Katherine Kurtz

The Deryni books are great sword and sorcery fantasy. What makes them unique is that they're a blend of historical fantasy and high fantasy. What marks a book out as high fantasy is a completely imaginary world with no links to real history--legend maybe, but the ties are tenuous, even when like Tolkien's Middle Earth, Lackey's Valdemir or Pierce's Tortall, they have a pseudo-medieval feel.

This on, the other hand, is Christian Europe--yet not quite. Gwynedd is recognizably Britain--more so show more than what you see usually see in high fantasy, even if there aren't any real historical parallels to the Haldane dynasty--or the Deryni for that matter, magically talented people who are persecuted by the Church. But more unusually, their "Holy Church" is quite recognizable as the Roman Catholic Church, and the church's beliefs are important to the characters, particularly Monsignor Duncan McLain, an ordained priest and newly made bishop, one of my favorite characters in the series. Which is why, unlike some reviewers, I can't see these books as anti-Christian, anti-Catholic or at all comparable to Pullman. I loved Pullman's His Dark Materials for it's style and imagination, but there's no question his quasi-Catholic Church, the Magisterium, is just plain evil, and at times Pullman's anti-church clanging anvils got to me. The thrust of the Deryni books is different. It isn't the Church or religion that's meant to be seen as evil, as characters such as Duncan prove. And in this book, two Bishops, Thomas Cardiel and Denis Arilan, are good guys as well. And I felt for Jehana, Kelson's mother, who tries to reconcile her religious convictions with her Deryni heritage. I don't think the messages of these books is anti-religion--just anti-intolerance. But I don't see these as books about a message--but good yarns. Well-plotted and with characters you care about, and this book brings the first trilogy of Deryni books to a satisfying conclusion. show less

Here's an odd little book that I picked up for a song at a Friends of the Library book sale. Although LibraryThing lists it as the fourth book of Katherine Kurtz's Adept series, that applies to only one of the stories collected here. Similarly, although the entire volume is included as the third book of the Knights Templar series by Kurtz and Deborah Turner Harris, this book appears to be the first of those to have been published, and its contents span a full range of Templar history, show more quasi-history, and pseudo-history from the twelfth century to the present. The individual tales all have their first publication in this book, and they were written by what appears to be a loose cabal of contemporaneous authors, many with social ties beyond their collaboration on this project.

Kurtz serves as the editor, and presents the stories in a roughly chronological sequence--albeit somewhat muddled by instances of prophetic precognition, astral consultation of the past, and straight-up science fictional time travel. In between the stories, she supplies bridging "interludes" that address themselves to the broad outlines of Templar history as conventionally understood. She also wrote the story "Obligations" that is part of the continuity of her Adept series.

The quality of the tales is rather variable, but mostly quite good. Easily my favorite is "Choices" by Richard Woods, which affords a very informed take on holy orders and heresy in fourteenth-century Paris, with Meister Eckhart as a principal character. Tanya Huff's "Word of Honor" was a slick trans-Atlantic ghost story. I was also impressed with the Nazi quest for Templars in Scott MacMillan's "1941," which reminded me of my recent read of Klaus Mann's Mephisto, transposed to the register of a weird horror short story. The dog of the bunch was "Stealing God," a Templar-flavored espionage urban fantasy that was basically a shorter version of Charles Williams' War In Heaven with massive infusions of Hollywood-style stupid.

Although the facing-title page contains a small advertisement for the Templar-claimant chivalric and benevolent SMOTJ, I think this book should be entertaining on some level to Masonic and occultist neo-Templars as well. Although I'm hardly anxious to read them, I would pick up another book in either of the related Kurtz series on basis of the virtues in this one. show less

Young King Kelson has finally put down the Mearan rebellion. He and the other boys who are coming of age are being knighted, and Dhugal, now openly known to be Bishop Duncan’s son, is being legitimized. During the ceremony, Duncan uses his secret Deryni powers, which outs him to those who didn’t know he was Deryni.

After all the ceremonies and feasting are done, Kelson finally has some free time. So he leaves Uncle Nigel in charge of state affairs and sets out with Dhugal, his cousin show more Prince Conall, and an entourage to look for evidence of what may have happened to Saint Camber a couple of hundred years ago. Kelson keeps seeing visions of his patron saint and hopes to figure out why.

Kelson has no idea Conall, who has always been jealous Kelson was the one to inherit the throne, has been making treacherous plans he hopes to initiate while they’re on the quest. Conall wants Kelson’s throne and desires to steal the woman Kelson plans to marry.

When Kelson and Dhugal fall off a cliff, go over a waterfall and wash up in an underground cavern, everyone thinks they’re dead. It looks like Conall has found a way to get everything he wants after all, or will he? show less

This is the 2005 second edition of the reference companion to Katherine Kurtz’ classic fantasy Deryni series of novels. (The first edition – published as a limited-edition hardback with slipcover in 1998 – sold out long ago and is only available for obscene prices on the secondary market.) This second edition includes some additional entries and information from the Deryni books published after 1998 that were obviously not available to include in the first edition, so true completists show more will want it for that reason alone. We could definitely use a new, third edition of the Codex once Ms. Kurtz writes the long-awaited, final book of the Childe Morgan trilogy (when are we going to get that? -- it’s been five years since Childe Morgan came out), so I definitely hope that all comes together soon. Fans of the Deryni series are known to be especially detail-oriented (I’ll be kind and not say “detail-obsessed”), so this is a truly welcome companion to the series.

The book’s conceit is that it is an actual historical manuscript discovered in the “present” in the Deryni setting. But what is it exactly? This is a thick, meaty tome primarily containing alphabetically-organized, encyclopedia-style entries of all the people and places (and a few things) mentioned in the Deryni Chronicles. It includes all the major entries you’d expect (Camber of Culdi, Alister Cullen, etc.) and all of the minor ones you don’t remember – anyone recall who Robard was? Nope? Me neither. As it turns out, he was one of Kelson’s scouts during his visit to Trurill in The Bishop’s Heir. Learn something new every day. Each entry also includes a listing of the books and stories the character or place is mentioned. That’s about the first 250 pages. After the encyclopedia portion, we have an equally thorough chronology (year, month, and day, where possible) of every major and almost every minor event that happened in all the stories. That covers the next 80 pages or so. The final section contains a Deryni liturgical calendar, bibliography, genealogies of the royal families, and maps. Whew! Can you imagine how much work went into assembling this reference. The mind boggles.

Negatives on this one are very minor (though I will be nitpicky for the sake of completeness): it’s a bit dry – as one might expect – though the text is certainly not flavorless, and it’s probably not the kind of book that anyone would sit down and read cover-to-cover. But it’s a reference book, so that’s to be expected as well. A listing at the top of each page showing the first and last entries contained on each page (like what traditional dictionaries and encyclopedias do) would have been nice, but probably a layout nightmare. I’d also have liked to see a few more entries on things like Wards and other magical practices, but we can always fall back on Deryni Magic for more information on those sorts of things. Also, the maps included in the back of the book aren’t great. I’m sure the cartography itself is fine, and it had to appear that they were drawn by hand to maintain the illusion that this was an actual manuscript, but “high-tech” looking cartography would have been a plus.

I give this one 4.5 stars out of 5. It’s a great reference work for anyone who enjoys Katherine Kurtz’ Deryni series and it did the one thing that works like this should do: it made me want to pick up the series again and reread them! Highly recommended for fans of the Deryni series.

Review copyright 2011 J. Andrew Byers show less