Charlotte Kersten

“It is bright in the wilderness now, warm and inviting, in those trackless lands where she has thrown away the key. Only she can walk safely there.
But it is never safe.”

Year published: 1998

Categories: Adult, fantasy

Summary: The kingdom of Wendar is in turmoil. King Henry’s reign is contested by his conniving sister Sabella, and she begins to gather allies to her banner- some willing and others ensorcelled through her dark arts. Meanwhile, the monstrous Eika raiders terrorize the coastal cities. As chaos spreads through the country, we follow the lives of two young people, Liath and Alain. Alain is from humble origins, dedicated to the monastery, but it soon becomes clear that the Lady of Battle herself demands more from him. Liath lives with her beloved father, learning the mysteries of the stars and ancient writings, but her world is shattered upon his sudden death. These two innocents are thrust into a world of danger beyond anything they have ever known before.

My Thoughts: King’s Dragon feels like a very classic epic fantasy in many ways. This works, in my opinion, both to its benefit and to its detriment as it embodies the archetypal characteristics of the genre that I tend to enjoy and struggle with. To begin with, the world that Elliott has created is no less than meticulously realized – there is a very real sense of dynamic, detailed history and vivid culture, and Wendar truly feels like an authentic medieval setting while still engagingly differentiating itself from our world and its history. The flipside of this is that Elliott’s world-building is sometimes so extensive and dedicated to the realistic concerns of a medieval world that it ends up being detrimental to my enjoyment of the book. A massive amount of time is spent considering religion: religious faith, sin, heresy, history and power hierarchies. Since I think Elliott’s goal was to craft a believable fantasy world that actually parallels our world’s medieval cultures this is no doubt necessary, but I did find it rather tiresome. Slightly less time is spent exploring the hierarchies of various noble families and questions of inheritance and alliance, topics that seemed to have little bearing on what actually happens in the book:

“There is so much talk of dukes and lands and biscops and allegiances,” Alain confessed. “I can’t make sense of it.”

You and me both, my dude.

As befits an epic fantasy, there is a sweeping cast of characters, and for the most part the cast is excellent. Liath and Alain both start the story as complete innocents, and while they are soon forced to confront all of the horror and pain that the world has to offer, they don’t relinquish their essential goodness or the characteristics that fundamentally make them who they are, namely Alain’s compassion and Liath’s intelligence and curiosity. They are surrounded by equally well-realized supporting characters, from the king’s beloved bastard son Sanglant to the determined scholar Rosvita, the cryptic Eagle Wolfhere to the utterly psychopathic monk (?) Hugh. I was engaged by all of the viewpoints except for that of Liath’s best friend Hanna, who mostly seemed to have been granted a viewpoint to 1) inform the reader about what the king was doing while Liath was not there to observe and 2) inexplicably continue to lust after Hugh, the man who enslaved and horrifically abused her best friend.

I was also a little dubious when Liath decided that she was deeply in love with Sanglant after interacting with him approximately two times. The psychologist in me wants to argue that severe trauma during a key developmental stage can lead to attachment issues later on, but I think it’s just plain and simple insta-love, because in a later viewpoint it’s established that Sanglant feels the same way. For that matter, it seems like every single man who interacts with Liath has to comment on how beautiful she is. For a book that is otherwise written with such realism and finesse, this is a rather strange touch.

There are many fascinating magical secrets and hints of arcane powers stirring, especially related to the ancient Dariyan empire that unified humans with the vanished race of Aoi, or Lost Ones:

“There are spirits burning in the air with wings of flame and eyes as brilliant as knives. They move on the winds of aether that blow above the sphere of the Moon, and now and again their gaze falls like a blazing arrow, like the strike of lightning, to the Earth below, and there it sears anything it touches, for they cannot comprehend the frailty of Earthly life. They are of an elder race and are not so fragile. Their voices have the snap of fire and their bodies are not bodies as we know them, but the conjoining of fire and wind, the breath of the fiery Sun coalesced into mind and will.”

I’ll admit that at this point I have very little idea of what is going on, but it seems as though the Aoi are hidden away in another world but plan to return to the human realm at some point in the future. It also seems that Sanglant’s birth to the king of Wendar and a mysterious elven woman has something to do with these plans, and that another infant was brought into existence by Mysterious Forces to counteract Sanglant’s influence. It’s all extremely cryptic at this point, and I’m looking forward to piecing more of it together in the next book. I’m also excited to learn more about the Eika raiders, especially the Eika prince who Alain allows to go free due to his compassionate nature- it seems that the prince has been irrevocably marked by their encounter.

As befits any book that calls itself an epic fantasy there is an incredible climactic battle, here between King Henry and his conniving sister, Sabella. Sabella and her priest Antonia are not above resorting to treachery, and employ the use of a guivre, a monster that has powers similar to that of a basilisk. As Henry’s forces stand frozen and helpless, Sabella’s men cut them down where they stand. It is a horribly harrowing scene, but it then becomes even more gripping: the self-loathing priest Agius (kidnapped by Sabella’s forces alongside Alain) sacrifices himself to the guivre, allowing himself to be eaten so that the guivre is distracted while Alain beheads it. It’s a stunningly written moment.

The first part of Liath’s story is excruciatingly difficult to read. When her father dies she is sold into slavery to pay his debts, and is purchased by the clergyman Hugh. Hugh is obsessed with accessing the arcane knowledge that her father has passed down to her, and embarks upon a campaign of psychological, physical and sexual abuse against her. You all should know by now that when an author writes sexual violence, I always hope that they either portray its psychological ramifications with accuracy or comment meaningfully upon the power dynamics and cultural norms that make it possible. Elliott does both. Liath only survives her enslavement through severe dissociation and numbing:

“She felt so utterly detached from herself that it was as if she were two people, one to whom all this was happening, one watching from her safehouse within the frozen tower.”

When she is freed she is very much marked by her trauma, experiencing hypervigilance, nightmares, intrusive thoughts, shame regarding her sexuality and a fear of trusting others. While she continues to struggle she nevertheless takes some massive steps in terms of being autonomous, trusting herself and connecting with others.

What’s more, Elliott is very clear about the way in which Liath’s community continuously condones Hugh’s ownership/abuse, thinking that she is lucky to be owned by him because he is an authority figure in the church as well as a charismatic, handsome, intelligent man. It is only when he beats her to the point that she miscarries that anyone cares at all, and even then no one hesitates to return her to him once she is well enough to travel. It’s a powerful condemnation of the hypocrisy, permissiveness and misogyny that characterize rape culture.

Interestingly enough, class differences mean an entirely different distribution of power for women and men in Elliott’s world. In the ranks of nobility, women have a great deal of administrative power:

“Her first duties were to administer her lands and bear children to carry on her lineage.”

In addition, they are the ones who inherit property and it is commonly argued by her proponents that Sabella should have inherited the throne because only a woman can prove that she has actually produced her heirs.

It’s often complained of pseudo-medieval epic fantasies that they are extremely white, but King’s Dragon very clearly takes place in a world that is inhabited by a wide variety of societies and people with all skin colors. Liath and Sanglant are both people of color, and it’s clear that historically Wendar has been shaped by people of color as well:

“But the blessed Daisan himself lived in the lands now conquered and ruled by the Jinna, so who is to say he was not himself as dark-complexioned as she?”

It’s an extremely refreshing take on diversity in epic fantasy, and just one of the many characteristics that marks King’s Dragon as a standout in the genre, in my opinion.