Interview with Yuval Kordov, Author of The Hand of God

We sat down with the author of the Dark Legacies trilogy, a metaphysical, double-post-apocalyptic sci-fi epic, to discuss the upcoming final installment

We interviewed Yuval Kordov, author of the Dark Legacies trilogy, to talk about the trilogy as the release date for the final installment quickly approaches.

The Dark Legacies setting is a world where humans nearly annihilated each other in nuclear apocalypse. In the aftermath, a second apocalypse occurs when the gates of Hell break open and the skies darken. A few hundred years later, the remains of humanity battle over the scraps of their lost past with a psychic sisterhood, mechs piloted by mutant children and brainwashed AI, and warriors with little future to hope for.

But all is not hopeless—despite the budding war between the vestiges of civilization, perhaps faith is the answer to their own prayers.

Book 3, The World to Come, releases on September 3. Pre-order on Amazon today. Book 1, The Hand of God, and book 2, All of Our Sins, are also available.

Interview begins now!

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We've seen a lot of post-nuclear apocalyptic fiction, but a second apocalypse is an interesting twist on the genre. What inspired you to do a double armageddon?

You’re right, every apocalyptic story is rooted in a singular event, usually man-made, cosmic, or more rarely Biblical. Going way back to my original Dark Legacies RPG, I proposed that a purely man-made apocalypse wasn’t the whole story. If we are so arrogant as to destroy Creation, would there not be further consequences?

It’s also a vehicle to combine science fiction and fantasy. Why have one apocalypse when you can have two? Why just have giant robots when you can have giant robots and demons?

How is your faith reflected in the world of Dark Legacies? 

Such a short question, such a long answer! And hard to answer fully without giving everything away. I’m Jewish, but some of my best friends are Catholic. ;) Dark Legacies is what I would call “Biblically informed,” maybe even to the point of being considered religious science fiction. It is very God-centric, because without God there is nothing–literally. (Deadlands, anyone?)

Coming back to Esther, and some of her flashbacks to the time before the world fell (in and around AD 2040), astute readers will determine that she grew up in a Jewish family, which is forced to hide its traditions due to the slow degradation of society. We’re seeing this happen in real time today. That concentration of her faith–the secrecy, the mythologizing, the fear and uncertainty–contributes to her eventual transformation into the so-called Eternal One, a being focused entirely on control.

The institutions that we see in AD 2500 look and feel and smell a lot like our own. The Eternal One’s Revenant Sisterhood bears a strong resemblance to Judaism and Kabbalah, with the addition of a foretold Messiah. I joke sometimes with my author friends that they’re effectively Messianic Jews, only the Messiah they follow is not quite… right. Bastion’s Church, on the other hand, looks a lot like Catholicism or Eastern Orthodox. I also mention the “old faiths” several times. It’s a tough balance to find. Some days, I wish I had been more explicit in my characterizations.

Theme-wise, there is plenty of allegory. The main one is an inversion of the binding of Isaac: God commands Abraham to sacrifice his son, Abraham complies, but is stopped at the last. In Dark Legacies, we see “the child” sacrificed after all, in the form of WW3/humanity’s self-destruction, and again later as children are continually forced to sacrifice themselves as a consequence of their parents’ sins. This is most apparent with Rebekah-6 and the “Numbered,” children empowered through occult means to control the “God-engines” you see on the cover of The Hand of God.

The consequence of this betrayal is the sundering of the world by God and the removal of the Earth from the heavens. My tag line in book one is “Hell is on the horizon. Who will survive?” but it’s more about who will be redeemed.

The demons in Dark Legacies are a combination of flesh that is familiar to whoever is seeing them, and decaying machinery. Why do they take these particular shapes? 

I’ve always taken the approach that demons are us. It’s very convenient to attribute evil to otherworldly forces, but that approach absolves us of our responsibilities, to God and each other. In Dark Legacies, demons are the literal embodiment of human sin. Machines are part of that, because they have become an intrinsic part of who and what we are. Whereas most sci-fi embraces homogenous transhumanism and the merging of man with machine as the end goal, I view it as a dead end. A sea of screams.

Do the three main cultures in the series (Cathedral, Bastion, and the Hub) have any real-world counterparts? 

Well, Hub/The Union is basically the United States/post-civil-war Central States of America. That’s explicitly stated, all the way down to the different political blocs, including “Restorationists” and “Americans.”. Their struggle/legacy/division is a reflection of the past and of the eternal struggle a nation faces.

Cathedral and Bastion are located in post-apoc western/eastern Canada respectively. I wouldn’t say they necessarily have real world counterparts.

There are obvious warning signs in the trilogy against nuclear war, AI, and misplaced faith. Which of these do you think is the biggest threat to humanity, and why? 

What a question! There’s another one in there too, which actually underscores all of these: division. Humanity is divided as it has never been before. Division is amplified at every turn. Every position has become so granular that division happens at the atomic level (which, I suppose, brings us back to the nukes).

As Esther said in The Hand of God: 

She wondered how people had come to loathe each other so much, that they chose to create these artificial facsimiles of themselves for companionship. And when their automatons still didn’t provide the succor they craved, they chose to destroy it all.

What future can there be if we all hate each other?

Your stories deal a lot with the idea of parenthood. How does being a parent affect your writing?

I couldn’t have written them before having kids, period. Which is ironic, since having little ones makes finding time to write so difficult! But the experiences I’ve had, and that they’ve had, have been pivotal.

Dark Legacies opens with a nine-year-old Esther–the “main” character in the series–who is very much influenced by my eldest daughter. Likewise, her younger sister is influenced by my younger daughter, as well as the interactions between them. So much so at times that my wife struggled to get through parts of The Hand of God–the world they inhabit is not an easy one…

Familial struggle is also a key theme in Dark Legacies. Yes, there are demons and battle walkers, but at the end of the day it’s a story about humans and the human experience. And so much of that experience is our relationship with our families and how that shapes us.

I understand that building Lego miniatures was part of the inspiration for the mechs in the Dark Legacies series, and even the impressive cover art is based on mechs that you built with Lego bricks. Could you talk through that process a little?

This is such a random story. I loved LEGO as a kid, and would always build MOCs (my own creations) instead of following the instructions. About five years ago, my parents bought my eldest daughter her first LEGO set for her birthday: a pony and a cart, nothing very gothic about it. At the same time, I worked at a place that gave out mini Star Wars LEGO sets for May 4. Something clicked (pun intended).

I ended up glomming the two together and my interest in LEGO was reborn. I got deeper into it, buying sets to modify, then buying individual parts off of BrickLink. My creations got better and became stories, vignettes of a long-percolating sci-fi reboot of the Dark Legacies fantasy RPG I wrote and published back in the mid 2000s. I ended up creating an Instagram page for my custom mech designs and it was this hobby that led to me writing the novels.

There are a ton of perspective characters through the series. Are any of the characters based on anyone you know? Are any based on you?

As mentioned, Esther and her sister Miriam are very much influenced by my own kids, the relationships and growth and spirit that I’ve observed. No author ever wants to admit their character(s) are based on themselves, but it’s inevitable to a degree: Sophus’s physical degeneration and Baptiste’s mental malaise, in particular. I wrote a lot of The Hand of God while dealing with some major health issues, insomnia in particular, and those experiences definitely helped me add the characterizations I needed. Never waste a good crisis, right? As I’ve said before, the characters in Dark Legacies suffer to find purpose, not to celebrate suffering. And they are gray because they fumble toward the light, not because moral confusion is a virtue.

How do you plan out your novels? Are there any tools you find helpful in organizing your thoughts? 

I had the whole trilogy planned before I wrote the first word. Character arcs, world arcs, the ending, etc. It was all there waiting to be written. Things changed along the way, of course, but the path was set. I use Apple notes to organize bullet points for each POV, plot arc, timeline, or other relevant bits. Then it’s 5am writer’s club to do the actual writing, and if I get stuck, I go for a walk.

Walks are my primary writing tool, I’d say. It is during walks that I connected dots, saw through the surface of what I was writing into the deeper meaning of it, wrangled extremely complicated convergences of plots and characters and themes. That emptying of mind is essential. It allows me to connect with the creative spirit in a way that nothing else does.

Who are some of the authors whose work shaped this series? 

None, directly. I have my favorites, like everyone, and certainly many of their influences are lurking in my brain, coloring my work. Dan Simmons’s Hyperion Cantos is an old favorite that I reread recently. Unparalleled excellence. Dune, of course. I really enjoyed Iain Banks’s Culture series for its metaphysical and world building approaches, even though I found it wanting on the spiritual side. I loved Stephen R. Donaldson’s Gap Cycle, for having one of the most impressive character redemption arcs ever. There’s a lot of amazing stuff out there.

If there is one thing you want readers to take away from this series, what would it be? 

Be grateful for what you have.

Now that your debut trilogy is complete, what will you be working on next? 

I’ll be continuing to write in the world of Dark Legacies for the foreseeable future. When and what that looks like, we shall see…