About the Book
Book: Crack the Stone
Author: Emily Golus
Genre: Fantasy
Release Date: September 22, 2023
I am Valshara, the black stone born of fire. Break me, and my edges turn into knives.
Condemned to a slave camp for her crimes, goblin convict Valshara Sh’a makes a death-defying escape to freedom. But navigating Vindor’s treacherous cavern system is only the beginning of her troubles. An encounter with a rogue king turns her world upside down, and a bargain with fairy tricksters leaves her with a human child she doesn’t know how to care for.
As she tries to smuggle the boy through the walls of a barricaded city, Valshara can’t let down her guard. Because somewhere in the darkness behind her, a bounty hunter rises—relentless as nightfall and merciless as death itself.
Emily Golus re-imagines Victor Hugo’s beloved Les Misérables as an epic fantasy adventure about suffering, redemption, and the extraordinary power of love.
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About the Author
Emily Golus is an award-winning fantasy author with nearly 20 years of professional writing experience. Golus aims to engage, inspire, and show how small acts of courage and love create meaningful change. Her books feature diverse cultures, authentic characters, and cinematic fantasy settings.
Her first novel, Escape to Vindor, won the 2018 Selah Award for Young Adult Fiction, and a spin-off novel, Crack the Stone, won the 2024 Kudos Award for Fiction. Golus lives in Greenville, S.C., with her husband, Mike, who is her greatest supporter. They have two active little boys and enjoy hiking, making Thai food, and exploring small towns in the Carolinas.
More from Emily
Crack the Stone is a fantasy re-spinning of Victor Hugo’s redemptive masterpiece, Les Misérables. I’ve taken the major themes and characters of the original novel and recast them within the fantastical world of Vindor. The heart of the story is the same—a stone-hearted convict on the run from the law finds unexpected redemption—but there are new twists and turns along the way.
The Jean Valjean character—now a fierce goblin warrior named Valshara Sh’a—finds herself fleeing through treacherous caverns, an ensnaring forest, and a West African-inspired city under siege. Her pursuer, an expert bounty hunter who has never failed to catch his quarry, is dead-set on returning her to slavery.
Complicating everything is the human boy Valshara rescues from a fairy ring. The precocious and chaotic child not only jeopardizes the goblin’s escape, but starts to melt her obsidian heart.
Crack the Stone focuses primarily on Hugo’s themes of scandalous redemption, legalism, and the transforming love between a mother and child. Other elements of the novel—lovesick Éponine, the red revolution flag, the barricade, the Elephant of the Bastille—have been remixed in unexpected ways to support the redemption arc.
If you’re a fan of the book (or the musical!) you’ll enjoy the fun Les Mis “Easter eggs” throughout. But even if you’re not familiar with the original, you can still get swept up in Crack the Stone’s epic story of suffering, love, and light in the darkest places.
Author Interview
- What is your favorite genre of books? Why?
I love fantasy and science fiction—especially those that create new cultures in interesting environments. When written well, these genres are able to strip away the familiar and get you to think by presenting the human experience in a new light.
- Are you a one project at a time author or do you have multiple projects going at once?
I’m usually only writing one book at a time, but I’m jotting down notes for my next projects as they come to me. I have a separate file for every story, and it’s great to be able to get an idea written down and put away so it’s not bouncing around in my head while I’m trying to concentrate. And then when I go to start that new book, I already have a lot of ideas to work from so I can get a running start.
- How has your life experience helped in your writing journey?
I often write about things that I’ve wrestled with in my own life. For example, my first book, Escape to Vindor, is about how I found an answer to my teenage anxiety and fears.
For Crack the Stone, both the villain and the hero represent different paths in my own life. The Faceless (my Javert character) represents me on the legalistic religious path of my youth: obsessively scrupulous, self-justifying, cold towards others who weren’t as dedicated as me, and yet despairing because I could never measure up to my own standards.
The heroine Valshara (my Jean Valjean) is who I’m becoming after truly encountering Jesus: humbly realizing I’m not better than anyone else, living in debt to a mercy I can’t repay, and just trying to reflect to others a small portion of love I’ve been given.
Valshara also represents, in a way, my experience with motherhood. At 35, I was more set in my ways than I realized when my first baby came, and so parenting has been a huge adjustment for me (as it is for Valshara). And yet having these little boys and watching their personalities develop is one of the most magical things I’ve ever experienced.
- Where do you find your greatest inspiration?
All of my best fantasy ideas come from the real world. I am endlessly curious about people and cultures, and I eat up stories, podcasts, and articles about civilizations in unusual places. I’m kind of obsessed with different ways humans gather food, organize their societies, and so on.
I have found that the truth is always more interesting than fiction. For example, my subterranean city of Elnat is based on the ruins of the Derenkuyu underground city in Turkey. The thing is, I had to tone back details about the actual city to make Elnat more believable to my fantasy readers!
My fictional city has seven layers, a moderate population, and is lit with a magical smokeless fire so no one asphyxiates underground. The actual city was laid out more like an ant farm with up to ten layers, housed up to 20,000 people plus livestock, was lit by smoky torchlight, and had a sophisticated ventilation system to keep air moving. Truth is stranger than fiction!
Anyway, I love anything about unique ways humans have done things, and roll as much of those details up into my fantasy world as I can.
- What do you need in your writing space to help you stay focused?
Before I had kids, I was a lot more particular about my writing space—I needed certain music, relative quiet, a window with a view, etc. Now that I have little boys running around the house, my requirements are:
- A chair
- My laptop
- An Internet connection (for when I’m doing research)
- No one talking directly in my ear (background laughter or the blasting of Disney Junior music is OK)
- A few consecutive minutes
I do sometimes get away to coffee shops or to the library while my kids are at preschool. But I can create my own little “concentration zone” pretty much anywhere, regardless of environment. It’s amazing how adaptable you become when you’re a mom!
Blog Stops
The Lofty Pages, September 21
Vicky Sluiter, September 22 (Author Interview)
Locks, Hooks and Books, September 23
Library Lady’s Kid Lit, September 24 (Author Interview)
Truth and Grace Homeschool Academy, September 25
For the Love of Literature, September 26 (Author Interview)
Texas Book-aholic, September 26
Tell Tale Book Reviews, September 27 (Author Interview)
Through the Fire Blogs, September 28 (Author Interview)
Blogging With Carol, September 29
Guild Master, September 30 (Author Interview)
A Reader’s Brain, October 1 (Author Interview)
Back Porch Reads, October 2 (Author Interview)
Just Your Average reviews, October 3
A Modern Day Fairy Tale, October 4 (Author Interview)
Denise L. Barela, October 4
Giveaway
To celebrate her tour, Emily is giving away the grand prize of a paperback copy of Crack the Stone, an obsidian arrowhead pendant, two Vindor stickers, a Vindor mini-map, a Vindor bookmark, and a $25 Amazon gift card!!
Be sure to comment on the blog stops for extra entries into the giveaway! Click the link below to enter.