Danai Liao-Centrella is a MechWarrior. Declarative, present-tense statement: Is.
From age, what, nineteen on? That’s the life she’s known, that’s the job she’s accustomed to, that’s the identity she has crafted.
Blood Will Rise is Danai’s Empire Strikes Back—the darkness of the cave she must traverse in order to learn who she may yet become.
She’s a woman and a warrior who has known loss. She knows trauma, and its impact on the soul. She’s also a hell of a combatant, dealing death from the cockpit of her war machine until reaching legendary status. Whether in the Yen-Lo-Wang or the Black Knight, the Duchess of Castrovia has dominated battlefields for decades when we see her again in Blood Will Rise.
But now Danai faces new challenges not so easily solved with a PPC.
Danai’s career in the Capellan military has been good, marked by great victories that proved her leadership. But are there battles that cannot be won with either diplomacy nor violence? What does real victory actually look like in these scenarios?
There may even be a battle taking place in her own heart, whether she knows it yet or not.
Blood Will Rise is a story about a sophisticated warrior plunged into battles most commonly fought in board rooms and situation rooms. Even after successfully neutralizing threats to the Confederation, the allure of combat is fading, replaced by Danai’s need to help her people truly prosper in safety—a goal not necessarily shared by Chancellor Daoshen Liao. The Celestial Wisdom takes a different view of the value of human life, to a degree that will forever change the fate of House Liao and his own “sister,” Danai.
What fascinated me most about picking up the mantle from Jason Schmetzer’s outstanding Blood Will Tell was Danai’s plunge into new worlds—and not the kind you enter in a DropShip.
In BWT, we see a Danai still under the thumb of her father and ruler, Daoshen, who literally assigns Wilhemina Liao to teach Danai how to rule over more than a regiment. This relationship with Mina is fraught at first but grows into a genuine friendship…one that is unceremoniously ripped away from Danai.
With a history of violent trauma in my own past, I felt compelled to plumb Danai’s heart and soul to see what choices she might make with other relationships after the gripping ending of Blood Will Tell, including her relationship to herself. And when faced with the sorts of battles she’s unused to fighting, I wanted to see if she was more committed to the Confederation, or to her own judgement and beliefs.
I loved writing Danai in Blood Will Rise, because she is a character on a long and arduous journey both inside and out. Despite her wealth, royalty, and experience, she has few resources. Whether facing off against a man with hopes to liberate his own little corner of the Confederation, or a man with ambitions so colossal he’ll risk galactic retribution, Danai is constantly caught in a tug-of-war between her duty to House Liao and her fidelity to herself.
These sorts of conflicts play out on the battlefield as well as the Daoshen’s court—a place where nothing is ever what it seems.
Add to that the machinations of political operatives outside the law, who also have in their minds “the good of the state,” and you’ve got a great recipe for what I like to think is classic BattleTech intrigue and warfare.
My big hope for Blood Will Rise is that readers and fans will get to see the many facets of the jewel that is Danai Liao-Centrella. She is a lovely character in the BT universe—strong, aggressive, fragile, cautious…she blends all these traits and more.
With the threat of further insurgencies, fracturing relations with former allies, and the blood on her hands getting much harder to wash off…
Well.
Danai Liao-Centrella is a MechWarrior.
But what is she becoming?
I hope you enjoy the book!
Take care, boxcars,
~ Tom
