Hello again dear reader or listener, today I have some AMAZING news on behalf of Solaris/Rebellion Publishing – news that necessitated several days of me cooling off before I could sit and write this all down, in fact, because I love this series and author SO much. Also, thanks to the incredible Jess Gofton, who offered us this opportunity, I got to chat a little bit with Taran herself about what she’s got in store for us!
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Solaris is delighted to announce the acquisition of The Deathless Council by Taran Hunt, the third and final book in The Kystrom Chronicles.
Linguist and thief Sean Wren must venture deep into enemy territory to unravel the mysteries of the immortal Ministers, still at war with the remnants of humanity in a distant star system, and find a way to save a friend who has become family.
The Deathless Council will be released in May of 2027.
World All Languages Rights were acquired by Amy Borsuk from Hannah Bowman at Liza Dawson Associates.
Author Taran Hunt on the acquisition:
“More Ministers, more languages, and more questionable life choices—I’m so excited to return to the world of Sean Wren and his family with the talented team at Solaris in The Deathless Council!”
Acquiring Editor Amy Borsuk:
“I’m absolutely delighted to be finishing out The Kystrom Chronicles with Taran! It’s been an absolute blast and The Deathless Council is going to go for the heartstrings.”
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Hi Taran! Congratulations are in order first, and thank you so much for doing this today!
Hi Eleni! Thank you for having me – I’m so excited to talk to you again, and to announce the existence of The Deathless Council!
Last time we spoke you’d joined Frasier Armitage and I for a lovely interview (you can watch that here, dear reader) to accompany the release of book two. We invented a very blue – and perhaps mildly radioactive – cocktail and got to pick your brain a lot. It seems only right that we do some more nosing around!
So, to start, how does it feel being finally able to finish the story of Sean, Indigo, and Tamara? Had you always envisioned this as a trilogy?
Three is such a powerful number! In this case, three books was mostly an accident—I love writing these characters, there was another story to be told, and Solaris allowed me to tell it. Three-character dynamics are my favorite to write, so it worked out very well for the Kystrom books—in a way, the first book tells us about Sean’s world, the second about Tamara’s, and the third about Indigo’s.
Looking back, what would you say to the Taran Hunt who first took The Immortality Thief through the query trenches?
Pretty much the same thing I should say to her now: You have no control over anything. RELAX.
Think that would be great advice for most of us really.
The Immortality Thief leaned into haunted “house” tropes and/or The Mummy (1999) in space, and The Unkillable Princess was effectively more of a Spy heist. So, what sort of vibes will we be getting with The Deathless Council?
When I first started writing The Deathless Council, I told myself that this would be a murder mystery. Now that I’ve been through a few drafts, that’s not as strong of a vibe as I originally planned. There’s absolutely some murder mystery in there, but because this is the third book, it felt right to bring in the themes and tropes of the first two books as well. The noir/spy/conspiracy thriller elements from The Unkillable Princess are present. The body horror and the haunted house horror of The Immortality Thief are present, too. And the vibe that ties the two genres together is a sense of paranoia and dread.
(It’s not all dread, though. There are hijinks. There are always hijinks.)
We talked before how the hijinks and sincerity behind the humor are what make everything else even more impactful after all.
If you could sum up this book in three words, what would they be?
Devotion, Mayhem, Wormwood.
Insert “Hehe, I am in danger” meme.
Is there anything you’ve been meaning to explore for a while in your writing that you’re finally getting to delve into with this book?
I’m very excited to delve into the world and culture of the Ministers in The Deathless Council! The Immortality Thief was set entirely aboard an ancient spaceship, and The Unkillable Princess bounced between planets in the Republic. We haven’t really gotten to explore Maria Nova and the culture there (nor has Sean). Our only source on the Ministers has been Sean’s friend, the Indigo Minister, who is—let’s say—kind of closed off. Also, he’s going through some things.
Indeed, when we left Indigo he was not having a great time, was he? We have to protect him, Taran!
Finally, what are you hoping readers will take away from this final instalment? Besides emotional damage, ‘cause we know you well by now and you’re not leaving us unscathed on that front, I just know it.
My main takeaway from the series, and something that I hope will resonate with readers as well, is how much Sean has grown. When we met him in The Immortality Thief, he was a damaged person—emotionally trapped in the awful moment he had lost everything, unable to grow up or move on. I’ve tried to show him both healing and maturing in every book, and I really like where I’ve left him at the end of The Deathless Council.
Which is not to say he’s a mature person. He’s mature-er. You know that experiment with electric shocks? Not the Milgram experiment, where participants shocked other people; I mean the one where people were left alone in a room for an hour with a big red button that would give them a mild shock if they pushed it. Sean would push that button. Sean would push that button a lot. Sean would push that button so much that the scientists would have to discard the data from his participation because he would be such an outlier, that is how much Sean would push that button.
But hey. Growing up is a lifelong process.
We’ve definitely seen him grow up so much in the first two books but he is still our lovable disaster of a human at heart, and I’m so excited to get my hands on book three and potentially damage my feels beyond repair because of his antics.
Again, a huge thank you for this mini Q&A!
Thank you so much for having me on FanFiAddict – it’s been a wonderful journey writing these books, and I hope that everyone enjoys The Deathless Council!
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If you haven’t yet read any of the Kystrom Chronicles dear reader or listener, first, you need them in your life, get to reading and thank me later and, second, here you can also find my reviews for both The Immortality Thief and The Unkillable Princess to further nudge you.
Taran Hunt is the author of The Kystrom Chronicles. She studied physics in college and loves languages. If she could have a swordfight aboard a spaceship, she would. She works in theatre in New York, where she lives with her partner and their increasingly round cat.
You can find her on her various social media and on her website, all listed here.
Until next time,
Eleni A.E.
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