Thea Guanzon on How The Hurricane Wars Reflects Her Family’s Heritage and Her Own Roots In Fanfiction
Books Features Thea Guanzon
If you read much fantasy at all, you’ve probably already heard about The Hurricane Wars, the buzzy—and now New York Times bestselling!—debut from author Thea Guanzon. The novel, which mixes high fantasy elements with a swoon-worthy romance is a tale of a clash between warring kingdoms, between two powerful aethermancers, between competing political ideologies, and even between the powers of light and dark themselves.
Set in a lush, Southeast Asian-inspired fantasy world, the story takes place in the midst of the titular Hurricane Wars, a decade-long conflict that has seen the Night Kingdom slowly conquer the neighboring kingdoms around them, including much of the Sardovian Allfold. Their impressive technology—which includes massive flying battleships powered by weather magic—means few can stand against them for very long. But Sardovian foot soldier Talasyn has been hiding an important secret: she’s a Lightweaver and possesses a rare, nearly extinct ability to control light magic. This makes her one of the few who might be able to fight the Shadow-wielding forces of the enemy, particularly the handsome Prince Alaric, the powerful heir to the Night Emperor and general of his army.
But when a freak accident that combines their powers forms something entirely new, Talasyn and Alaric will be forced to join together to prevent a deadly global disaster, something that if it’s not stopped will render the outcome of the Hurricane Wars all but moot. The story is delightfully addictive, full of political backstabbing and shady diplomatic maneuvering, alongside a complicated enemies-to-lovers romance, and complex questions about how years of war and conflict undoubtedly shape and impact those who survive its devastation.
We got the chance to chat with Guanzon herself about her debut novel, her roots in fanfiction communities, how The Hurricane Wars reflects her own cultural heritage, and where Talasyn and Alaric’s relationship is headed in Book 2.
Paste Magazine: Tell us about The Hurricane Wars! Where did the idea behind this story come from?
Thea Guanzon: It was a combination of many things. Enemies-to-lovers is my favorite trope, so this is my own take on that, and I unabashedly adore Asian dramas—from Filipino teleseryes to K-dramas and everything in between—so in this book you’ll find a lot of character archetypes and plot beats that will be familiar if you know the genre. As for the idea of storm magic being the main instrument of conflict and oppression, this was inspired by growing up in the Philippines, where we are frequently affected by typhoons and they are as much a fact of life as it is an ongoing nationwide conversation on how best to mitigate their effects.
Paste: In the preface that went out with Advanced Readers Copies of the book, you spoke at some length about how your own heritage and culture—and the history of the Philippines in general—played an important role in how you imagined this story and its world. Can you tell our readers a bit about that? (I thought it was beautiful, honestly, but copying and pasting it here felt like cheating.)
Guanzon: My country as it is now was birthed from a history of violent struggle. The Philippines was colonized three times over a span of almost four hundred years. My great-great-grandfather and his father were freedom fighters; upon their capture by the colonial government, they were tied behind a cart and made to walk for dozens of miles, dragged along by the ropes. My grandfather took up the cause fifty years later, joining the rebel army against a new imperial power at the age of fifteen, and he once walked thirty-seven miles to fetch munitions from a waiting submarine. I sometimes wonder if he ever thought about how he was walking in the footsteps of his ancestors along those mountain trails…
This is where I drew a lot of inspiration from in writing about how war can affect generations and about characters who fight for freedom no matter the cost, while at the same time creating a space where Philippine culture can be celebrated without ignoring our flaws and the past that made us what we are.
Paste: Tell us a little bit about the magic system at work in this world, it feels very different from a lot of similar stories we see in this space, especially in the ways it mixes in technological elements.
Guanzon: Magic in this universe is drawn from aetherspace, a place beyond the material realm that contains elemental energy that aethermancers can tap into to wield in battle or channel into their technology. These different forms of aether sometimes bleed into the material realm at irregular intervals, and it is only then that they can be harvested for tech purposes. I was playing off of the idea that magic, like other natural resources, comes from the land and it can be finite, and it needs to be respected as much as we need to respect our forests and our waters in the real world.
Paste: How would you describe the journeys your two main characters—Talasyn, a Lightweaver, and Alaric, a Shadowforged—go on over the course of this first book?
Guanzon: In a word: tumultuous. They start out as bitter enemies on opposite sides of the titular conflict and they end up needing to work together. It’s an uneasy alliance, rife with political intrigue, but in the process, they reluctantly come to understand each other and there’s a very inconvenient, very dangerous attraction that blooms in spite of a war’s worth of hate and anger between them. So the question is: can they save their world by working together, learning who they are along the way, or will they destroy each other first?
Paste: My two all-time favorite tropes are enemies to lovers and marriage of convenience so thank you for essentially gift-wrapping this story for me. What do you think keeps us coming back to these sorts of stories time and again?
Guanzon: I think that, in general, enemies-to-lovers is a compelling dynamic. It’s a conquering of the self, in that the characters have to overcome their preconceived notions in order to fall in love with each other. So I think that speaks to us on a fundamentally human level, because it carries a sort of hope that we can be more than what we were born as and that the heart can be greater than whatever cage seeks to contain it. And when the two characters are attracted to each other and the line between hate and passion becomes blurred, that’s just really intriguing to both write about and watch play out.
As for the marriage of convenience trope, I feel like that plays into our desire for some form of agency when the overall circumstances are beyond our control—and of course the happily-ever-after that springs from even the unlikeliest of situations is just so satisfying to witness.
Paste: Tell me about how you see Talasyn and Alaric’s relationship, and what makes them so good (and or bad depending on the moment haha!) together?
Guanzon: Talasyn and Alaric are children of war and that shapes the brunt of their interactions, but underneath it all they bear a similar loneliness that they eventually recognize in each other and reluctantly bond over.
While this is Grumpy/Grumpier rather than Grumpy/Sunshine, they are still a study in opposites, with Talasyn being so fiery and feral and Alaric being so cold and sarcastic, and they’re able to balance each other out. She wrestles compassion out of him and he goads her into thinking for herself. They are what the other one needs, even if they don’t know it yet.
Paste: Is there any scene you’re super excited for readers to finally experience on the page?
Guanzon: Chapter 38 🙂
Paste: What can you tell us about Hurricane Wars Book 2? What’s next for Talasyn and Alaric? Where does their relationship go from here?
Guanzon: In Book 2, Talasyn and Alaric reckon with their growing feelings for each other as a natural disaster closes in, and more family secrets will be revealed as the web of political machinations around them tightens.
Paste: The Hurricane Wars is your debut novel — how does it feel to have survived it, and to be looking forward to the sequel?
Guanzon: As of the moment, I’m so focused on actually drafting the sequel that I don’t have the emotional capacity for much else, but it has all definitely been exciting and nerve-wracking!
Paste: I know you’ve got something of a background in fanfiction communities, and I love it — I think fanfic is honestly such an amazing medium and gets a bad rap from people who don’t value or understand it. Good fanfic is art! How did writing in fandom help shape the professional writer you’ve become?
Guanzon: Fanfiction taught me how to write romance—how to craft sexual tension and pining and resolve it in a satisfying manner. It exposed me to new ways to play around with language, such as for example writing in present tense, and that encouraged me to keep on experimenting and honing my craft. I will also say that coming at it from the perspective of someone who lives in the Global South, fanfiction opened doors for me that I otherwise would not have had access to.
To my knowledge, there are no literary agencies in my country and only a handful of local presses, and making a living exclusively from the arts is very, very difficult here. Fulfilling my dream to become an author was not in the cards for me until I had fandom reach and support, and I’ll always be grateful for that and proud of my origins.
Paste: And my favorite question, always—what are you reading right now?
Guanzon: I have actually not allowed myself to read anything new until I’ve made a lot more progress with Book 2. So I guess to answer that question I’m rereading what I’ve written so far and trying not to overthink it.
The Hurricane Wars is available now.
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