Welcome to the Speculative Chic Book Club! Each month, we invite you to join us in reading a book that is voted on by YOU, our readers. We’re still experimenting with the format, so just like last month, this month we’re just doing a review followed by your discussion in the comments!
Daggerspell (1986)*
Author: Katherine Kerr
Pages: 395 (paperback)
Publisher: Del Rey
* A note about my edition: I purchased a used copy printed in 1989. In 1993, the Kerr released an author’s definitive edition, which seems to be the only edition currently in print. I can’t tell what changed between the two, but the book does seem to be significantly longer (by about 90 pages) at this point and I’m not sure how much is due to new content and how much is due to formatting. If I talk about something you don’t remember or just plain didn’t happen in your volume, that may be why.
Why I nominated this for book club: Well, you see. Saint Patrick’s Day is in March, and I thought hey why not read a book based around Celtic myth and legend, and in my google for those kinds of books, this one kept popping up, and then people voted on it, so here we are.
Premise:
Even as a young girl, Jill was a favorite of the magical, mysterious Wildfolk, who appeared to her from their invisible realm. Little did she know her extraordinary friends represented but a glimpse of a forgotten past and a fateful future. Four hundred years-and many lifetimes-ago, one selfish young lord caused the death of two innocent lovers. Then and there he vowed never to rest until he’d rightened that wrong-and laid the foundation for the lives of Jill and all those whom she would hold dear: her father, the mercenary soldier Cullyn; the exiled berserker Rhodry Maelwaedd; and the ancient and powerful herbman Nevyn, all bound in a struggle against darkness. . . and a quest to fulfill the destinies determined centuries ago. Here in this newly revised edition comes the incredible novel that began one of the best-loved fantasy seers in recent years–a tale of bold adventure and timeless love, perilous battle and pure magic. For long-standing fans of Deverry and those who have yet to experience this exciting series, Daggerspell is a rare and special treat.
This book club discussion does assume you have read and finished the book. If you want to avoid spoilers, please finish reading before continuing!
Discussion:
Spoilers: I didn’t like this very much. Reading this book was a trial and a struggle, and it honestly baffles me that it has such a good rating on goodreads and regularly ended up on top ten lists for Celtic myth and legend. Unless this book is really among the best in that genre, which doesn’t do much to recommend it.
I didn’t feel passionately enough about it to hate it, so I think I just fall down around “tepid.” I have tepid feelings about this book. So let’s break it down.
First, there was the way that women were depicted. This book was written by a woman, but it was written by a woman in 1986. Jill, the leading lady in this romping adventure, is regularly slapped by her father, hard enough to leave a bruise marring an entire side of her face, and Jill’s response is to immediately stop doing what he slapped her for and obey him. Women are raped, women are treated as property, and, with one particular exception, women are assumed to be weaker and less than men.
But I was also intrigued by the depiction of women either trapped by circumstance (Brangwen), societal norms (Jill), and her own children (Lovyan). These women either fell to their troubles or found ways around them, but stayed true to the limitations of the time period and also exhibited at least some agency. Granted, Brangwen’s agency came in choosing her own death.
“If you set her aside”, Lovyan said at last, “I’ll make provision for her. At the very least she can come to me as part of my retinue, but I might be able to do better than that.” (Page 201)
I liked these parts, the bits where women exerted independent thought, where they realized how trapped they were in this unfair world and imposed their will and their effort to at least make their corner of it their own.
I also liked Jill’s character and voice. I liked the struggle toward the end for her, that it wasn’t the romance novel ending where they decide to damn the kingdom and marry anyway. I liked Lovyan and the way she at least attempted to maneuver around her eldest son.
That may have been all I really did like though.
I’ve seen books with multiple timelines done well (Cloud Atlas) so I know it can be done, but I didn’t understand the point of mixing them up here. We were given three glimpses into the recurring lives of these characters: the “present,” 643, and 698. 643 sets up the history and how the whole thing started, 698 gives one intercalary glimpse of how it played out in another lifetime, and then there’s the present, which, if these are normal years, is about 400 years after the first timeline.
If you’re going to mix up the timelines, why not show us more than just the three? Why, instead, give us 220 pages of a storyline involving a needlessly complicated plot by one brother, who isn’t even involved in this overarching story about their Wyrds, to disinherit his younger brother? This is the part I struggled so hard to read. I could not bring myself to care about Rhys. The denouement from the waaaaay too easy death of Corbyn and his wizard to the part where Rhodry and Jill stagger off into the sunset was excruciating.
And back to the overarching story, I wish this had been stamped with an incest warning label. Not because I would never have read it, but I would at least have been better prepared for . . . that. That said, I did like the way that story resolved itself. I reluctantly liked Cullyn’s character, how he struggled above his temptations and let Jill go when he needed to, not begrudgingly, but with grace.
My final question: why was Aderyn still alive 300 years later? Can’t be that he’s a dweomer, because Nevyn should have died at a normal time. And unless he has some kind of curse on his Wyrd too, there’s no reason he should still be around. If this is an entirely different person, why give him the same name and then never bother explaining why? This book left a lot up to guess work and I just didn’t feel like doing the heavy lifting.
In conclusion: I have trouble believing this book launched a fifteen book series. Even though I’m left with the mystery of who exactly Nevyn was feeling in the distance, I feel absolutely no push to see what happens next.