Only the fires of vengeance remain - Daughter of Madness (Creation Saga #2) by Amanda J. McGee

DAUGHTER OF MADNESS tells the story of a princess and her twin, a soldier and his king, and an oracle who is more than she seems.

Description:

Release Date: June 2nd, 2018

Liana has lost much to Herka's manipulations, though nothing so precious as her sanity. Emerging from her madness, she finds the world changed - her body wasted, her son gone, and her kingdom still beyond her reach. Only the fires of vengeance remain, and she will build the flames high.

DAUGHTER OF MADNESS tells the story of a princess and her twin, a soldier and his king, and an oracle who is more than she seems.

GUEST POST

A Hero’s Journey, or a Heroine’s?

You’ve probably all heard of the Hero’s Journey. Joseph Campbell famously coined this term in his book Hero of a Thousand Faces. He saw it as a universal constant across all stories, called a monomyth. In this story, a young man, who is identified as the chosen one by a powerful mage, goes on a mighty quest, suffers setbacks and finds companions, and is at last victorious and awarded some recognition by a mystical woman or other sage figure. It’s the story you get in Star Wars’ A New Hope, where Luke is trained and assisted by Obi-Wan and is able to save and eventually be rewarded by Princess Leia Organa. 

But in the Creation Saga, I wanted to tell the story of a young woman. 

I didn’t realize it at the time, but the journey of the protagonist of my tale, Liana, actually somewhat parallels a different, less well-known cycle called the Heroine’s Journey. This was an alternate plot arc that was first identified by Maureen Murdock. 

I’m somewhat skeptical of overly condensing plots like this, and everything contained in the Heroine’s Journey doesn’t necessarily apply, but reading about the Heroine’s Journey let me see some of the things I was subconsciously trying to understand in my writing. In particular, the rejection of the feminine in order to try to protect oneself or achieve goals seen as masculine was something that spoke to me in regards to Liana’s character. As the central protagonist of the novels, a lot of the action revolves around Liana. Due to her trauma, she is very conflicted about what kind of person she wants to be. The qualities of the just, fair, and open-minded princess don’t seem enough to reclaim and keep her throne, or even to protect herself. And she knows better than to hope to be saved by anyone.

Despite the obvious parallels, I don’t know that Liana’s story fits neatly into either Hero or Heroine’s Journey. Unlike Joseph Campbell, I don’t personally believe that all stories can be parsed down so simply. Monomyths are useful for understanding ideas that repeat in our culture, but I don’t think they are exhaustive of the types of stories we tell. As with any analysis, the lens will only take you so far.

But I’m grateful to both Murdock and Campbell for giving me tools to look critically at my own work, and I hope that other authors and readers can use them as well. 

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About the author:

Amanda J. McGee is fantasy author living in Southwest Virginia with the love of her life and two cats. She likes baking, gardening, and flights of fancy. You can find out more about her books and her blog at

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