The Fifth Ward: First Watch
by dlucas114
Today, my new novel The Fifth Ward: First Watch hits bookstore shelves. This is my first work for a major international publisher, and the experience of getting it ready for launch has been a dream come true. While the basic pitch is easy enough—it’s Lethal Weapon meets Lord of the Rings; The Wire in Middle Earth—I’d like to offer some insight into just what moved me to tell this story and what some of my hopes and intentions were.
Basically, First Watch was born of a single, simple idea: in a world full of magic and crazy creatures, who keeps the peace on the streets? It all began as an idle thought about day to day life in Minas Tirith, as portrayed in the film version of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King—this huge, beautiful city that spiraled up a mountainside, it’s highest point thousands of feet above its base. Something about that image—a tiered city with a single winding road heading toward the top—just tickled my imagination. Was there an economic pecking order in Minas Tirith? Did the poor folks all live on the lower tiers while the knights and priests got houses nearer the palace of Denethor, up top? Who had to carry all the food stores and furniture up to Denethor’s pad on the peak? Did shit truly (as the old proverb insists) roll downhill? And what about the city’s nightwatchmen or police force? Did those guys really have to walk uphill every damn day on their beats?
As often happens with story ideas, the idle questions started to create pictures . I saw a big, sprawling city with narrow, winding streets, choked with smoke and fog, the stink of a pre-industrial world and the sounds of a hundred different spoken languages. I imagined a place that drew all sorts, from all quarters (providing there wasn’t some earth-shattering war underway over an eldritch gizmo of power). Elves might come to town in search of raw materials for their lovely arts. Dwarves might come to trade their gems and their metalworks. Orcs might pass through in search of a good brawl or to barter pelts and such that they collected in the wild. And, of course, there was mankind: more numerous than the other races, but still feeling squeezed between them. How did they all get along when sides weren’t chosen? When a Dark Lord wasn’t threatening all of creation? Were all those races just what the popular imagination made of them—beautiful elves, industrious dwarves, bloodthirsty orcs–or could they all be more than that, if only someone took the time to find out? And what kind of men—or elves, or dwarves, or even orcs—might walk those streets every night trying to maintain the peace, and keep everyone from killing each other?
And there it was. How much fun might it be to take a worm’s eye view of a fantasy world? What constituted a crime in a world where everyone wears a sword or carries an ax and skulls get cleaved on an everyday basis? How were each of the races corrupt? Misunderstood? Human, even? And, in world where heroes often came from epic poems, or from histories of great wars or quests for mystical MacGuffins, what might two everyday heroes look like? Two guys, just trying to pay the rent, put food on the table, and keep a couple hundred-thousand closely-packed souls from killing one another?
The story literally built itself, in my head, over the course of a single afternoon. The drifter, Rem, waking up in a dungeon and not sure how he got there. The dwarf, Torval: belligerent, bellicose—but also in need of a real friend. The wards and their rivalries. The watch, constantly underfunded and undermanned. The city lights on a foggy night. The traffic in illicit drugs and black market magic. It all fell into place, just because I was daydreaming about the socio-economic strata of a city from a book (and movie) that didn’t even exist.
This is the magic of storytelling: asking what if? Then, asking what next?
First Watch is available now from Orbit books. If you dare a visit to Yenara, be sure and let me know how you found it, and if you’d ever go back again. I myself might be spending a lot of time there in years to come.
Dale Lucas 
Well, the elves were elves, dwarves were dwarves and mists rolled up to clog grimy alleys. As expected.
Brilliant.
What I liked about this was that it took the urban fantasy out of the grim dark back into the tavern
and had some guys walk in with swords. I’m not a fan of the current vampire-werewolf-fey doomed lovers tropes.
The start of watch briefing reminded me of “Hill St Blues” which is perhaps why the book as a whole took me back to playing D&D in a fantasy city setting. It’s retro but not totally so – the nature of the crime involved is quite contemporary but works well, very well.
The only question is – when’s the next one then?
Thanks so much! Glad you enjoyed it!
Second one should be out next year, unless the rewrites are hellish.
So its next year already, and I come looking for the sequel. Any news? I like the first book.
Book 2 is out! THE FIFTH WARD: FRIENDLY FIRE was released on August 7. Book 3, GOOD COMPANY will arrive in 2019.
Excellent – a year is about right from the various series I’ve read. It’s not really any of my business but I’d ask two things
Firstly, no black powder? It works in the “powder mage” series because that’s a semi modern world (1815 plus magic) but it intrudes science into escapism and once the gun is out of the box, you can’t get it back in
Secondly please don’t bring in novelty watchmen of the month – a werewolf here, vampire there. It worked for Terry Pratchett but it did move away from the gaggle of humans facing down dark deeds. If one of the watch can take bat mode and overfly the crime scene or the elf just mind reads till they get the culprits, it will lose a lot
I should add that the sense of longing for an elf that you get from the humans is very effective; it’s something that is in the background of Tolkien but is never looked at. There’s a very real sense of how attractive that is but how it coujd also go horribly wrong.
Cheers
Maff
Just my 1gp as it were!
Awesome question re: black powder! The honest truth is this: in my head, it exists in this world and gets used in certain, rare instances (think of the Hundred Years War and thereafter, when black powder and cannons were just starting to make their presence known on the battlefield). My thought was that its a proprietary secret of the dwarves and certain alchemists, but they seldom sell that secret and only to the highest of bidders, because they’re trying to keep it rare and under wraps.
However, there was really never an appropriate place to address this issue in the story story I told, so it was just never touched upon. Maybe in the future, or maybe not at all. We’ll just have to wait and see.
As for the novelty watchmen, I’ll try to be sensible on that front. My preference is to portray a city watch that is perpetually, habitually, out-numbered and out-matched but that does its duty anyway. I don’t foresee too many watchwardens with wild talents filling out their ranks and giving them an advantage any time soon.
As you noted with the human-elf longing, one of my primary concerns is addressing the assumptions that the characters (and the readers) have about these familiar fantasy races, and asking some questions about them and showing sides of them that a lot of the other fantasy I’ve read never seems to. I specifically decided to go with those stock races–with all of their stereotypes and assumptions–for precisely that reason: I knew that casual fantasy readers would be easily oriented, and I knew that hardcore fantasy readers would enter with assumptions that I could then twist and challenge and subvert. Hopefully, I’ve done that and not bored anyone.
Thanks again for such great comments and questions!
That is itself an awesome answer on black powder. It’s in Mainstream fantasy already as Sarumans blasting powder in LOTR; How else does it fit in? I’m sure I read a theory that when medieval chroniclers wrote of a “philosopher torn apart by conjured demons” they were really describing an alchemist discovering some form of HE the hard way. So that’s one way in; I think the problem for me is that it’s hard science in a world of magic. The trick is to introduce it by stealth and not to let it achieve dominance or an arms race.
In one sense, that sense of being outgunned and fantasy races met – for me – with the Drow. We hadn’t encountered them until they appeared right at the end of the Against The Giants and when we did, it was a massive shock – the equivalent of firearms arriving in a bow and arrow hunting culture. I think we suffered “drow shock” in the sense of “tank shock”; just as every German tank in Normandy was a tiger, every monster was a drow until proven otherwise. I don’t recall how we beat them but it was nasty.
That’s another avenue your approach has kept open – we’ve seen our dwarf go berserk but so far the orcs have been strong but quite civil; you can still unleash an Orc warband and get the impact of that Huron war cry in the woods near the cabin. I like the Uruk Hai scenes in the LOTR books (Eomer takes on Ugluk single handed cf Conan and Thrak the ape man which suggests a hint of respect) and the Orcs we’ve seen so far gives you that kind of option of a not so crude society that can go feral very easily.
I too often wondered about ordinary life in Minas Tirith – have you encountered the post LOTR fragment “the return of the shadow” (or similar)? That upended it for me I can tell you!
Glad you don’t mind the comments – I’m aware that this thread may be edging towards spoiler territory for the casual surfer – though it may pique interest. It’s very interesting as a gamer and reader to talk to someone in the writing business
I’ve recently read your Fifth Ward series and totally loved it! I’m really hoping for more…any chance for that?
Thank you so much! Glad to hear you enjoyed it! Alas, while I’d like to write more, Orbit didn’t opt to continue the series. There might be hope in the future, but as of right now—no plans. I’ve recently done some short stories and a novel for Black Library, the Warhammer gaming folks, and I’ve got another novel coming from them next year. Beyond that, I just delivered a new book to my agent which we’ll be shopping around soon. Hopefully, that’ll find a home as well.
Thanks again for the kind words!