‘Crimson Climb’ Writer E.K. Johnston Discusses Qi’ra, Force Artifacts, and Dryden Vos For Her New Book
In a newly published article for StarWars.com, writer E.K. Johnston provides details on her new book, Crimson Climb, providing info about what it was like writing for Qi’ra, Dryden Vos, and a story about finding a Force artifact. Crimson Climb is the new young adult novel centered on Qi’ra and is available now at bookstores and on digital store shelves.
E.K. Johnston has written many other Star Wars books in the past, including Star Wars: Ahsoka and the “Queen’s” Trilogy, centered on Padmé. Her latest story features Qi’ra as she first encounters Dryden Vos and becomes a member of the crime syndicate Crimson Dawn. In our review of Crimson Climb, our very own Tyler Bradshaw who described it as “a blast to read from start to finish.”
Author E.K. Johnston discussed what it was like writing for the eclectic cast of characters and described it as “the most fun I’ve had writing Star Wars.” She draws attention to Qi’ra and her questionable morals and how that was interesting to explore:
“Qi’ra isn’t like any other main character I’ve built a story around. She was never going to do the nice thing or the good thing or the right thing. She was always going to do the best thing for her, and that is pretty great in terms of plot generation and character dynamics. I loved building her a nemesis and setting her up against Dryden Vos, knowing where they’re all headed.”
Dryden Vos is another character central to Crimson Climb. The character was originally played by Paul Bettany in Solo: A Star Wars Story. Johnston cites Bettany’s performance for helping to influence how she wrote the character in her book:
“In Mur Lafferty’s Solo: A Star Wars Story novelization, Han sees Dryden and thinks something along the lines of ‘the man acted like he had read about human emotions from a script and was doing his best to portray them.’ He’s just so false, but also so MUCH. Stir in the best of Paul Bettany’s delivery, and it’s a magical combination for writing speeches.”
Finally, Johnston also hinted at the Force artifact Qi’ra appears to be searching for in the story. Johnston doesn’t give too much away about Qi’ra’s treasure-hunting adventure, but Johnston does state that it was important to her to make the artifact Jedi-related:
“I don’t get to play around with Force shenanigans very often, so it was fun putting together something Force-related for Qi’ra to be headed after … I came up with a holocron after thinking “What could a Jedi make that ends really badly?” It’s not a short list, but this one had to be portable, so at least that made it a bit easier. I like the idea of something made for the light side with the best of intentions, but by human(oid) error, it swerves too close to an absolute. It is, theoretically, a Palpatine-killer, but there’d be a lot of collateral damage so it has to be hidden away.”
Crimson Climb is available now in print, as an e-book, or as an audiobook. Feel free to also check out our review of Crimson Climb by Tyler Bradshaw.
Born and raised in Hawaii, Jay Goodearl runs the YouTube Gaming channel “Good Games, Dude” His channel aims to open up video games to beginners and immediate players and help them understand what makes games the art form that it is.
