The Deverry Cycle by Katherine Kerr - Darkspell

NB – covered 1989 elsewhere so will leave thoughts on those years for now

Publisher – Harper Voyager

Published – Out Now

Price - £8.99 paperback £3.49 Kindle eBook

A royal’s freedom, the gift of magic and stolen power…

Exiled from his brother’s court, Lord Rhodry has found a life for himself on the road with wandering mercenaries, the Silver Daggers. The going is hard, but Jill, a young master of sword and magic is with him. As they journey along Deverry’s roads, feelings between warrior and lord deepen.

But before love can truly blossom, Jill and Rhodry are drawn into a web of enchantment and mortal danger. The Great Stone of the West, a magical jewel that guides the conscience of kings, has been stolen. When Jill stumbled across the Stone, she draws the attention of the Dark Brotherhood – evil sorcerers who will hunt her with he darkest magics and messengers of death.

One of the fun/exasperating parts of discussions on sub-genres is what makes x an example of y. We tend to think of these linear books that bounce off other books. This book created cyberpunk, this book creates urban fantasy. I actually think these tend to be simplistic and occasionally history get overwritten by weakened memory and good marketing reading genres and styles can be found earlier if you look hard enough. Reading the second entry in the Deverry cycle I’m given two tales that I suspect if they came into my review pile, I’d probably class as grimdark despite it coming from 1989. It manages to capture the pluses and the minuses of the genre so while not my favourite in the sequence gives a lot of food for thought about what other authors are out there to re-discover.

As in the first book we have two separated but related narratives. Our main trio – Jill, Rhodry and Nevyn are working out their paths following the consequences of the first adventure. Rhodry is now banished and the young brash lord is trying to adapt to living without regular income or comforts. Jill far more used to life on the road is looking for work for them and saving coin. But their exploits have attracted the attention of some dark magic sorcerers and Jill accidentally also finds a magical artefact they want to use for evil schemes. Nevyn soon gets wind of this and tried to help. But may be too late. Meanwhile we also go back 300 years to the first incarnations of Jill and Rhodry and key figures from their life. This time Jill is Gweniver a child of the Wolf clan who sees her family decimated by enemies so seeks solace and power from the Dark Goddess of the moon. Now a fearless fighter with a death wish as she allies herself with the strong but noble Ricyn (Rhodry) but finds a local lord a little too keen to intervene in her affairs and attempt to break her vows of chastity (Dannyn). This trio is once again going to cause issues for the future.

The split narrative of timelines and characters again give me two very different tales. I find Gweniver’s the more interesting as here we get a lead story focused around a woman losing nearly everything who decides to become a warrior berserker for a moon goddess cult. Marked by a crescent tattoo she lives to kill all her enemies and forswears all other attachments. Gweniver would these days easily be a grimdark heroine; but I think ties into the older mythology of tales where we get warrior maidens avenging lost families (nothing is ever completely new). In some ways this is Jill but without her warm compassionate side - colder and scarier. Ricyn is smitten and naïve while Dannyn nfortunately is a man who sees woman as things to gain. Happy to tease the goddess and once gets jealous attempts rape but actually receives punishment for it (take that bad authors of grimdark). This is not a fun tale and matching what feels like the dark ages for Deverry life feels cheap and spilling blood the only solution. Its uncomfortable reading but an interesting trip into other versions of people we now know. Unfortunately, I do think the pacing of the tale loses the edge. There is a lot of travelling to places and explaining things which slightly gets in the way of the action. But the ending is tragic and suits the arc of these incarnations.

Meanwhile I think the main plot here manages to expand the world of Deverry, set in motion the main plot of this sequence but also falls down in how the enemy is depicted falling into the worst types of stereotypes. The fun element for me here is seeing how Deverry is not just nobles we get a chance to explore the seedier side of life where thieves, drug dealers and conmen work and for Jill this feels quite normal. Deverry feels much more the modern type of fantasy world we know in this entry. Jill is even sympathetic to those avoiding the law while Rodry is less comfortable. This opens up an intriguing division between the lovers – they do come from different worlds and its not quite clear that Rhodry understands or wants his new one. We also get to explore the elvish population a bit more and the mystery of Rhodry’s parentage gets opened up. I like the idea of Deverry being different cultures that don’t quite trust one another; and it makes Rhodry’s future quite interesting (and may explain the dark dweomer’s interest). The action sequences where our young duo fight and try to work out what is going on are really interesting and quite pacey. A nice counterbalance to the dark age tale.

But the questionable element here is while the Brotherhood we find as Nevyn’s enemy is indeed evil, well matched in power and we see not afraid to do whatever is necessary. Their battles with Nevyn are unusual taking place in the ethereal world which gives Kerr a nice use of various celtic magical symbols to play with visually. The uncomfortable element is that we see the evil brotherhood use blood sacrifice and in particular sexually abuse and rape a male victim to achieve this. This alone is clearly unsettling but the bigger issue is that one of the brotherhood gets clearly shown to be homosexual and there is a very uncomfortable analogy her that this makes that character turn evil following the sexual abuse he suffered from his master. I’m not sure Kerr meant this and another gay character is treated slightly more sympathetically but reading this thirty years past publication it feels a mistake I can’t overlook - .

Overall I think Darkspell managed to build up the world but for me slightly tries to do too much and some of the ideas of 1989 I think read very off. The Gweniver tale really is interesting because of how it chimes with modern grimdark but the main plot feels a tad loose and clumsily delivered. I shall be interested to see where Kerr decides to go next.

Next entry - Dawnspell