James Logan

James Logan was born in Surrey, England, where he grew up on a healthy diet of classic 1980s cartoons and Commodore 64 computer games. Books were an early love as well, with Sheila McCullough’s Puddle Lane and Tim and the Hidden People series instilling an early love of the fantastical.

The impulse purchase of Ian Livingstone’s Return to Firetop Mountain started an obsession with Fighting Fantasy gamebooks and heroic fantasy. A passion for Warhammer soon followed, which led to him being thrown out of an English lesson for reading a Space Wolves codex book (with the furious teacher describing it as ‘perverted rubbish’).

Undaunted, James continued to play Warhammer and read fantasy novels, with The Sword of Shannara acting as a gateway to the world of adult epic fantasy. After devouring the works of Terry Brooks, Raymond E. Feist and Robert Jordan, he decided – with the ironclad belief only teenagers possess – that he would write his own fantasy novel, and it would be brilliant.