Such a fun book!

Here is my review: www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

If you're interested, Flatlands by Edwinn A. Abbott is part of Project Gutenberg.

The satire is sharp but easy to miss, and if you don't recognise it, the book may come across as deeply offensive. Read with that lens, though, Flatland becomes not only a mathematical curiosity, but a surprisingly incisive critique of its time. (2/3)

Part of that speculation involved giving these nearly omnipotent beings a leader who is even more unknowable to them—The Rector.

Their intentions form the largest arc of the entire series.

But that's a secret for later 😉 (6/6)

Why this approach?

I wanted to imagine immortals who treat knowledge as their only meaningful pursuit. Beings so far removed from their humanity that their morality has reshaped itself outside what we would recognise as 'moral.'

Speculative fiction gives room for that. (5/6)

The other Orders study different sciences: physics, chemistry, mechanical engineering. Each Order applies its discipline through a posthuman lens—and each has its own name in the text. (4/6)

This 'selection criteria' is not out of cruelty—but because psychological suffering creates perspectives inaccessible to those untouched by it.

Ultimately, my alchemists are researchers, and one Order focuses on human psychology—though the books call them Soul Transmuters. (3/6)

If you've read the prequel, The Genesis of Change, you know one key detail: my alchemists are posthumans, shaped from human 'source-beings.'

These sources are hand-selected by the alchemist leading the Orders, The Rector… and are often people broken by life. (2/6)

Today on the Substack, I break down how Borges deployed these "destabilising adjectives," and how writers can use them to shift tone with surgical precision.

Full essay here ➡️ open.substack.com/pub/liviajel... (4/4)

Borges understood that strangeness doesn't come from monsters or magic.

It comes from the moment the ordinary behaves in ways it logically shouldn't.

That cognitive slippage—tiny, precise—creates the eerie. (3/4)

These adjectives aren't decorative. They dislocate the familiar:

✔️ "unanimous" turns night into a collective consciousness
✔️ "infinite" fractures time
✔️ a mirror becomes an agent with intentions

One word shifts the world's physics.

The Roman-esque setting of The Omens of War, held in a tense Nash equilibrium, allowed me to explore how fear, honour, and interest collide—and how they can also function as forms of deterrence.

But that part deserves its own thread. (6/6)

The last cause is interest; the most pragmatic.

Resources, trade routes, knowledge, influence: if acquiring something benefits a state, that incentive alone can drive conflict.

That's why, in my book, Calya thinks: "Because even nations act in self-interest." (5/6)

Honour in the ancient world meant glory and renown, but as Donald Kagan notes, in more modern societies it can be read as deference, esteem, deserved respect.

As Kagan wrote: "When states' power grows, that deference and respect are likely to grow as well." (4/6)

Fear is known. Margaret MacMillan writes, "Individuals and nations will fight out of fear of an imminent threat..."

In my book, Berserk agrees: "Fear was a useful tool; it united a crowd against another, and it poured bloodshed between them. Across ages, across worlds, across societies." (3/6)

Thucydides—Athenian historian, general, and chronicler of the Peloponnesian War—famously proposed that states go to war for three reasons:

Fear, honour, interest. (2/6)

In today's Substack, I break down how two narrators describe the same space in different ways—one bitter, one analytical—showing how POV reshapes reality.

(Yes, the hallway scene is from my upcoming book, but the craft lesson applies anywhere.)

🔗 Here: liviajelliot.substack.com/p/narrators-...

A limited narrator isn’t a camera. It’s a *moral filter*.

A distortion field that reveals: what a character values, what they fear, and what they refuse to see.

It tells the reader: "Truth is subjective, but here's the version you're allowed to see." (2/3)