith, The Wrath of the Talons by Sophie Kim, Skater Boy by Anthony Nerada, and Mighty Millie Novak by Liz Holden!
So Let Them Burn is available now wherever books are sold.
Lacy Baugher Milas is the Books Editor at Paste Magazine, but loves nerding out about all sorts of pop culture. You can find her on Twitter @LacyMB