Water’s Wrath (Air Awakens #4)
by Elise Kova
Released Date: April 26th 2016
Pages: 365
Goodreads Synopsis:
Librarian turned sorcerer. Sorcerer turned hero. Hero turned puppet.
The Solaris Empire found victory in the North and, at the cost of her heart and her innocence, Vhalla Yarl has earned her freedom. But the true fight is only beginning as the secret forces that have been lurking in the shadows, tugging at the strings of Vhalla’s fate, finally come to light. Nowhere is safe, and Vhalla must tread carefully or else she’ll fall into the waiting arms of her greatest foe. Or former lover.
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About The Author
Elise Kova has always had a passion for storytelling. She wrote her firs
t novella, a high-
fantasy, in sixth grade. Over the years she’s honed her love of literature with everything from fantasy to romance, science fiction to mystery, and whatever else catches her eye.
Elise lives in Saint Petersburg, Florida, where she’s currently working on the next installment in her debut YA fantasy series: Air Awakens. She enjoys video games, anime, table-top role playing games, and many other forms of “geekdom.” She loves talking with fans on Twitter (@EliseKova) and Facebook (/AuthorEliseKova). Visit her website, EliseKova.com/, for news and extras about her books!
Q&A With Elise Kova
What are your routines before, during, and after you write?
I really need to develop a better routine. It’s constantly shifting.
Before, it’s setting up the essentials… I make sure I have everything I could need on-hand so I don’t have to get up for a while. So that’s making sure my water glass is full, likely that I have tea, my phone is on silent but close by to check for emergencies or phone calls I need to take.
When I start writing I usually skim/edit what I was last writing. This helps me get back into the world. At the same time I’m usually playing either the song related to the scene or some long EDM remixes so I don’t have to touch iTunes for a while.
After I’m done writing it’s checking social media, because I try not to pay attention when I’m writing and I want to catch up on what I missed.
Why tea and not coffee?
Simple, truthful, but not very exciting answer… I just don’t like the taste of coffee. The only times I’ve liked the taste of coffee is when there’s so much syrup, sugar, and/or milk added to it that it’s not really coffee anymore. Plus, I love the variety of tea – rooibos, white, black, green, they’re all very different so there’s a tea no matter what I’m in the mood for. I’m told there’s different roasts to coffee, too… but my palette isn’t inclined enough to it to tell.
What is the reason behind killing off Larel? (Aside from breaking your readers’ hearts?)
*Spoiler alert!* Goodness, going right for the hard questions now! There are a couple major character deaths throughout Air Awakens, and I have a reason for all of them. I think killing characters is important because if everyone is “safe” in a book with fighting and war then I think it’s a bit boring. Larel’s death was significant to the story in a few ways…
Foremost, it signified that the war was there. More importantly, it’d been there all along. This was the second time that Vhalla lost someone important to her at a moment when she believed her world to be safe. And, I’ll tease Water’s Wrath, there is a connection between the two deaths where this happened.
For Vhalla’s character, it was the death of the last of her innocence. After the conclusion of Air Awakens, Vhalla was pretty scarred, and in Fire Falling she latches on to anything she perceives as stable. Larel, is one such person. In fact, she’s the biggest crutch Vhalla has. Larel’s death was pulling out Vhalla’s mental safety net from under her and forcing her to fly on her own without Larel, Fritz, or Aldrik. She tries to latch on to Daniel across the end of book two and into book three, but she’s beginning to move past that need, and it never quite comes to fruition in the same way as it did with Larel.
But, it also evolves Aldrik’s story arc, and changes him as a character. Aldrik has very few things that are truly precious to him, and he has an unfortunate habit of wanting total control over them and their management. In his mind, it’s to protect them. For Aldrik, Larel’s death is the moment when he realizes that, no matter how hard he tries, he can’t have total control. And, rather than accepting that graciously, it pushes to him an edge he’s never been before. He becomes more reckless. If keeping people far hadn’t kept them safe, then he’d keep them as close as possible. And we see this reach a fever pitch for him in Earth’s End.
Have you ever thought of partnering Vhalla with other characters, instead of Aldrik?
Yes and no… I like exploring the evolution of relationships, and the different forms of love through Vhalla. So you have characters like Daniel who, on paper, should be the man she’s with. And yet they don’t work out. There’s the heartbreaker prince who should swoon her, and turns out to actually have a heart of gold, but his charms just roll right off her. And then there’s the man whom she is in love with, who actually is broken in some terrible ways, and yet she still feels compelled to be with him.
There’s an element of Vhalla and Aldrik’s relationship that I view as being quite toxic. As “swoon’ey” as they may or may not be, there were better people for them to be with throughout the course of the story.
Mohned told us what would happen to them in book one. They would consume each other, they would be the death of each other. And I think at the end of Earth’s End (again, note, end) we see that breaking point. We see the moment where the toxicity about all they were consume them and they both meet the end of who they have been until now. But it’s because they have had that conclusion to who they were that makes room for the opportunity of who they can become. The brokenness they have matches each other in many ways. It gives them deeper understanding of themselves and their relationship. And perhaps that will be when they can become “greater than the sum of their parts”.
COFFEE INKED TALES 
Love this Q&A I recently read Water’s Wrath & cannot wait for the final book! ❤ ❤
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