Interview with Elisa A. Bonnin, author of Dauntless

Happy Friday, tea party attendees! I am so excited because today we have a very special guest joining our tea party this afternoon. Today, we’re joined by author Elisa A. Bonnin, whose debut novel Dauntless will be released in 2022! Check out our interview below to see what we chatted about, and to learn more about this exciting book!

A teen girl must bring together two broken worlds in order to save her nation in this lush, Filipino-inspired young adult fantasy novel from debut author Elisa A. Bonnin.

“Be dauntless, for the hopes of the People rest in you.”

Seri’s world is defined by very clear rules: The beasts prowl the forest paths and hunt the People. The valiant explore the unknown world, kill the beasts, and gain strength from the armor they make from them. As an assistant to Eshai Unbroken, a young valor commander with a near-mythical reputation, Seri has seen first-hand the struggle to keep the beasts at bay and ensure the safety of the spreading trees where the People make their homes. That was how it always had been, and how it always would be. Until the day Seri encounters Tsana.

Tsana is, impossibly, a stranger from the unknown world who can communicate with the beasts – a fact that makes Seri begin to doubt everything she’s ever been taught. As Seri and Tsana grow closer, their worlds begin to collide, with deadly consequences. Somehow, with the world on the brink of war, Seri will have to find a way to make peace.

Links for Dauntless: Goodreads | TheStoryGraph | IndieBound

Hi Elisa! Thank you so much for joining our tea party today! We’re so happy to have you. For those that may not know you, can you share a little bit about yourself and Dauntless? Additionally, are there any trigger or content warnings our readers should be aware of for Dauntless?

Hi, thank you for having me! I’m Elisa, the author of Dauntless. I’m originally from the Philippines, but I moved to the US when I was sixteen because my mother got a teaching job.. I stayed there for 12 years and ended up getting a doctorate in oceanography. Now, I work as a researcher in Germany. 

Dauntless is my first novel, and it’s a book that I wrote while I was working on my PhD. It’s a high fantasy standalone set in a Filipino-inspired world. It follows the story of Seri, a young girl who leaves her home village after someone close to her dies. Seri is just trying to get away from her past and start a new life, but she ends up working as the aide to a famous hero, Eshai Unbroken. Seri ends up on the path to becoming one of her people’s warriors, but all of that changes when she meets Tsana. The two of them fall in love, but to be together they have to keep their respective societies from going to war. 

As a high fantasy with a lot of action in it, Dauntless does have a few content warnings. In particular, be aware that some scenes in Dauntless deal with: animal cruelty and animal death, blood, violence, death, loss of a loved one, guilt, mind control, fire, and physical and emotional abuse. Also, minor content warnings (these things are not shown on the page but are described as part of certain characters’ backstories) for: amnesia, illness, starvation and homelessness. 

Where did the inspiration for Dauntless come from?

While I was writing Dauntless, I was studying oceanography. Oceanography is a relatively new science, and it’s one of the few sciences that still relies a lot on exploration. I was fascinated by the idea of exploring an unknown location, of being the first person to see a part of the world. Because of this, I wanted to write a story set in a world that was mostly unexplored, from the point of view of a society still learning about the place that they live in. 

But as I was writing, I couldn’t stop myself from asking what would happen to this society when they ran into another group of people. When they realized they weren’t alone in the world and they couldn’t just claim whatever they wanted. As someone who is both Filipino and Spanish, I’m especially sensitive to this issue because I know that the country I came from was colonized, and that my existence is a direct result of that colonization. 

Once I started thinking about that, I couldn’t stop, and Dauntless became a story about that moment when two different societies meet for the first time. I wanted to explore an answer to their meeting that would be different from colonization or war. 

Which characters from Dauntless were the easiest and hardest to write?

Eshai was the easiest character to write. I started writing her as a heroic mentor character for Seri, someone who is a legend in her own society. Because I love writing those kinds of characters, she just flowed onto the page. Her struggles and internal conflicts came pretty naturally to me, and a lot of the scenes that feature her made it into the final version without too many changes. 

Tsana was definitely the hardest character to write. I revised her scenes and dialogue several times, and had to include a few more POV scenes for her so that I could get a feel for her character. It took me a while to figure out who she was and what she wanted, and in the end I think Tsana only really started coming together for me during developmental edits, after I had commissioned character art for her and could actually see her in my head.

If you could switch places with any of your characters, who would it be?

This is a difficult question, because I honestly don’t think that I would survive very long in Seri’s world. First of all, I’m deathly afraid of heights, which means that I wouldn’t last long in a world where people live in the branches of massive trees and have to climb down precarious ladders on a daily basis. And the characters that don’t live in the trees have pretty awful backstories. 

But if I had to pick one, I don’t think I’d mind switching places with Srayan, the villain of Dauntless. Srayan is an older character and he probably lives the most comfortable (and low to the ground) life of all of the cast. His life becomes difficult because of the choices that he makes, but if I switched places with him, I wouldn’t make those choices. I’d be a much better mentor to Tsana too (if only because I couldn’t possibly be worse). 

Of course, the plot of Dauntless probably wouldn’t happen because I wouldn’t do the bad things that Srayan did, but with an army of sentient animals at my beck and call, I’d never be bored.

Without giving too much away, what would you say is one of your favorite parts of Dauntless?

I have two favorite scenes, which are related to each other. The first is the watchtower scene that happens in the first half of the book. In that scene, Seri has to deal with an impossible situation and makes a somewhat extreme choice. That scene defined Seri as a character for me, and really helped me to understand who she was and who she would later become. 

The second scene follows immediately after the watchtower. It’s the scene where Seri comes clean, revealing her past and a certain secret to Eshai. I loved writing that conversation, and I especially enjoyed the decision that Seri made in the end.

What’s an album or song that describes Dauntless?

I’m very bad at coming up with songs or albums that match my stories, in part because I’m really out of the loop when it comes to music. But when I write, I like to have background music playing. Since lyrics distract me, I have a playlist full of instrumental songs, usually from soundtracks. There’s one song that I ended up associating with Dauntless, but you’ll have to forgive me for this because I’m going to put on my anime nerd hat. . 

At around the same time that I was writing Dauntless, I was watching the anime Yuri on Ice, which is a combination romance/sports anime about ice skaters. One of the songs that the protagonist uses for his routine has the same title as the show–Yuri on Ice. I really loved that track and I added it to my playlist.

It came up once or twice while I was writing Dauntless, and I started associating it with dramatic moments in the story, right when a character’s arc is about to hit a pivotal moment, especially when writing Seri’s scenes or Eshai’s backstory. Even though the two are fundamentally different stories (Dauntless has a lot more blood and fighting in it), I hope that you can find some of that emotion in the book. 

If Dauntless was a tea party, what would be the theme of the tea party?

Dauntless would absolutely be a tropical tea party! Banana leaves and bamboo and your most colorful, patterned clothes. For snacks, we could have an assortment of Filipino treats like ensaymada, mamon, leche flan, buko pie, egg tart, halo-halo, polvoron一Sorry, I got lost there for a second. There are a ton of delicious treats, so the food would definitely be a highlight. We could wash all those treats down with a selection of tropical fruit juices. 

What kind of message do you want readers to take away from Dauntless?

I wrote this book at a time in my life when I was feeling really unsure about the work I was doing and the kind of future that I would have. I was figuring things out, about myself, my identity and the life that I wanted to live. I wasn’t sure that I was smart enough or strong enough or brave enough to do what I needed to do–to finish my PhD and to move all the way to the other side of the world, and I wrote those feelings into Seri. 

I wrote Dauntless because I wanted people who were feeling similarly lost and confused to know that they aren’t alone, and to see someone like them become a hero. In my life, I have been constantly inspired to do better and be better by the stories I’ve read, and I wanted to provide that experience for my readers. To show them that no matter who they are, they are still valued, and they can still be great. 

Thank you so much, Elisa, for taking the time to chat with me and sharing more details about Dauntless with us! We’re so excited for this book and we hope, tea party attendees, that you are as well!