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Interview with Kai Meyer © New York Times By JULIE JUST Kai Meyer is the author of many books for children and adults. His novel "The Water Mirror," which was a best seller in his native Germany, is the first book in the Dark Reflections trilogy. Vol. 2, "The Stone Light", will be published in fall 2006, and Vol. 3, "The Glass Word," will be published in 2007 (both from Simon & Schuster). "The Water Mirror" is set in Venice, where orphans toil as apprentices in guilds making enchanted mirrors, and mermaids with sharp teeth patrol the canals. As the story begins, the city is under siege by the flying ships of the Egyptian Empire. Q. The other two novels in the Dark Reflections trilogy won't be available in the United States until next year and the year after. Can you give readers an idea of what lies ahead? Does Merle, the heroine, stay central to the story? Will there be a climactic battle with the pharaoh's mummies in the streets (or canals) of Venice? A. There will be a confrontation with the pharaoh in Book 3, but it's not with Merle. Let me just say that her friend Junipa gets more important with each book, and so does the weaver's apprentice Serafin, although Merle remains the central character. "The Stone Light" is set in a Venice overrun by mummy warriors, and in Hell, of course. The third book, "The Glass Word," brings Merle and her companions to the Egyptian desert, which is buried under several meters of snow. The ending is quite unexpected and tragic, I guess -- I'm still getting dozens of emails every month about the conclusion, although the German edition has been out for something like four years by now. Q. Venice literally comes alive in "The Water Mirror" -- for example when the stone lions appear carrying soldiers -- but the buildings and city squares are also described in great detail. Did you do a lot of research before writing the story or is this entirely a city of the imagination? A. When I worked on the concept for the trilogy I went to Venice for a week. I had researched the town quite well from books and articles but found a huge amount of new detail that went into the novels. For example, there is a scene in "The Water Mirror" in which Merle watches someone crawl into the well behind the mirror maker's house. When my wife and I arrived in Venice, we took a nighttime walk and -- like most good tourists do in Venice after nightfall -- got lost in a maze of alleyways. It was 11 p.m. and for nearly half an hour we met nobody, absolutely nobody -- until we watched a man leave one of the houses, open the well in this little square, and climb inside. And I swear he closed the lid from down there. To this day I have no idea why anybody would do this, especially at night. Q. The title of your trilogy, "Dark Reflections," may remind some readers of Philip Pullman's "Dark Materials" books. It's interesting, though, that he offers a vision of heaven while your books imagine hell (discovered at the center of the Earth by the National Geographic Society). Do you think readers are particularly interested in stories about good and evil now? A. The books didn't have a trilogy title in Germany or in most other countries where they have been published, so I'm glad you mention the essential difference between Pullman's trilogy and mine. Pullman's characters discover the truth behind creation, but never question the existence of heaven itself as an ethereal place. My view of Hell is much more down to earth, as you will discover in the second book of the trilogy. It's a real place, not another dimension. Everybody could walk down there if they found the right steps. I love stories about angels, gods and theological concepts -- and I have written my share of those -- but at the heart of the "Dark Reflections" books lies something much more solid, much more real. It's symbolized quite well by what the second title in the trilogy refers to -- a light actually made of stone. Q. What did you like to read growing up? What were some of your favorite books? A. My all time favorite is still "The Lord of the Rings," although I read it only once when I was 12. I've re-read parts of it over the years, but never the whole trilogy. Those were the books that made me want to be a storyteller, although I published more than 30 novels before I sat down to write my own fantasy trilogy. I never intentionally tried to write books in the Tolkien tradition -- and I probably never will, because we have too many of those -- but the impression his writing made on me was tremendous. I have never read many children's classics, not even as a kid, although I absolutely loved Astrid Lindgren's "The Brothers Lionheart" and "Ronia". Q. What are you working on now? A. I've finished a new 1,000-page novel for adults. It's set in the early 13th century and tells the story of 5,000 women going on a crusade to free Jerusalem -- but only four of them eventually reach the Holy Land, and none of them reach Jerusalem. The protagonist is a young girl who is the best liar in the world. She is forced to be the leading preacher of a crusade she doesn't believe in. It's a story about false religion and false leadership, set against the backdrop of the first conflict between Christianity and Islam. I'm correcting the galleys of that one right now, and I've just begun writing book 1 of a new fantasy trilogy for young adults set in Asia.
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