Sometimes the reasons we read, or don’t read, books can be a little strange. I’ve bought books because the cover was illustrated by someone who illustrated the covers of other books I liked. They were entirely different kinds of books, but I guess I thought that the art linked them, somehow. It wasn’t a rational choice, though it ended up working for me in some cases.

I’m currently reading a series that I didn’t read previously because the author’s name was too similar to the name of an author I liked. Weird, huh?

When I was in high school and college, I was obsessed with the Deryni books by Katherine Kurtz. This was before the Internet, so there weren’t a lot of ways to know if an author was going to have a new book coming out, other than maybe some of the specialty magazines (that I didn’t know about at the time). You mostly found that there was a new book by checking the bookstore every time you went to see if there was anything new. I discovered Kurtz (or I guess I could call her Katherine, since I actually know her now) when she had a bit of a lull between books, so I’d binged everything available up to that point, then had to wait for the next new one. Every time I went to the little bookstore in the mall, I’d check the K shelf of the fantasy section, and I’d get excited when I saw something by another author with a similar name — Katharine Kerr. Even the name of the series was similar enough to fool you if you saw it out of the corner of your eye, Deverry. I’d run by the bookstore (they had small bookstores in most malls back then) whenever I was in a mall, and it was just similar enough to jump out at me as my glance skimmed over the shelf. I’d get that “new book!” thrill, then take a good look and realize it was something different. Then I’d be so mad at that (poor, innocent) book that I wouldn’t even look at it because it had disappointed me by getting my hopes up and then not being what I wanted.

Then not too long ago, I saw something mentioning that series and thought I ought to give it a try. It turns out that it was the sort of thing I would have liked, so I was missing out by blaming those books for not being what I hoped they would be. They even have some similarities to the Deryni books in that the world is loosely based on medieval Wales. This series draws upon Celtic mythology, imagining a world in which some souls are doomed to make repeated returns to life until they resolve a particular issue, and in each go-round, those people tend to find each other and replay the same sort of conflicts. In the “present” of the story, we have the latest incarnations, but woven throughout is the story about how they got into that mess to begin with. Tying the threads together is an ancient magical man whose error in the past set a lot of things into motion, and now he’s stuck staying alive until he can fix it and free the others from the loop. He’s found the appropriate souls in their new lives, and they’re caught up in a conflict stirred up by others with an agenda, which complicates matters. He can’t really fix his own issue until he finds a way to defeat the bad guys so that the people he’s looking out for don’t get killed before they get set on the right path.

Our main character in the “present” is the daughter of a mercenary soldier who’s grown up traveling with her father and who is now the equal of most swordsmen. I was afraid we’d have a case of “not like other girls” with her being good at typically male things and that making her better than most women, but the cast of characters is pretty well balanced with other women who are good at politics and diplomacy or herbs and healing. When we had the inevitable “strong female character is terrible at sewing” scene, it’s not treated as that somehow making her better. The story points out that the noblewomen are responsible for providing clothing to the people who work for them, so this is necessary work, and she’s not good at it because she’s had no practice. That’s refreshing to read, especially since these books were published in the 80s.

The first book is Daggerspell, and I just finished the second book, Darkspell. There is some unsavory content that’s a bit questionable in places, but I felt like it was handled with some sensitivity and wasn’t dwelt upon for titillation. Let’s just say that some of the same things that are in A Game of Thrones are in these (though published nearly a decade earlier) but they’re handled in a very different way with a lot less relish.

It seems that these books are considered Sword & Sorcery or Epic fantasy, but what I liked is that they’re really about the relationships among this group of people and how these relationships have affected history over the centuries. I like the back-and-forth nature of the storytelling, showing the past lives and how they affect the present. Each book seems to focus on a different go-round of the past while moving the present story forward. I guess it’s kind of like Lost or Once Upon a Time, with the flashbacks and the present-day stories.

I got these books from the library, so I have no idea if they’re still in print (they do seem to be available as e-books), and I don’t know how well the series will progress or end. But I have requested the next book in the series as soon as I’ve finished reading one, so I guess they’re keeping me interested. I don’t hear a lot about Kerr now, but she seems to have been publishing at least up to 2009, with 15 books set in this particular world, and it looks like she’s self-published some things more recently. She seems to be one of those woman fantasy writers who’s forgotten when people act like women didn’t get into fantasy until recently.

People who like epic fantasy like The Lord of the Rings but also want character-driven stories are most likely to enjoy these.