D'Shai

D'Shai #1

by Joel Rosenberg

In feudal D'shai, your birth determines your status—and your own special magic. There is the Way of the Warrior, the Way of the Runner, and fifty other kazuh. Thus has always been...

The Way of D'shai

Kami is twice trapped by this rigid caste system. He is a peasant in love with a beautiful daughter of the upper classes. And he is an acrobat with no magical talent for acrobatics.

But when he is falsely accused of a nobleman's murder, Kami must defy tradition and find his own special power—and neither he nor D'Shai will ever be the same.

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Mystery, Science Fiction Fantasy, Science Fiction

327 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published February 1, 1991

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Note: This is a different person than the political/thriller author, Joel C. Rosenberg

Joel Rosenberg was the author of the bestselling Guardians of the Flame books as well as the D'Shai and Keepers of the Hidden Ways series. He made his home in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Reviews

[Tracey · Rating 5 out of 5]

D'Shai is a wonder. The book is named for the country, and a magnificently realized country it is: Asian flavored, without beating a reader over the head with it, and with its own wonderfully unique system of - everything, from magic to language to time-keeping. (Rosenberg had fun with the latter, replacing the traditional Japanese hours with his own innovations. The Japanese hours are Hare, Dragon, Serpent, Horse, Ram, Monkey, Cock, Dog, Boar, Rat, Ox, Tiger) There are 52 Ways, meaning 52 vocations for which some are born, for which some have an added ability. A kazuh runner can, once kazuh is raised, run for hours; his only limitation is the endurance of his body, and while in the state of kazuh that doesn't matter to him: he can and might and will run until his bones break and his muscles snap and he dies.

A kazuh acrobat, therefore, is something spectacular. It is also something that our hero and narrator, Kami Khuzud (which means Eldest Son Acrobat), is not: acrobat, yes, because he was born into a family of (mostly kazuh) acrobats and he has been trained since infancy; kazuh, no. What else he is: of the peasant caste, yet not quite: he does not work the land, so peasants don't own him, and he certainly isn't bourgeois, much less one of the "beloved ruling class". He is part of the best acrobatic troupe in D'Shai, though, and Lord Toshtai enjoys acrobatic troupes, so his status is not as lowly as it might be. Still, being in love with NaRee, a daughter of the bourgeois class, is a generally very bad idea, because there isn't anyone besides the two of them who are going to be in favor of that...

And far from favor, this romance leads to terrible things. Kami Khuzud has a rival, and the rival is much higher than he - and the rival does not take well to being or having a rival. Tragedy ensues - and it is down to Rosenberg's great skill that what happens is truly a terrible thing. Kami wangles himself an order from Lord Toshtai to investigate the death, and in doing so discovers he can raise kazuh after all - just not as an acrobat, or any of the other 51 Ways known for centuries. He becomes something new: Eldest Son Truth-Seeker. When he is in the zone, he can match Sherlock Holmes – and he does, working his way through the scanty available evidence and his new-found abilities to bring the book to a satisfying – and surprising – conclusion.

I've seen this called a light fantasy mystery, and I suppose that about covers it, but it's more than simply that. It could never fit into the typical "cozy mystery" category. It is very much a fantasy, and it happens to have a good mystery built into it; the lightness comes from a great sense of humor built into the narration, not from the sort of slapstick/madcap comedy of most cozies.

I love this book. It is wonderful when old favorites surpass expectations: this did. I remembered loving it long ago, and have been intending a reread, and finally gave it one when prompted by word of Joel Rosenberg's untimely death in June. I wound up raising my rating from four to five stars. It's a beautiful book. With utter confidence Joel Rosenberg set the story in a thoroughly new milieu, and taking the reader in via the first-person narration he never sets a foot wrong: we always know what we need to know, because both Kami and Rosenberg know everything. Kami is young, a little dense at times though very intelligent, honest with the reader and himself even when he's not being honest with others, and generally what used to be called a boon companion. I like him a lot – and I dearly wish there was more than one other book set in this world with Kami Dan Shir.

One thing I have to say going back to the unique structure of the world: as I mentioned, it is given an Asian feel, down to people eating with "eating sticks". But they are called "eating sticks" – never chopsticks. While elements are recognizable, there are no jarring and out of place references to anything readily identifiable as specifically Chinese or Japanese or Korean or otherwise terrestrial: everything is unique to and part of D'Shai. I don't think I've ever seen it so well done, outside of Guy Kay's work.

[Cera · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was pleased and delighted to reread this for the first time in 11+ years and find it still very, very enjoyable.

D'Shai is a pseudo-mystery novel set in an Asian-inspired fantasy world in which professions are more-or-less determined at birth, both through rigid class/caste systems, but also through a form of inherent magic; people are born to their professions not only due to social control but because they have the ability to 'raise kazuh' and perform their profession at the absolute peak of their abilities -- a kazuh runner never tires, a kazuh warrior is incredibly deadly, and so forth.

D'Shai's main character, Kami, is a late-adolescent acrobat whose keen powers of observation tend to fail him when it comes to his personal relationships. Through a series of mis-steps (mostly his own) and dangers he eventually ends up playing the role of a detective. Rosenberg does a good job of combining some classic detective moments with the unique cosmology of his world, but I'd say that the mystery aspect is definitely secondary to Kami's coming-of-age, so I wouldn't recommend it to a die-hard mystery fan. Come to think of it, it reads rather like a historical mystery, except instead of period detail one gets subcreated world detail.

For me, the biggest flaw in the book was Kami's personality; he is at times a pretty unbearable example of an arrogant, selfish male adolescent who cannot resist showing off in spite of great danger. To a certain extent I had a difficult time seeing how someone like him would have survived so long in a world in which members of his class can be casually killed by aristocrats without any justification. On the other hand, I've never gone through teenage boy socialisation, while I got a pretty strong dose of the 'keep out of trouble' version of teenage girls socialisation, so the milage of other readers will doubtless vary.

I liked this much, much more than the Guardians of the Flame series, which I tried rereading before this and ended up putting aside in dismay.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fun detective story, similar in some ways to the Lord Darcy books.
Plot: Not overcomplicated, with satisfying ending
Style: Decent
Setting: Worth the read
Characters: Good

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Re-read.)

As good as I remembered it. The world of D'Shai is a wonderful creation: vivid, overwrought, over-the-top, colorful (for once Darryl K. Sweet is the appropriate cover artist). Influenced by mythical/historical Japan and China, but not a simple appropriation of either. Viciously caste-bound, but with enough social hypocrisy to make the rules dangerously permeable. Filled, top to bottom, with kazuh: the magic of skill, which builds on whatever you do (swordsmanship, juggling, carving wood, plowing a field) and raises talent and experience into genius and the splintering edge of human ability.

Kami Khuzud is a young acrobat -- a good acrobat, after years of practice with his itinerant troupe -- but not a kazuh acrobat. Acrobats are legally of the peasant class, but they entertain the nobility, which means they get to mix above their social circle. Mind you, being noticed by the nobility means you might offend the nobility. An offended noble can cut your head off; as can an angry noble or a mildly bored noble, for that matter. Kami Khuzud is something of a cynic about what he calls "our beloved ruling class". But the banquets are nice.

While entertaining the imposing Lord Toshtai, the Khuzud troupe is struck by tragedy. Kami Khuzud does not believe the death is an accident. Lord Toshtai, for his own reasons, declares that Kami Khuzud shall discover what really happened. Disappointing a noble is about as wise as offending one, so off goes the acrobat, poking his nose where peasants really shouldn't, if they value their heads.

If I try to list what's good about this book, I fall over in a burble: Lord Toshtai is awesome, Kami Khuzud's acrobat family is awesome, the juggling is awesome, the ironic formal customs are awesome, the food is awesome (oh powers, the food) (and the liquors too). The castle wizard and the castle swordsman. The aristocratic D'Shai culture, which is equally full of dung-footed peasants and lower-class boarding houses and bourgeois castle servitors. The fact that castle guards are required to have good singing voices, so that they can announce newcomers and raise alarms in four-part harmony.

The magic is brilliant -- I can't believe other writers haven't stolen the gimmick -- because what is either more numinous or more familiar than the moment of hitting the zone and doing it *right*?

On top of that, it's a formal mystery, with suspects and clues and motives and all that good stuff. One will not be surprised to learn that Kami Khuzud finds the murderer, and learns something about his kazuh along the way.

There is one sequel, equally good (_The Hour of the Octopus_). Sadly the series didn't sell well enough to justify further entries, and now the writer is gone, so two books is what we've got. Read 'em.

[Mitchell · Rating 3 out of 5]

Joel Rosenberg wrote a series of very fun fantasy novels I enjoyed in high school called Guardians of the Flame, which is basically about a group of D&D players who get transported into their fantasy world and find it’s not quite as much fun when your real life is at stake, and who also end up staying there for 25+ years and using their own college degree knowledge to kickstart an industrial revolution. It was a silly premise but very earnest and enjoyable, and I need to get around to re-reading it one of these days. D’Shai, on the other hand, is a more traditional fantasy story – one which is also a mystery, as the narrator and his family of travelling acrobats get caught up a tit-for-tat revenge drama while performing for a week at the court of a local ruler. (The blurb, shamefully, gives away a fairly critical plot development which doesn’t happen until the last fifth of the book!)

The key fantasy gimmick at the heart of D’Shai is the concept of “kazuh,” a form of magic in which the performer of a task – someone already at the height of their profession – can phase into a supremely focused and powerful rendition of that task, whether they’re an acrobat or a warrior or a runner or a cook or whatever. This seems a logical line of thought for Rosenberg, who (as I was reminded early in this book) is a writer with a lot of other hobbies who often writes about the physicality of certain acts: juggling, karate, guns, and in this book acrobatics. The most obvious example of this kind of writing was Hemingway, but you see it with lots of others, people who you can tell are channeling their love of a particular pursuit into their fiction: classic rock and baseball with Stephen King, mountain climbing with Kim Stanley Robinson, animal husbandry with John Marsden. I wish I was that kind of writer, mostly because I think it would be nice to be one of those people who can just lose themselves in an activity, even a mundane one like cooking. Instead I’m the kind of writer who’s an easily distracted scatterbrain and dislikes working with my hands, not because I’m lazy but because I find it dull.

Anyway, D’Shai is a light and easy read for a fantasy fan, the kind of book which would probably sit well alongside Barry Hugart’s Bridge of Birds. I suspect Guardians of the Flame is probably his better work, though I’d need to re-read that, because for all I know it doesn’t hold up.

[rixx · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hidden gem among early 90s Fantasy: In an Asian-inspired world, everybody has a kazuh: a talent, one of 52, that they discover and then hone to the point of genius, by entering a deep flow state. The protagonist, Kami, belongs to a family of acrobats, but clearly acrobatics are not his kazuh. This doesn't make him crippled or outcast or anything, he's just less good at some things than his father and his siblings.

Acrobats are slightly special in the rigid class hierarchy of this world, because while they belong to the peasant class, they play for and interact with the nobles – who can, if they want, have them killed on a whim. Fun. When a murder happens while they perform for a local noble, a standard mystery begins – but I'll forgive it for being a mystery, because it's more fantasy than mystery, and the worldbuilding is just delightful.

How about the fact that castle guards have to have a good singing voice, because guests are traditionally announced in four-part harmony (as are sudden alarms)? And seing traditional professions with their own kazuh, for example the smith, was just enjoyable and fun. Kazuh runners can run nearly limitless as long as their kazuh is raised (which, as any flow state, of course isn't sustainable indefinitely).

I'm not one for mysteries, and I tried to ignore the romance (not bad, just a bit YA-y), which mostly serves the purpose of driving class hierarchy home.

Overall an enjoyable light read. There's a second book to the series, which I probably won't get around to. No more than that – the series was not successful enough at first, and then the author died.

[Myra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kami is an acrobat. His father leads the troupe of acrobats, his sister is an acrobat, he really doesn't have much of a choice...even though everyone else possesses the sort of 'magic' (kazuh) of acrobats, and Kami doesn't. The traveling troupe stops for some time in a town where the ruling nobleman has a special fondness for acrobats. It's important to note that the 'beloved ruling class' treat commoners however they want—the acrobats don't let this bother them. Kami is in love with a noblewoman, who is courted by a nobleman, and that noble is not inclined to treat Kami fairly. A series of vicious accidents result in Kami being tasked with solving for murder.

I read this book because I somehow ended up with book 2 (which I still intend to read). At first I was confused and a little bit bored, but gradually I came to appreciate the world, the story, the characters, and the tongue-in-cheek storytelling. It was lighthearted at first but about 1/3 of the way through the real plot starts and it gets a good deal more serious.

[Dantegideon · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn’t really enjoy this; I didn’t like the ornate style of writing or the main character, particularly. It didn’t help that every time someone said ‘kazuh’ (which is frequently) I pictured a kazoo. Raising his kazoo.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved this book when I was 11. Much more imaginative than the Guardians of the Flame.

[David Huss · Rating 5 out of 5]

A start to a new world.

Sadly passing before his time. A fascinating world. Find book 2 "The Hour of the Octopus " for more in this series.

[Kenn Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reread this book. Adventure and romance with two murders that must be solved by Kami, an acrobat with no magic.

Interesting cast system and the magic system is a little different.

[Joel Flank · Rating 5 out of 5]

D'Shai by Joel Rosenberg is an out of print book by an author who's best known for the Guardians of the Flame series, and I was fortunate enough to pick up a copy at a used book store not too long ago. This book was a rare gem, and combines an unusual fantasy setting (vaguely riffing on ancient Asian cultures), an engaging mystery, world building, and some light humor. This is definitely not your standard cliched fantasy book with elves, dwarves and fireballs being cast. Instead, it focuses on Kami, an acrobat in a traveling troupe, and the events that happen to him upon arriving at the city of Den Oroshtai. While there, a murder is committed, and Kami is thrust into the center of the investigation. He must solve the murder, both to ensure justice is served, and also to make sure he's not framed for it himself.

Kami's life is complicated by being the only member of his troupe that doesn't have any magic that supports his acrobatics. For that matter, he doesn't seem to have any magic that would help in another profession, either. In a world where everyone is born with magic tied to a certain profession, that makes Kami's life difficult. He has had to learn to rely on his hard practiced acrobatics skills that barely puts him at a level fit to perform, as well as his innate intelligence. Things are further complicated by his charm with local girls as he travels from town to town, since his sweetheart in Den Oroshtai has other suitors, and they are not happy with her favoring a peasant caste itinerant performer. By the end of the book, Kami not only needs to deal with these situations, but must forge a path to a new profession, in the rigid caste based society that only has 52 traditional professions.

One of the best things about this book is that it's an engaging, small story being told. There are no epic consequences to the events in the book, no armies sweeping across the continent, artifacts of immense power, etc. The events of the story profoundly affect Kami and the other characters, but that is all. This makes the story much more personal than the epic world shattering plots that are more common in fantasy. Also, Joel Rosenberg's writing is light and easy to read, while still conveying a new world to the reader that is a joy to explore. There is a sequel to this book, which will be reviewed shortly, once I finish reading it.

[Sherryl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably the best book I've read by the author. Very well written and sometimes poetic. The author could have taken the story in a more epic turn but I'm satisfied with what I've read. Reminds me of a Patricia McKillip novel.

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've probably read this book ten times over the years. I've always liked the caste-specific magic system. The murder mystery that isn't really a mystery is okay but is really set dressing for the characters.

[Sbuchler · Rating 3 out of 5]

Genre: Fantasy

Read-once fantasy murder mystery. The magic system/culture system is interesting.

[Jeffrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

a terrific read.

[Adon Coya · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good for one reading, I went through it in two days.

[Doug Stillinger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not the most intellectual or meaningful book in the world, but for what it is—a fresh-feeling, light-hearted, comedic caper—it's an easy recommend. Pairs well with sand, sun, and sake.

[Kelsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite of all Joel Rosenberg's works! An incredible world, and good solid characters.