PHOTO: Darren Joy, author of the Plagueborn series, whose dark epic fantasy blends mythic dread with deeply human struggles.
Exploring Magic Madness And Mortality
Darren Joy weaves dark epic fantasy infused with myth, metaphysics, and flawed humanity, crafting the Plagueborn saga where survival is uncertain, death is never final, and characters confront haunting inner battles.
Darren Joy is a writer who does not shy away from the shadows. His Plagueborn series grew out of a deep confrontation with mortality, faith, and the unsettling space between life and death. In his worlds, nothing is certain—not survival, not sanity, and not even the finality of death. What emerges is fiction that is both harrowing and oddly life-affirming, born from a place of lived struggle and profound imagination.
At the heart of his storytelling lies a fascination with the unreliable, the flawed, and the paradoxical. Characters such as Threadfin, whose magic rebels against him, or the Grim, a reaper-king shaped by both myth and personal history, reveal how weakness and brokenness can be as compelling as strength. These figures are never mere archetypes; they carry the rawness of human frailty even while inhabiting vast, mythic landscapes.
Drawing upon religious imagery, quantum paradoxes, and the wide loneliness of deserts, Joy threads together epic scope with intimate vulnerability. His writing dares to ask what it means to endure when existence itself is called into question. The result is dark fantasy that unsettles, challenges, and lingers in the imagination long after the last page is turned.
With his work, Darren Joy reminds us that the line between horror and wonder is vanishingly thin, and that sometimes, to face the darkness is to discover the truest form of light.
What first sparked the idea of a world where death is merely another beginning, and how did that evolve into the Plagueborn series?
When I first wrote A Viral Imperium, it was a very different book. The turning point came when I became ill with Functional Neurological Disorder (FND). It involves fatigue, pain, and a sense of a new normal, of not being myself anymore. I stopped writing for a time, overwhelmed by the symptoms, but the story lingered in the background.
In many ways, I felt undead myself. I felt trapped in a body that no longer felt mine, and that reshaped everything, including how I saw my characters. I started over from scratch, and I poured those feelings into Threadfin. Ironically, making him undead brought him to life on the page. The concept of death as a beginning was,in many ways, personal, and the Plagueborn series was born.
Threadfin’s magic is famously unreliable—did you begin with that flaw as a plot device, or did it grow organically from his personality?
I never intended Threadfin to be the heroic type. In fact, he spends a lot of time running away from anything remotely heroic. He wants nothing to do with such nonsense, and yet somehow, he ends up saving the day more often than not. For him, it’s become a bit of an annoyance, really.
Nothing much ever works out for him in his unlife, so it follows that his magic is a bit of a let-down, and this fits with his nature. It’s also partly a plot device, in that the true origin of his magic means it has a mind and will of its own. I won’t spoil what that origin is here, but suffice to say: his magic wants to usurp control of his body, to become something more, to be free to do as it wishes. Threadfin finds himself locked in a battle with his own power, just to remain sane and whole. He often laments that being a mage isn’t quite as advertised.
The Grim is portrayed as both reaper and would-be king; which cultural or mythic figures did you borrow from to shape such a paradoxical villain?
I grew up in a fundamentalist religious group that placed heavy emphasis on “The End Times,” Armageddon, and the Devil’s influence over world events. Satan and his demons were ever-present figures in that worldview, shaping how I saw the world—and, inevitably, how I began to imagine the world of my characters.
That Satanic archetype became a dark influence on my development as a young adult. Even after quietly fading out of that cultish group, the imagery lingered. Writing became therapy, and when I created the Grim, I poured a lot of that imagery into him. He’s not the Devil, who was a fallen angel. Rather, the Grim was a mortal man, a sorcerer who became drunk on power, and who found a way to cheat death.
Other influences helped form the Grim too, the most notable being Sauron from The Lord of the Rings. The Grim is also a dark father figure, embodying all the negativity of a terrible parent.
Lorn Larthuz stole existence itself—without giving spoilers, how do you write a character who does the impossible, and still feels grounded in your world?
When Lorn steals existence, she does so by taking an object called the Shathra Stone. This artefact is considered an “impossibility” as it contains all of existence within it, and yet it can be lifted, held, or stolen. The idea came from quantum mechanics, particularly the notion that something can exist in multiple states or dimensions simultaneously. I imagined that, on a quantum level, such a paradox might be possible.Of course, my understanding of quantum physics is basic as a layman, but the concept fits well within the metaphysical aspects of thisstory.
Despite the metaphysical, “impossible” nature of Lorn’s task, she is a person with real fears, dilemmas, and desires. And that’s how I keep her grounded; her motivations are human, even if her actions defy reality.
Myral’s desert crossing feels almost biblical in its torment; what real-world deserts or pilgrimages informed that bleak journey?
It’s true I borrowed from biblical mythology for much of the series, along with other mythologies, of course. I think there are elements from the Bible that influenced Myral’s story, including the desert crossing, but when writing that part of her journey, I was thinking mostly of the American deserts—vast, sun-scorched landscapes with towering mesas I knew from Hollywood westerns growing up. That imagery stayed with me: the quiet loneliness, the heat, the sense of danger waiting ahead somewhere. I guess, in a way, it gave her crossing a sort of spiritual weight.
Book 2 descends into deeper peril and metaphysical dread; how do you keep tension high when the reader senses catastrophe looming?
Even when catastrophe seems inevitable, I try to keep tension high by weaving multiple storylines with uncertain outcomes. Lorn may accept her fate, but Threadfin refuses to. In the Plagueborn world, even death isn’t always final—it can be cheated, though often at great cost. Also, interfering archetypes like the Shadow Twins, Manic and Mania—who are demonic-like beings infectedwith fragments of humanity—often disrupt events to serve their own hidden agendas. Then there are the angels with their own plans and desires. So, while fatalism simmers beneath it all, the reader never knows who might defy fate, or what price they’ll pay.
Your maps and digital art accompany the prose—do you draft the landscapes first and then fit the story in, or vice versa?
Sometimes, the maps and story develop together. When I’d write the first draft, I’d sketch a rough map as I went, adding what I needed to support the story. Once the world starts to take shape, I can complete the map. Other times, I have created the map first, though it may go through some changes as the story then unfolds. I’m not sure how other fantasy authors approach this, but for me, it tends to differ for each book.
What single craft lesson would you pass on to other dark-fantasy authors struggling to balance grand-scale horror with intimate character arcs?
Know your characters. Not their hair or eye colour, or what clothes they like to wear. I mean, know them inside and out. Know what makes them tick, what they’re afraid of, what they don’t want anyone else, even you, to know. Know what sets them off, or what delights them, and especially how they’ll react in a crisis. For example, Threadfin’s first instinct is always to run; “Mages and children first” is his motto. But deep down, there’s a vital part of him that wants to do the right thing. He cares, no matter how much he protests, and he almost always ends up trying to save the day, while griping about itthe whole time, of course. It’s not the colour of a character’s eyes that readers will remember.
