Cascade Failure is one of 2024’s must-read debuts. It is the rare novel that delivers exactly what it promises: the story of a messy, chaotic found family who have been driven apart by time and circumstance, and whose reliance on one another in a time of extreme crisis reveals hidden truths about them in the process. Although the humor, mystery, and world-building are spectacular, it’s the core cast of characters that really make Cascade Failure stand out as a beloved novel you will want to return to over and over again.
Author L.M. Sagas has dropped by Earthshine Tower to chat about their debut novel, Cascade Failure, so read on without fear of spoilers!
What would you most like readers to know about Cascade Failure before they climb aboard the Ambit with this crew of unlikely heroes?
To me, one of the most important things about this book is that it’s ultimately meant to be hopeful. Bad people do bad stuff, and sometimes things kind of suck for the people you want most to root for. But that’s not the point, you know? The point is, So what are we gonna do about it? And that’s what the Ambit crew is: a bunch of people who (I hope!) you want to root for, faced with some pretty serious bad, and deciding they’re gonna do something about it. And the fact that they aren’t doing it alone, to me, is really important and what the book is all about.
From the moment that Jal first sneaks aboard the GS 31-770 Ambit, a decommissioned gyreskimmer with lovingly painted interiors, crocheted creatures hidden in nooks and crannies, and lovable ship-cat Bodie, it’s clear that this ship is the safe haven in an unkind universe. What came first in the writing process: the Ambit or her crew? Would you be willing to elaborate on that element of your creative process, and discuss the ways in which they shape one another?
The crew definitely came first for me (characters usually do when I’m writing). And once I had an idea of what I wanted these people to be like—all the rough edges, all the soft spots, all the rust and the dents and the worn-in history, I built the ship around that. It’s sort of like walking into someone’s home, I think—seeing all the knickknacks and things that they keep around because they make them happy, or they remind them of something good, or they make them feel safe. And since the Ambit is home for most of the crew, I wanted to carry that through into the design of the ship. She’s a little rusty, she’s got plenty of dents, but more than anything, she’s got the heart of the people who crew her.
Out of all the characters, I found AI Captain Eoan the most fascinating. AI can feel like such an ever-present threat in our society, due to the controversy around AI art and ChatGPT, but Captain Eoan was my favourite character, which was truly an impressive feat considering the ensemble they’re surrounded by. Can you discuss the challenges of bringing a sympathetic AI to life, and exploring how an intelligence whose purpose is the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake comes to understand how human they really are?
Full disclosure: when I was writing this book, machine learning tech like what we’re seeing a lot of right now, wasn’t really in the spotlight (that makes it sound like I wrote this book a really long time ago, but in reality, that’s just how fast technology moves). So when I was writing an AI, I went into it focusing more on an old-school idea of artificial intelligence, where what might’ve started as a bit of complex computer code really evolves and becomes their own life form. A lot of Eoan’s evolution comes from their fundamental purpose: the pursuit of knowledge. Curiosity. And I think that’s why Eoan comes across as so human in the story, not just because curiosity itself is such a big part of human nature, but because curiosity leads to so many other aspects of that nature. It can lead to empathy. It can lead to personal growth. It can also lead to pain, and mistakes, and misunderstandings, and taking the bad with the good and forging ahead is a pretty powerful thing we humans learn to do. It puts Eoan right at home with the rest of the crew, and hopefully makes them just as relatable a character in their own way as all the others.
Saint and Jal have one of the most interesting relationships in the novel, as a former mentor and mentee whose broken relationship is a source of early conflict in the novel. Watching them repair their bond was a profound reading experience. When did you first realize how fundamental that relationship was to the overall plot of Cascade Failure?
I think the Saint-and-Jal relationship (I’ve seen a couple portmanteaus for it now, too, which is absolutely delightful) is actually one of the first components of the novel that came together for me. It was about the history, you know? I like it when futuristic scifi doesn’t just look forward, but has that sort of footprints-in-the-sand thing where you can look back and see bits and pieces of how they got there. You see that in the Ambit, which is a piece of history all by itself; and in the worlds that they end up on throughout the novel, which tell stories about how this new society has developed over time. But I also wanted to carry that through the characters, too, and Jal and Saint gave me a way to do that. These guys have History, capital H, and I had a lot of fun (and made myself super sad, oops) figuring out how that History would affect their story, and the story as a whole, as they moved ahead.
One of the biggest strengths of Cascade Failure is the nearly effortless combination of humor, action, mystery, sci-fi, and adventure. Despite the apocalyptically high stakes, you never lose sight of the heart of this story, which is the bond amongst the crew. Being able to balance those elements is a rare feat. What would you say was your favourite element to write?
I loved the banter so, so much. Don’t get me wrong: I had a blast with pretty much all of it (though there’s this part at the end that made me do math, and I still haven’t forgiven it for that). Fight scenes, exploring creepy new worlds, piecing together the mystery at the heart of the story over a galley table and an inadvisable amount of caffeine—it was all a lot of fun. But taking these characters with wildly different communication styles (like Saint, who talks like every word costs him half his paycheck; versus Nash who talks like smarting off’s an underrated art form and she’s determined to singlehandedly bring it back into vogue) and bouncing them off each other was definitely my favorite part of writing this story.
You have a publication date for this novel’s sequel, Gravity Lost, before Cascade Failure has even released. It seems clear that you’ve envisioned a wide world for these characters beyond the scope of this single story. Can you elaborate on where you see the series going?
Yeah! So, right now, the Ambit’s Run series is planned as a duology. We wanted to release Gravity Lost pretty close after Cascade Failure, so that folks wouldn’t have to wait long to dive into part two of the story. And if the series did end after Gravity Lost, I do think that readers would be really satisfied with the ending. That said, the Ambit’s Runseries has a lot of life in it, and I have a lot of love for these characters and this universe—so, there’s always the possibility that there could be more books in the series, if folks enjoy and support them! I would like that very much.
Is Bodie based on a real cat?
Bodie is actually based on two cats, mushed together into one rosette-spotted, stub-tailed behemoth of a feline. They both had those larger-than-life personalities (one was also physically larger than life, so I definitely have a soft spot for big floofs) that seem to come factory-standard with cats, and definitely had Bodie’s will purr for food approach to making friends and influencing people. It was fun to work some of their quirky little mannerisms into Bodie’s as I went along. There’s also secret shout-outs to my childhood dogs in both books! Query: is it still an Easter egg if only you and, like, three other people on the planet would notice it? I’m gonna say yes.
L.M. Sagas is an author of rowdy, adventurous science fiction and fantasy stories full of characters who live hard and fight harder. She writes to give folks a few good laughs (and maybe a few good cries too). When she isn’t writing, L.M. daylights as an intellectual property attorney in Nashville and moonlights as a dirt-smudged gardener, breakfast food enthusiast, and personal assistant to the world’s snuggliest shelter pup.
You can find L.M. Sagas on their website, and also on twitter.
