Spoiler Alert: This story contains spoilers for Ava Reed’s “Innamorata,” released March 17 by Penguin Random House.
Eva Reed’s latest novel, Innamorata, ends in such a twist that the author is offering a $1,000 bank transfer to anyone who can predict it.
In this epic fantasy novel published Tuesday by the author of “A Study in Drowning” and “Lady Macbeth,” the main character, Agnes, is brutally murdered by her lover Lupland on the orders of her cousin Marozia, raped posthumously, and then left dead in the basement of Crudere Castle. But before the book ends, our omniscient narrator reveals an even more shocking development. Agnes, thought to be barren, now grows life inside her corpse.
Reed, who just completed a new draft of the “Innamorata” sequel, explains more about what’s going on here.
“She inadvertently fulfilled Adele Blanche’s mission,” Reed told Variety this week. “But it’s important to remember that whatever is growing in Agnes’ womb is as much Leupland’s as it is hers. That’s my opaque tease about what’s to come. The other thing I was thinking about is that names are very important, and I chose all the names as specific references. They’re all pretty historical names. And sometimes they can hint at the fate of the characters. So if you want a hint, I look to Minoan culture and Greek tragedy. And obviously we’ll see more of that in the second volume.”
Reed is not currently working on adapting Innamorata for the big or small screen, although she has hinted that a film project is in the works under one of its previous titles, but she will say that she is not planning on a potential live-action project.
“The only way I can see this being done is as an adult animated fantasy like ‘Castlevania,’ because I don’t understand how you would adapt some elements of this work with live human actors,” Reid said. “And because this film is so similar to classic fantasy, I don’t think you want the more gritty, gray aesthetic that a lot of live-action fantasy tends to have. If it’s more like a colorful, bombastic, ’90s fantasy adaptation, but drab and vaguely medieval.” It’s not a gray live-action movie. There’s no shade, but the trailer for The Odyssey doesn’t give me much hope, just from an aesthetic standpoint. But Knight’s Tale of the Seven Kingdoms gave me hope for a return to a more colorful fantasy era, both literally and figuratively.”
Read more from Variety’s interview with Reed about the making of Innamorata and what the sequel will be about.
How did you come up with the idea for “Innamorata”?
Not all books are put together in such a way that you immediately know what the book is about and what you want. And this book was one of those books where I knew from the first page what the book was going to be and what I wanted it to be, as soon as these different sources came together. And it definitely wasn’t Romantasy. But this book is very meta in many ways, so I intentionally incorporated some of these romanticism tropes. The “destined soulmate” thing is almost a parody in this book. “Romeo and Juliet” is a story of forbidden love and romance, and it also had a great influence on this book. I knew from day one that this was going to be an evolution of what I’ve done before, but it was also a return to my Juniper & Thorn roots. I said this was for the “juniper” girls and I think that’s really true. And Juniper was a very important book for me to publish early in my career, raising expectations from readers and helping me define my own identity as an author. So, I think that laid the groundwork for Innamorata and gave me the confidence to write and publish it.
Agnes dies at the end of Innamorata, but does that mean she won’t be a character in the sequel?
Although Agnes is a character in the second book, she is not a POV character. And I joked on my Instagram story. Because people ask about Waltrude. They love Valtrude very much, my problem-free queen. “Waltrude will be returning in Innamorata: End of the World.” Some of the POV characters that will be returning are obviously Pliny, Malegant (the magician from the outer walls), and Ninian. What readers may not expect is that there is a new central narrator, who in Innamorata is more of a supporting character. And the tip I gave one of my readers was that this character has a chapter named after them, but they haven’t spoken any lines yet. Here’s my little hint of where the sequel will go. And this sequel goes in a more epic fantasy direction. The first book is more Gothic, while the sequel is more epic, gruesome, dark fantasy, and court politics.
What else can you tease about the sequel?
The sequel is also split into three books, but in this case it’s like three different plotlines. Like in A Song of Ice and Fire, there’s Catelyn and Robb’s parts, then there’s a King’s Landing section, then maybe a Jon section, and then a Dany section. So it’s more like that.[In the sequel]Volume 1 follows a particular set of characters in a particular location, Volume 2 follows a particular set of characters in a particular location, and Volume 3 brings them all together.
You’ll see more of the islanders and other houses you’ve never seen before, and how they think the difference between themselves and the Seraphines. You will remember that this is still a very new world order. It has only been a century or so since Berengar came and eradicated their old customs. Many of these houses retain memories of their earlier days, and in Volume 2 we learn that a considerable number of customs were indeed survived by the conquistadors. We can see the loosening of the structure of this society. And there are hints of that in Leupland, where the island feels like it’s held together with popsicle sticks and cellophane tape.
What were the main influences for “Innamorata” and what inspired the next sequel?
I always thought of “Innamorata” as real, authentic, classic fantasy. That’s not romanticism. But it’s also a weird, almost “Into the Spider-Verse” of different types of fantasy. There’s a manor gothic fantasy that was influenced by Gormenghast. A harsh, dark, epic influence from A Song of Ice and Fire. You have the influence of the classic Renaissance epic from “Orlando Inamorato”.
And there are plenty of other classic fantasy influences in Volume 2 as well. Thomas Malory’s “The Death of Arthur” and “The Death of King Arthur” have been a major influence on the sequel. Dune also had a huge influence on its sequel. In fact, I was just tagged in a review saying, “This has the politics of Dune,” which made me really happy. There’s one of our favorite character archetypes: the scheming matriarch. This is a play on many of the Chosen One archetypes and their tropes in fantasy. You will see more of the history of Crete and the influence of Cretan culture. It was also a big part of Crete’s history. And it will play a bigger role in Greek history. Minoan culture had a huge influence on what happens in the sequel. My editor loved the way she described things and said the sequel was like a “death metal, chivalric romance.”
This interview has been edited and condensed.
