Interest
Author Accidentally Includes Zelda Ingredients in New Novel
posted on by Andrew Osmond
The perils of hasty online research for authors was demonstrated today when a Reddit user spotted a curious anomaly in a new novel. A Traveller at the Gates of Wisdom is a historical novel with a 2,000-year sweep, written by Irish author John Boyne, whose previous books include The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas.
As the Reddit user, named u/nonono_ohhoho noted, in Boyne's new book (right), the author described some dye-making ingredients that you would not expect in a serious historical novel. At this point in the story, the narrator is intending to poison Attila the Hun using red dye. Among the ingredients he lists are an Octorok eyeball, the tail of the red lizalfos and four Hylian shrooms. The funny thing is that none of these ingredients exist in the real world. Rather, they're all items you can harvest from the monsters in the game The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
The story was picked up by American writer Dana Schwartz in a thread on her Twitter feed. Wondering how on earth Boyne had come up with these items, Schwartz googled for "ingredients red dye clothes." She found that at the top of the search results was a list headed "Red dye ingredients," which did indeed include the exotic items. Unfortunately, Boyne hadn't spotted the list was taken from a gaming article on the Polygon website, headed "How to dye your clothes and armor in Breath of the Wild".
Boyne himself quickly responded to Schwartz's thread, admitting it was a fair cop. "LOL that is actually kinda hilarious. I'm totally willing to own it. Something tells me I'll be telling this anecdote on stage for many years to come..." When Schwartz implored the author not to correct the mistake in future editions of the novel, Boyne confirmed that he'd leave it as it was. "I don't remember but I must have just Googled it. Hey, sometimes you just gotta throw your hands up and say 'yup! My bad!'"
Boyne also added, "Someone remind me to add Zelda to the acknowledgements page when the paperback of TRAVELLER is published... oh lord..."
Source: The Guardian
