Peadar Ó Guilín Answers Questions Five

Peadar Ó Guilín is a new author hailing from Ireland. His debut book, The Inferior, has garnered critical acclaim as both a YA and science fiction novel and it kicks of the Bone World trilogy (my review). Currently available in the UK, it will be released in the US in June 2008, and will be translated to several other languages in the future. Peadar has traveled the world, learned other languages, currently lives in Dublin, and can be found immersed in discussions on an almost daily basis over at westeros.

I’m very happy that Peadar has taken the time to answer Questions Five.


If I were going on holiday to Dublin and I can only visit one pub, which pub do you recommend and why?

POG: Most of them are ridiculously bad: giant sports games on every wall and pop music loud enough to murder the conversation we used to be famous for. Our ancestors even had a god of eloquence, once upon a time, did you know that? I miss him.

So, for the real experience, you need to find what we call an “old man's” pub. If you walk through the door and half the stools aren't occupied by lads with pitted red noses and beer mustaches, then you should take your custom elsewhere.

Do you consider yourself a carnivore, herbivore, or omnivore and how does this influence your writing?

POG: Flesh, and whether or not we have a right to eat it, is something I take very seriously. Many of the stories I write are little more than laboratories where I try to work this out. The Inferior fits the bill nicely. Sure, it's all great fun, with characters running around hunting anything that can hunt them. But underneath that is a series of situations designed to explore every possible degree of carnivorousness. Is it right to eat meat? What if the creature is as intelligent as you are? What if the survival of the human race depended on you doing so? And so on. I want the readers, be they vegetarians or omnivores, to choose sides and make the hard, honest decisions for themselves.

My personal belief is that future generations will regard meat-eaters like myself as barbarians, in the same way that we now (rightfully) scorn the once respectable slavers and slave-owners in our past. But scorn is so easy from a distance and sometimes it's a writer’s job to strip that away.

How hard was it to write The Inferior without ever saying: “___ tastes like chicken”?

POG: I've been trained from an early age to overcome such challenges. Your language has no word for it, but let's just say I'm a ninja at not saying that things taste like chicken. I'm so good, I don't even think it.

Discuss one reason why The Inferior may inspire a reader to strip naked and run screaming into the forest?

Up to now, your questions have been insightful and even a little daring. But this one is pure nonsense, and worse, dangerous. Naked readers should stalk very very quietly into the forest. They should save their screaming for when something catches them.

Why should The Inferior be the next book that everyone reads?

POG: Why should 'everyone' be allowed to read such a red hot piece of excitement? Most of them couldn't handle it, and those that could, probably don't deserve it. Let them stay at home, I say, and weep, weep for the gray tedium of lives that even a glimpse of The Inferior would fill with wonder.

'Everyone' should ignore the reviews and the fact that editors from France to Japan have paid real money for the right to translate it. So what if it has great characters and world building? No, it would be best for society as a whole if 'everyone' just picked up the latest cookie-cutter SF/Fantasy/Horror and didn't become cannibals after all.

Review: The Inferior by Peadar Ó Guilín

Marketed in places as YA and others as science fiction, Peadar Ó Guilín’s debut novel, The Inferior, defies easy categorization. By the end of the novel we can firmly place it in the realm of science fiction, but elements early on lend an equally ‘fantastic’ feel. Plot-wise and thematically, The Inferior reads like a YA that crosses over well into an adult audience – though I’d suggest is should be a mature YA audience with things like cannibalism and rape occurring.

Stopmouth exists in the shadow of his older brother – a brilliant hunter and strategist with ambitions of one day becoming chief. Handicapped by a stutter and the resulting lack of confidence, Stopmouth simply strives to stay alive and useful to his tribe in the bitter world they live in – a post-apocalyptic shell of a world with only poisonous plants forces sentient species to hunt each other’s flesh for food. Times grow harder when two rival species inexplicably learn how to communicate with each other, coordinating their efforts to gain flesh. At the same time one of the mysterious ‘orbs’ from the roof (sky) crashes, and with it a human like none of the tribe has ever seen.

This is a coming-of-age story – our young hero overcomes personal limitations and excels. In this respect the story does little that surprises, though the character growth of Stopmouth satisfies with in the context of the story.

Thematic elements challenge the idea of inferiority (as the title itself implies) throughout the book. Stopmouth continually faces those that feel he is inferior, while harboring his thoughts of superiority over others. Nearly every interaction between humans (and the other sentient species) comes back to this concept. This YA thematic approach is neither too simplistic nor obvious to alienate the more mature reader.

Ó Guilín excels with the presentation of his world – a Darwinian nightmare where a variety of sentient species battle for survival and dinner. The horrors of this harsh world truly come alive his utilization of third-person perspective from the point of view of Stopmouth. Ó Guilín must have had a load of fun dreaming up different species, their characteristics and various ways to eat each other.

The biggest failing of The Inferior is the lack of a coherent direction. There is no single antagonist spanning the novel and only a vague goal that abruptly changes focus. This might have been an attempt at some amount of ‘realism’ or a product of this being the introductory book of a trilogy, but at times the plot seems to just ramble on.

The Inferior kicks off The Bone World trilogy – annoyingly, there is no mention anywhere on the book itself that I could find that indicates this book is the first of a trilogy. That being said, I think that this could be read as a satisfying stand-alone if you can accept open-ended endings. A lot of questions remain, but in terms of character development, the end is well placed (of course I do look forward to seeing what happens later).

The Inferior is a solid debut that should appeal to both a mature YA and an adult audience. I look forward to seeing where Ó Guilín takes us with The Deserter later this year. 7/10

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