Deryni Rising is the first book in Katherine Kurtz' long-running Chronicles of Deryni series. This book was published in 1970, and the series is still going, with over a dozen titles now in print. The most recent was published in 2004, though I've got no idea how well it, or any of them, have sold. They must be somewhat popular, given that the first book is still in print nearly 40 years after being published. Buy (or not) your copy here; it's got a
4 star rating on Amazon, but from only 24 reviews.
Kurtz has an official site, which Google told me was appropriately located at
Dernyni.net. So yeah, this is her big series. I clicked the link, and after I recovered from the eye-injury her home page inflicted upon my unsuspecting eyeballs (Deryni.net = best page design on Geocities, circa 1998), I browsed through the lifeless forums and wound up on her Deryni FAQ. It seems to be out of date, since the most recent Deryni novel listed on Amazon is
In the King's Service, from 2004. That one's not listed on Kurtz' FAQ, but one as recent as 2002 is, and there are more than a dozen titles in total, along with a few short story collections and other assorted tie-ins. Including one that looks like it's half fan fiction, half Kurtz' original. Interesting concept.
So she's chugging along, and good for her. I'm not too down on any author who can earn a living with their words. It's certainly more than I've done thus far, and no, another blog entry/book review choking full of snarky criticism isn't real likely to change that. To the scores!
Deryni Rising, 1970, by Katherine Kurtz
Plot: 3
Concept: 6
Writing Quality/Flow: 4/6
Characters: 4
Horror: NA
Humor: NA
Fun Factor: 3
Page Turner: 6
Re-readability: 5
Overall: 4
I don't know how fair it is to judge Kurtz and her whole series just from the first book; after all, even Shanarra improved greatly after book one, but unless/until I read another Deryni book this one is all I've got to go on. And it wasn't very good. It wasn't horrible, and I've read worse, but it's nothing special. It's not an adult novel, and must have been marketed in what they used to call the "Young Adult" category. That's not because it stars children, though the main character is a young prince, but because it's simple and formulaic. Bad guys are entirely bad, good guys are noble and honest and valorous, and who do you think triumphs in the end? Go on, take a wild guess...
More curious than the novel itself is the way I came to read it, since my copy of the book has been in my possession longer than some of you have been alive. The book has a used bookstore stamp inside, proclaiming that it came from Larry's Discount Books in Arlington, Texas. Arlington is a glorified suburb of Dallas, Texas, and home to the new Dallas Cowboys stadium. It's also where I lived with my dad during 6th and 7th grade, back in the 1980s. So yes, I'd been carrying this book around for over two decades, and had never gotten around to reading it until a few weeks ago.
Well, I hadn't actually been carrying it; it was in my bookshelf at my dad's house in San Diego, where I'd left it when I combined the books from my apartment with books I'd left at his and my mom's house, when I moved up north to live with Malaya in summer 2003. I was browsing that bookshelf this summer while visiting the folks, saw this book, and two others in the Deryni series, remembered I'd had them forever without ever reading them, and stuck them into my suitcase on a whim. I read it on a similar whim, and it wasn't good, but it wasn't horrible.
I picked the book up all those years ago since other kids I knew in junior high were always reading it, and the Elfstones of Shannara books. I never got into either of them then, and since I read my first Shanarra novel a couple of years ago, it's fitting that I have now read one of the Deryni books too. Kurtz is better than Brooks, at least judging her first book against his first two, but neither of them are going on my recommend list.
The world of Deryni Rising is basically England, circa 1300, if the Druids could actually work magic. They're not called Druids in the book, nor is their land called England, but it's any generic middle ages kingdom, with a brave king, potential enemies on the borders, traitors in the court, and a powerful and corrupt clergy. The magic comes from the Deryni, a race who appear to be exactly like humans, but who possess magic that humans do not. They used to be part of the main kingdom, but there was a war and all of the Deryni moved away or went into hiding. They and magic in general are now thought to be evil, and the priests condemn it.
The book starts with the noble king on a hunt, most of which he spends thinking about his half-Deryni bestest friend and General who's off in some distant outpost. The king is promptly murdered by some sort of witch, and his 15 y/o son the prince is in command. His first act is to call home General half-mage. He arrives two weeks later, and the rest of the story takes place in about 12 hours, as the General does stuff to help the prince ready himself to become king, and to regain or somehow tap into some form of magic; the kind his human father had and used to fight off enemies while he ruled the kingdom.
The Queen is hysterically opposed to magic though, the priests hate it too (though they never say why, or mention Satan, in kind of a wimpy cop out on Kurtz' part), and almost the entire court hates and fears the half-mage General, simply because he's a Deryni. The fact that the beloved late king used magic constantly to save the kingdom isn't really discussed.
None of this is awful, but it's all very formulaic. The scheming traitor noble is one-dimensional, as are the disapproving priests. We're told right away that the prince must regain his father's magic to survive, but it's not made clear why, until coronation the next morning, when the witch who murdered the king marches into the royal hall with about fifty of her enemy soldiers, and demands to fight a magical duel, to the death, for the right to rule, against the young prince.
Why this is allowed is never explained. Why the city guards didn't stop them from entering, why the royal guards didn't fight them off, and why anyone expects the prince to have a chance against a super powerful sorceress, when he's never shown any kind of magical ability at all. The clergy vanish entirely from the book come the last 50 pages and the magical showdown, presumably because after Kurtz spent most of the short book portraying them as eager to arrest or execute anyone with any magical ability, there's no way to justify them allowing it to happen.
There's also no way to justify why the evil witch would be allowed to challenge for the throne. Can anyone just waltz in and throw down? Doesn't she have to be in the royal line of succession, hated/feared magic or not? The best part is after the prince miraculously regains his father's magical powers (which he does just in the nick of time, if you can believe it), and uses them to defeat the evil witch (yeah, I was surprised too), all of the witch's soldiers just sort of melt into the crowd while everyone else is applauding the former prince/new king's victory. Because you know, when a regicidal usurper challenges the new king to a magical death match, and brings fifty of her bodyguard, all of whom are sworn enemies of the kingdom with her, it's only natural to let them all go once you defeat her in combat. Including the ones who were attendants of the scheming, traitorous noble who just got defeated by the king's champion. No hard feelings, guys. And the priests are fine with you using magic too; it's only the prince and his best friend/protector who they object to casting fire serpents.
In addition to this book I possess book 3 in the series, and another book from later on. I might skim that one at some point to see if it's any better than this one was. I'll probably have to read it to say for sure though, since this book wasn't written poorly, and there weren't an abundance of LOL-bad moments (unlike
Brooks' Shanarra series). Fortunately, the Deryni stuff reads really fast. I got through all 280 pages of this book in around 90 minutes, and yeah, I was kind of skimming, but not really, since it's written on such a simple level and all the characters are so straightforward and unambiguous that I don't think I missed anything. There's not really anything to miss, other than kid's cartoon-level plot twisting.
Labels: book review, writing
