Ian Irvine

Ian Irvine is an Australian novelist with 32 novels and a short story collection that are mainly in marine science, eco-thriller, and fantasy genres. His most popular works include the Three Worlds fantasy epic sequences, The Song of the Tears Trilogy, The Well of the Echoes Quartet, and The View from the Mirror Quartet. Born in Bathurst, New South Wales Irvine had always wanted to be a scientist and not a writer. Nonetheless, he had a voracious appetite for books from the time he learnt how to read. He probably found them an appropriate outlet given that he was a small and quiet child. In fact, one of the punishments that his mother used to unleash on him was to forbid him from reading anything for a week, when he had been naughty. He discovered fantasy when he was in his twenties after reading the Earthsea trilogy and The Lord of the Rings, after which he became hooked to the genre. For the young Irvine, the 70s were severely lacking in fantasy or science fiction and it was not long before he had read everything that was to be found. Desiring more diverse and bigger canvasses, he was ultimately frustrated, a fact that drove him to become a writer. By being a writer, he could write the type of stories that he knew many fantasy readers were looking for. Nearly three decades later, the art of storytelling has grown into a passion that still keeps him going. He lives in New South Wales with his wife in a house overlooking the mountains.