Reading Deryni: The Bastard Prince

Welcome to the final installment of a six part series of essays focusing on Katherine Kurtz's Deryni novels (you may find the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth parts here). As I am physically incapable of actually reviewing these novels with any semblance of objectivity because they've imprinted themselves deep into my heart, what I am going to do instead is write about the aspects of each of the "Camber Era" novels which have stuck with me throughout the years and which I find intriguing today. Shall we conclude?

Okay. It's been not quite a year since I wrote about King Javan's Year, my entry point into the Deryni universe and still the Deryni novel of my heart.

I've always been reluctant to read The Bastard Prince. I'm not sure if it's because I've always preferred the this era of the Deryni novels and this is where Katherine Kurtz brings the era to a close, or if it is't because I was so emotionally drained after King Javan's Year (and the four preceding volumes) that going once more into that breach is one novel too many. Also, it is a little jarring to go from Javan's story in the previous two novels to Rhys Michael. It's never been a statement on the quality of the novel for me, just a general reluctance.

I often describe The Bastard Prince as of the Deryni novels I've read the least, although I'm not sure that is entirely true. I've only read the second Kelson trilogy twice and I know I've read King Kelson's Bride and the Childe Morgan novels just once. The Kelson novels have never held the same appeal to me, so if I'm going back to read Deryni, I'm revisiting the old friends and the old horrors of this era of the Haldane restoration and the deryni purges. But, I don't go back to the sixth novel without re-reading the first five. The other novels were formative, this one was not.

It's been six years or so since the events of King Javan's Year and everything is still awful. Everything may be even more awful than that. Rhys Michael Haldane is king in name only. Alroy's former regents, having conspired to murder Javan, are now ruling Gwynedd in fact. To say that Rhys Michael and his wife, Michaela, are chafing under that presumption of authority would be a gross understatement. They know they are puppets, but they also know that open defiance is a death sentence. Producing heirs to the throne is a death sentence. Not producing heirs will result Michaela's rape in order to produce a presumptive heir, and then a death sentence. Everything is awful.

It is on the back of that awfulness that Torenth (the long standing rival kingdom to the East) has invaded, taking a border town and killing its lord. But, it is not just Torenth that invaded, it is a man named Marek, the son of the deryni king deposed by Camber and his cohort way back in Camber of Culdi. Marek has never ceased his claim to the throne of Gwynedd and this mini invasion is one that must be answered by the king, in person. The less awful bit here is that it relaxes (somewhat) the leash on Rhys Michael, but we (and Rhys Michael) are constantly reminded how tenuous that relaxed grip is.

We know from Deryni Rising that the authority and actual rulership of Gwynedd does eventually return to the Haldanes, and this would be a bleak novel indeed if there was no hope of that occurring here.

The thing is, The Bastard Prince is a bleak novel.

It's been a long, long time since I've read this book and I remembered that the crown of Gwynedd is freed and restored to Haldane rule. What I didn't remember is that Rhys Michael doesn't live to see it happen. I thought he was the one to restore the throne, but the infection from his hand that was wounded in battle with Marek eventually killed him without healing, sped along by the medicinal "bleeding" he was subjected to by the Custodes Fidei and the regents at the at the very end of his life.

Of course, it was the actions of Rhys Michael that made the recovery possible, the "codicil" to his will putting loyal men permanently on the regency council guiding his son Owain to his majority. It cost his life (maybe the bloodletting wasn't entirely medicinal and was perhaps punitive in nature), but it saved his children.

The Bastard Prince ends with a significant exhale as the evil (I don't use the word lightly) former regents are all dealt with, most end up immediately dead, and even though the Status of Ramos that caused such immediate persecution of the deryni are relaxed if not rescinded, and the harshest of the laws are eliminated (except, notably, the one dissallowing deryni in the priesthood, this does lead to an excellent later set story, "The Priesting of Arilan").

***

Throughout the Reading Deryni project, I've considered the nature and application of deryni magic and I find myself coming back to it again in my reading of The Bastard Prince. Throughout the six novels set in the "Camber Era" of the Haldane Restoration, the use of magic has been subtle, often with ritual and mysticism. Magic has been used to read the truth of words, to suborn the will of another with a touch, to ward against sound, to communicate without speech, to heal, and to travel through the use of magically constructed portals. Except, perhaps the ability to fast travel, the use and application of that magic is internal. The consequences are visible, but the action of that magic is not.

Some two hundred years further down the timeline of this world, in the era of King Kelson, there are epic magical duels using spoken (and rhyming) spells and the visual results are spectacular.

The Bastard Prince seems to begin to bridge that gap between the first five novels of this era against what we are first introduced to in Deryni Rising.

"Miklos stabbed a gloved forefinger at the ground behind Rhys Michael. Sudrey screamed as flame leaped up from the very ground and began to trace a curved fiery line around to the side and then behind Miklos, laying down a containing circle."

***

"Without further preamble, he raised his right fist and thrust it toward her with a muttered Word, opening out his fingers with a snap. The gesture launched a fist-sized ball of fire that roared toward her like an inferno, growing as it came"

***

"A Word of command conjured heavy cloud above the flames, weeping moisture that changed to steam as the fire below was quenched"

Not that I would ever recommend a reader begin reading Deryni with The Bastard Prince, but for readers who are now (at least) five novels deep into the series, the change in how magic is used is a bit jarring. Or maybe I've just spent too much time thinking about deryni magic and ethics and use. Regardless, I am quite happy that Kurtz did not reintroduce rhyming magic battles to this world.

The fire and blasts are a more much external use of magic, and I'm now wondering if and how magic is used in this world is a cultural thing. It is only in clashes with the Torenthi (Charissa, Marek) that we see that sort of battle magic. I can assume that since Torenth is ruled by deryni that overt displays of magic is culturally accepted and the Torenthi magic schools are teaching different magical arts. The Gwynedd magic schools were in various monastic traditions and focused on the more contemplative traditions we've seen across the previous five Camber-Era novels.

We only have glimpses of Torenth, but now I wonder about the wider world the novels never touch on. What is the Chinese analog in this world and how do they handle deryni magic and culture? What about African deryni? Peruvian? There's no answer to those questions, but I'm now I'm curious.

Speaking of the use of magic, but since I'd like to beat this horse one final time, I'm continually interesting in the slippery slope of the ethics of how deryni use their magic.

"It can be argued that since he didn't agree to the changed terms we're imposing, his death won't technically be suicide anymore. Call it an indirect execution if you prefer. Personally, I would as soon send his unrepentant soul straight to hell, b ut my office as a priest forbids indulgence in vengeance. I salve my conscience with the knowledge that at least he's going to have a chance to make some restitution before he dies - even if he's forced to do it"

That is Bishop Niallan talking about Dimitri, a deryni agent of Torenth who voluntarily had a "death trigger" to prevent revealing his true loyalties, but who has been suborned by the Camberian Council on behalf of Gwynedd ad who now has his will forced to do the bidding of his new implanted orders and the death trigger altered to prevent *that* knowledge from getting out. The argument, I suppose, is that this is essentially war and the survival of a race dependent on a sympathetic Haldane regaining the crown in truth, but it is part of a continual pattern of how far the "good guys" will go to justify their actions. Their cause is just in opposing the murderous regents, but it is a continued example of exactly why many humans fear the deryni.

This is a point that I've hit on again and again throughout my reading of these six novels of the Deryni written by Katherine Kurtz, that though readers are rightly sympathetic towards the deryni and find the persecution of the deryni abhorrent, the magical actions of the deryni towards humans are often absolute violations. If you don't spend much time thinking about ethics and just enjoy those fleeting moments of our heroes getting the upper hand, it is so easy to slide past the implications. It is absolutely a matter of life or death for the deryni and the Haldanes, and it is absolutely wrong.

***

One final thing I would like to discuss, and there hasn't been space for it the previous Reading Deryni essays, is what the hell happens in the future? I know, that's a vague and misleading statement. We know what happens two hundred years in the future. Kelson becomes king and Katherine Kurtz writes seven books about Kelson. With her Childe Morgan trilogy, Kurtz takes a slight step back in time to the reigns of Kelson's grandfather and father.

What I want to know about is what happens in the immediate twenty years after Rhys Michael dies and Owain takes the throne as a four year old boy. One of my favorite things about this series is the inclusion of various appendices at the end of most of the books. There is a "Partial Lineage of the Haldane Kings" and "Partial Lineage of the MacRories" and those genealogies tell a story. They tell a story of Owain Haldane dying in the year 948 at the age of 24. That's young, and the early deaths of Alroy, Javan, and Rhys Michael suggest that dying young while king should be viewed with suspicion.

But then you look at the MacRorie family tree and something jumps out at you. Joram dies in 948 at age 70. Okay. His son Tieg, the healer, dies in 948 (age 34). His nephew Ansel dies in 948 (age 48). His cousin Camlin dies in 948 (age 42).

What happened in 948?

Besides the king, these are all members (formal or informal) of the Camberian Council. That is a council formed by Camber in exile in order "to prevent flagrant abuses and to discipline those we can't prevent" and it will be "Deryni sitting in judgment of Deryni" (quotes from Saint Camber). It's more than suspicious that so many of these characters died in the same year, there's a story in those genealogies and it is one that I have been waiting more than twenty five years to be told. Unless Katherine Kurtz is working on that 948 novel now, I don't expect to ever get it.

Between a 948 novel and an Orin and Jodotha novel, there are so many questions raised both in the genealogies and in tantalizing hints in the novels themselves. After Owain dies, his brother Uthyr reigns for more than thirty years and, presumably, offers an era of relative stability. But Uthyr's three sons all die relatively young and have short reigns of three years, two years and nine years. What happened then? Tragically, Michaela (Rhys Michael's queen and regent mother of Owain) buries both of her sons and two of her grandchildren.

***

Even though the actual content of these six Deryni novels have been increasingly unpleasant, it has been a delight and a joy for me to revisit this series. I am continually waiting for Katherine Kurtz to be named a SFWA Damon Knight Grand Master and / or receive a Lifetime Achievement from World Fantasy. Either would be more than well earned and well deserved. One day?

Thank you for going on this journey for me, hopefully it has been as much fun for all of you as it has for me. I know there are ten deryni novels I haven't included in this re-read, plus two short story collection (one written by Kurtz, one edited by the author), an encyclopedia, and a book about the working of the deryni magic that I suddenly wonder if I should look at just to answer some of those questions I have about the differences in how magic has been used in this series; but I just don't see another round of essays happening. Never say never, but maybe don't hold your breath for very long.

Read Katherine Kurtz. Read Deryni.


POSTED BY: Joe Sherry - Co-editor of Nerds of a Feather, 2017 & 2018 Hugo Award Finalist for Best Fanzine. Minnesotan.

Reading Deryni: King Javan's Year

Welcome to the fifth of a six part series of essays focusing on Katherine Kurtz's Deryni novels (you may find the first, second, third, and fourth parts here). As I am physically incapable of actually reviewing these novels with any semblance of objectivity because they've imprinted themselves deep into my heart, what I am going to do instead is write about the aspects of each of the "Camber Era" novels which have stuck with me throughout the years and which I find intriguing today. Shall we continue?

It has been more than a full year since we last checked in with my re-read of the Deryni novels from Katherine Kurtz. It hasn't been that unusual to take a few months in between posts in this series, but a few months turned into the birth of my daughter Coraline, and I think we all know how that goes. Best laid plans and all.

So here we are with King Javan's Year. Many of the Deryni novels have imprinted on my heart, but perhaps none moreso than King Javan's Year. This was my first Deryni novel, randomly picked up from the Rush City Public Library so many years ago. I believe it had not been out long was still in hardcover, so we're talking a good twenty five years. It was my excitement about reading this novel that led the librarian to sell me on the cheap her copies of the three Camber novels. I've been hooked ever since, as you've seen from the previous four entries into this series.

I've also been slightly dreading getting here. The title says a lot. King Javan's Year. It sounds ominous and if this isn't your first time reading Katherine Kurtz, you'll also have a very good (and correct) feeling that it isn't a good year. Also, if you've been reading any of the Deryni novels via a print copy, you may have noticed and paid attention to the genealogies at the back of each book. The Haldane genealogy flat out tells you what year Javan was crowned king, and what year he died. King Javan's Year, indeed. I'm sorry if I spoiled anything.

Let's do this.

It's been three years since The Harrowing of Gwynedd and, as I mentioned then, everything is awful. King Alroy, always sickly, has been less than a puppet on the throne. First ruled by a regency council, and later upon reaching his majority still ruled by a regency council who has drugged him into compliance, is dying. Javan has spent the last three years as a lay brother with the Arx Custodes Fidei, the rabidly anti-Deryni militant religious order which sprang up damn near fully formed in the wake of the Michaeline order being declared outlaw. For reasons, this was Javan's best option for survival as a superfluous heir to the throne who didn't want to also spend his years drugged or to just flat out be murdered by the Council. It kept Javan out of site and served as a rigorous intellectual training ground, which will serve him well during his year as king (as is pointed out by numerous characters throughout the novel).

The Statues of Ramos are still and well in effect (remember those from Camber the Heretic?). As a quick summary: "Deryni were officially prohibited from holding any office, from teaching, or from endeavoring to seek out any religious vocation, especially the priesthood. Ownership of property was being increasingly restricted. In addition, Deryni were forbidden to use their powers in any manner whatsoever, under pain of death." Yeah, everything is awful.

So - Alroy is dying (and soon to be dead, check the title of the book). Javan relinquishes his temporary vows to the much hated Custodes Fidei and ascends the throne. He recognizes he needs to be careful. Even though is old enough to avoid a regency council, he sees the entrenched power structure of men who have long held all of the institutional power of Gwynedd during Alroy's reign and even parts of Cinhil's. If Javan pushes too hard, tries to enact too many changes too quickly, he knows he can end up in civil war or just straight up dead.

But this is where Javan is such a great character. It's why he resonated so strongly with my back in the early to mid 1990's - he's a teenager thrust into power due to the death of his brother and spends the entirety of the novel trying to do good, to be a good and just king, to overturn the evil enacted by the regents, to bring balance back to the force (what?). He is a teenager, but because the age of majority is so young in Gwynedd (14, I believe), he is a man with the responsibilities of a man. To be honest, between Javan and his younger brother Rhys Michael (much more on him later), I half expected someone to petulantly shout "I'm a grown ass man" with the squeak of puberty only just hit. That's an unrelated point, though.

The point is that Javan hit all of my buttons when I was also a teenager, and the novel holds up very well today.

There are some things that I didn't quite think about the first half dozen times I read this book as a teenager, though.

"It all scares me, too. I've gotten much stronger since then. Alroy, I have powers almost like a Deryni. If I'm careful, I can control some humans." He hazarded a quick grin. "I used to do it to Charlan all the time, once I found out how. It's dangerous, though, if anyone found out"

One of the aspects of Deryni magic that I've thought about as I've worked my way back through the series is the ethics of that magic. Time and time again we see deryni using their powers to control the minds of humans, to make them do things they might not have otherwise done, to make them forget what just happened, or to falsely remember events the deryni would rather have the human think happened.

When it's the "bad guys" doing this, it's a big deal. It's evil and the "good guys" need to make sure their people are protected and the realm is protected against this incursion. But when it's the good guys...

Guiscard smiled and shook his head. "You're worried about interfering with his free will, but if his will doesn't turn out to the same as yours, you're prepared to interfere even more with his free will." Javan looked up sharply. "That is what you're proposing, you know."

When it's the good guys, it is often hand waved away because the cause is noble and just. The above passage is one of the first that truly actively called out the questionable ethics of the situation. Actually, I would argue the ethics aren't even questionable, they're reprehensible and they are cooked into the behaviors and culture of the powerful deryni for decades. Hell, re-read what I wrote about Saint Camber for some of the more salient points of how Camber himself (the most legendary and sainted of deryni) deployed his powers against humans and against his human colleagues. The deryni purges and persecutions and the Statues of Ramos were wrong and evil, but the fear (though perhaps not the hatred) is understandable. How do you know when your mind has been violated and messed with? How can you trust? Javan's former squire and now knight Charlan trusts because he believes in Javan and his cause - but can he even know if that trust is legitimate?

I understand this may be one of the few ways our heroes are able to stay alive (and / or remain in power against enemies who would see them and their families dead - because let's not forget the torture and execution of full familes for no better reason than being deryni), but it is still a violation and it is still terrible. I know this is something I keep coming back to, but this time around it keeps jumping out at me every time it happens.

Let's be quite honest about just how twisted and evil most of Javan's council is, though. While I am very troubled by the use of deryni magic by the king and by many powerful deryni, this is a confederation of men participating in and institutionally supporting religiously approved torture and with a requirement that their priests violate the seal of the confessional. The council has imprisoned families to compel the magical support of their now "tame" deryni who are working under strict and abusive conditions.

Oh, and if that's not all (and it never is), that council so longing for a return to power puts into a motion a plan to overthrow Javan and place his more pliable younger brother on the throne. Rhys Michael is fake abducted and then rescued by a member of the council so that he could be nursed to health by Michaela Drummond and, while young hormones rage, get a child on her when they marry in secret - thus making both Javan and Rhys Michael completely superfluous. Once this goes down, the end is near for Javan as his council, those former regents, make their moves to betray him and in the process, unknowingly take down yet more deryni (a subject best left for a separate essay)

For as many times as I have read this novel, Javan's death in battle continues to move me almost to tears. It's the loss of a character I came to root for, to care deeply for, to want to read how he would reform Gwynedd and set so many things to right. It's the loss for the promise and possibility of a better future.

That final loss is similar to the loss I felt in The Harrowing of Gwynedd when Evaine died because it meant a closing of the door of scholarly research and discovery in the magical heritage of the deryni, of Orin and Jodotha and the Airsid. I wrote about that at the end of my Harrowing of Gwynedd essay, so I don't need to recap it here. It's just that the loss of Javan is the loss of possibility and, in some cases, the loss of a dream. It comes through on the page.


Next up, which will probably be at least six months from now, is the final book in my Deryni re-read: The Bastard Prince. If memory serves, it is my least favorite and least read of the six Camber-era novels. We'll see how it holds up for me and what I may have to say about it when I do get to read it later this year. Thanks for reading and we'll see you on the other side of the veil!



POSTED BY: Joe Sherry - Co-editor of Nerds of a Feather, 2017 & 2018 Hugo Award Finalist for Best Fanzine. Minnesotan. 

Summer Reading List 2018: Joe

There are many things in this life which I really, really like. Two of them are reading books and making lists. A third would be making lists about reading books. Strangely, I'm not sure if I want to read a book about making lists, so we'll just move right on from there, shall we?

It is something of a tradition here at Nerds of a Feather to post one's Summer Reading List. Now, since I've been adulting for quite a number of years, the concept of "summer" doesn't have quite the same cache for me as it might have two decades ago. I have to go to work in July much the same as I do in February. And while the summer does mean more trips up to the family cabin, now that I have a child, some of that time spent reading on a swing overlooking a lake with a beer in my hand is going to be spent playing with my children. This is not a bad thing.

With all of that said, I do rather enjoy making lists about books. Nerds of a Feather is a genre blog, so while I plan to continue to read more non fiction each year and I've been reading an increasing amount of non SFF fiction, I do still get through more than one hundred books each year, so what I'm going to highlight is some of the science fiction and fantasy I plan / hope to read this summer.

For those keeping score at home, I have read four of the six books I have listed in both 2016 and 2017. I have decided against listing those books here, even though I do plan / hope to read Kate Elliott's The Gathering Storm, Katharine Kerr's Days of Blood and Fire, and Roger Zelazny's Nine Princes in Amber.

1. Space Opera, by Catherynne M. Valente

Are there readers of this blog who don't know about Catherynne Valente's gonzo-awesome-Eurovision-in-Space novel? It hardly seems possible at this point because if you want to talk about a novel that has completely blown up in all the places I see online, that's it. Every time I see something more about Space Opera, the buzz inside my brain gets louder and louder to the point that in a year which does not have a new N. K. Jemisin novel (go read the Broken Earth trilogy), Space Opera has risen to become the Must Read novel of the year.


2. King Javan's Year, by Katherine Kurtz

It's been a year since I last wrote an entry in my Reading Deryni series (The Harrowing of Gwynedd). I am long overdue to revisit the Eleven Kingdoms. King Javan's Year was the first Deryni novel I read, which is one hell of a novel to start the series with. It was here I learned Kurtz would build up a novel of hope and then send it all crashing down in blood and horror. Perhaps because he was my introduction to this world, Javan has remained one of my favorite characters over the years. I can't say that I'm hesitant to read this because I know how it all shakes out because I included Camber the Heretic in my re-read and to paraphrase a point I made about that novel, George R. R. Martin doesn't have anything on Katherine Kurtz. I think it is rather that re-reading King Javan's Year means that my re-read is almost to an end and I don't have this foundational and formative novel to look forward to in the immediate future.

3. The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. Le Guin

Late last year I started to read Le Guin's Hainish novels and because it's the way I'm wired, I started with her earliest published volumes: Rocannon's World, Planet of Exile, City of Illusions. Now it's time to get to the heavy hitters of The Left Hand of Darkness and The Dispossessed, two novels which have loomed in and over my consciousness of science fiction for almost as long as I have known about science fiction as a genre with a history.  I have owned the copy of The Left Hand of Darkness sitting on a pile of books next to  my bed for far more years than I am comfortable admitting. It's well past time to remedy this.

4. Stretto, by L. Timmel Duchamp

I first read Duchamp's excellent novel Alanya to Alanya back in 2008 and worked my way through the Marq'ssan Cycle into July 2010 when I read the fourth volume, Blood of the Fruit. I can't say why I held off reading Stretto for these eight years, but I have. The Marq’ssan Cycle, as a whole, is a deeply feminist series of social and moral ideas played out in bold and clear strokes with characters actively conscious of motivation, identity, and theory. The ideas here are what is important. I may need a refresher on the series so far, but I'm ready to finish this one up.

5. Company Town, by Madeline Ashby

This first hit my radar back in 2016 (when it was published) and the word was that the book was damned fantastic. Far be it for me to complain that a novel I've never read seems to have been under-read and under-appreciated, but the sense that I have is that Company Town is both under-read and under-appreciated (though, fully appreciated by those who did read the novel). Company Town has been on my "to-read" list since before publication and it's time to move it up. 

6. A Shadow In Summer, by Daniel Abraham

These days Daniel Abraham is best known for being one half of the writing team behind The Expanse, James S.A. Corey. Back in 2006 he published his first epic fantasy novel, A Shadow in Summer. It received an immense amount of praise, if not the sales to follow. I bought the first two books in the series shortly after publication, but as happens all too often, never cracked the cover. Perhaps this summer is a good time to remedy that.




POSTED BY: Joe Sherry - Co-editor of Nerds of a Feather, 2017 & 2018 Hugo Award Finalist for Best Fanzine. Minnesotan. 

Reading Deryni: The Harrowing of Gwynedd

Welcome to the fourth of a six part series of essays focusing on Katherine Kurtz's Deryni novels (you may find the first, second, and third parts here). As I am physically incapable of actually reviewing these novels with any semblance of objectivity because they've imprinted themselves deep into my heart, what I am going to do instead is write about the aspects of each of the "Camber Era" novels which have stuck with me throughout the years and which I find intriguing today. Shall we continue?

"I do not pray for a conversion of the Deryni," Secorim muttered through clenched teeth. "I pray for their destruction!"

"And I pray for deliverance from their influence!" Javan retorted, knowing he must defuse that line of hatred immediately, or all was lost. "I pray for deliverance, and today my prayer was answered."

Everything is awful.

We have not forgotten the massacre near the end of Camber the Heretic and just how bad life in Gwynedd has been for the Deryni living there. The title The Harrowing of Gwynedd should be quite enough to realize that things are not going to get better any time soon. Also, readers of the Kelson era novels know well enough how many hundreds of years for uneasy inroads to be made.

For now, we are still in the early days of the persecution of the Deryni race. With Cinhil dead, his underage son Alroy is on the throne of Gwynedd and under the control of the human regents who are far more interested in consolidating their own power and destroying the Deryni as completely as possible. There are few moments of grace here.

Instead, what we have is a pervading sense of numbness. The regents have their "pet" Deryni collaborating under extreme duress against their own race and doing the bidding of their masters. We have the state sponsored murder of Declan Carmody's wife and children done in front of him and his subsequent torture and and execution (though, he dies during said torture). We have the scourging of Javan for defying Archbishop Hubert. We have the creation of Custodes Fidei, the new religious order permitted to have soldiers of the faith as well as the responsibility for all religious instruction in Gwynedd - which doesn't sound terrible on its face, except that they are also given "automatic forgiveness for malicide", which essentially grants these soldiers of God "the license to murder Deryni". Yeah, they're friggin delightful (and they will only get worse in the next two books).

I don't have a strong memory of this book and what I do remember is that this is Evaine's book, but that's only half of the story. There are two parallel stories told in The Harrowing of Gwynedd.  One storyline is Javan back at the capital trying to find a way that he might be able to survive and thrive and provide information and access to his Deryni allies and friends. It is everything he can do to hide his hatred and disgust of what the regents are doing. Javan, being one of the three sons of Cinhil, has begun to develop magical powers - powers which should by rights only be developing in Alroy as King, but perhaps because Alroy is spending his days drugged into submission by the regents Javan is instead the beneficiary.

With those powers, we get back to one of the concerns I had with the previous three novels I wrote about it. In this novel we see Javan invade the mind of Hubert MacInnis and set magical compulsions to both guide and force Hubert into actions and behaviors he would never have considered on his own. Now, let's all acknowledge that Hubert is flat out evil and an example of a churchman whose every action is at utter opposition to the religion he is supposed to follow and, in fact, lead as Primate of Gwynedd. Previous novels gave many examples of true men of faith trying to follow the teachings of the church and live lives in imitation of Christ. The Harrowing of Gwynedd shows the other side of that coin, giving examples of men using the church to further their own aims.

So, when Javan uses his power on Hubert we see it as a good thing, an opportunity to mitigate the evil Hubert is planning, an opportunity to protect himself. But, this is also the very sort of action that causes humanity to hate and be fearful of the Deryni. Though Javan is not Deryni, he has their powers, and he is using it in the same way to take control of Hubert, to take control of random guards, and to demonstrate to everyone that Deryni can do what they want to whomever they want. Javan is one of my favorite characters, but the older I get the more I can see the cracks in the armor of the "virtuous" Deryni heroes. We read these books with the Deryni and the friends of the Deryni has heroes and as the persecuted minority - which they are, but even the good guys are doing ethically questionable stuff that we don't question because they're the good guys.

But let's move on to the part of the novel which I so clearly remember. This is the volume where Evaine truly comes into her own and set such a mark on me that until my re-read of the first three Camber era novels I had thought she played a significant role, and she doesn't. But here, almost freed of the shadow of her dead father, she comes into her own and steps into a significant leadership role of the Camberian Council and is the major player of this novel, along with Javan (who I remembered having a much lesser role than he does).

I said that Evaine is almost freed of the shadow of her dead father, and that's very accurate because her driving motivation for this novel is to research the magic required to return her father to life (she thinks he may be trapped between life and death). So, while she is a powerful character here, her actions are all still on her father's behalf. Where Evaine is at her best, though, is in the depth of the research into the spell to help her father. She shines as a researcher delving deep into deryni magic and lore - which gets to the heart of one of my favorite aspects of the Deryni novels. I love the heritage Kurtz reveals. I'd just love to see more of Evaine with the Council and how she helped develop the next generation of Deryni and her Healer children. Alas.

Had Evaine lived though this novel and into the next thirty plus years, I can only imagine the things she would have discovered, learned, and passed on about long lost and newly found aspects of magic. Instead, what we get are glimpses.

Here Evaine discovers the tomb of Orin and Jodotha, two legendary Deryni mystics. She is on the cusp of such great discoveries - but her focus is on restoring Camber to life, a man who had lived at least two lifetimes in his day.

I want to know so much more about Orin and Jodotha (there have long been rumors Kurtz will write that novel, too), the Airsid, the dark times of the "barbarian incursions, the failure of the Pax Romanum, the cost of the Moorish repulsion". I'd love a deep dive into Deryni history. We never quite get that anywhere else in the series.

Next up is my introduction to Katherine Kurtz and the world of the Deryni: King Javan's Year. Sometimes I start fairly deep into a series and still get hooked.


POSTED BY: Joe Sherry - Co-editor of Nerds of a Feather, 2017 Hugo Award Finalist for Best Fanzine. Writer / Editor of the mostly defunct Adventures in Reading since 2004. Minnesotan.

Reading Deryni: Camber the Heretic

Welcome to the third of a six part series of essays focusing on Katherine Kurtz's Deryni novels (you may find the first  and second parts here). As I am physically incapable of actually reviewing these novels with any semblance of objectivity because they've imprinted themselves deep into my heart, what I am going to do instead is write about the aspects of each of the "Camber Era" novels which have stuck with me throughout the years and which I find intriguing today. Shall we continue?

Nyford had burned for a day and a night, but not before rampaging humans had put to death all the Deryni and Deryni sympathizers who could be found. Deryni owned or piloted ships were burned to the waterline where they lay at the quays, after being robbed of their cargoes. Deryni shops were vandalized and looted, their proprietors usually dying in the process.

The schola was brought down stone by stone, after all its pupils and masters were put to the sword or clubbed to death. Many of the dead were no more than children [...] The piles of bodies lining the streets fueled fires whose smoke besmirched the clean skies above the delta for most of a week- pg 51-52

The persecution and purge of the Deryni race have been a looming specter hanging over the first two volumes of The Legends of Camber of Culdi. I'd like to back up a moment by looking forward. When Katherine Kurtz first published Deryni Rising in 1970, she dropped hints that some two hundred years earlier some really bad stuff happened to the Deryni race, that there was a deryni man named Camber who was canonized and later named a heretic, and in some cases the more "modern" society of Kelson's era was still recovering from what happened "back then." After writing three novels set in the era of King Kelson, Kurtz drew back the curtain and told the stories of what happened in the time of Camber of Culdi.

What happened in Camber's era is brutal and nasty and while there are moments of grace, those moments are increasingly fewer and farther between. Camber the Heretic is a dark book that gets darker as it progresses. The persecutions Camber had feared over the course of the two previous novels are now imminent threats as King Cinhil is close to dying and his sons not yet of age to rule on their own. Unlike Deryni Rising, where Kelson is able to take the throne as a competent adult at the age of 14, young (and sickly) Alroy has several years to go until he hits the age of his majority. The proposed Regency Council is primarily made up of human men who hate the Deryni and we learn very early on that they slipped some documents into a stack signed by Cinhil that will grant them power and control to shape the membership in the council itself (rather than simply abiding by the selections of Cinhil).

It is the combination of the public fear and anger facing Deryni since the ousting of the Deryni king Imre coupled with the soon to be regents of Gwynedd hatred of Deryni that is beginning to spill over as Camber the Heretic opens. The novel is set some ten years after the conclusion of Saint Camber.

Now the anti-Deryni factions were about to get their wish. Cinhil would die within the year, probably within the month, if Rhys' estimates were correct, and young King Alroy would be ruled by his regents. The last of the Deryni loyal to the Crown would be ousted by from their offices, their positions of influence, no matter than many of them had served Gwynedd and its present king well and with distinction. And then the ostracism would begin, and the persecutions, and finally the bloodshed. It had happened before, in other lands, in other times. Perhaps it was happening already. - pg 4

When I wrote about Camber of Culdi and Saint Camber, I talked around the Deryni persecutions because the persecutions were much less the focus on those novels and were rather more a looming threat. This gave me the space to think about religion and grace and the ethical use of Deryni magic. That space is now tightly contracted because Camber the Heretic is all about the bloody persecution of the Deryni race.

Early in the novel, the Deryni Healer Rhys Thurin discovers a new magical technique: the ability to "turn off" a Deryni's power and thus hide any evidence that person was ever a Deryni. Given the pride that Deryni have in their racial and cultural identity, as well as how their magic enhances how they interact with the world, this is no small thing. But, again, with the looming threat of state sponsored persecution of their race, the Camberian Council (a secret group of leading / powerful Deryni) decides to explore the idea of using this new technique as a way to possibly protect their people and relocate them as "humans" until such a time might come that their powers could be returned to them.

"And I think I have raised a valid question: if we block the best to save the best, who will teach the children?" - pg 236

The plan to block the powers and identity of Deryni is a last resort, because while the Council understands the hope to restore the powers taken away, they also recognize that this is unlikely to happen. Generations of Deryni will be lost, even as their lives may be spared. The Deryni teachers and leaders may not be around, either because their powers are also blocked or because they have also been murdered by the humans.

If you've read the original three Deryni novels Kurtz published (Deryni Rising, Deryni Checkmate, High Deryni), you may remember a scene where Morgan and Duncan visit the ruins of Saint Neot's and search for a transfer portal they might be able to use. While they found an unusable portal, they also found an old warning tied to that spot.

Beware, Deryni! Here lies danger! Of a full one hundred brothers only I remain, to try, with my failing strength, to destroy this Portal before it can be desecrated. Kinsman, take heed. Protect yourself, Deryni. The humans kill what they do not understand. Holy Saint Camber, defend us from fearful evil - pg 372

In Camber the Heretic, we see Dom Emrys, the Abbot of the Gabrillite order of Deryni teachers and healers, leave that message as his brethern are slaughtered, the chapel defiled, the abbey burnt and torn down, and finally, with his last breath he was able to destroy the portal and leave that message before he himself was murdered by human soldiers.

It gets worse, though. The part of Camber the Heretic which has most strongly imprinted itself is the wreckage of Trurill, a castle on Camber's former property. It's bad.

"If the captors of the castle had been brutal with Aidan and the castle's garrison, they had been savage with the castle's lord. They had beaten him, like Aidan, but that was the very least of the atrocities to which they had subjected poor Adrian." pg 447

Coming on the heels of the destruction of the Gabrillite and Michaeline chapterhouses, the discovery of what happened at Trurill is brutal. In some cases, I wonder if George R. R. Martin had read his Katherine Kurtz before setting down to write A Song of Ice and Fire. That Kurtz is describing what happened by showing us the aftermath, rather than writing the events as it happened, is no comfort.

Kurtz describes the detail, how the bodies were ripped apart, how the bodies lay, what sort of disfigurement, dismemberment, and torture was done. Who was impaled on stakes and crucified. It is relentless and it is as bleak as anything I have ever read.

There is a small moment of grace in this with Evaine directing the powers of her young son Tieg in healing Camlin, but that grace is tempered by the brutal loss of so much and it is then followed by the death of Camber himself (for real this time).

"Dear God, why?" he whispered, his voice breaking as the tears began to come. "Forty years to make this man, and now - this! A fall! Death should be more difficult." - pg 412  

Oh, and just in case everything else wasn't bleak enough, late in the novel after the human regents have made a mess of everything that could be considered good and holy and install the truly vile Hubert MacInnis as the new Primate of Gwynedd (sort of like a Pope), the new bishops meet for the Council of Ramos. What happens there? Oh, only the suspension of all Deryni priests and the subsequent defrocking of those priests, the forbidding of Deryni from ever taking Holy Orders again, the repudiation of Camber's canonization 12 years prior, the forbidding of Camber name to even be spoken on pain of whipping or the physical removal of one's tongue, the stripping of all titles of nobility for Deryni, the destruction of the mostly human religious order of The Servants of Saint Camber which included the burning to death of more than 60 mostly human followers, and more. So, nothing much.

Since so much of this has been focused on the persecutions, I have some final thoughts on Camber the Heretic:

**In my mind Evaine is a major character. She looms large in my memory of the Camber era novels. So, imagine my surprise when I finish this trilogy and realized that her role was relatively small if borderline non-existent. I think she must have had a much larger role in The Harrowing of Gwynedd and I translated that to this series, but she's a brilliant researcher and was discovering so much about lost Deryni heritage and magic that I really built her up. I was disappointed by her lack of presence. Even when she was on the page, she was so frequently in a minor support role and then quickly pushed aside.

**But about that lost Deryni magic - Camber the Heretic features the first mention of "an ancient Deryni brotherhood known as the Airsid". I want to know more!!

**Speaking of lost heritage,

The overall impression rather confirmed his suspicion that the origins of the Gabrillites, like the Deryni themselves, stretched back much farther in history than most folk assumed. While it was not much discussed, especially among the orthodox clergy, those who studied such things were well aware that many faiths besides Christianity had contributed to the body of knowledge which was the legacy of Deryni magic. - pg 171

I want to know more about these faiths, about the lost history, about how little people in the "present" actually seem to know about the past and what that says about what happened in the intervening centuries.

**I can't quite remember how the next trilogy goes, but we may have seen the last of the Michaeline Order. As a result of the persecutions, the Michaelines withdrew again, but this time for good. The text mentions Djellarda, the original motherhouse of the other, which overlooks "The Anvil of the Lord." Sometime in the intervening centuries, I believe the Michaelines rebranded themselves as The Knights of the Anvil. We hear of them in Kelson's time, but overall know very little.

**It is notable that early on in this novel Camber and company set up the potential for "Haldane Powers" in Cinhil's children - and those powers begin to quickly manifest themselves in Javan, the boy who seemed to have the strongest will to eventually defy the regents.

**I ran across this quote midway through the novel, ""The concept of dying to the world and being reborn is a fairly universal one, going back even before Judaic traditions. John the Baptist was neither the first nor the last to preach it." It raises an interesting side point because while I haven't talked about it before, like many, I've assumed the Deryni are a stand in of sorts for the Jewish people. After all, this world isn't a perfect match for ours, though the primary religion in the Eleven Kingdom is pretty much Christianity and we see hints of Islam. But this is a direct reference that stands out, though it is never explored in anything except for the semi-official fanfiction story "Arilan the Talmud Student" which was collected in Kurtz's Deryni Tales (which seems to legitimize it)

Finally, I will leave you with this, which is very much not a moment of grace but seems fitting based on the pain of this novel.

"I can't Alister," he whispered. "God help me, for the first time since I was ordained a priest. I can't. I saw, Alister! I had to watch while they hacked his poor, murdered body to pieces! There's no charity in my heart for what they did." pg 322

POSTED BY: Joe Sherry - Writer / Editor at Adventures in Reading since 2004. Nerds of a Feather contributor since 2015, editor since 2016. Minnesotan.

Reading Deryni: Saint Camber

Welcome to the second of a six part series of essays focusing on Katherine Kurtz's Deryni novels (you may find the first part here). As I am physically incapable of actually reviewing these novels with any semblance of objectivity because they've imprinted themselves deep into my heart, what I am going to do instead is write about the aspects of each of the "Camber Era" novels which have stuck with me throughout the years and which I find intriguing today. Shall we continue?

Let's begin by talking about magic and ethics. We briefly touched on the use of magic when we talked about Camber of Culdi, but the deeper I read into Saint Camber, the more I began to notice something that I never picked up on before.

"You make it sound, well, ominous," Guaire murmured, "as if there were something sinister about your Deryni powers."

[...]

"It's all right, Guaire. That's how many humans view our powers. And between the humans who distrust us because we're Deryni and the Deryni who distrust us because we deposed a Deryni king in favor of a human one, I suppose we're lucky to have the support we do." - pg 6

The perspective we have in Kurtz's Deryni novels is a very sympathetic view of the Deryni. While there are bad actors like Imre and Ariella and Charissa, we are given a contrasting view with Morgan and Camber and Evaine and Joram and Rhys Thurin and any number of others. The Deryni are men and women who happen to have magical powers and who, mostly, just want to live their lives much as anyone else. Even though they are physically no different than anyone else, their magic sets them apart as a separate race.

The reader is sympathetic to the persecuted Deryni and for good reason, but what I noticed on this re-read that I never picked up on before is that our "heroes", the intensely sympathetic protagonists of Saint Camber engage in some seriously questionable actions.

In addition to the obvious ties of Michaeline brotherhood and obedience to a bishop's higher rank, Crevan would be bound by more invisible links of Deryni crafting. Camber made sure of that during his last interview with Crevan, after informing him of his intention to name Crevan as his successor.

His touch was subtle but irresistable; and Crevan left none the wiser. - pg 189

Camber hand picked his successor as Vicar General of the Michaeline Order, but invaded the man's mind so that he would be much more amenable to obeying Camber's directives and preferences.

Given that Crevan was never asked, let alone gave permission, there is no conceivable way to read this as anything over that a complete violation of Crevan. This is wrong and it is done by one of "the good guys", by one of the paragons of the Deryni race. It is done by one, who by the end of this novel, is canonized as a Saint.

Despite the general goodness of Camber what he does here, along with other instances throughout the series of the "good" Deryni entering people's minds to "protect" either the individual or themselves, is so very questionable and is one of the legitimate concerns humans have about the Deryni. How can the Deryni be trusted when those with the power use it against unwitting humans? This is not to say that I think the Deryni are monsters who should be eliminated, but we are seeing instances of the more positive representations of the Deryni using their powers in remarkably unethical ways.

Camber is rightfully concerned that since the coup to restore the throne of Gwynedd to the Haldanes that a backlash against the Deryni race is building and so much of what he does is in support of lessening that backlash, because even he does not believe it is possible to eliminate it all together.

Perhaps a third of the way through the novel, Alister Cullen is killed in battle with Ariella (thus mostly concluding a primary storyline from the previous novel). Cullen was the Vicar General of the Michaeline order of warrior priests (for lack of a quicker description), but more importantly, Cullen was a Deryni and perhaps the only friend and confident that King Cinhil had. Cinhil has been unable to truly trust Camber and Evaine and the others because these men and women with magic tore him away from the church he so desperately loved and thrust a crown on him.

So because Camber felt the near inevitable turning on the Deryni race and with Cullen slain, Camber used magic to first lay Cullen's soul to rest (it had been trapped by a final counterstroke by Ariella) and then changed his body to that of Cullen's and Cullen's to Camber's - so that, to all appearances, it was Camber who died in battle with Ariella and Cullen who lived.

The rest of Camber's life is a deception, but he felt it was necessary to become Alister Cullen if it meant that the backlash against the Deryni people could be lessened.  There were some deceptions that Camber was not willing to do, which gets back to one of the facets of Camber of Culdi which I most appreciated, which is the honest and true faith in God that these men and women have.

Alister Cullen had been tapped to be the next bishop of Grecotha, but Camber himself had never proceeded past being a deacon before being recalled back home when his brothers had died. Camber was not willing to dishonor the church, God, or the role of being a bishop by celebrating mass as a sham. Camber had never been ordained as a priest, and this is something he took seriously. Camber shared his secret with his old friend, the Archbishop, and was ordained prior to celebrating mass as a bishop.

Would they be faithful and constant in proclaiming the Word of God? Would they sustain and protect the people of God and guide them in the ways of salvation?

Would they show compassion to the poor and to strangers and to all who were in need? Would they seek out the sheep who had strayed, and gather them back into the fold?

Would they love with the charity of a father and a brother all those whom God placed in their care, even at the cost of their own mortal lives?

They would. - pg 238

I want to highlight this passage as it gets to the heart of what it means to believe in the Christian god (which is pretty much what this world worships, even though it is not a one to one with the church and our world) - because it puts a spotlight on what the priests and bishops and archbishops are supposed to be and how they are supposed to act and lead. This is important, because unfortunately as the series progresses, we'll see just as many priests who won't follow those commands, even to the highest offices of the church. It is heartbreaking.

But where this series will show us dishonorable and immoral priests, it has not yet. What Kurtz has shown is how happy Joram is that his father is now his brother in the priesthood and is now a Father to more than just his own family. He has a quiet pride in his father because now they share something that few can understand, and they each have a sincere vocation.

There are a handful of smaller points which I would like to quickly address.

*While it is in the Chronicles of the Deryni trilogy that we are introduced to the Camberian Council, it is a very shadowy organization in Kelson's era. There we get the sense of the weight of history and authority and infighting, but it is in Saint Camber that we first see the glimmers of the Camberian Council, though it isn't known as such when Camber first mentions the idea. In the fear of a violent backlash against the Deryni, to the point that more than just the Michaelines would need to go into hiding as they did in the year leading up to reclaiming the throne of Gwynedd from the Festils, and for potentially more than just a year. The council is to be set up "to prevent flagrant abuses and to discipline those we can't prevent" and it will be "Deryni sitting in judgment of Deryni" (pg 248).

We'll explore how the Council comes to be and changes over the next four novels, but I will forever be left wondering about how it changes over the next two centuries.

*Saint Camber contains the first mention of "The Protocols of Orin".

*Camber begins to delve into the origins of the Deryni religious orders in Saint Camber. While I recognize this is background, it is one of those things I am deeply fascinated by the various schisms of the past and how it shaped the orders of the "present". Camber also discovers a consecrated altar from one of those earlier orders, an altar built like ward cubes, but in a configuration even Camber has never seen before. It is noted how much magical knowledge has been lost in the time between Camber's era and Kelson's, but this touches on how much knowledge is lost even in Camber's day - knowledge that might just be rediscovered in the scrolls Camber found which are from Orin's day (hundreds of years prior) and yet earlier. Between Camber and Evaine, there is a great opportunity to translate those scrolls and rediscover so much that was lost. This assumes, of course, they ever get the time. Remember, I know how this ends. 

*Late in the novel - and this has been gradually building since the deception of "Camber's" death - a religious community is building around the idea that Camber should be canonized: The Servants of Saint Camber. This is because of the "miracles" Camber caused with visions and magic, one to convince a distressed servant to support "Alister Cullen", one where Camber let his control slip when he was being healed by Rhys Thurin and assimilating the memories of the real Alister Cullen. Of course, the title of the book *is* Saint Camber and we remember the "he had not yet earned the title of Saint" line from the prologue to Camber of Culdi, so it isn't like this is a surprise. But, The Servants of Saint Camber is notable. Also notable is how much I apparently enjoy ecclesiastical politics with the convocation and defense of why Camber should (or should not) be canonized.

I will leave with this, because it is continually rending that Cinhil is so torn up inside of being not quite forced to give up his true vocation.

"Ego te absolvo, Cinhil," the voice whispered. He felt a light touch on his bowed head. "Be welcome at the Lord's table," Cullen continued in a more normal tone. "Will you share this Eucharistic Feast with us on the morn of battle?"

Cinhil opened his eyes, but he count not bear to raise his eyes higher than Cullen's knees.

"D-Domine, non sum dignus," he managed to stammer.

"'Thou art a priest forever,'" Cullen replied in a whisper. - pg 73

POSTED BY: Joe Sherry - Writer / Editor at Adventures in Reading since 2004, Nerds of a Feather contributor since 2015. Minnesotan.

Reference: Kurtz, Katherine. Saint Camber. [Ballantine Books, 1978]

Reading Deryni: Camber of Culdi

Welcome to the first of a six part series of essays focusing on Katherine Kurtz's Deryni novels. As I am physically incapable of actually reviewing these novels with any semblance of objectivity because they've imprinted themselves deep into my heart, what I am going to do instead is write about the aspects of each of the "Camber Era" novels which have stuck with me throughout the years. Shall we begin?

I have struggled for a while now to come up with a way to talk about Camber of Culdi. Katherine Kurtz's Deryni novels have long been a favorite of mine ever since I first discovered King Javan's Year back in 1993 and my small town librarian soon after pushed the earliest set Deryni novels on me. This is where I was hooked. I love Javan's painful story, but the wonder and brutal sorrow of the three volumes of The Legends of Camber of Culdi is really what hooked me on Kurtz. This probably says more about me as a teenager than I'm willing to admit.

Earlier this year I re-read Katherine Kurtz's original Deryni trilogy and participated in a megablogtable here at Nerds of a Feather discussing the first book, Deryni Rising. When I wrote about Deryni Rising on my blog back in June I mentioned that anytime I was looking to re-read Deryni I would invariably return to the Camber era novels because "many of the details that I cared about, the mysteries and the magic and the rituals, were lost by Kelson's time."

The political landscape of Deryni Rising was shaped by 200 years of brutal persecution of the Deryni race. "Deryni", it should be pointed out, are humans who just happen to be able to use magic and have no other differences that I can recall reading about. The original Deryni trilogy drops hints about what happened during that time and about a "Saint Camber" who was, by Kelson's era, little more than legend.  Camber of Culdi begins to tell the story of not only the titular character, but of the events of that era which led to both the restoration of the Haldane family to the throne of Gwynedd but also to the persecution of the Deryni race.

As I mentioned two paragraphs ago, the parts of this novel (and the entire Deryni saga) I cared most about were the "mysteries and the magic and the rituals", so as we step back 200 years in the history of the Eleven Kingdoms, we go from the epic rhyming magical duels of Deryni Rising to a significantly more subtle use of deryni magic in Camber of Culdi. The difference is striking. Where the spells that Kelson uses against Charissa are constructed via rhyme, Camber can use his magic to sift through the memories of another or cause one man to have the illusion of resembling another man. The method Camber uses are ritual and general mysticism. It's magic, but a very internal one. As with the church where there are ritual words used in worship; depending on the magic, there are rituals involved - but those rituals often seem to mirror those of the church in an honest and respectful way. Deryni can invoke the archangels in ritual and it is quite clear that those are real forces. Other uses of the magic involve meditation and training. There are schools that teach healing, a skill long lost by Kelson's era.

One thing that I would like to add to that list of things I like most about Camber of Culdi, and this will extend across the rest of the Camber-era novels is the religion and Kurtz's handling of legitimate faith.

"Think on it, Your Highness," Joram said, rising and moving towards the door. "Where, if anywhere, is the break between your duty to God and your obligations to His people, your people? Is there even a difference?"

"I vowed vows," Cinhil moaned.

Joram paused in the doorway to gaze compassionately at his fellow priest.

"Feed my sheep," he whispered...
p228

Cinhil's faith and his calling to be a priest is central to who he is and how he interacts with the world, especially in light of Joram (a warrior priest, but a priest all the same) asking Cinhil to forsake his priestly vows and accept an earthly crown. In a weaker novel, this would likely be a decision made far easier and with lighter consequences. Here, the agony of this decision is as intense as it could possibly be with immense pressure being brought to bear on Cinhil. This is as it should be. Cinhil has devoted his life to the Church and has spent the previous twenty years or more in monastic life with a vow of silence. It is one of many vows he has been asked to break for the "good" of Gwynedd.

In many ways I see the Deryni Saga as a story of faith and fear and prejudice. This is all tied together with the Church of the Eleven Kingdoms. The "Church", as it is called, is a stand in for the Roman Catholic Church of our world, and in the Eleven Kingdoms it has immense power. The fear and hate of many in the church of the magic wielding Deryni is significant and it is a driving force in the series as a whole.

When Camber of Culdi opens, the Deryni are in power in Gwynedd. The current King, Imre, is not an especially moral or effective ruler, so when the Deryni healer Rhys Thurin learns that one of his patients is actually a descendant of the previous and more legitimate (but human) Haldane dynasty and who happens to have one surviving grandchild...events are set in motion.

As I noted earlier, readers of Deryni Rising are already aware that there was a "backlash" and "purge" against the Deryni in Gwynedd, is it any wonder the seeds of it are sown here when a magic wielding minority brutally came to power some three or four generations prior and now humanity is about to have the chance to "reclaim" their throne and their kingdom? We should know better if we think this will end well. There are hints of that that backlash here in the actions of Imre and that even Deryni are looking to depose a king of their race and restore the throne to humans. Camber and others discuss their fear of retributions and their bare hopes to be able to limit it.

When I think about Camber of Culdi and the earliest set Deryni novels, I think about the religion, the fear, the hate, the beauty, the magic tied to ritual, the so very real faith, and the sense of discovery each page brought. These weren't the "good old days" of the Eleven Kingdoms by any means, but in many ways they were mine.


POSTED BY: Joe Sherry - Writer / Editor at Adventures in Reading since 2004, Nerds of a Feather contributor since 2015. Minnesotan.

Reference: Kurtz, Katherine. Camber of Culdi. [Ballantine Books, 1976]

MEGABLOGTABLE: Deryni Rising by Katherine Kurtz (1970)

Back in June I was struck by the sudden urge to re-read Katherine Kurtz's Deryni series. This had been one of my favorite fantasy series in my early teenage years (before I discovered edgy literary fiction and temporarily abandoned genre). I remembered it as more grounded in actual history than most fantasy, with great characters and an appealingly minimalist approach to magic. After re-discovering fantasy via A Song of Ice and Fire, some years later, I often found myself wondering how these books would hold up now, reading them as an adult. So after reading Kari Sperring's essay on the Deryni series, I decided to give it a shot (and loved it). Not long after, I wandered into a conversation among several of my twitter friends: Joe Sherry, Rob Bedford, Paul Weimer, Jonah Sutton-Morse and Fred Kiesche. Turns out we were all reading the first book! So we decided to have a little fireside chat about Deryni Rising, how it holds up after all these years and its influence on more modern fantasy. I offered to host the chat, and the rest is history. Here is the record (questions in bold)...


[The G] I think it’s fair to say we all really liked Deryni Rising by Katherine Kurtz--I know I did. But what is it, exactly, that makes this novel hold up so well? I mean, it’s more than 40 years old, but it feels quite modern in many ways. Am I right? Why or why not?

Rob Bedford: In large part, it is Kurtz’s ability to build up the narrative tension as the novel ramped up to the confrontation with Charissa. Good, gripping storytelling survives and continues to draw people in because it keeps people from stepping away from the story. I think it is the simplicity of the story and how elegantly Kurtz constructs the story.

Jonah Sutton-Morse: I think part of it is that the concerns are political.  The emphasis is on characters interacting, with the world and magic in many ways in the background.  It seems almost as though the concerns of fantasy have come back around to Kurtz after drifting away for a while.  Also it’s well paced.  There’s always a new mystery (aggressively signposted!) to keep moving forward.

Joe Sherry: Two things stand out for me. One: How quickly Kurtz gets into the action of the story and how tight the timeline is here. Everything that happens is so immediate,  but it feels appropriate with the political risk of Kelson being able to hold on to a crown he is barely prepared to accept because he is only about to hit his legal majority all the while he is about to face a challenge from an external threat with an internal agent. I’m not sure that stuff really gets old when it’s written so smoothly. Two: This may be colored by how I feel about some of the later novels, but what I like is the minutiae, the details of how things work behind the scenes - the Council sessions, the rituals of the church, the tidbits on Deryni history.

Paul Weimer: I agree with Joe. Kurtz drops us into things without as much of that ramp up as one might expect, especially given the era in which it was written. We also get very clearly defined stakes pretty early on and can follow Kelson’s line clearly. No meandering for the sake of meandering.

Fred Kiesche: My copious backstory on how I found the book might explain why I still think it holds up. I first encountered the book as part of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series (get your mind out of the gutter, Rob, “adult” in this case means “not for children” not “boom-chicka-wah-wah”). That was a series that Ballantine Books ran from the (roughly) mid sixties to the (roughly) early seventies.

Rob: Thanks for the vote of maturity Fred! Seriously, I was aware that this was part of the BAF, and the only wholly original title in the program.

Fred: In those dark times there was scarcely an original fantasy market. Sure, you could score reprints of Conan (Ace Books!), find hardcovers in yard sales or even your library (Arkham House, for example), but most of the original paperbacks (and the marketplace was mostly paperbacks in spinner racks in drugstores and the like, the town I grew up in originally—Teaneck, NJ—did not get a bookstore until 1969 and the town that I then moved to—Kinnelon, NJ—did not get a used bookstore until around 1974 and a “new stuff” bookstore until 1976) were science fiction. Occasionally DAW Books would do something by Lin Carter that was “sort of” fantasy (much in the vein of Edgar Rice Burroughs), but for the most part there was almost no fantasy.

So: No Brooks, Donaldson, Weis, Eddings...no (fill in your favorite author here). Tolkien and Lewis and a few “classics” were around but not known (my mother took Fellowship of the Ring out from the library for me in 1969 and the introduction stopped me cold).

Betty Ballantine brought out some collections of the art of Frank Frazetta that sold like hotcakes. The Ace editions of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E. Howard (with Frazetta covers and “expanded” by such people as L. Sprague de Camp, Lin Carter and Poul Anderson—this was years before some unknown named Robert E. Jordan started doing them!) sold well. Ace Books came out with an “unauthorized” edition of The Lord of the Rings (an interesting story in of itself) and Ballantine came out with the “authorized” edition (and sold very well because of promotion and the fact the author blessed it). Ballantine Books brought some other (older) fantasy works into print (William E. Morris, E.R. Eddison) which also sold well.

So they had the brilliant idea...why not an entire line of fantasy stories aimed at these adults (mostly college students) that were snapping them up? So the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series was born, run by Lin Carter.

The line was mostly reprints. In addition to those names mentioned above, Carter brought back into print (or into paperback) names such as Fletcher Pratt, Mervyn Peake, Lord Dunsany, James Branch Cabell, George MacDonald, Hope Mirrlees and others.

And also, an original book: Deryni Rising, which appeared in the BAF series in August of 1970.

I don’t recall how early on I came across that. I know that during the summer of 1970, I tried the hardcover of The Lord of the Rings and bounced off of it. Then I found the Ballantine edition of The Hobbit, loved it, made the connection with The Lord of the Rings, read that again, loved it, and then started hunting down anything from Ballantine (they thoughtfully provided a list of titles in their books).

Some titles I found in those aforementioned spinner racks. Some were found in yard sales or garage sales or tag sales or rummage sales (names varied according to region visited). Some titles I grew to love as much as The Lord of the Rings (Mervyn Peake has no magic, is borderline “fantasy” at best, but the story and the setting...especially the middle volume...wow!), other books were stilted and archaic and difficult to get through (William Morris, E.R. Eddison and David Lindsay come to mind).

Then there was Deryni Rising. When I encountered it, I knew that it was a newly-written original book (Lin Carter wrote introductions for many of the books that were printed while he was running the line in addition to writing some non-fiction books and anthologies). It was short (when compared to  Peake and a few others).

But it was amazing. It took place over a short period of time, in a relatively small number of locations. There were no elves or fairies or the like, other than having powers (which could be manifestations of forms of telepathy for that kid who mostly read science fiction), there were only people in the book. The setting “could be” Europe (other than the rather strange proximity, it seemed to me of one desert locale; even then I thought about how topography would affect the land). There was a religion that I could recognize (there’s debate over what Kurtz based this one, but other than a lack of a Pope, it seemed Catholic to me!), no words that I stumbled on.

And… murder and plots… and secret meetings and magical rites ...and even a duel between wizards!

Before fantasy movies, before fantasy games, before a “fantasy genre” practically, this book had so many of the elements that we encounter and love again and again. Does it hold up now? You bet! It holds up because it is, in many cases, the “source code” (along with a few other works mentioned here, but also people like Jack Vance and Fritz Leiber and Ursula K. Le Guin).  Yes, there are some weaknesses. Yes, there is some cracking plaster from where subsequent volumes were added to the series (and shoved up against the original foundation). But...reading it again, after decades, it kept my attention and has (once again) made me want to read the rest of the series.


[The G] My big issue with the book was its treatment--or perhaps, more accurately, its non-treatment--of women. Charissa is a fairly cardboard villain, while Jehanna arguably embodies the negative stereotypes of women as petty, vain and overly emotional. Did this bother you guys as well? And were there other ways in which you felt the book didn’t age well?

Rob: It [the treatment/non-treatment of women] was noticeable, mainly because of how much discussion is currently going on in the genre in terms of gender parity. On one hand, it makes sense for Jehanna to have the feelings she does towards Morgon as well as the hesitancy about her son. On the other, Charissa could have easily been a man in the role she played and it wouldn’t have changed the story. The “treatment” of the women characters in the novel didn’t bother me too much, to be honest, but it was perhaps the only aspect of the novel that felt a bit dated. How does it compare to other novels of the time, in terms of treatment of women characters? Not saying that makes it acceptable. If anything, the mildly surprising element of the treatment of the women characters is that the book was written by a women.

Jonah: yep, the treatment of women generally sucks, and I don’t feel that Jehanna comes across well.  Charissa is noticeable in part as the person interested in sex.  Men with men don’t think about it.  Men with women do, which was also frustrating.  Mostly, I just didn’t feel that either Charissa or Jehanna were real characters, though I think I’d extend that critique more broadly - I think that most characters are playing a role (some almost literally - Morgan the Dark Defender, Duncan the reluctant wizard-priest, Kelson the superman with his trusted Uncle).  It’s just that Jehana got to be the crazy emotional queen & Charissa the Dark Seductress which are even more unpleasant character types than the others.

Joe: Can I just agree with Rob?

Paul: To be fair: The portrayal in women in general in epic and secondary world fantasy has been evolving over the last two decades. I think if they were being published for the first time now, a lot of reviewers would excoriate them harder. It’s not excuse, but its explanation. To Rob’s point, this goes to the whole “writing to a male audience” that a lot of writers, women and men, engage in.

Fred: The treatment of women is no better or worse than any other contemporary fantasy novel. Kurtz was a new writer at that point and I don’t know if she was just shadowing the norm or was pushed in that direction by her agent (or editor or publisher). Given how few female characters are in the books of the time (or the books in the BAF series), she did, I think, a good job with several female characters playing major roles. And, I think, as the series grew, so did the role of women (think of—spoilers, sweetie—the role of the daughter’s of a certain person in a certain prologue series!).

Jonah: I’m willing to agree that standards have changed and reviewers would highlight this more, but  I stand by the assertion that the women are a symptom of not-very-fleshed-out characters. What do you guys think?

The G: You may be right, Jonah, but I read the female characters as poorly drawn relative to the male characters. I mean, Morgan, Duncan, Kelson, Ian, Brian--they are all capable, and all save Ian are also relatable. And they all have at least some depth. Of the female characters, by contrast, only Charissa is capable, and "none" are relatable. Why the scare quotes? Because there's only one other female character in the book--Jehanna, who basically exists to annoy Kelson and Morgan (and, by extension, the reader). Okay, I lied--there is one other female who appears momentarily, a courtesan who Morgan basically slaps out of her "female hysteria." This may be a sign of the book's age, but it doesn't read well today. Actually I found it very frustrating.


[Jonah] This book had me thinking a lot about inheritance & traditions.  Kurtz acknowledges debt to Dune, and having read that, the parallels jumped out.  Lots of political undercurrents, Kelson the superkid groomed to rule, even little things like the Stenrect crawler in the garden that he has to stay perfectly still to avoid.  Similarly, when I read The Goblin Emperor with it’s elaborate coronation rituals, court full of titled characters (the Supreme of Howicce!), and concerns above all with political undercurrents, I got strong echoes of Kurtz.  (All three books also arguably mostly posit good characters behaving honorably, a few obvious villains, and then a single traitor to show the danger of trust, while mostly reinforcing their main character’s interest in trust & showing good faith).  I don’t think I’d put these three books in the same genres, but I do think that each is very much inheriting from what came before (which I’m always nervous of because it tends very close to trying to interpret the author’s thoughts rather than the text).  Thoughts? Are there other books that you’d group here, or other inheritors of different aspects?

Fred: Given the setting (based strongly on England during the Middle Ages), the use of inheritance (the land is ruled by a king and administered by other men who inherit power) using traditions (a combination of practice and law). There’s the strong presence of a church (more traditions, a different ruling base) and magic (more tradition and ritual). There’s also a nice sense of time (with things having been lost, think of Strider in The Lord of the Rings being the representative of a lost culture or Old Ben Kenobi in Star Wars being the last of a once proud profession).

I never thought of any parallel to Dune, myself. Kelson is “groomed” but so would the son of any king, whether magical power was involved or not. This is, I think more of an aspect of any cycle of stories, which could be fantasy, set in this sort of society. Think of Mordred in L’Morte D’Arthur and the other stories of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table; he was “groomed” to rule and to get revenge.

The G: I’m not entirely sure how to answer this question, but here goes: some of what you are picking up on, I think, is the common influence of medieval Romances and of nonfictional accounts of court intrigue. And, of course, it’s quite likely that Katherine Kurtz read Dune before publishing, and that Katherine Addison/Sarah Monette read both. It’s not entirely certain--after all, when I finished The Black Company, I was certain that it had been a major influence on Joe Abercrombie. Later I found out that he had not, as of a couple years ago (and possibly still), read the series.

Similarly, a lot of people who read Old Man’s War when it was first published assumed that Scalzi was responding to Starship Troopers and The Forever War. It’s true in the first instance, but not in the second--like Abercrombie, he hadn’t read the book that seemed like such a big influence on his own work (until some years later). I’d guess that Addison/Monette has read Deryni Rising anyway--she may even be making reference to it, a la George R. R. Martin to Tad Williams, Roger Zelazny, etc. But the more important linkage is, I think, the common approach of recontextualizing the medieval Romance and historical accounts of court intrigue within the fantasy form.

Rob: This question couldn’t be timed more serendipitously. As chance would have it, I went back to another “modern classic*” of Epic Fantasy, Melanie Rawn’s Dragon Prince (DAW, 1988), the first novel she published and the first in the “Dragon Prince” series. Over the first seven chapters I have been especially struck by just how damned similar Rawn’s novel is to Deryni Rising, in terms of story beats. You’ve got a royal hunt (in Rawn’s case, a Dragon hunt); a ruler mortally wounded in said hunt; the chosen Prince as inheritor who many think is ill-equipped; the chosen Prince acting counter in some ways to how, in historical context, he should behave; hints of powers beyond what is normal for him; and a scheming nemesis.  These similarities could be that Kurtz and Rawn are pulling from a similar well of tropes and story beats, but I would be very surprised if Rawn didn’t read (at least once) Deryni Rising.

*Classic being subjective term, of course, but Rawn has a pretty big readership and Tor.com is a doing a re-read of the books..

Rawn handles the gender roles more fairly, although the “women-folk” still stay at home while the men hunt, the main female character shows signs of being proactive and more than just a prop for the Prince’s reign. Again, only about 140 pages/7 chapters into the book as of this writing.

I read The Goblin Emperor before Deryni Rising; I’ll just say that Deryni Rising was far superior reading experience for me on nearly every level. Sure both stories/novels had court intrigue and an heir that many believed to be inept, but for me, that’s where the comparisons end. Connecting Deryni Rising forward to The Goblin Emperor never entered my mind until our twitter conversations and Jonah mentioned them both on his podcast.

Joe: Keep reading, Rob. While there are some “traditional” roles in Rawn’s work, many of the female characters are quite adept at wielding their own personal power and taking charge in their lives.  Back to Deryni!


[Jonah] Le Guin’s famous essay "Elfland to Poughkeepsie" situates the Deryni books firmly in Poughkeepsie: books with magic but where the enchantment has been drained away along with some of the peril of elfland. She relies heavily on stylistic critiques, but I think the point is equally valid just thinking about how the story is told and the ways the plot is concerned so much with politics and relationships. This doesn’t necessarily detract from the book, which I loved, but does raise some interesting questions about where it fits in the fantasy tradition & other books that are closer to the perilous enchantments of Elfland. (A Song of Ice and Fire looms large here, but the bits of magic are so *mysterious* that Martin is probably closer to occasional intrusions of Elfland than Kurtz?) I guess at it’s most basic, my question is: do you agree that Fantasy often has (or aspires to) bringing in the enchantment of a distant & mysterious land, and that Deryni rising mostly fails at this? with the follow-up of what does it say that it’s so successful despite not hitting that mark? but feel free to jump off other things.

Joe: I’m not sure I really care. I mean that in the best possible way. Again, I’m colored by having read all of Kurtz’s Deryni work, especially the earlier Camber-era novels so I’ll try to limit this to how things are presented in Deryni Rising. In Deryni Rising the magic appears to be somewhat mystical (with really awkward rhyming battles - somehow I think Alan Dean Foster should pay royalties to Kurtz for Spellsinger) - the methodology of the magic isn’t explained and Kelson appears to use it by instinct. But I’m not sure I agree that the enchantment of the magic is drained away - unless we take this to mean that because it is otherwise a low-magic world and the magic users are generally feared and persecuted in Gwynedd so that there isn’t “magic” in the magic. So - okay, I’ll grant that. But are we taking this as a negative? There is magic in ritual. You see this with the ward cubes, but it becomes much more evident later.

To answer your question, I’m not sure that we can narrow “Fantasy” enough to say that it does or does not aspire to the enchantment of other lands, Elfland if you will. Some of it does, sure, but just as much does not. I’m not sure the categorization is important, now or when Le Guin wrote her essay. Emma Bull’s War for the Oaks is set in 1980’s Minneapolis. I’ve been to a number of the locations she writes about, I’ve seen shows at First Avenue. But Bull ties in faerie and a supernatural conflict that is very much a “perilous enchantment” - so what do we do there? Does it matter?

Paul: I definitely want to unpack The Goblin Emperor and Deryni Rising in my own question to the group, so I will reserve talking about that here. I do think Deryni Rising is definitely working on the mechanics and nuts and bolts in a Dune like way--and that’s why Dune reads like an epic fantasy much more than a space opera.

As far as fantasy and enchantment, fantasy is, as has been said, the largest, broadest category of fiction that there is. By comparison to mimetic fiction, or even science fiction, the potential range of fantasy, from Amber to Deryni to War for the Oaks to Jim Butcher to Wizard of the Pigeons to Tolkien is vast. In fantasy’s house, there are many mansions. The enchantment of other lands, and Elfland argument sounds to me, like an argument made in the Encyclopedia of Fantasy about the diminishment of magic as being a major concern in fantasy. I think that was true, once. But I think it’s a leftover of Tolkienian “Fourth Age” concerns.

The G: Well, I’ve always thought of fantasy as this: take a plausible world (whether secondary or this one), then add some element of magic and/or concretized metaphysics that makes it different from the actual world we live in. The degree of variation between the created fantasy world and ours is, to me, unimportant. Both books where the magic and metaphysics are light, such as Deryni Rising, and ones that are positively dripping with the stuff, like The Black Company, work for me.

More to the point, I’m not sure why the degree of fantastical elements should measure “success” or “failure” at being fantasy. In fact, I’m tempted to suggest that even the basic definition of fantasy as dependent on some degree of magic or metaphysics is too restrictive. I mean, imagine a book set in a secondary world but without magic. What would you call that, if not fantasy? Regardless, if we do accept magic as integral to fantasy, for the sake of argument at least, then it’s better to think of Deryni Rising as embodying a specific approach to fantasy than to judge that approach as a qualitative indicator of how successful it is as fantasy.

Fred: Much like science fiction, fantasy is anything I point at and say is fantasy. I’ve used a lot of terminology in the past, some taken from Carter, some taken from Le Guin, even some developed by people like Robert H. Boyer and Kenneth J. Zahorski in their Fantastic Imagination series of anthologies.

Kurtz “fits into” fantasy as much as any other book in the field. The amount of magic does not matter, the proximity to Elfland does not matter. It share so many tropes used throughout the field, mining the same traditions that “more elvish” books mined (be it Shakespeare or the or the Prose Edda or the Epic of Gilgamesh) and it been the genesis itself of so much subsequent telling of tales (be they other books and stories or people running roleplaying games) that we cannot exclude it from fantasy.

Rob: I’ll mostly borrow Joe’s earlier response: “Can I just agree with Joe?”  I think of, at least Deryni Rising as historical fantasy. There’s enough supernatural/magic in a non-real location it to place it outside of historical fiction I don’t see this book (not sure about the remainder of the series) as “bringing in the enchantment of a distant & mysterious land.” If anything, I see this the opposite: bringing enchantment to a familiar land (or at least a land that resonates with historical, real places, but renamed) with closer ties to Arthurian Myth.


[Paul] Right, so my question: Deryni Rising feels like it comes from a somewhat different timeline of fantasy novels, or one that is an undercurrent. The emphasis on the process of politics and the *lack* of autarchy and the division of power.  Just as in the novels of Sherwood Smith and also in The Goblin Emperor, the politics of Deryni felt more complex than most epic fantasy. How did you find it? Did you like it?

Fred: Could this be an artifact of the age of the author? Or the time she was writing in? Deryni Rising was published when she was 26, so relatively out of college (or possibly still in graduate school) in 1970. You have a combination of both the time when most people are at their most political plus a year when younger people in the United States were (ahem) agitated over many things (civil rights, Vietnam, the then President). It would be very easy for “politics” to leak in.

I don’t think, however, that Kurtz was leaking her politics into the story or the politics of the time. As I said earlier, it appears, to me, that she was possibly just as influenced by a number of other literary sources (Shakespeare, etc.) and injecting the politics as part of the court and kingdom drama she was shooting for.

As for if I liked it, it is part of the charm of the book for me. Just as one of the books I read this year (The Goblin Emperor) would have been very much the poorer without politics, the same with this.

The G: It’s fairly sophisticated, and as I was re-reading the book, I kept thinking of A Game of Thrones--the first novel in A Song of Ice and Fire, that is, and wondered if Martin might have been responding to Deryni Rising in much the same way that he’s responding to other landmark fantasy series.

I mean, both novels are similarly preoccupied with the process of politics, with conspiracies and so forth. They’re obviously quite different, but I did feel that, whereas Kurtz presents a fairly Romantic view of royal and aristocratic politics (altered, of course, for a world that hews closely to medieval history but is made-up and features the limited use of magic), Martin is digging up the dirt to show ugliness for what it is (in a similarly constructed world). Charissa is evil, true, but no one in Deryni Rising is arbitrary in their use of power, whereas just about everyone in A Game of Thrones is--Ned Stark excluded (and we all know what that got him).

Whether Kurtz’s idealized or Martin’s anti-idealized visions of medieval politics is “more realistic” is another story. But I think it’s clear that Martin is trying to be “more realistic” (however misapplied that term is). And the lack of political process fantasies between the Deryni series and A Song of Ice and Fire makes me think that it’s not coincidental. Martin is very widely read, and the Deryni novels are, I think, rightly considered to be on the highbrow side of the genre. I’m sure he’s read them.

Rob: Well, the primary setting of the novel is a court and the challenge the prince has in ascending the throne so I’m not sure, like Fred says, the novel would have been as strong – or even worked – had politics not been part of the novel/story. To answer the basic question, I thoroughly enjoyed nearly every aspect of the novel. Kurtz did an incredible job of pulling off the story in such a competent fashion at a relatively young age and for her first novel. I haven’t read any of Sherwood Smith’s work, but I’ll say everything Addison tried to do in The Goblin Emperor was done much more effectively and enjoyably (for my reading sensibilities) by Kurtz here in Deryni Rising. (If it hasn’t become clear at this point, I wasn’t a fan of The Goblin Emperor)

Jonah: I think it’s best that I just echo Rob’s sentiments on Deryni Rising and The Goblin Emperor (since it was reading The Goblin Emperor for Rocket Talk many moons ago that prompted me to pick up Deryni Rising leading indirectly to this chat) and move on.  I want to return a bit to my question which I think I phrased poorly.  I feel like there are some fantasy novels where the geography and magical systems are systematic and predictable - the rules and laws of the world may be different from ours, but the general notion that things are more or less deterministic & predictable still holds.  In others, to borrow Tolkien’s language "You step into the road and if you don't keep your feet there's no telling where you might end up."  With the reference to Elfland above I meant mostly to suggest that Kurtz is on the predictable side of the Fantasy spectrum, but I did so very clumsily. This does, though (to circle back to Paul's question), get at politics.

I don't think that the magic of Kurtz's world intrudes to provide the tension & plot. Nor is there an easy all-encompassing good and evil to fall back on. Instead, it's the people (characters shading into stock tropes) that drive the book - the Grasping Councillors and Superstitious Churchmen seeking to fill a Power Vacuum and opposed by the Young King and his Loyal Allies.  I do feel that many of the characters aren't fully fleshed out, but I don't feel that detracts from the tension of the political machinations.  I think comparisons to Goblin Emperor & Game of Thrones are both apt (the main difference I see in how each book plays out is how reliable trust is), and I've already mentioned I'd include Dune in that lineage (as Kurtz did in her intro)

As for how I find this - it's not my ideal fantasy. I prefer novels with a bit more enchantment in the setting & correspondingly less complexity in plotting, but the book still grabbed me & pulled me through, and it's held up incredibly well. I am always happy to reread Deryni books. I think partly this is because Kurtz's medieval setting is so closely modeled on a time I'm particularly interested in, and she actually takes religion seriously as an important and complex motivating force (spiritual & secular).

Joe: Being a long standing fan of Kurtz’s Deryni work, one of the things I have appreciated most *is* the political aspect and the details of the trappings of power. Compared to some of her later novels, Deryni Rising is rather light on the political aspects (the wonderful council scene notwithstanding). But move on to the earlier set novels and you’re intensely enmeshed in politics and more interestingly to me, religious politics. Kurtz’s use of the church in this series is hugely important.


[Rob] My question is a simple one. Given the length of the series, the legacy, and overall acclaim, isn’t about time that Katherine Kurtz was a recipient of the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement? Why do you think she hasn’t received such an honor?

Jonah: I know nothing about the award, but she seems like an extremely worthy candidate.

Paul: The same reasons why lots of worthy people haven’t gotten SF Grandmaster awards: The limited amount given out in a given year, the lack of shortage of worthy candidates, and the bias in genre awards toward male winners. Things are getting better but there is a lot of catchup up to do.

Joe: Despite how passionately we started a discussion on twitter (#deryni) and the fact that she is still publishing new work, Kurtz seems to be a borderline forgotten fantasy author. She seldom comes up in discussions regarding the genre and I’m not sure how much that hurts. But I don’t know what the politics of the selecting a Lifetime Achievement award for World Fantasy are. There are a number of writers I would love to see recognized, many of the major names of the 80’s who I grew up reading, but Katherine Kurtz is very much near the top of that list. I hope she receives the award soon.

Fred: The awarding of status to professionals by professionals is a crime. See Harlan Ellison’s crusade in the 1990’s. Things have changed...hardly at all. Still too many people dying before getting recognition from the SFWA or the World Fantasy. For pity’s sake, give out enough awards each year to catch up. Run a damned Kickstarter if you need funds.


[Joe] Now for the most important question: You’re all going to read more Deryni, right?

Jonah: Eventually? Rereading book 1 coincided with a crapload of really good SFF dropping that I'm still trying to get through, plus I want to finish Kate Elliott's Crossroads trilogy before Black Wolves lands. But it gives me great pleasure to know that the Deryni trilogies are waiting when I'm ready for them.

Paul: Eventually, yes. In my copious free time.

Fred: I’ve read ‘em before and I’ll read ‘em again. I was thinking of going right to the middle book of this trilogy, but I’ve changed my plans. One of my earlier comments talked about the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series. I think I’m going to make that a (re)reading project and start with the first books published for that series (which actually predated the official name of the series. That way I’ll pick up the Deryni “in order of publication” amongst the other volumes of the series, plus revisit Tolkien, Peake, Munn and many others.

I wish the publisher of the Camber books would get their act together and come out with new editions (including eBooks). The same with the second Kelson trilogy. Back in print! Please!

The G: Absolutely! But my TBR pile has reached the near-insurmountable stage, so I don't know when. I've got the old SF Book Club omnibus of the first trilogy, though, so it's a near certainty that I will--eventually--get around to it.