Customer Reviews

Childe Morgan (Deryni)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Following up her previous novel, <a href="">In the King's Service,</a> fantasy author Katherine Kurtz continues her tales of the childhood of Alaric Morgan, the Duke of Corwyn, told mostly through the eyes of his parents, Sir Kenneth and Lady Alyce.

The intervening two years have been peaceful ones in the kingdom of Gwynnedd. But if the land is peaceful, there's plenty of underlaying currents that promise future turmoil. At the start of the novel, we see the queen mourning the death of one of her young sons, and Lady Alyce remembering the death of another young child, one who was planned to grow up and be a protector of the future king. But now that burden has passed on to her own young son, Alaric.

While Alaric is very much a child, not much more than a toddler in this story, he plays a prominent role in the story at several points, mostly because he is a Deryni, a member of race born with magical abilities. Most of humanity hates and fears the Deryni, a hatred that is spurred on by the religious authorities, who never miss a chance to prate on about the need to purge the land of their evil ways, and the faith, based about christianity, is given rather short shrift in this one.

Indeed, I was tempted to term this one as a novel in search of a plot. A great deal of the novel is given over to regal splendour and ceremonial, births and marriages, quite a few deaths, and only a few short chapters where there is any sort of excitement at all, and that mostly towards the end of the book. There is also a noted lack of any sort of humor as well, and most of the action seems to be anticlimatic.

Indeed, with the exception of the chapter on the Naming of Alaric, a death that previous readers of the Deryni novels know is coming, and a few encounters with the mysterious Sir Se Trelawney, this one just lumbers along. Sir Se, I suspect, will appear in the third novel of this set, if there is a third novel. Other characters who appear later on also make an appearance, from a young King Brion, Rhydon, the Torenthi royal siblings Wencit and Morag, and various members of the Camberian Council -- the only entertaining bit was picking these various folk out early on and knowing that they were going to be making trouble later.

And it's a very short book, not much over two hundred and fifty pages. Readers not familiar with the series, which Kurtz has been working on for about thirty years or so, will find themselves very confused. Sadly, those who are fans might find themselves very bored indeed with it all. We already know all of this that is happening, and it's got a hint of being all too familiar and that we've read it all somewhere before.

To make things worse, there are a huge number of people and places in the cast, enough so that Kurtz has a listing for both people and places at the end of the book to help the poor reader keep it all straight. There is also a rather grainy, grey map of the Eleven Kingdoms as well.

That's the saddest part of all this. Kurtz is certainly capable of writing tightly plotted, action filled fantasy fiction -- her first two trilogies with the Deryni universe certainly proved that. But her later work has the feel of just going through the motions, and these characters lack the moral questioning that made them so interesting when they were first introduced. Instead, now everyone is either so poisonously good that they don't even think bad thoughts, or so scheming that you know that they are going to come to no good end. But now, Kurtz has dwindled into a very second rate author, and her more recent works are palid copies of her first novels.

Summing up, this one isn't worth the purchase price in hardcover. Try to be patient and pick it up in the paperbound release, or check it out from the library if you have an overwhelming urge to read it.

Three stars, if only for the deathbed scenes, and the little bits of magic here and there.

I could not have been more disappointed with Childe Morgan unless I tried to write the book myself. Let me back up. I am a long standing fan of Katherine Kurtz and her Deryni saga. These novels set in back in an era which approximates England's Eleventh Century in terms of society and history feature a Church and a human population fearful of and persecuting a race of humans called the Deryni. The only difference between human and Deryni is simply that the Deryni can use magic and normal humans cannot. But the Church, which is just as powerful as the King of Gwynedd, hates and persecutes the Deryni so they must operate in secrecy not to advance some secret agenda, but more to try to shape the world around them to be more tolerant of the Deryni race. I loved these stories, in particular the ones set earlier in the chronology which featured more of the interplay between the Church and the Deryni.

Childe Morgan is the second entry in Kurtz's Childe Morgan trilogy which began with In the King's Service. These novels are set not long before the Kelson novels (Deryni Rising) and the Childe Morgan novels introduce us to the character of Alaric Morgan, so central to the Kelson novels. Only here, Alaric is four years old, and Kelson's father, King Brion is fourteen. I believe that this trilogy is setting up the battle of Brion against the Marluk, Hogan Festil, which we have referenced in the Kelson novels, but unfortunately, most of Childe Morgan is simply that: Set up.

Rather than the political and cultural intrigue which Katherine Kurtz has so successfully treated her readers to over the past thirty years, she instead focuses two thirds of Childe Morgan on Alaric's mother, Alyce de Coursy, and her relationship with her husband Kenneth Morgan, and a little bit of hinting by the King Donal Haldane that Alaric will have to be Brion's Deryni protector, but very little actually happens in the first two thirds of the book. I described Childe Morgan as mostly set up, but that is inaccurate. Childe Morgan is waiting for a set up. It is stasis. We learn a little bit about Alyce and her sister Vera, are introduced to Duncan (another player in the Kelson novels), and pretty much Katherine Kurtz spends the novel preparing Gwynedd for Alaric and Brion and later Kelson by moving several pieces around and hinting at Deryni magic.

In the final third of the volume there are several events which could rightly be called Major Events, but somehow in the telling they feel like Minor Events, and that is not a good thing. These huge events (in terms of this trilogy) somehow fail to resonate. There is a sense of relief that finally, something is happening, but the emotion is diminished by the fact that by this point in the novel I didn't care. An action sequence late in the novel does work well, but it is too little too late.

If I were not so invested in the Deryni novels and count several of them among my favorite works of fantasy, I would have given up long before I go to the last third of this 250 page novel. At least in the earlier Deryni novels the reader could get the sense that major acts are in the works, there was intrigue, risk, and excitement even in the description of arcane magic and Church politics. It's all missing here.

I will read the third Childe Morgan novel when it comes out and I will hope that when Katherine Kurtz writes her long rumored 948 novel that it will reclaim that vitality that she had when writing about Camber, Joram, Evaine and others, but that vitality is sadly lost here and I cannot recommend Childe Morgan to anyone, not even fans of the Deryni.

-Joe Sherry

Ostensibly the first book in a 'Childe Morgan' trilogy -- and an appreciation of the adult Alaric Morgan and his world is probably the only reason to pick up this latest Deryni novel -- this book is more of a sequel to Kurtz's previous tale of Gwynnedd, In the King's Service: A Novel of the Deryni, as it continues the life of Alyce de Corwyn and her husband Sir Kenneth Morgan as their marriage ages alongside their children.

This is not a book for the faint of heart or short of attention span; only hardened Kurtz fans need apply. Characters spend most of their time reciting genealogies and history, recapitulating the action of the previous book, or making allusions to events that will come to fruition only in the later ones, continuing the feel of exposition for something to come rather than independent story. The tone of In the King's Service continues as well, but even more so. This book has substantially less plot, less conflict, and less action: something that I didn't think could be possible after reading the last one. Kurtz has clearly built up her world to the point where she thinks she can dispense with these things, and write tableaux of her characters' life instead.

I never thought that I would criticize a fantasy novel for not having enough action, or for being too domestic, but I find myself making that criticism here. Everything is simply too easy. The only conflict of any kind to be found in this installment is the interminable debates of the Camberian Council over whether Character X should marry Character Y or Character Z, or whether Potential Baddie Q should be taken out preemptively or not. This could be interesting, if we weren't assured by the author and every other good character that the Camberian Council has everyone's best interests at heart, and would never contemplate anything morally iffy. This lack of ambiguity, which was always present in the Deryni novels, has become unbearable by this one. No character has to make a difficult decision, or oppose another character on ideological grounds. Paradoxically, only people who have qualms about what they are doing are the villains, who occasionally are made to weigh, say, condoning the murder of children against extirpating the Deryni. For the main characters, everything is in the clear. The king is committed to the safety of his realm and the good of his people; his nobles are deeply loyal to it and to him; with the exception of a few brutal and bigoted bishops, the church is godly and invested in the well-being of the populace; lords are invariably kind to their underlings, and the peasantry are cheerfully subservient to their good masters (cf. Diana Wynne Jones' The Tough Guide to Fantasyland: The Essential Guide to Fantasy Travel on "Good Aristocratic Feudalists"). There is something rather Victorian about this happy and virtuous realm, and the feeling is compounded by the precociously adorable and saccharine children, among which young Alaric (in his rare appearances in this rather mis-named book) takes his place with darling questions about God and fealty that the adult General Morgan of Chronicles of the Deryni would squirm to remember, even as he would have a hard time recognizing the blithe moral confidence of his parents in the even slightly more checkered world-view he imparts to his protegé King Kelson.

This book continues the backstory of Alaric Morgan, one of the main characters in the Deryni series. Readers new to the series should not start with this book, since it assumes the reader is familiar with the characters and the world. Long-time fans of the series such as myself have been hoping that this book would explain how young Alaric learned to use his Deryni powers, why he was ostracized by the Camberian Council, and how he became such a close and trusted friend of King Brion. This book answers none of those questions. Alaric himself is only two years old when the book starts, and the book takes place only over the period of a couple of years. I wouldn't have minded that if something else of interest had been going on, but this book suffers from a very serious lack of a plot.

Indeed, except for a few vague hints of intrigue by the Camberian Council, and a bit of action at the end of the book, there is no plot at all. The book follows Alaric's parents, Alyce de Corwyn and Kenneth Morgan, through the first few years of their marriage, and mostly deals with domestic details of no interest. Prior books had described Alyce as being a bright and fascinating woman, but there's no hint of it here. All she does for the entire book is try to find husbands for her girlfriends, look after her son, and do the shopping and sewing. I know Katherine Kurtz tries to create women characters true to the period rather than the sword-wielding Amazons of other fantasy series, but she took it too far here. How boring can you get? While those activities may have been what most medieval women actually did, I don't find it interesting to read about in what I was expecting to be a fast-paced novel of magic and political intrigue like this author's other books. With the exception of one or two minor characters who only appear for a scene or two, none of the other characters are much more interesting than Alyce.

Fans of the series will probably want to read this book so they can keep abreast of the very few items of genuine interest contained in the book, but my advice is to get it from the library. It's not worth the price of a hardback. Hopefully, the next book will restore the usual excellence of this series.

I would have liked to have liked this book better!

As a great fan of Morgan from the original Deryni trilogy, I was hoping for some insights into his background. Kurtz did provide a few in this book, but they were embedded in a mass of comings and goings, names and places, forward and back references. Throughout this book, I was oppressed by the knowledge that, for Morgan to reach the original book of the series, PRACTICALLY EVERYBODY here is going to be slaughtered, one way or another. I guess I'll have to read the next volume to find out the gruesome details. Kurtz is fond of impalings and poisonings, I recall ...

And would somebody get this author an editor? Childe Morgan includes some of the clumsiest sentences I have ever read. It's too late to get her to fix the laughable jumble of ethnic and pseudo-medieval names that burden her characters, but it might be possible to tighten up her flaccid prose.

There's a bunch of events in this book. They never come together to form a story; it's like Kurtz said "I have to get through all these events in my timeline to get to the next part of the story." She should have just written the next part of the story, and perhaps done something interesting with it, because none of the events here fit together and none of them make you want to read farther.

I rather regret this, because some of the earlier Deryni books were very interesting and fun to read, but this is sequence not yet metamorphosed into plot, recounting without enjoyment, and things rather than narrative.

I usually enjoy K. Kurtz's Deryni novels, but this one dragged. Very little focus was actually on toddler Alaric Morgan, but the events around him. The few times he does appear, he's precocious. His parents are saintly, the king has become a tragic figure, the Camberian Council is opaque and mysterious... The book fills in a lot of background for those obsessively keeping track of who married/murdered/hated/loved whom and when, but it doesn't have any characters who really make a connection to the reader. Hopefully the next one will be more interesting.

Katherine Kurtz's first Deryni series introducing the land of Gwynneth and its young, just-made King Kelson and his advisor Alaric Morgan is a justifiably acclaimed fantasy classic. Since that first trilogy, Kurtz has given us several series of books dipping into Gwynneth's far history as well as Kelson's near future. While, as is true of just about any such multi-volume fantasy series, there have been some stumbles here and there, for the most part Kurtz has maintained the high level of quality set by that first trilogy, especially with regard to the Camber of Culdi series set in the distant past.
Childe Morgan is the second in the series that falls right before that first trilogy when King Kelson takes his place as ruler, helped by Alaric Morgan and others. Like the first book in this grouping, In the King's Service, Childe Morgan suffers from a feeling of it being a "fill-in-the-gap" novel, one whose plot and characters are pre-determined by previous novels. As such, it lacks much of the passion and excitement of King Kelson's earlier books or the Culdi series (which was set so far in the past that only broad strokes of plot had to be accommodated).
The first book suffered from trying to "catch up" the reader on many, many years, so we were hurled through decades and the emotional impact of that novel was stunted by the short shrift given to any particular event or character. Childe Morgan, on the other hand, is much more focused in terms of many fewer years covered (only a couple) and many fewer characters involved. Unfortunately, though, it still feels more like one wandered into a theater a few hours early--the stage is being set, props are put into their needed places, lights shift from place to place quickly practicing where they'll be focusing later, characters pop on and off stage practicing their entrances for later important scenes, cue lines are rehearsed that will eventually lead into moving dialogue. But not here, not yet.
As if often the case with prequel storylines, the book also suffers a bit from been-there-done-that. If you've read the previous Deryni novels, and while this series stands independent it would be a mistake to read it alone or first, you've already seen the scenes involving a king frustrated by his inability to deal with a recalcitrant clergy, an interrupted ceremony of power, the death of a child, the assassination attempt on a king, the death of a major character, a young boy with a preternatural sense of bearing, etc. They aren't done badly here, not at all, but they feel like shadows of what has come before--less substantive, less moving. It also doesn't help that the major characters her fans will be most interested in (Alaric, King Brion--Kelson's father) are too young to do much through most of the book--Brion reaching only 14 and Alaric remaining a toddler.
There is also, as one has to expect by now, a lot of ritual. In fact, the rituals structure the novel as we move in time through various knighting rituals, coming-of-age rituals, marriages, births, oaths of fealty, raising of a new archbishop, etc. Nobody does ritual like Kurtz, but I'd be lying if I said I read every single word of every single ritual.
While this sounds like a pretty negative review, the book actually was an enjoyable and quick read (ok, more quick since I didn't read every ritual litany). The pacing is even and moves along quickly, dotted as it is by slow rituals. There are exciting moments and moving moments. It isn't at all a bad book or even a mediocre one; it pales mostly in comparison to its strong relatives. But it does feel like a placeholder book; I'm not sure it will rivet anyone or move them fully. Though fans of her work will be stirred not by the action itself but by what it portends. When we read of early Deryni burnings or watch clerics plotting, what excites us more than these particular events is what we know they lead to.
For that reason, and because it does fill in some interesting gaps of knowledge, I recommend the book for any Kurtz fans. It doesn't reach the level of many of her previous works, but it will tide you over nicely and whet your appetite for the closer-to-home and more exciting events that are just waiting in the wings--Brion's battles with the church and the Torenthi, the soon-to-come purges of the Deryni, Morgan's ascension into power, along with his cousin. I'm certainly looking forward to the next book. For people who haven't read Kurtz yet, this is not the place to start. Pick up book one of her first trilogy (Deryni Rising) and be prepared to read many more; you won't want to stop.

This book is very much a background piece that doesn't necessarily provide new information but tries to pull together some fragments from earlier (by publishing date) work. It could have benefitted from closer editing - After Alyce's death, when Kenneth stopped at the convent on his return to Rhemuth, we were expected to overlook the fact that his youngest daughter was studying there. Had he forgotten? Was he going to tell her about her step-mother's death? In other ares, information was repeated with slightly different phrasing as if it were new.

Hopefully the third novel in this trilogy will see a return to Kurtz' usual excellent form.

Once again, there was no fleshed out plot line to speak of.

This is the third straight Kurtz novel that has disappointed, to say the least. King Kelson's bride, in the king's service, and now childe Morgan have sorely disappointed and tested the loyalty of Kurtz's devoted fans.

One wonders why Kurtz even wrote this book or series to begin with. this book, like its immediate predecessors, is sorely lacking in focus, plot, and vitality. I doubt that Catherine is getting well-paid to write these books; one wonders why she is deliberately putting in such little effort and doing such a bad job.

I had previously maintained that Kurtz deserved a readership on the order of Martin, Tolkien, Brooks, Hobb, and Lewis; sadly, this is no longer the case.