Chapter Sixteen: (Spoilers Hidden)

Annotation Elantris Chapter 15 Chapter Fifteen: (No Spoilers. Sorry!) When I teach writing, one of my major educational philosophies is that an author must understand his or her strengths. If you do something well, play to that strength. Write books that show off what you can do. This isn’t a reason to ignore, or to…

Chapter Fourteen (Spoilers Hidden)

Chapter Thirteen (Spoilers Hidden)

Chapter Twelve (Spoilers Hidden)

Chapter Eleven (Spoilers Hidden)

Annotation Elantris Chapter 10 Chapter Ten (No Spoilers. Sorry!) Are the Elantrians zombies? I’ve been asked this question before. The answer is a little bit yes, a little bit no. I very intentionally don’t make any references in the story to them being zombie-like, and I certainly don’t call them ‘undead.’ Both words bring a…

Annotation Elantris Chapter 9 Chapter Nine: This third ‘chapter triad’ is the first one where I do a real intersection of the three viewpoints. Raoden sees Hrathen on the wall, Sarene and Hrathen spar, then Hrathen thinks about his run-in with Sarene on his way to the meeting with the noblemen. I’m not sure if…

The economy of Arelon is one of the interesting features of this book. Even still, I’m not certain if I made things a little too odd here. The idea of nobility being tied directly to money is described so often by the characters that I worry that readers will think the system too foolish to have arisen. However, I think that by establishing the king as a former merchant—and by pointing out how the system was created quickly, to fill the void after the fall of Elantris—I manage to keep the economic and social situation in Arelon within the realm of possibility.