Madge asked Erin Bow:

in plain kate, how would you describe Linay? Is he an anti-villain or anti hero and how did Kate view him?

Erin Bow I'm not great at English-teacher kind of labels, but I am interested in villains who have actual human motivations. Real people don't set out (for example) to destroy a city just for kicks and mustache wax. They have reasons. They are wrong, of course, but they still have reasons.

It's more interesting to me as a writer and reader if the villain's reasons are ones I can relate to. I am not drawn at all to villains like Sauron or Voldemort, who simply want power, or immortality, or to watch the world burn. I like instead villains who can be cast as heroes who have gone wrong.

And so I like Linay. He is motivated by grief, love, and a desire to save his sister, with perhaps a side-helping of madness and revenge. Kate, who also feels grief, love, and the longing for family, connects to that in him. She also thinks he is terrifying and needs to be stopped. What interests me is that those two things are not a contradiction.

(And don't get me started on Talis.)

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