Deryni Rising

by Katherine Kurtz

When King Brion of Gwynedd is murdered by a sorceress with pretensions to his throne, his young heir Prince Kelson must rely on Duke Alaric Morgan, a member of the same race of sorcerers, to help him access his own kind of hereditary powers in time to face the pretender Charissa's inevitable magical challenge. However, the widowed Queen Jehana devoutly believes that all occult powers are intrinsically evil, and that to save his soul, her son must rule without magic--even if that puts his life at risk. And Jehana is well aware that to save Kelson from the taint of magic, she must first remove General Morgan.

Over at the Tor.com blog that I like so much, Judith Tarr is doing a detailed reread of Katherine Kurtz, and I jumped at the excuse to pick these up again. I first got hold of Deryni Rising when I was fourteen (the same age as Kelson, which did not escape my notice), and I fell hard for Kelson and Morgan, not to mention Morgan's aide Lord Derry. I read the books over and over as a teenager, and I'm so steeped in the history and mythology of them that it was really hard to write a short paragraph of summary without going into the whole saga of the Deryni Interregnum, Haldane Restoration, religious persecution of the Deryni, the family tree of the Festillic Pretenders, and the hagiography of Camber of Culdi, patron saint of Deryni magic.

However, before the current reread began I hadn't picked the books up in at least ten or fifteen years, and reading the first one again after that long is a little odd. I still remember the plot and the characters, and even some of the dialogue, really well, so on one level it has no surprises for me. But maybe because of the length of the hiatus since my last reread, or maybe because I'm now older than nearly all the named characters (and considerably older than the author was when she wrote it), I have been able to read it with a more critical eye.

I can tell, now, that it's clearly the first novel of a fairly young writer. And it's a damn fine first novel, but there are some clunky bits--repetitious sections, a main character who inconsistently acts far younger than his actual age and life experience should warrant, another main character who consistently acts far older than his age. My favorite rookie move is that several times the action stops dead for a detailed physical description of a person or a place when the viewpoint character logically should be too familiar with both the faces and the floor plans to pause for an inventory at that moment. One such passage comes right out and says something like, "Morgan allowed himself to take in the familiar surroundings," just as if Morgan wasn't really stressed, exhausted, and pressed for time just then!

And I can't really argue with LeGuin's point that the prose could just as well have been lifted from a modern political thriller; she's right, it doesn't sound like Elfland. But here's the thing: as Tarr points out in her own remarks, these books aren't aiming for that. The Chronicles of the Deryni are historical fantasy (and have a good claim to be progenitors of that whole genre). We're not in Elfland here! The Eleven Kingdoms, of which Kelson's Gwynedd is one, are human kingdoms populated by thoroughly realistic human beings, even if some of them are quasi-humans with innate magical abilities. Homo sum, as Terence said (and it's a book in this series that introduced me to that quotation): humani nil a me alienum puto. There is nothing alien about the hearts and minds of the Deryni.

So yes, I still love this book. Even knowing the story as well as I do, I fell right into it again (and leaped ahead of the pace of the reread to finish it and go on to the next one). It's still my benchmark for high fantasy taking place in anything like a historical setting.

Waiting on Wednesday (72)

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating. So here's a thing I'm very much looking forward to: The King's Deryni, by Katherine Kurtz (Ace Hardcover, 2 December 2014).

Alaric Morgan always knew his purpose in life—to stand alongside the king of Gwynedd. The old king knew that whichever of his sons succeeded to the throne would benefit from having a Deryni at his side. Alaric and the young Prince Brion Haldane were bound together by magic—a magic to be called upon when Brion was most in need.

Now eighteen, Brion has ascended to the throne and seven-year-old Alaric has come to court. Through the coming years, both will grow to manhood and come to realize their destinies. Brion will strive to solidify his power and position, seek out a bride to secure his legacy, and ultimately, when faced with an unbeatable foe, call upon Alaric to fulfill his oath.

Meanwhile, Alaric slowly learns the extent of his powers and how to use them, and will face the prejudice that many have against Deryni in its ugliest form. He will experience bittersweet first love, great personal loss, and the hard lessons one gains from both. And he will be there to unleash the full power of his Deryni magic at Brion's command.

For Alaric is—and always will be—the King's Deryni.

*****

I got an email from Amazon, alerting me to upcoming books I might be interested in based on my purchase and browsing history, and I had to laugh when I saw this one; not a week before, I had been commiserating with my friend the Brit that we would probably never see this series finished in our lifetime.  We've been waiting on it for eight years, and I'm really pleased that we'll finally get hold of it. Of course, now I've got to reread the first two books in the trilogy (published in 2003 and 2006), because I totally don't remember where we left off!

Childe Morgan

I stumbled across Katherine Kurtz's first novel, Deryni Rising, when I was exactly the right age: thirteen, a year younger than one of the main characters in the book.  At the time I thought the fourteen-year-old king was the main character; only later, rereading the book from the perspective of my own increasing age, did I realize it's really about the 29-year-old Duke Alaric Morgan, halfbreed of a detested and distrusted race of sorcerers and one of the flat-out coolest characters I've run across in a fantasy novel.

I tore through the three volumes of the Chronicles of the Deryni, and hunted down the Legends of Saint Camber trilogy as well--a prequel series that I didn't like as much, largely because it had to lead into the vicious persecution of Deryni described as historical fact in the other series, written first but set two hundred years later.  So as a fan, I was personally a little disappointed when I heard that Kurtz had chosen to postpone writing a Childe Morgan trilogy (even though I didn't know any more about it than the name) in favor of three more thoroughly depressing Heirs of Camber novels, in which nearly all the sympathetic characters die wretchedly.

And now she's finally come around to the Childe Morgan series I've been waiting for, leading up to the events described in her very first novel.  And I have to admit I'm disappointed in them.

I suppose they could never have lived up to my hopes for them.  But it just seems like this one in particular, the second in the series, is just a place holder.  An Amazon reviewer described it as a collection of characters in search of a plot; I also got the impression that really not much happened except some traveling back and forth.

Originally posted at MySpace 1/7/07