A Touch of Daggerspell

Last year I followed Aidan’s series of posts regarding his read of Daggerspell with Kate Elliott’s re-read.  Daggerspell is the first entry in a multi-volume, multi-generational epic series of fantasy novels.  The series was one I had my eye on for some twenty years when I had first encountered one of Katherine Kerr’s novels from the middle of the series when I was twelve and for whatever reason, I just wasn’t ready for it and I never went back. But, several years ago I did purchase a copy of Daggerspell and once again, I never read it.

Now, this particular post of mine is fairly out of date because I finally read Daggerspell back in July and August of 2013, so you may well be wondering why I am writing about it now.  The very short answer is that I’m preparing to start reading Darkspell (the sequel) and I wanted to re-familiarize myself with the first book before I dove back in.  I’ve been on something of an unintentional semi-break from science fiction and fantasy and over the last few months and I want to dive back in.  Working on some series that I had always planned to work through seems like a good idea.  Plus, I’d rather not have an accidental five years pass and find myself still have not yet opened up Darkspell. 

The crazily short and absurdly simplified to a fault version of what Daggerspell deals with is reincarnation, fate, and atonement.  So, while this is a multigenerational tale, it is also dealing with the opportunity (nay, requirement) for a particular character to correct a serious mistake of the past and in correcting it, fix himself.  That sounds intensely cheesy and dismissive of just how good of a job Katherine Kerr did in setting up this story and what sort of story it is.  But, I am coming from this more than six months since I read the book and the beautiful interweaving of time periods and characters is somewhat lost in what I have in me to describe the book.

I do highly recommend Daggerspell and would suggest that new readers start with the introduction to the re-read series but not venture beyond them because the next three parts are heavy with spoilers and synopsis of the book.  Do not delve into the posts without working with the schedule of what is being covered.  It’s worth reading, but not before you’ve read the book. 

All that said, I do appreciate Aidan and Kate doing those posts because it helped give me that final push I needed to finally read Daggerspell, and it was more than worth the wait.  Even writing this little bit about Daggerspell makes me itch just a bit to start Darkspell.