It’s all about the clichés, apparently:
I have a confession to make: I hate clichés. This is a problem, because a cliché is a good idea that has been re-used so often that it outstays its welcome.
Also, being a Brit of a certain outlook, I do not view monarchism or aristocracy with any degree of nostalgic fondness. The divine right of kings is a post-hoc justification for hereditary dictatorship (current poster-child: Kim Jong-Un) and the feudal age was one of total militarization of society, of petty lords with the right to hang any serf whose face they didn’t like, and of wars ravaging the land every generation.
Finally: I’m lazy and cynical, I get bored easily, and I have a warped sense of humour. Which is how I came up with this series. I grabbed hold of a bunch of clichés and rammed them together until I achieved fusion. And that’s how The Bloodline Feud starts.
Cliché #1: science fiction about people who can travel between different time-lines. The 500 kilo gorilla in this sub-genre is undoubtedly Roger Zelazny’s Amber series (if you count it as SF: I’d say the main protagonists’ outlook qualifies it as such), but honourable runners-up are numerous: Harry Turtledove, John Barnes, add to the list at your leisure. The ability to walk between worlds seems like a wonderful talent that can bring all sorts of benefits: but what if it wasn’t? What if you ran into all the same problems with earning a living, maintaining your personal safety and security, and staying out of trouble that you had in your home time-line? In fact, what if it made everything worse? It seemed to me that this was fertile territory to explore, so I stripped my world-walkers’ ability back to basics and put some onerous limitations on it. It’s not a get out of jail free card. And for added amusement, I decided to give them another handicap: a cultural one.
