Customer Reviews

Magic Casement (Man of His Word)

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4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

Princess Inosolan is bored. Bored with the tiny kingdom of Krasnegar, bored with her Aunt Kade's attempts to give her some polish and just bored of being somewhere where nothing ever happens! However, she is simply stunned to discover that her father, King Holindarn, is sending her to Kinvale with her Aunt Kade to find a husband. Inos doesn't feel ready to marry and has never even been interested in boys that way. Well, there was Rap, the stableboy, whom she rode horses and played on the beach with, but he surely didn't count. After all, Rap wasn't a boy he was just Rap.

Inos hated Kinvale when she first arrived. She wasn't good at any of the maidenly pursuits that were focused on there and she really didn't care about embroidery or anything of that nature anyway - until Sir Andor arrived...Sir Andor was everything a maiden dreams of marrying - strong, handsome, charming, witty, attentive to a woman's every wish and desire. If Inos got to select her husband, and her father said that she may, she would surely pick Sir Andor. However, before they could reach a firmer understanding on the matter, Sir Andor up and left for the winter and Inos began to despair of ever seeing him again...

Meanwhile, back in Krasnegar, Rap was working hard with the horses and trying to improve his station in life from stableboy or goat herder to wagon driver, but he couldn't stop thinking about Inos. Oh, Rap well knew that their stations in life were so different that there could never be anything between them, but that didn't stop him from loving her. He just hoped that he would still recognize her when she returned from Kinvale and that they would still be friends. So Rap was thrilled to befriend Sir Andor, a visitor to the small kingdom of Krasnegar who seemed to have selected him specially to be a friend who helped to get his mind off of Inos. Rap would do anything for Sir Andor and, when he discovered that Inos was in danger, he left everything he knew behind to travel overland with Sir Andor to rescue his princess. But Rap quickly discovered that Sir Andor was not what he seemed and that he was far from being an ordinary stableboy...

Magic Casement is the first book in the Man of His Word quartet and it is a wonderful kick off to a thoroughly enjoyable series. My favorite character was Rap. It is true that he was not necessary a quick thinker and that he didn't react to things in the way I visualized a hero would, be he was dogged, determined and dependable and he fought through everything to give Inos the chance to take over her kingdom and rule. Inos was also a good character, but I didn't find her quite as interesting. I found myself rushing through the parts of her story to get back to see what was happening to Rap, but I liked the way Duncan dealt with both main characters at the same time by changing perspective so that you knew what was going on wherever they were. In addition to Rap and Inos, there is a host of engaging and intriguing secondary characters that readers will delight in getting to know including the witches/warlocks who guard the segments of the kingdom, the different races who populate the land, Sir Andor, the minstrel Jalon, the scholarly Dr. Sagorn, the monster Darad and the unexpected Little Chicken. Though this series is out of print, the books are readily available and they are also found in ebook format. Another great series by David Duncan - highly recommended for fantasy fans looking for a new twist on an old theme.

I loved this series so much. It plays with the usual fantasy cast, but they are very sincerely and beautifully developed. You have your honest young stable boy (not very good-looking, just to shatter one classic fantasy role a little) who is bent on following his childhood friend Princess Inosolan all over the world if need be to help her regain her kingdom. This all takes place in a rich, well-developed world with interesting races based on historical places in our own world. Like the imps, dark-complected people with an interest in empire-building and a very well-organized Romanesque military. The story is exciting, with great twists and interesting developments. The system of magic is unique, and I adored all the characters.

I have all the books in this series and the sequel series, A Handful of Men, and I have read the first four until the pages are starting to fall out of the book. I think it is a true gem among some of the typical fantasy that's out there and I hope to spread the word about it!

goes a long way in the case of "Magic Casement". Those that are tired of books with a horde of 'main' characters that seem to get nowhere even through a handful of 1,000 page tomes, will be most pleased with the start of this four book series. Two main characters: the shy but faithful stableboy Rap with a curious knack for horses and the quite unladylike princess Inos, grow from their juvenile beginnings into adults as the story unfolds even just in volume one. For Inos, life holds far more than the world of the pampered royalty in embroidery and casual tea party chat that her father whisks her into after it becomes a necessity for her to wed so she can ascend the throne after her father's death. And for Rap, a denial of the acceptance of power could very well prove fatal for him as he finds that life gets much harder than being a mere stableboy.

Duncan's pace is impeccable. Like "The Gilded Chain" and the books following in their wake (which came many years after this series was written), he sets the story in brisk motion and keeps us trekking across the continents along with the two centers of the novels, entwining many more characters into their lives to complicate things even more, yet he never strays too far from the gels that hold the story together.

Tightly well written, introducing a very unique magic system which becomes very important as things come to a head, and an assortment of savagely likeable characters who are far beyond the cliched bunch found in other novels, "Magic Casement" is the start of a very good thing, and a must read for anyone who loves fantasy with a bit of an original edge.

I have read hundreds of fantasy books and this remains my my uncontested favorite series ever. Reading this book is somewhat like watching the felowship of the ring with out knowing that it is going to end in the middle. Your flying through the pages to see what will happen to Rap and Inos when all of a sudden it's over without realizing it you have finished the book. Now you must hunt through the used book stores to find the next one (before amazon[.com]) stopping at nothing to find what will happen to our stable boy and his queen, will Raps magic progress further or get him killed buy someone trying to torture his secret out of him.........

I have read over a thousand fantasy novels, and this book starts my favorite series. I waited anxiously for each book to come out - haunting my local bookstore for weeks at a time!

The book is beautiful. The main characters are lovingly developed through a plot that's surprising but consistent. The broad fantasy world is rich with history and very much alive. Duncan's absolutely unique system of magic is thoroughly enjoyable and clever.

Duncan switches viewpoints in exactly the right way; you're always anxious to find out what's happening in several places at once, and he keeps you hanging... just long enough. It took me three books to catch onto this marvelous technique. You'll love it too.

I love Dave Duncan and this series is no different. Fun and interesting characters, facing impossible odds, will suck you in but if you purchase this book for your Kindle be warned that the second and third book are not available on Kindle. Only the first and forth book of this series have been released in the Kindle format.

This is the first volume in the first of two marvellous fantasy quartets.

The first series, "A man of his word" has titles taken from Keats' "Ode to a nightingale" and the titles perfectly match the themes of the books.

The lines which inspired the titles are as follows -

"The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days, by Emperor and Clown ....

... The same that oft-times hath
Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam
of perilous seas, in Faery lands forlorn"

The four books of the first quartet are

The Magic Casement
Faery Lands Forlorn
Perilous Seas
Emperor and Clown

These four books tell one complete story and are best read in this order.

There is a sequel quartet, set 15 years later in the same universe, which is called "A handful of men" and has its titles taken from Masefield's poem, "Tomorrow." The four books in that story are

The Cutting Edge
Upland Outlaws
The Stricken Field
The Living God

All eight books are set in a world of Gods and Sorcerers, where magic abilities are conferred by the knowledge of words of power. The descriptions of magic powers and how they work are far more effectively and consistently thought through than in the typical fantasy novel, and as the hero and heroine travel through a strange and diverse world a picture both of that world and the serious threat which it faces gradualy takes shape.

The Magic casement opens in the sleepy town of Krasnegar, where Inos is the only daughter of King Holindarn. Her best friend is the stableboy, rap. A divine apparition warns her to "Seek the Good" and adds "If you do not trust in love, all will be lost."

Initially this message is taken as meaning that Inos must marry, and her father sends her to the Imperial capital to learn how to be a lady. But this is only the start of her travels, and strange adventures, throughout a strange, beautiful, and dangerous world.

The original paperback editions of the "A man of his word" quartet had beautiful covers painted by Don Maitz, and the books would almost have been worth buying for these covers if they had not also comprised a beautiful story.

This was the very first fantasy book (from the Science Fiction/Fantasy section of a bookstore, not the Children's section) that I read. I was ignorant of Fantasy writers' tendency to write multi-book stories, so I was horrified when this book ended without ending the story! My family and I were on a vacation in Washington state, and I ignored all the sights to read this book. When I finished it, I nagged my mother (I was only 13) to take me to a bookstore so I could get the next book in the series (Faery Lands Forlorn), which I also devoured.

The Magic Casement just swept me up in it's story. I found it very exciting and interesting. I desperately wanted Inos to fall in love with Rap. I had read enough books by then to recognize forshadowing when I saw it, but I had no idea how the pair was ever going to get together.

I love the system of magic. Everything was explained so well. It all made sense. I thought it was very original to have a person's magic ability be determined based on how many magic words a person knew. Every fantasy story I have since read is a disapointment to me if the author doesn't explain how magic works. I always feel cheated when I read a story and magic just IS, and some people can do it and some can't, and I have no clear idea of the limits to the magical abilities.

All in all, I enjoyed the characters so much that I just wanted to spend more time with them. Even Little Chicken - I was very unhappy when he got separated from Rap and disappeared from the story for awhile.

If you like fantasy that isn't dark and heavy, and is (relatively) not that long, I would recommend this series.

Whether or not you like it, most of the fantasy published these days is more-or-less directly derivative of Tolkein... unless it's Dark Fantasy, and then Stephen King is a common prototype.

Well, meet Dave Duncan.

Dave Duncan plays by Dave Duncan's rules.

The only other book/series that i can recall that gave me as much fun watching an entirely new (to me, anyway) system and practise of magic revealed just at the right pace to move the story along quickly but not bog it down in Expository Lumps was Edward Eager's "Half Magic" and its sequels/related books (which you ought to check out, too).

Duncan's system of magic for this series (which i won't go into detail about because, while it's imminently understandable and elegantly simple, the gradual revelation of its elegant simplicity and power is part of the appeal of these books) is one of those "why didn't *I* think of something like that? " ideas.

While this magical system and the implications of its working are the major driving engine of the series as a whole, the driving engine of the story that makes it wonderful and compellingly readable is the relationship between Rap and Inos -- the stableboy and the beautiful princess. I've never before seen a better or more touching portrayal of two young people so deeply in love with each other and yet so totally clueless as to what they think themselves, much what the other thinks.

On the other hand, i've read very few adventure romps that satisfy so thoroughly as this series, either.

Duncan has obviously put a lot of effort into working out his world of Pandemia (this becomes even more obvious in the sequel series, "A Handful of Men"), its races, its politics and its geography. And we see a *lot* of that geography in the course of this series -- these books will gove you saddle sores and blisters on your feet just to read.

Even beyond the nations and the countries and the politics, Duncan has assembled a cast -- a veritable horde -- of characters, almost all of whom seem to be concerned in some way or other with stableboy Rap and Princess (of a Very Small city-state) inosolan. Particularly interesting and Important are the goblin Little Chicken, the minstrel Jalon, Dr Sagorn the scholar, Darad, and Andor the cavalier, not to mention various Gods who take a direct and meddlesome interest in human affairs...

Admittedly, this book starts a bit slowly, but that's just Duncan winding up all the clockwork, setting all the dominoes in their rows and getting the pyrotechnic displays set up Just Right.

If you read as far as Page 100 or so -- the introduction of Darad is, i think, the turning point -- i do not think you will be able to put this book and its three companions down until the last page of Volume Four.

((I would also like to praise the beautiful covers by Don Maitz -- i saw the originals of two of them at the 1991 World SF Convention -- which are Simply Beautiful, and which, although on the surface simply four portraits of the same girl/young woman, all clearly relate to and comment on the action of the books they grace. And look for Maitz's signature, which is included in one or two at least as part of the design or decoration...))

This book is great, but as the series goes on, the quality declines. Sorry!