Katharine Kerr hosts a Deverry Q&A discussion
The overall series
date
newest »
newest »
Oh, I for one noticed quite clearly the "Under/over" weave very early on in the series.I personally like to be challenged by the literature I read, and I don`t just mean challenged by the ethics or morality, nor by the action or inaction of the engine driving the story.
No, I like to be challenged by the need to constantly refer back to characters or language.
The first time I discovered this peculiarity in my nature was when I bought the short paperback novel , A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess, back in the late 70`s.
He chose to tell the story heavily steeped in a made-up "(s)lang"uage spoken by the young gang members, and this drove the reader to the back of the book repeatedly to translate the narrative.
Not quite as intense as reading Dumas` "Count of Monte Cristo" in french, but hard work all the same.
Anyway, I digress, my point being, I relish fiction that doesn`t pander to the "easy read", and the Deverry series is never likely to fall into the category of an "easy read".
Keeping track ,as the reader, of interwoven lives and incarnations spanning a thousand years, was often like doing historical research on 3 or 4 dynasties. throw in the Welsh/Celtic/Gallic place names, the interpersonal relationships, and the gender switches, and you, Kit, shot yourself in both feet when it came to ever tempting a TV or Film producer into committing it to the small or large screen.
For me, that was always a huge part of the lure.
Since I picked up my first real book, Robinson Crusoe, when I was just barely 5, I`ve delighted in painting the scenery and faces of my favourite stories... always disappointed with their greyness when they reach the Technicolor screen.
The sheer enormity of the Deverry series spanned a decade of pleasure for me, and without shame I admit to having read it through in it`s entirety far too many times for it to be healthy... but I genuinely believe that for it to be truly appreciated, this is absolutely necessary.
So, in answer to your question, again:
Puzzling? Absolutely
Engrossing? Without question
Great fun? Fun? that isn`t a word i`d use... pleasure is much more apt.
Annoying? On occasions, yes, but only because of the sheer enormity of love and affection and dedication I`d invested in certain characters who then surprised me with twists and turns I`d have liked to slap them for.
Did I notice?
Pfft... now Kit, that`s a daft question to ask of Deverry fans ;)
I didn't notice any particular order in the sections from different time periods, but it was pretty clear that we were seeing windows into different times, given that it was, y'know, indicated by the date at the beginning of the chapter. What I didn't get was that the earlier times were supposed to be 'flashbacks' and that the 1060s-1100s were the designated 'present', as so many blurbs have described -- I thought the 'present' of the books was somewhere around the 1700s?Whether I'd have figured out the particular pattern of the books can't be answered, since I found your website and your Celtic knot structure analogy long before THE SILVER MAGE was published, but I did enjoy watching the patterns play themselves out, and took a lot of pleasure in trying to guess which character belonged to which soul without peeking at the table of incarnations. (Then again, to compare again to A Clockwork Orange: my copy put the glossary at the back, so I just learned the slanguage as I went along -- none of it is difficult to deduce from context -- and then got to the end and saw that 'ah, damn, this could have been so much easier!' ... but looking back, I think I like it better the way I read it.)
To answer your questions, as above:
Annoying: not at all.
Engrossing: definitely! But then I do enough fibre arts that one would think I'd find such structures engrossing in literary form. :-P
Puzzling: nah, not beyond the 'who's who this time' guessing game, which as I said was Great Fun.
I never really considered it as two separate story lines to be honest. I was thinking of it as separate parts of the same story line. As you say it's like a Celtic knot-work, I always just assumed that everything tied together onto one big thread.
I loved witnessing the pieces come together - but I always love that, when what seems like a non-incident in one story is the complete hinge for another. I re-read the entire series again from time to time, because I so greatly enjoy watching the "great picture" build.
I've never had any trouble with the Celtic knotwork story structure... unless you count the disappointment that it's so unsuited to film that there can never be a Deverry miniseries on tv. For a tv viewing audience the whole business of souls having a series of different lives (and being portrayed by different actors/actresses) would be waaaaay too confusing.
I love the story's structure. Though it's difficult at times to keep it all straight and I was constantly referring back to the tables to remind myself of the different incarnations and time periods, it was still enjoyable and fascinating to read. The way the story all comes together at the end of the series is very satisfying too. I have always imagined your writing space as covered in papers and references and post-it notes. It must have been difficult to keep it all straight at times and to stay consistent. I don't think I'd ever attempt to write a story with such a complicated structure myself (it intimidates me just to think about it!) but I did definitely enjoy reading it.
Now I'm going to have to check your site and read more about the "celtic knotwork" story structure. I hadn't thought of it that way before but it certainly makes sense.
Mod
Mod
I first discovered the Deverry series in 1988, when a neighbor loaned me the first three books. The structure puzzled me a little at first as I'd never seen anything quite like it in anything else I'd read. But the story itself captured my attention and over the years, I searched out and read the rest of the series - then, I went back and read them again - and again. And when the last book came out and I finished reading it, I was sad that there was no more to read, but at the same time, all the major loose ends were neatly resolved and questions answered. It was well worth waiting for. It was also nice to see a 'fantasy' novel where 'myth' (magic, reincarnation) were explained so well one could almost accept them as reality. I've since read other books in the genre that make use of flashbacks to other periods in time and points-of-view, but none that do it so well. And while I guess some people would complain that its too many characters and/or timespaces to remember, that's akin to the Emperor telling Mozart (in the movie "Amadeus") that his composition had "too many notes" - Mozart's answer, quite correctly, was that his composition had exactly the right number of notes, neither too many nor too few.
Interesting that you found the books by borrowing them. I'm currently lending my books to a neighbour who is working her way through the entire series. At least she won't have to wait for the next book to be written like I did
Mary Wombat wrote: "Interesting that you found the books by borrowing them. I'm currently lending my books to a neighbour who is working her way through the entire series. At least she won't have to wait for the next ..."Yes, I was very fortunate, I had just moved in to my first apartment after leaving home at a young age, and my next-door neighbor was a true bookworm - the entire 400 square feet of her apartment was crammed with books - and she was kind enough to loan them to me. I remember that they were nice hardcover editions, and probably not something I would have found in the local bookstore at that time. I especially remember the quality of the maps in them.
I particularly enjoyed the realism - the logical explanations for both natural and supernatural events, the de-glamourization of medieval life (particularly battlefields), and a world where towns had purpose - they weren't just placed for the author's convenience. Economic, geographic, and social factors are introduced and explained, which made the Deverry world come to life and make more sense, at least to me.
At the time I didn't know that Katharine had been a writer for Dragon Magazine. Although I was a gamer at the time, and had read some of her articles, I didn't make the connection until much later. It makes sense to me now that someone familiar with role-playing games would understand the need for a well-thought-out world setting.
Mod
Any chance there will be a Deverry console game for PS3/Xbox 360 ??
Katharine wrote: "Yes, when I was building Deverry and Bardek, gaming had a great influence! Not that all the game worlds current at the time were well thought out. Certainly the TSR D&D world had vast illogics. :-)"It certainly did! I spent most of my teen years attempting to be a dungeon master, and I'm afraid I probably did all the things that TSR said would unbalance the game - allowing players to run multiple characters, a lot of 'winging it' and running a campaign without a well thought out plan or milieu to set it in, etc. I can see why role-playing games were meant for adults - people with life experience and maturity.
Unfortunately, finding the time, and others who have the time and interest in it, just isn't likely to happen. (Maybe that's part of why I enjoy your books so much!)
I know when I started studying actual medieval history, I realized many of the illogics in the worlds and dungeons I'd created. So many little things I'd never even thought of. The economics, social structure, politics, literacy, food quality/quantity, science, religions... those are just a few of the things I think one would have to really understand in order to create a meaningful fictional world.
I've often described the Deverry series as modelled on Celtic knotwork. That is, there are two main story lines that interweave. Eventually, in THE SILVER MAGE, the two lines join and form a circle of sorts. I loved the structure of the series. I saw THE SILVER MAGE as completing a turn of a spiral, though. All the characters were there but they were no longer as they were in the beginning and most had made important life decisions that freed them from some recurring aspect of their wyrd.
So looking at it one way, they were in the same places they were in the beginning (when Galrion kicks off the whole entanglement) but looking at it from a different angle, they are ready to progress onto a different future.
Mod
Mod
Katharine wrote: "M, that's what I'd hoped readers would see about the ending. Cheers!"It's a good group, I've been a member for years.
Katharine wrote: "Yes, when I was building Deverry and Bardek, gaming had a great influence! Not that all the game worlds current at the time were well thought out. Certainly the TSR D&D world had vast illogics. :-)"I love that idea, but personally I think it would be a role playing game better suited for pc/mac. I could be wrong though but that's what I think.
Mod
Probably not. No one's ever approached me to make any kind of game out of the Deverry material.
Did you find this structure annoying, engrossing, puzzling, great fun, or did you even notice? :-)