Susan Dexter: The best for last – The True Knight

It was with some sadness that I picked up The True Knight. This was the third book of the second trilogy Susan Dexter wrote about Calandra and its surrounds, and the last of her books in my reread (having read the second-to-last book she wrote, Wizard’s Shadow, first, and not having the very last book, Moonlight, to hand yet). I didn’t want to leave this world, or this author – she’s a very hard act to follow (though I did move on to someone who matches her…). The True Knight starts with a terrible scene, in which a king is faced with the consequences of having concurrently married a warrior woman and fallen in love with a sweet lady who had been taken prisoner by his people on a raid. The warrior woman, Melcia, known as the Red Queen for good reason, takes issue with her husband’s mistress and the daughter he has had with her: she forces him to fight her in single combat, defeats him, and bears his head off to take care of the interlopers. The mistress goes to her own death almost gladly, having lost her love – but the daughter is another story …

Some years later, a young man named Titch is trying to make his way in the world following in his dead father’s footsteps: he has his father’s now-elderly horse and sword, and armor garnered from various battles, and big plans to be a great knight. He’s good, and knows it – he’s had no choice but to be good – and knows that if he can just win the right fight in front of the right noble he will earn patronage, and become a True Knight. Having outgrown – and outfought – his neighborhood, he sets out to seek his fortune. In short order he meets Gerein, who appears to be everything Titch aspires to, and who is mounted on the most magnificent black horse. All else aside, Titch wants that horse beyond all reason, and challenges the knight for it … and loses. The two end up unlikely off-and-on companions, and Gerein turns out to be not quite the Knight he appears to be. In trying to do him a misguided good turn, Titch is nearly killed, but is found by Wren, a young apprentice magician who nurses him back to health.

Trying to regain control over his life, Titch actually loses it a little more, and before he knows it is, with Wren, conscripted into the service of the Red Queen. She needs help. The one thing that could bring out the humanity in her is her son, and trying to free him from the terrible curse that has been laid on him scours her of everything but desperate mother. Unfortunately, in her “desperate mother” equates to no one else in the world mattering worth half a damn. She is driving all the magic-users she can lay hands on to help him … or die.

The story uses a classic fairy tale – The Seven Swans – in a way that is purely Susan Dexter, unique and original and flat-out terrific. These are some of my favorite characters in her bibliography, and the book was probably my favorite … I suppose it’s a good thing to (except for Moonlight) quit on a high note. But I really, really wish she hadn’t.

 

The Prince of Ill Luck: Susan Dexter

I loved most of this book.

I loved Leith.  Born under a curse which causes misfortune to follow him like a huge and malevolent shadow, he absolutely can’t catch a break.  The ill luck is his – he is constantly bumped and bruised and broken, and is living proof that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.  But the ill luck is also that of those around him: wherever he goes, calamity follows.  Cattle plagues, fishing hauls dropping from bumper crop to empty nets … earthquakes … Whatever he does, wherever he goes, terrible things happen.  Finally, his father the king sends him off to marry a distant princess.  Unfortunately Leith+ ship = shipwreck, and he – possibly the only survivor – is washed onto an unknown shore, and has to decide whether to seek out people, and thereby endanger them, or figure out some lonely alternative.  In his wanderings, he comes upon a horse, also wandering loose: a beautiful black stallion, small but perfect.  (Valadan, the horse somehow communicates to him.)  Leith– eventually – captures him, not only for the simple reason that riding will be easier than walking but also because the money from selling the horse might make the difference his life needs.  When he arrives on a certain beach, however, he decides to try something different with the amazing little horse: there is a competition going on, young men attempting to take their horses up a hill of glass to claim a gold ring at the top.  A gold ring is worth money – maybe, he thinks, he can take advantage of the weird communication he has with Valadan, and the stallion’s extraordinary agility, to claim the ring – and sell it instead of the horse, which he is more and more reluctant to do.

And it works.

Sort of.

The fly in the ointment is that the ring isn’t the real prize; it is only the immediate proof that the task has been accomplished.  The real prize for accomplishing the task is the hand of the Lady Kessalia in marriage. Leithis dismayed – this is not what he had planned – but not nearly as dismayed as Kess: she has no intention of marrying.  The whole competition was meant as a distraction, as works out her plans to go off in search of her mother, who disappeared years before; her father went to look for her, and has not been seen since.  And now she just can’t shake offLeith.  He is a man of honor – he will not let a young (very young) woman go off into the unknown by herself … and, too (mostly), once he learns that Kess’s mother is a witch, he wants to meet her. Maybe she can alleviate, or even remove, the curse.

And here’s where the book lost a lot of love.  Valadan, of course, is as always wonderful.  The story is grand, or begins so.  Leith is steadfast and cheerful in the face of the most abysmal happenings, but not to a degree where I wanted to drown him myself.  He has had a horrible life from the moment of his birth, and has managed to reach adulthood scarred (internally and externally) but generous, devout, and surprisingly optimistic.  As I said, I love Leith.  Kess, though … She’s shockingly awful.  She’s spoiled, is part of it, but she goes well beyond simple brat.  She is self-centered, self-absorbed: anyone else in her vicinity only exists insofar as they can serve and obey her.  Otherwise they need to just shut up and get out of her way.  Or else.  When Leith comes into her vicinity and refuses to leave it even when ordered, even when shrieked at, even when she tries stealth to escape him, she takes to abusing him.  He is a gullible sort, so desperate for a way to turn his luck and spare not only himself but those around him that he will do anything she suggests, not suspecting for a good long while how evil she is.  When finally he realizes that she is telling him to do painful and humiliating and ridiculous things just to inflict pain and humiliation and ridicule on him, he stops listening, finally – but he still refuses to leave … why, then she simply resorts to poison.  I hate Kessalia.   Her behavior is extreme, inexcusable, and unredeemable, she quickly became one of my most-hated characters in all of fiction, and not very far into the book I made a note that this would be a wallbanger if Leith and Kess ended the book married.  (Wallbanger: book which makes a bang when flung against the wall.)   I won’t spoil the ending, but it was not what I would have chosen.

The writing is excellent.  The characters, even the hateful Kess, are well-drawn; I couldn’t hate Kess with such a passion if she hadn’t been given life by the writing.  The plot never does just what is expected, which is good, and the story as a whole is lovely, weaving fairy tale elements into a realistic and heart-felt tale.  If only the female lead wasn’t a sadist.

 

The Wind-Witch – Susan Dexter

First of all: Don Maitz cover.  Wonderful.

The Wind-Witch is Druyan, whose life as a farmer’s wife has been fairly ordinary aside from the small fact of her ability to whistle up a wind or redirect a storm.  This ability she has kept quiet, even from her husband, magic not being terribly well looked-upon.  The only other extraordinary aspect to this simple and good life is the rather small black horse Druyan discovered one day; as no one came forward to claim him, he was, by default, hers, and whatever she suspects about his extreme uniqueness is, again, kept to herself.  It is, of course, Valadan, immortal Warhorse of Esdragon (“of course” because the book is “The Warhorse of Esdragon, Book 2″), and he is anything but ordinary.

“Ordinary” is turned upside-down when the sea raiders begin to come, killing and plundering as sea raiders always do, and the local lord calls for troops – including Druyan’s husband – to try to fend them off.  In shockingly short order, Druyan is widowed, left alone with a tiny group of very young and very old female servants to try to maintain the farm – and to do something about the wounded raider, Kellis, her husband captured and locked in the root cellar just before he left.  In many ways it turns out just as well that of the several raiders who were put in there only Kellis remains – the others dug their way out and left him to die.  But he didn’t die, and though he might find death preferable to surviving as Druyan’s prisoner and indentured servant, he heals.  Trust slowly, cautiously grows between them as she discovers that, in many more ways than one, he is not your typical raider.

This could have been the setup for a completely generic fantasy romance – but it was written by Susan Dexter, and that is not what Susan Dexter does.  (Did.)  The trust between the two of them is hard won, and goes little further – the elderly woman servant certainly never trusts Kellis as far as she would a rabid dog.  But all he wants is to fulfill his obligation to Druyan, work out the year they agreed upon which will help her keep the farm, and then leave for parts unknown.  All Druyan wants is to keep her farm and see peace return to the countryside.  It’s frequently doubtful that either of them will get their wishes.

As always, Valadan is beautifully drawn.  And as always, so are the humans; they evade the usual pigeonholes fantasy characters have a tendency to slot into, and give every indication that they have full and complete lives before, after, and beyond what the story tells.  The story is (as always) excellently well told, with unexpected twists and turns and a perfectly satisfying ending.  It’s yet another reason to mourn the lack of books by Susan Dexter over the last ten years.

 

Susan Dexter: The Mountains of Channadran

It was kind of amazing reading the Wizard King’s War again after all these years.  In many cases, a writer’s first book is the best, and the ones that follow are attempts to recapture the magic.  But now and then there’s a writer like Susan Dexter, who gets better, and better, and better.  Ring of Allaire was good, but flawed.  The Sword of Callandra was good – better.  And The Mountains of Channadran?  Wonderful.

Once again the story is pretty simple: Nothing else has worked against the cursed winter that will not let go of Calandra, so Tristan must go and end it, once and for all – it, or himself: he heads off for Nimir’s stronghold, by way of Channadran and Royston Ambere’s tower.  He tries to sneak off alone for the quest, but his wife and the magician whom he’s never trusted (with good reason) won’t have it.

Almost all of Ms. Dexter’s main characters are in some way broken.  Elisena has scars I won’t Spoil, but they’re such that would have long since destroyed a lesser woman.  Crewzel had a husband once, and his loss is not only a grief but a danger to her and her young son.  Tristan is, superficially, all right: he had no major traumas in his youth, before this year at least, apart from the scar of having been abandoned very young (how young?) in Blais’s orchard.  But the last year has been both the best and the very worst; he gained Elisena in his life, but the loss of Blais remains terrible, and the kingship is not something he expected or desired.

His confidence level is low – he’s prone to mishap (and how), and his magic seems to be wildly variable, and his greatest virtue – and it’s remarkable – is the ability to put his head down and plow ahead even when he expects disastrous failure at every moment.  He has spent his entire life working through his days only able to be certain that if he tries a spell, it a) will not work; b) will work, but not in the way he intended; or c) will give every appearance of having worked beautifully, until he shortly learns of unintended disastrous results.

Polassar and Allaire are pretty much okay, but they’re not exactly deep people… Polassar thrives on battle, which is what he has had throughout his adult life at least.  Allaire’s traumas have intensified what was a natural timidity – but after all, had it easy over the years up until now.

The animal characters should be used as teaching tools for fantasy writers.  Thomas, Minstrel, and Valadan are beautiful.  Thomas is all cat. He may be able to speak fluently with Tristan – and, later, Elisena – but that’s because he’s grown from kittenhood in a wizard’s household.  Well, Tristan was always able to hear him, but the wizard’s household doesn’t hurt.  He’s no soppy slavish pet, any more than most cats are – if he doesn’t want to do something, damned if he will, and he uses his claws and teeth as necessary.  Minstrel is not the featherhead ( ) most writers resort to when trying to give a bird personality – not that there are so many of those – I’m actually trying, and failing, to think of any, especially any that aren’t birds of prey.  So perhaps it’s better to say he’s not the featherhead one would expect of a sentient canary.  (Yes, I’m using sentient in the way Star Trek taught me, and I really don’t care that that’s not the primary definition, thanks all the same – not that it’s anything pedants on TBWSRN have picked on before, no precious… It’s the word I want.  Sue me.) And Valadan … He’s magnificent.  I love that Ms. Dexter chose to make him smaller than might be desired – he is not what most men think of when they say “war horse”.  But he is in all other ways nearly perfect.  Not utterly, but nearly: he has his limits, some of them the limits of being in horse form, some the expanded limits of a magical being able to perform near-miracles: he just can’t perform actual miracles.  Even with his abilities and his sire and his sentience (there it is again), he is still a horse, and is painted as one, and he’s wonderful.

And the story is simply beautiful.  Through pain – heart-rending pain – and struggle – realistically portrayed as the sort of thing that, if it doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger – an ending is reached which, while not quite Happily Ever After, is Happily For the Near Future.  I believed every word of it, and was sorry, very sorry, to see it end.

 

Susan Dexter: The Sword of Calandra

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The second book in the Calandra trilogy is The Sword of Calandra.  I had memories of this one, because this book has (I don’t think this is a spoiler) a detailed and fascinating account of the forging of a sword, which was something I knew nothing about, and which I remember being engrossed in.  I enjoy learning about where things come from and how they’re made, and especially things as dear to my heart and yet present-day-exotic as swords. 

Tristan is in residence in the delapidated castle at Crogen, and preparations are ongoing for his crowning, amid a worsening of the weather – I feel for them, I really do; I’ve been beginning to suspect Nimir’s hand in our winter  - and constant threats from just about everyone in the surrounding countryside.  Elisena has located the royal regalia, and everything is present … Nearly.  They discover that over time and generations of kings and wizards the crowning has become thickly woven through with spells and rituals which must be followed.  And they discover – Tristan being Tristan, the hard way – that trying to take the throne without heeding every detail of the accretion of ceremony could be fatal.  The problem is that they don’t have the king’s sword.  And they very much need the king’s sword.  And therefore this is the quest for this book: locating a blade which has not been seen in centuries, possibly since the last king of Calandra fought the Duke of Esdragon.  It could be anywhere – or nowhere, though they hope that’s not so likely given its lineage and properties.  Once more Tristan finds himself with no other choice but to set out on Valadan – with Thomas at his saddlebow – to try to learn more. 

It’s fun to see how little Tristan expects to be missed when he leaves the castle, apart from Polassar and Allaire and, mostly, Elisena and Minstrel; few enough of the people of Crogen recognize him as their king as yet, especially when he wears what he has always worn and physics old ladies’ cows for them.  He has no real purpose there, and the mission is almost as much to be useful as it is to find the sword. 

They go to Kovelir, in hopes that the old wizard they met last time they were there - Cabal, who knew Tristan’s master Blais - will be able to help them, or at least to sponsor their search through the magic academy’s library.  Instead, through his soft-hearted reluctance to hurt the old man, who has aged and sickened in the months since Tristan last saw him, he finds himself apprenticed.  Which is awkward, at best.  He doesn’t have the heart to break the truth to Cabal, His days are spent with Cabal, and his nights in the library and on the streets searching for first Crewzel’s son and then Crewzel herself, the street magician who befriended him (in her own way) the last time they were in the city. 

All of his spells of seeking seem to come to naught.  Some information turns up in the library, but not enough, and time is running out – and Tristan finally decides his only course of action is to go to Kinark, legendary for its swords and the place where the king’s sword was made, and commission a new blade to the exact specifications of the ancient one.  It’s risky – but there’s no other real choice.  And that is how he meets Jehan, a smith with some very large and very painful demons.  (Given that it’s a fantasy I should specify they’re metaphorical demons…) 

Swords are pretty common Quest items, but this is an uncommon quest.  It’s one man, relatively ordinary in many ways, trying to accomplish something he feels is greater than he is.  Others may have confidence in him, but he doesn’t; he is so very human, believing he is well able to do many things but incapable of a huge number of other things, knowing from experience that however perfectly everything seems to be going it could all blow up in his face at any moment.  Sometimes literally.  He is befuddled at having been pushed to the throne; he is uncomfortable with ceremony and leadership on such a scale; he is scornful of his own abilities as a wizard.  He’s real. 

In Calandra Ms. Dexter continues to present flawed, human, real characters.  They don’t necessarily behave or react as the reader expects them to, any more than almost every human in any of our lives always lives up or down to expectations.  I love the characterizations, and the plots, and the story-telling.  The only thing I don’t love about Susan Dexter’s books is that there hasn’t been a new one in years.  And there’s no information out on the ‘web about her, so far as I can find.

 

Susan Dexter: The Ring of Allaire

Next in my reread of Susan Dexter was the first book she published, the first book in The Winter King’s War, the Tristan trilogy, Ring of Allaire from 1981.  It felt like I hadn’t read the book since the first time, probably in the early 80′s; I remembered a few random bits from the three books – Jehan, Crewzel, the rings, Thomas, Minstrel, a couple of plot points – so it was almost as if new.

The basic structure of the story – of Allaire, and of the trilogy as a whole – is almost formulaic.  A young man (19, I believe), orphaned very young and raised by, apprenticed to a wizard, is set on a huge quest even though he is not the most … ept of lads.  He finds himself shoved into a destiny he never would have imagined, and for which would never assume himself capable.  But, in the classic tradition, there’s no one else to do it: he is it.  The first quest turns into a series of quests, which lead to one great Quest, to in effect save the world, with a wildly assorted group of traveling companions. 

That right there could describe a great many fantasy novels.  But that’s where these books and formula part company.  Tristan, the apprentice, should be cookie cutter: he’s the young proto-magician who is called upon to be a hero, who can’t even pull off a simple spell without disaster.  But Tristan ranks high among my favorite fictional characters.  The majority of the three books use his point of view, and he’s an excellent traveling companion.  For all his faults – and he does have faults – he also ranks high among the fictional characters I would like to meet.  He is selfless in several ways; he is embarrassed by his many failures and fumbles and accidents but doesn’t let that keep him from making efforts, and it doesn’t distance him from others.  He tries, he fails, he grits his teeth and picks himself up and moves on.  And, too, he’s big-hearted; his loyalty, once given, is solid. 

He and his master Blais live quietly apart from a village by the sea in the east of Calandra, and muddle along quite well, making their living with love philtres and minor weather witchings.  There’s much call for the latter, because Calandra - and beyond – has for centuries been more and more under the spell of Nímir.  No one knows exactly who or what Nímir is, but he’s evil, and powerful, and bent on – to inappropriately reference C.S. Lewis – making it always winter and never Christmas.  Kind of like this winter, only to the point where if spring is seen it’s brief and feeble. 

There is a prophecy that Nímir can be defeated by a team made up of a wizard, the true heir to the throne of Calandra (which seat has been vacant for a very long time), and Valadan, the war-horse of Esdragon, a stallion who is said to have been sired by the wind and is effectively immortal.  He is magic.  And he’s gone.  But Blais, as it turns out, has been researching the prophecies for most of his life, and must have come across something, because Nímir kills him one fine afternoon while his apprentice is out.  Tristan comes home to find his master vanished, and only a message and a spell left behind, a spell which puts him on the path to find Valadan. 

With him from the cottage go Thomas, a cat who scorns the title of familiar, and who is another of my favorite characters; and Minstrel, the eagle-hearted canary who refuses to be left behind simply because he is small and fragile. 

Bringing the heir into the quest is easier than finding the war-horse – Valadan being found in a situation which shouldn’t have seemed as bad as it did, to the point it actually makes me a little queasy.  The heir is the gigantic and naturally martial Polassar, who does not take a great deal of convincing before he joins in on the journey into the Winterwaste to find and free the Princess Allaire of the Nine Rings.  It is only once she is freed that the heir can take the throne of Crogen and have a hope of beating Winter.  Problem is, I believe it was 6,003 wizards and uncounted heroes have attempted the quest – and failed – and died.  They never had Valadan, of course, and not everyone who went in was or had with him a valid heir – but nobody said having the full complement guarantees victory. 

The only drawback I can think of with Allaire is that one part of the adventure feels rather abridged.  Considering the danger of it all – 6,003 + wizards, was it?  - it seemed like only a prologue to the second half of the book.  Because after all Allaire has Nine Rings, but ten fingers.   It wasn’t easy – but there didn’t seem to be all the insurmountable obstacles one might expect. 

(Reading about Nímir’s influence on the land has had an eerie resonance given our ridiculous weather.  I wish I could go look for a war-horse and a lost princess and a sword, and MAKE IT STOP.)

 

Susan Dexter: Wizard’s Shadow

I’ve been rereading again.  One reason I don’t like Goodreads as much as Librarything is the pressure: if you get a new book and post it as “to be read” it adds it to your to-be-read shelf – and assigns it a number.  1043 is the number on there now – just a bit under one third of the books I have listed.  Oh.  Every time I add a book I feel guilty about rereading.  For a minute.

Since I’m not going to be dictated to by a website, on I re-read.  This time I’m making my way through Susan Dexter.  There are two trilogies (’81-’86 and ’94-95) and one standalone novel (93) (and one I believe children’s book about Tristan’s childhood, which I’ve never gotten my hands on – yet); they all take place in the same world, over a broad (and unspecified) timespan.  The second trilogy takes place first chronologically, and the books jump generations, being bound together (probably by the publisher) as the story of the war-horse Valadan, sired by the wind and magnificently immortal.  The first trilogy takes place untold centuries later, bringing Valadan back from a terrible imprisonment, among other things.

I read the standalone first, and it was my first clue that it had been longer than I thought since I read these books – too long.  I might have reread them, but it would have to have been at least ten years, I think, for all of them.  Ten years and hundreds of books later, I’ve had plenty of time to forget almost everything: perfect.

I’ve started with The Wizard’s Shadow, which starts with a murder, or an execution.  The impression is of something dark, something hunted, being pinned down and put, terribly, to death – very effective writing.  It doesn’t entirely die, though – a shadow takes shelter under a rock, and settles to wait.

It has a long wait on the seldom-traveled path, until Crocken the peddlar comes along.  The poor bugger has had a terrible time of it, with a string of bad luck, insult to injury, that has sent him off on a trading journey farther than he’s ever gone before to recoup losses he’s suffered.  The ill luck hits him again, in the form of his bad-tempered mule and a fall … which along with knocking him out dislodges a certain rock along the trail … And when Crocken comes around he is no longer alone. His shadow is gone and has been replaced with a new one, one which, hard as it is to accept (in a good way) even in a world in which magic is common, can speak to him.  It makes him a classic offer which cannot be refused: divert his path to the kingdom of Armyn, with the shadow trailing along behind, and he will be paid handsomely.  If not …

Crocken knows it to be a bad bargain – the way is difficult, and long, and very much not where he was headed – but there isn’t much else he can do.  He obeys, and the arduous journey is only the beginning of a complicated situation he feels completely unequipped for: a morass of motive and suspicion and very dark magic in the castle, a foreign bride for the young to-be-crowned king, and the mystery of what – who – the shadow is, or was, and what exactly it wants.

I loved it.  Wizard’s Shadow, and every other book I have by Susan Dexter, is exactly what I love best in a book: intelligent, funny, wonderful characters in a beautifully created setting involved in fascinating situations.  I made guesses about what was going on – guessed wrong – didn’t care, because I was enjoying the book too much.  The story did not end up as I’d feared, with the typical everyone-neatly-paired-off trope, and I was glad.  I hadn’t planned to move on to the Tristan books, but after Shadow I didn’t have any more of a choice than poor old Crocken: I had to keep going with Susan Dexter’s work.  I only wish there was more.

ETA: There is!  Get thee to Amazon!