FFBC: Welcome to the club, Chantress Fury (Chantress Trilogy #3) by Amy Butler Greenfield

Chantress Fury (Chantress Trilogy #3)
by Amy Butler Greenfield
288 pages
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry Books
Release Date: May 19th, 2015
Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy

Synopsis:

The sea is coming. We are coming. And we will drown you all.

With a song, Lucy can control the wind and the water; she can bring castles and kingdoms to their feet. Since Lucy mastered her powers, King Henry has kept her close as he’s rebuilt England. She’s his best ally—and his workhorse. And now he’s called her to investigate attempted murder: His men claim they were almost killed on the Thames…by a mermaid. All Lucy can glean from the creature they’ve captured is a warning: The sea is coming. We are coming. And we will drown you all. 

And then the floods begin. Swaths of London are submerged as the people scramble to defend themselves against the water—and the monsters—that are flooding their streets. As mistrust of Lucy's magic grows, the king relies on Nat, Lucy's great love, to guide them through the storm. But Nat is cold and distant to Lucy. He swore his love only a year before, and now he calls her “stranger.”

Lucy is determined to defeat this powerful new magic alone if she must. But then she hears an eerie song within the water…can it mean that she’s not the last Chantress after all? 

Sweepingly romantic and crackling with magic, Chantress Fury triumphantly concludes the powerful Chantress trilogy.

Hello Amy! We are super excited to have you once again in our FFBC tours.

Thanks so much for having me! It’s great to be back.

At the start of Chantress Fury, Lucy is at the height of her powers, the most revered—and feared—woman in the kingdom. Water and winds do her bidding; she is the king-maker, the great power in her country. But the magic that gives her this power has also set her apart from everyone she loves. It’s been over a year since she has even seen her beloved Nat, and when a summons from the king finally brings her face-to-face with him again, Lucy hopes her loneliness will finally end. Instead, she is confronted with a terrifying onslaught of sea magic. Faced the monsters of the deep, Lucy must find a way to save the kingdom, but she’s in for the struggle of her life.

My stories can come from almost anywhere, but I’m especially inspired by myths and fairy tales, or by odd stories from real history – the kookier, the better. A big inspiration for the Chantress Trilogy was a 300-year old journal, The Transactions of the Royal Society, first printed in London in the 1660s. In it, great scientists of the day shared their latest findings, reporting on everything from observations of the moon to descriptions of local witchcraft. When you read it, you see that they didn’t have the clear dividing line between science and magic that we have today. To them, magic was absolutely real (though its exact workings were hotly debated). With Chantress I set out to imagine a world like the one they believed in – where science and magic were both real and co-existing. But instead of giving magic to the powerful scientists of the 1660s, I gave it to someone who otherwise would have been very powerless in that society: an ordinary teenaged girl. 

Lucy is a Chantress, a spell-singer, able to hear the music that is everywhere, deep inside everything that exists. She uses that music to create songs of her own that allow her to work magic. She lives in an alternate seventeenth-century England, similar on the surface to the real one, but deeply affected by the subtle workings of magic. In her world, for instance, most of the English nobility were killed off in an explosion called the Great Devastation (think Guy Fawkes, but with a magical twist); young King Henry IX sits on the throne; and Chantress-hunters are waiting to be let off the leash.

Spell-singing Chantress battles sea monsters & discovers what’s monstrous about her own magic.

When I started Chantress Fury, I was dying to know, too! The ending to Chantress Alchemy took me by surprise, but since it was true to character, I went with it – which meant I had to completely re-think the next book. By the time Chantress Fury begins, Lucy and Nat are both very powerful figures in their own right. In some ways that just makes things harder for them – but it made it very exciting for me as a writer, because I could put them right at the center of the kingdom’s life-and-death struggle to survive, and then push them to their limits. 

So hard to do this! I’m still too close to the book to see it clearly, for one thing -- and for another, almost everything I first thought of was a spoiler. But here’s a quote that doesn’t give away too much. It’s something Lucy says to Nat early on in the book: “I was more alone than I’ve ever been. And maybe you’re right; maybe that’s changed me. But in the name of all that’s holy, Nat, how could you walk away from me for a year and a half, and then come back and expect me to be the same?”

I loved writing the scene where Lucy and Nat first lay eyes on each other again – but a mermaid gets in the way.

The very first Chantress cover was stunning, but as a set I love the new covers the best. It’s so hard for me to pick a favorite – I love the opulence of the first one, the mystery of the second, and the wildness and loneliness of the last one.

I guess I’d recommend chocolate and a cup of tea, because I think just about everything goes better with those! But some of the best emails I get are from readers who picked up Chantress when they weren’t in the “perfect mood” for it – they were in the hospital, or ill, or grieving for someone they love. When they write that the book was a wonderful escape for them, and that it took them away from their troubles for a while, I feel very grateful to have given them the kind of refuge that books have always given me. 

Blogging is a wonderful way to find kindred spirits, and bloggers can be incredibly supportive of each other. When I was writing the first draft of Chantress, the LiveJournal community really helped me have faith in the work and in myself. So for me that’s the best part! Personally, the biggest downside is that it takes a huge amount of time, and it’s hard to respond to everyone or to do justice to everything you read, though I wish I could.

A couple of super-secret projects! They’re a mix of fantasy and history, and one of them keeps making me laugh out loud.

Thank you so much for everything, Amy!

Thank you! It’s truly a pleasure.

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Amy Butler Greenfield was a grad student in history when she gave into temptation and became a writer. Since then, she has become an award-winning author. 

Amy grew up in the Adirondack Mountains and later studied history at Williams College, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Oxford. She now lives with her family in England, where she writes, bakes double-dark-chocolate cake, and plots mischief.

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