S G Cushti

About the Author

S G Cushti writes adult epic and dark fantasy, exploring the uncomfortable spaces between morality, power and the human condition.

He has never been particularly convinced by stories in which good and evil are easily distinguished. Life, in his experience, is rarely so obliging. People are contradictory, their choices shaped by circumstance, and even the noblest intentions can have devastating consequences. His fiction reflects that complexity, building worlds where morality exists in countless shades of grey and where doing the right thing is seldom straightforward.

Having twice come close to losing his own life, and having lost too many people before they reached thirty, he has developed a complicated relationship with the ideas of fairness, justice and mortality. What troubles him most is not simply the brevity or unpredictability of life, but the inequalities woven into the systems people inherit and inhabit. Systems that reward some, punish others, and often endure regardless of the intentions of those within them.

Writing became a way to explore those contradictions. Through magic, kingdoms, religion and conflict, he examines the structures that govern people’s lives, the compromises demanded by survival, and the consequences of trying to change a world that resists being changed.

Away from the page, he lives a quiet life with his wife and their rescue animals. He believes that the way people treat animals, particularly those dependent upon their kindness, reveals something fundamental about their character.

The Archives of Discernment is his ongoing exploration of a world in which power always carries a cost, history is rarely impartial, and even the darkest characters have reasons for believing themselves right.