Peregrine Quinn and the Cosmic Realm by Ash Bond
A delightful guest blog from Ash Bond, author of Peregrine Quinn and the Cosmic Realm, the first in a new adventurous series!
Peregrine Quinn: You’ve never seen a hero quite like her…
By Ash Bond
“Someone has to save our skins. Into the garbage chute, fly boy.” Dynamic, sassy and willing to get her hands dirty, Princess Leia has always been something of a role model. When writing Peregrine, I thought often of Leia but also her latest incarnation, Rey. In the opening scene of The Force Awakens we see Rey scavenging for technology to trade. In this scene Rey is masked, genderless, but in that half-lit cavernous space we as an audience already know that she is a survivor; we know that she is a hero.
For me, Peregrine also exists in this half-light and is just one of a cavalcade of fierce young action stars that are edging their way forward into the world, kicking off gendered expectations like space dust from their highly-practical boots.
Peregrine is herself of course scavenged from the characters that I encountered when I was younger. Scavenged, tinkered with, and then shot through with something to make her alive in a way that no writer really understands, not really. In the mode of Leia, the characters that have always appealed to me are the ones that scramble their way through their hero quests with scraped knees and mud on the hems of their skirts. I love that they are reckless, brave, and often incredibly rude to those who were telling them what to do. I love them and use them as models for my own reckless and rude behaviour, and then for my reckless and often rude writing.
Before Rey (but after Leia) there was of course Lyra from Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials. While these books are very different in style, Lyra and Peregrine have a lot in common. Lyra, like Peregrine, is an Oxford resident in the care of a guardian and Peregrine, like Lyra, would I think do very well running along rooftops. However instead of rooftops, Peregrine – in Book One at least – opts to run along the train tracks of the Under Under Ground, somersault through doorways, and drop-kick the occasional vending machine.
Peregrine is gloriously physical with how she interacts with the world. To the constant annoyance of her companion, dryad and Trainee Librarian Rowan Strong, not only does Peregrine kick stuff, but she pulls wires out of control panels, and cannot resist grabbing for the shiny new CosTech that is always just out of her reach.
In writing Peregrine, I wanted to lean into these instincts, and in particular into the characteristics that have conventionally been the remit of the male hero… and then dial them up. Bearing a name that has also traditionally been given to boys, Peregrine is curious and reactive, and has very little in the way of boundaries, so essentially, she will jump into the garbage chute and then deal with how to get out of there. And no, it does not always work out.
While these traits often propel Peregrine into all kinds of trouble, they are – in their own way – super powers, super powers that Peregrine does not quite know how to use yet. Luckily, Peregrine Quinn is a series, so she’s got time to figure it out, and I cannot wait to see what happens when she does.
Peregrine Quinn and the Cosmic Realm by Ash Bond, out in hardback on 25th April, published by Piccadilly Press.
