My love of mythology comes out loud and clear in most of my books. Wish Givers is no exception. Fantasy religions reveal a great deal about the cultures within, so they’re terrific for world building and characterization. In university, I took multiple mythology courses, including Theory of Mythology. In my class on Norse and Celtic myth, I got caught up in Loki, who is often characterized as a trickster god. Sometimes he’s depicted as evil. One collection of Loki myths is put together in a time order to suggest Loki was good and turned bad. Readers do love a logical plot line. I characterize Loki as a change-maker. Loki moves the plot forward. If you don’t judge him entirely on Ragnarök, or the series of events leading to the end times, he is quite a complex character. Myth and religion, of course, are wrapped up in notions of good and evil and the values that define each. A deity who doesn’t clearly fall under a category of good or bad can be confusing for some people, but I find it fascinating. For instance, I was reading some Japanese manga, which included gods of disaster and disease. I was quite taken by the idea of calamity gods. What if, by one’s very nature, catastrophes occurred wherever they went? While the event itself is a disaster for people, the bringer of the event is simply a force of nature. I picked up Eastern religion and mythology texts to read about Japanese and Korean gods connected with all manner of subjects. There were gods of the kitchen, the doorway, disease, famine. Somewhere in all of this, I created both a god and a character who was the priest of that god for my book Wish Givers.

         The plot of Wish Givers revolves around a power struggle. Our protagonist is arguably both the most powerful and weakest character. Reva is one of the Mauli, a clan of people who can tattoo wishes into reality. However, limitations on this power include the inability to grant their own wishes. In the first chapter of Wish Givers, we also learn that the ruler of the islands, the Ali’i, has maneuvered the Mauli in such a way that only the Ali’i and his descendants may have wishes granted. (In multiple Polynesian languages, “ali’i” means “chief.”) Therefore, Reva is determined to free her people and destroy her greatest enemy by granting his every wish.

         Meanwhile, the Ali’i amuses himself with power games, including the sway of the various priests over the capital city and the islands. A new, foreign god, known as the White God, has risen in power, with his priests pushing against the Ali’i’s hold on the city. Amidst the numerous gods, one in particular seems insignificant. Mata, the one-eyed god, thrives on darkness. (In multiple Polynesian languages, the word “mata” means “eye.”) Mata notices the hidden, the secret, the people and places that the bright world turns away from. In chapter one, Reva, our hero, ducks into a small temple to hide from vengeful priests of the White God. She meets the only priest of Mata in the city, and Mata’s eye turns towards her.

         A pair of the gods in Wish Givers thrives on stories. Worshippers must sing their life stories to these gods. A character asks if the gods are helping them, or if the people are simply helping each other. Sometimes all we need is to know someone’s personal story to feel the urge to support them. Within a fantasy world, as readers, we ask ourselves if these gods are real in this fictional world, or if the religion is real, and the gods simply figments of characters’ social beliefs. I love that kind of questioning and how it echoes our real-world questions regarding religion and deciding what we believe in. Within Wish Givers, the tattoo magic exists without question, but the power, including the level of power, that the gods and their priests hold is part of the building mystery. Mata may be a god of hidden things, but is he also a god of calamity? Is Mata bad, good, or neutral? His priest, Kahu, encounters and even expects disasters. How could he worship such a god? Is Kahu somehow creating these problems himself? Or maybe Kahu is a man who values shining a light on darkness, no matter what harsh truths may be revealed.

         The story builds as both an adventure and a mystery. Reva and the Ali’i are at the forefront of the power struggle, but all around them the priests and gods make their moves in an orchestral crescendo. The White God believes you’re perfect just the way you are—it is wrong to change a single thing. Mata considers the very idea of perfection hysterical. Reva, with a cunning gleam in her eye, asks that you make a wish. Together, the questions emerge. What do our gods reveal about ourselves? What makes a god? Are we the sum of our wishes, or do wishes restrict our happiness? Should we accept things as they are or strive to change them? And will Reva’s wish for freedom succeed when every move she makes seems to bind her more tightly in place? While Wish Givers is a fantasy adventure, it also asks you to consider these ideas and perhaps wonder, given the opportunity, what you would wish for. Is it the striving that we need for our happiness? Alternately, by always reaching for more, do we curse ourselves to be discontent? Could there actually be more satisfaction in fulfilling another’s wishes than our own? When we lose something and simply want it back, does it prove that we’d always had what we wanted, but only our appreciation was lacking?

         Come to an island world of gods and wishes, and watch the story unfold.

Find your copy: https://books2read.com/wishgivers/

Reva’s clan, the Mauli, tattoo wishes into reality. Once revered, the Mauli now live in hiding, with a precious few imprisoned in a pit beneath the Ali’i’s palace. Burning for justice, Reva strides into the capital city, announces herself a wish giver, and allows herself to be bound. She knows the only way to save herself and her people is to grant her greatest enemy his every wish.

Already outcast by her skill and arrogance, Reva feels she has nothing to lose and everything to gain. However, she faces not only the Ali’i, but the mighty White God and his followers, the animosity of the Mauli, and the burdensome eye of Mata, a dark god with an ambitious priest who has a wish of his own. Within the confines of the Ali’i’s palace, Reva secures love and friendship, but to destroy the Ali’i, she may be forced to sacrifice more than she has ever wished for.

Wish Givers is an epic fantasy with a tropical island setting and themes of freedom, found family, and the pursuit of dreams.

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About Shannon Knight

Shannon Knight lives in the Pacific Northwest with her faithful feline, the best cat on this planet. Their adventurous lives include coffee, reading, ribbon games, and K-dramas. Prior to settling in the PNW, Shannon traveled to islands, living briefly on some and sailing from Java to Christmas Island on a small ketch. Years later, Shannon fell ill with the novel COVID-19 virus and became primarily bedbound for about two and a half years. The first thing she did upon regaining the ability to sit up all day was complete the publication of Wish Givers, Insiders, and Grave Cold.