These four books are interesting in their organization and subject. In many ways, it’s two pairs of books, for the main issues shift gears dramatically between books 2 and 3.
The Bishop’s Heir was probably the first Deryni book that I read. The background is dark and complicated–following The Chronicles of the Deryni the religious debate follows naturally, but I was amazed at it without the background context the first time.
The heart of the book is the developing Mearan secession crisis. We also meet a highland friend of Kelson’s, who was quite absent during the first trilogy, but Dhugal’s pretty interesting fellow. Meara feels like a pseudo-Scottish region of the kingdom; their separate history and politics feel a little “wait, what” when they’re first introduced (since why didn’t they affect the first trilogy more?), but history’s complications soon make this conflict feel fully realized as well.
Both sides get good development, and we even get introduced to Conall more, which begins laying the groundwork for the third book. But first, we need to finish this war…
The King’s Justice does NOT suffer the middle book of the trilogy effect. The Mearan war rages throughout, but it’s resolved completely by the end of the the book. It’s a fierce but unconventional war; this time Kelson has so many advantages, but he has to deal with determined partisans.
It’s well done; Kelson has age appropriate issues with impulse and passion. The war is brutal and feels appropriately so, and the church’s deryni question continues to confound and exacerbate the normal concerns of rebellion.
The Quest for Saint Camber is very different in feel from the previous 5 books. Kelson and Dhugal get an individual adventure feeling book, heavy on the difficulties of survival with limited resources. In parallel, we see Conall struggle with his birthright–the constraints of being raised to rule but thwarted from actually ruling.
The book delivers good development for many characters, and is quite a dark pleasure, though Kelson and Dhugal’s suffering is tricky to read. Much like the dark parts of the last Harry Potter novel, it feels repetitious, but the monotony does a good job of reinforcing their experience, even though it’s not fun in the same way as the Kingdom centered adventures.
King Kelson’s Bride has some parallels to In the King’s Service, in that there’s a lot of focus away from conquest and battles. As the title suggests, marriage runs through the novel as a backbone–sometimes overtly and reduced to geneology debates, often more personally.
The book gives us interesting viewpoints within Torenth and shifts nicely from marriage considerations to politics to action and magic and back around to politics and marriage. The book ends with Kelson and his kingdom set for a glorious renaissance. It’s a nice place to end the timeline–and it feels earned. (Well, Araxie does seem too good to be true, but it’s nice recompense for Kelson’s terrible previous luck.)