Zen Cho: Complete Sorcerer to the Crown series + Q&A
Author photo by Darren Johnson
Magic and mayhem clash with the British elite in this whimsical and sparkling series.
In the Sorcerer to the Crown series, a young woman with no memories of her past finds herself embroiled in dangerous politics in England and the land of the fae. Scroll down for more info about the books in the series, and to find questions and answers from author interviews with Cho.
Zen Cho was a finalist for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer and her short story collection Spirits Abroad was a joint winner of the William L. Crawford Fantasy Award. Her debut novel Sorcerer to the Crown won a British Fantasy Award for Best Newcomer and was a Locus Awards finalist for Best First Novel. Her work has won the LA Times Book Prize (Ray Bradbury Prize), as well as the Hugo, Crawford and British Fantasy Awards, and been shortlisted for the Locus and Astounding Awards. Born and raised in Malaysia, she now lives in the United Kingdom.
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Scroll down for info on the books in the Sorcerer to the Crown series, plus questions and answers from interviews with Zen Cho.
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Sorcerer to the Crown series
Sorcerer to the Crown (Sorcerer to the Crown #1)
One of NPR’s 50 Favorite Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books of the Past Decade
The Royal Society of Unnatural Philosophers maintains the magic within His Majesty’s lands. But lately, the once proper institute has fallen into disgrace, naming an altogether unsuitable gentleman as their Sorcerer Royal and allowing England’s stores of magic to bleed dry. At least they haven’t stooped so low as to allow women to practice what is obviously a man’s profession…
At his wit’s end, Zacharias Wythe, Sorcerer Royal of the Unnatural Philosophers, ventures to the border of Fairyland to discover why England’s magical stocks are drying up, an adventure that brings him in contact with Prunella Gentlewoman, a woman with immense power and an unfathomable gift, and sets him on a path which will alter the nature of sorcery in all of Britain—and the world at large…
“An enchanting cross between Georgette Heyer and Susanna Clarke, full of delights and surprises. Zen Cho unpins the edges of the canvas and throws them wide.”—Naomi Novik, New York Times bestselling author of the Temeraire novels
“Sorcerer to the Crown felt like Pride and Prejudice but with magic and race, which makes Zen Cho Austen crossed with Susanna Clarke and Ignatius Sancho…I am utterly in love.”—Tor.com
The True Queen (Sorcerer to the Crown #2)
In the follow-up to the “delightful” Regency fantasy novel (NPR.org) Sorcerer to the Crown, a young woman with no memories of her past finds herself embroiled in dangerous politics in England and the land of the fae.
When sisters Muna and Sakti wake up on the peaceful beach of the island of Janda Baik, they can’t remember anything, except that they are bound as only sisters can be. They have been cursed by an unknown enchanter, and slowly Sakti starts to fade away. The only hope of saving her is to go to distant Britain, where the Sorceress Royal has established an academy to train women in magic.
If Muna is to save her sister, she must learn to navigate high society, and trick the English magicians into believing she is a magical prodigy. As she’s drawn into their intrigues, she must uncover the secrets of her past, and journey into a world with more magic than she had ever dreamed.
“A delightful follow-up to Sorcerer to the Crown! Cho applies her characteristic wit and charm to a tale of cursed sisters—a story I found as enchanting as her Faerie Court.”—S.A. Chakraborty, author of City of Brass
“Reading the clever deployment of weaponized manners never gets old; in Cho's charming prose, The True Queen weaves a very pleasant spell indeed.”—NPR
Zen Cho Q&A
Q: What initially inspired you to write Sorcerer to the Crown? And to make a freed slave the hero? Did you initially plan to give it a Malaysian hero?
“A novel’s too big to have just one source, so lots of things inspired it. I grew up reading British period literature from the 19th and early 20th centuries (it was cheap and plentiful—you learn to love what you get). In particular, the Regency romances of Georgette Heyer were a major inspiration for Sorcerer, as were the comic stories of P. G. Wodehouse. I thought it’d be interesting to write that sort of Merchant Ivory film/silver fork novel with a black man at its center.
“There were a lot of black people in the UK around that time, especially though not exclusively in London. And we know quite a lot about their lives—they wrote letters, poetry, essays—so I was interested in exploring what one such life might have been like. Plus magic, because why not!
“Because that was the genesis of the story there was never a point at which the hero of this particular book might have been Malaysian.”—Interview with Sorcerer to the Crown author Zen Cho (SFF World)
Q: Would you rather be known as a Malaysian author who writes fantasy fiction or a fantasy fiction author who is Malaysian?
“I would rather be known as Zen Cho. I would like people to see my name on the spine of a book and think, "Oh my gosh, a new book by HER!" and buy it straight away and feel like their afternoon or holiday has been sorted. And I'd like people to return to my books when they feel the need for something to console or hearten or strengthen or cheer them up. That's how I feel about my favourite authors.”—Zen Cho Interview (Banana Writers)
Q: Tell us something about Sorcerer to the Crown that is not found in the book description.
“The blurb has a lot about English magic, but the book’s really interested not in England, but Britain—the United Kingdom—and its connections with the wider world. There are a couple of appearances of magicians from the sorts of countries that don’t usually appear in Regency novels!”—Interview with Zen Cho, author of Sorcerer to the Crown (The Qwillery)
Q: The True Queen begins with two people washed up on a beach. It made me think of Twelfth Night and The Tempest, but I’m guessing that you weren’t thinking of Shakespeare. Are there moments when you write that you’re thinking about scenes in other works, or from real life?
"You know I wasn’t thinking of Shakespeare! You’re not the first person to notice Shakespearean parallels, though. My editor at Pan Macmillan, Bella Pagan, also mentioned them.
“I was going indignantly to deny that I ever thought of scenes in other works when writing because of not being a plagiarist, but then I realized I do frequently riff on common tropes. And so does every genre writer—the body discovered in the library, the epic final battle with the Dark Lord’s hordes, the barbed exchange with the romantic interest in a ballroom.
“I try to avoid specific scenes from specific books, but they rise up in my writing anyway. I told you about how it was only months after completing The True Queen that I realized the climax has several similarities with that of The Story of the Amulet by E. Nesbit.
“I also lift more consciously from real life, mostly because my parents regularly come up with better lines than I could invent.”—In Which Author Zen Cho Is Interviewed by Her Husband About The True Queen (B&N Reads)
Q: What inspired you to write the novel and series? And where do you draw your inspiration from in general?
“I’ve always loved the Regency romance genre and I thought it’d be fun to do a fantastical twist on it. Sorcerer to the Crown has multiple different sources, but the seed of the book came from all the 19th and early 20th century British books I read when I was growing up in Malaysia, which would refer to characters as being “dark”.
“In my world when people were called ‘dark’ that meant they were dark-skinned, but I knew everyone important in these books was white, and of course the books just meant they were ‘dark-haired.’ I thought it’d be interesting to write about somebody who lived in the world of these books who was ‘dark’—dark-skinned.
“I draw a lot of inspiration from the books I read, especially my childhood reading.”—Interview with ZEN CHO (Civilian Reader)