Kurtz, Katherine: Camber of Culdi

[MythingLink]

This is Volume 1 in the Legends of Camber of Culdi. Rich, full of descriptive phrases, you feel like you know the characters from the beginning. What I'm going to do is reread the books in order and post updates ... my thoughts, questions, etc. about what I've read. All of Ms. Kurtz books are well worth reading over and over again. I'm pretty sure this is going to be about my 4th time.

The prologue sets up a small amount of history of Gwynedd, gives a bit of information about the Deryni and their history, and the persecutions. It's where the reader learns that Camber is a man who is concerned about humanity and the people of his land.

Camber MacRorie, Seventh Earl of Culdi. Gifted scholar and legalist. Retired civil servant. Sometime practitioner of Deryni magin.

In 109, he had not yet earned the title of Saint.

Cheers,

 

[MythingLink]

I am too old to be staying up late at night reading any longer.

Katherine Kurtz' books have always fascinated me with their imagery. She writes with a gift that allows the reader to enter the worlds she creates and become one of the cast of characters and thier life and times. It is especially true in these books about the struggle between human and Deryni as they attempt to rebuild a once great nation that for all intents and purposes could be the United Kingdom.

These books have all the majesty and mystery of Athurian legend complete with their own Merlin in the form of Camber of Culdi, a Deryni with great wisdom and courage who becomes first kingmaker, then saint, then a man whose name is anathema. It is he, the first three books were written about and it is he and his family, whose trials and tribulations are chronicled.

Camber wanted to become a priest and studied to become one, but with the death of his two older brothers and his vows not yet take, he returns home to take the title of Earl of Culdi and sit at the side of the new Deryni king as confidant. He stayed in this favored position through two kings, but with the crowning of the third retired and left his oldest son Cathan to take his place when the new kinds politics and ways of ruling didn't agree with his own moral and ethical code. For Camber did not believe that mere humans were less than the Deryni and he treated all with the same respect, suffering when they suffered and rejoicing when they rejoiced.

As the atrocities of the new king grow, Camber sees that something needs to be done. His second son, Joram a Michaeline warrior priest and his friend, Ryhs, a Deryni healer, discover that a human heir to the old Haldane monarchy still lives, Camber knows it is time to renounce the Deryni monarch and restore the old Haldane line.

Ms. Kurtz weaves a tale of intrigue and mysticism that will leave anyone who loves the tales of Arthur and Merlin wanting more. This first book in the trilogy ends with the heralding in of Cinhil Donal Ifor Haldane and the rebirth of the Haldane line to the thrown of Gwynedd.

Cheers,

 

[BAYLOR]

An excellent writer , Im think this series is out of print.