The Last Guardian

Foreward

There was no doubt in my mind about what happened to Jon Shannow when he rode into the mountains, wounded and alone. He was dying. And Jerusalem beckoned.

Yet once the novel was published reader reaction was immediate. How long to the next Shannow story? In those days reader's letters did not arrive in bulging post bags and I was able to answer all of them. The answer was simple: Thank you for your letter, and I am glad you enjoyed Jon Shannow's tale, but he is dead. There will be no more adventures.

I sent just such a response to a fan in Liverpool. He knew better and wrote back immediately. 'No he's not! No way!'

It was a real shock — as if he knew something I didn't. I showed the letter to one of my test readers. Her amused response was 'Hey, maybe he's right. You don't know everything, Dave.

You're only the author.'

From that moment I started wondering about Shannow. Could there have been some miracle on the mountain?

At around the same time I received a number of reviews for Wolf In Shadow. Some were very good, some were indifferent, but one was downright vile. One of the lines in it struck me particularly. I dread to think of people who look up to men like Jon Shannow. The writer was named Broome.

Twenty years of journalism had taught me not to over-react to criticism. A writer's work is not his child. It is just work. A work of love and passion, but a work nonetheless. Even so I wanted to react in some way. All the characters in my novels are based on real people, and I thought it would be a neat response to use a character named Broome, a man passionately opposed to violence who would loathe the hero, but be drawn into his world. It was in my mind that he would be a cannon fodder character, of little conscquence, who would die early. But, as with so much in the magical world of creative writing, events did not — as you will see — turn out anything like I had planned.

It took only one more little nudge to push me into a second Shannow novel. I was driving home one night, listening to the radio, when the haunting lyric of a new song struck home like an arrow.

The singer was a brilliant new American artiste named Tracy Chapman, and the song spoke of racism and riots, and the appalling violence that has sadly become commonplace in the impoverished inner cities of America. One line had immense power for me…

Across the lines who would dare to go…

I knew who would dare.

I got home around 2 am and immediately switched on the word processor. I had no idea how to get round the obvious death of my hero in the first book, and did not wish to write a prequel. In the end I used the simplest device there is. I began with the words: But he did not die.

David A. Gemmell

Hastings, 1995