Exclusive Reveal: Castoff

Six months after saving her city from destruction, Deyeri Renn is outrunning leadership she doesn’t trust herself to take on. Mavrin Leed chases secret knowledge beyond the business of a mere street magician, wondering where his friend Eyasu Temergon has gone, and how much his devotion to the god-like Aspects endangers him this time. All while the Raw wait to be freed from their prison—the extent of their patience unknown.

And as the Highest Voices work to silence the gods who keep Aelda safe, dangerous truths at the edge of the world still find their way to light.

I had the opportunity to speak with author Brandon Crilly and artist Olajide Ajayi to talk about Brandon’s upcoming release, Castoff, and the work that went into creating the cover. 

Gailey: Castoff is the follow-up to your beloved novel Catalyst, closing the Aspects of Aelda duology. How does it feel to be wrapping up your time in the world of these novels?

Crilly: It’s a little uncanny, as anyone who’s finished a series knows. Catalyst left off with my main characters recovering from this dramatic upheaval for their lives and their world, and one of the goals with Castoff was to establish a long-term future for the latter and give them the opportunity to decide what the former was going to look like. Do they want to be leaders, do they want to fade into obscurity, do they want to have more adventures, etc. Answering that question for each of them–as well as a couple new characters!–means I get to imagine this sort of ongoing epilogue, off the page.

Gailey: The cover for Castoff was created by the same artist who worked on the cover for Catalyst, Olajide Ajayi. What was your process like in working with Ajayi? What excites you about Ajayi's approach to these books?

Crilly: One of my absolute favorite things about working with Ajayi is that there’s a stage in his process where he applies “the juice.” He gave me a draft of the cover for Catalyst that was fantastic and I thought was the final, but it wasn’t finished for him yet, and when he applied “the juice” it became mesmerizing. When we started discussing Castoff, Olajide’s pitch to me was to include more detailed characters, specifically because we hadn’t done that the first time around, and he wanted to expand how he’d depicted Aelda. He’s got this internal push to produce something new and different with each project, and that’s such a cool quality in a collaborator, and I feel like when I work with Ajayi, I’m going to get his style and awesomeness but also something fresh.

Ajayi: I have carved a niche for a strong interest in stories and ideas that take my imagination to a different world, and that is exactly what working on Castoff was for me. 

Gailey: Are there any small details of this cover that especially captivate you?

Crilly: Oh, it’s those characters for sure. This is the first time ever (as far as I know) that my core four from this duology have been drawn, and the details on them are so good. I’ve got a zoomed-in cutout on my computer, and everything from the cut of Mavrin’s hair to the way Deyeri plants her feet is spot on. We had the Aspects prominently displayed on the first cover, but here you can see wisps of the Raw curling around Linn (or Aulina, as she’s known in Catalyst), which I adore because they’re also a really crucial part of Aelda, even if they’ve been forgotten and discarded.

Ajayi: It was a fun ride exploring a possible world almost devoid of life, yet humanity strives to survive and find their place in it. I was fascinated with having a star-filled sky with rocky terrains. I was strongly inspired by the real world and how much fantasy exists in our world if we just look well enough. From Canyons to Karsts to Ginormous Plateau all around the earth. Castoff for me was a dive into a beautiful berserk world!

Gailey: How does it feel to see both of your books side by side, ready to capture a whole world of readers?

Crilly: Hopefully a whole world! There’s the satisfaction side of it, where I’ll put both books on my ego shelf and bask for a hot minute. But there’s also the pragmatic side. A finished series isn’t something every traditionally published author gets to enjoy, often for reasons out of their control, so I count myself lucky there. It’s going to be fun to go out to events and say to potential readers, “Yes, this is the whole thing! Please take it!” If they enjoy this world and these characters like I do, even better.

Brandon Crilly’s IPPY Award-winning fantasy novel Catalyst was published in 2022, with its sequel Castoff forthcoming in 2025. He has more than 50 published short works to date, and freelances for games publishers such as Kobold Press and Gallant Knight Games. Brandon is also an organizer for Can*Con in Ottawa, an occasional reviewer, a frequent speaker at conferences and festivals, and, yes, clearly wears too many hats.

Olajide Ajayi  is a conceptual artist and illustrator from Lagos, Nigeria. Olajide primarily works for film, books, and games, having worked with companies like Wizards of the Coast, EA Games, Marvel, and more.

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—gailey