Inspired by Cabaret, which she had seen several years before and which had stuck around in her subconscious, Donnelly began to understand the kind of person Aristide was. Although she wasn’t sure who he was waiting for or what had driven him to a place so at odds with his glamorous persona, she decided to find out. She imagined a character-Aristide Makricosta, who clearly didn’t belong in such a rural place-waiting for someone on a hillside.

The first inspiration for the Amberlough Dossier came to Donnelly while on a drive through the Sheffrey Pass in Ireland. Its citizens, still angry and thirsting for justice-or at least revenge-must find a way to sweep away the rubble and rebuild their country from the ruins that remain.Ī tall order for the characters… and for the author behind them.īut long before the restructuring of Gedda in Amnesty, before the violent revolution of Armistice, and even before the fascist takeover in Amberlough, Donnelly faced an even taller order: building the world of her series from scratch.

Set nearly a decade after Amberlough, after Cyril DePaul tipped over the first domino that led to the rise of a brutal fascist government-and five years since Armistice, since violent resistance to that government began in earnest- Amnesty, the conclusion to Lara Elena Donnelly’s Amberlough Dossier, answers an often-ignored question: What happens once the revolution is over?įor Gedda, the fictional country that serves as a backdrop for much of Donnelly’s trilogy, the days of train track bombings and assassinations are over, but not forgotten.