(I posted this the night before the Silver Mage came out to the Deverry15 livejournal page, but I thought I would re-post it here as well)
When one of the later Deverry novels came out (I think it was the Gold Falcon), my husband reasonably complained that I hadn't spoken to him for an entire day.
“Sorry,” I told him. “You're the first *person* I fell in love with, but Deverry is still my first love.”
***
The summer I turned twelve would be the start of the Movie of My Life where they would change the actress playing me from a child to a young adult. In a series of somewhat related events, I joined an intimate group of friends in a Shakespeare club during the spring of sixth grade, started reading The Mists of Avalon on the final day of the school year, almost instantly converted to Paganism, and opted not to go to my usual summer camp. Instead, I went to a very disappointing summer camp that brought me two very important things: 1) a summer job in college (many years later) and—far more significantly—2) Deverry. My camp counselor shared my enthusiasm for The Mists of Avalon (and I suspect that she was pagan herself), and she highly recommended the Deverry books to me.
Well, I was hooked on Daggerspell by the third page. As a rookie pagan, the religious philosophies of the book were very compelling to and ultimately influential for me. And such characters! There was Jill, who remains one of my favorite characters in any novel ever; Nevyn, who was wise and sad and stubborn; Cullyn, who I always felt sorry for, but I knew would reject my pity; and of course, Rhodry, who I proceeded to fall madly in love with.
As an adult, it's incredibly hard to explain all that Deverry meant to me at that time in my life. I had very few friends at that point, and middle school was hell. Deverry was my Perfect Fantasy Escape—a place where, among the characters who mattered—the women were strong, the men were good-looking, and all the cool people could do magic. Even better for me at that age, these were grown-up books where the characters were only slightly older than I was (take a moment to appreciate the fact that Jill is about the same age in the first two Deverry books as the main characters in the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants). They were eccentric role models, to say the least, but they were role models nonetheless. I had all the classic symptoms of twitterpation about Daggerspell: I had trouble sleeping for several nights because I was so obsessed with it, and I remember actually writing out some of my favorite passages on my body. It was slightly troubling to me that I couldn't just read it all the time.
Though I think I stumbled across these books at the perfect time in my life, it was a terrible time to be trying to read them because Darkspell was temporarily out-of-print, and there was no ebay back in those days. My camp counselor had warned me not to read the books out of order, so I was diligently though impatiently waiting to keep reading the series. My mom and I scoured the local used book stores, but finally, after weeks of waiting, my father searched diligently in a larger city and lo and behold! He came home with a book with a very creepy looking cover that turned out to be the second Deverry book!
Now I had another incredible character to adore: Salamander, who is still my favorite character in the series, and who I am hoping for a tremendous resolution for in the final book.
So I obsessively followed the lives of Jill and Rhodry throughout seventh grade, and I was delighted when the release of Days of Blood and Fire followed very closely on my completion of A Time of Omens. In eighth grade, I was one of the winners of a statewide book contest called “Oh the Characters You Will Meet,” when I wrote what was basically an obituary for Jill, who had just died in Days of Air and Darkness. At some point I acquired a silver rose ring and had it engraved with the name Arzosah (“Arzosah Sothy Lorezohaz” just wouldn't fit on any ring I ever found), and referred to it as my engagement ring to Rhodry. I also got tired of not being able to do other things while I was reading Deverry books, so I read all of them out loud on to tapes (they're still not available as audiobooks). I still have well over a hundred of hours of audio from Daggerspell to The Red Wyvern, and I listened to the books over and over again while I created many arts and crafts projects. In my spare time in middle school, I also wrote a really bad novel that was essentially a Deverry clone. If only the Internet had been more than a nebulous fantasy back then, I'm sure that I would have had a second life writing illicit Deverry fan fic1.
Throughout most of my adolescence, I was sort-of a Deverry apostle, lending the books to everyone I met, and encouraging them to read them. Indeed, it was probably a little hard to know me back then and not read them. By eighth grade, I had started to actually make some living friends, who were all also quite enamored with Deverry (so much so that my Shakespeare teacher—who I'm not sure ever read the books herself—jokingly complained that our “Shakespeare Club” felt more like a Deverry club). When I got to high school and found even more friends, we spent hours analyzing the characters and their relationships. (There was one memorable discussion where we tried to average out the time fictional characters knew someone before they slept with them, and we concluded that Rhodry was really pulling up the average).
Now you may notice this account changing from one where Deverry was my saving grace from social isolation and the characters were some of my best friends to one where Deverry became a means to foster friendships; and so it was. Though Harry Potter eventually proved to be a more ubiquitous literary bond in my friendship circle, Deverry saw me through the grimmest part of my adolescence and shaped who I became as an adult in ways that no other piece of literature has (and I have a B.A. in Literature). Somehow, my friendships with characters in Deverry were transformed into friendships with living, breathing people, but those friendships were in turn informed and affected by what happened in Annwyn.
Now I'm all grown-up, and almost exactly sixteen years later, I'm going to read the last Deverry book tomorrow. I still don't know what that's going to feel like, but I can feel it wrapping up some cycle with my teenage self like one of the Celtic knotwork bands that form the thematic foundations for the book.
One thing I'm pretty sure of is that no matter what age I am, I'll still want to sleep with Rhodry. Once he stops being a dragon...
[1:] Kit has asked us not to write fan fic so she isn't at risk of lawsuits, although I'm hoping she'll lift the ban after tomorrow... she's not really risking anything any more. [sidenote: she continues to ask us not to write any...]
When one of the later Deverry novels came out (I think it was the Gold Falcon), my husband reasonably complained that I hadn't spoken to him for an entire day.
“Sorry,” I told him. “You're the first *person* I fell in love with, but Deverry is still my first love.”
***
The summer I turned twelve would be the start of the Movie of My Life where they would change the actress playing me from a child to a young adult. In a series of somewhat related events, I joined an intimate group of friends in a Shakespeare club during the spring of sixth grade, started reading The Mists of Avalon on the final day of the school year, almost instantly converted to Paganism, and opted not to go to my usual summer camp. Instead, I went to a very disappointing summer camp that brought me two very important things: 1) a summer job in college (many years later) and—far more significantly—2) Deverry. My camp counselor shared my enthusiasm for The Mists of Avalon (and I suspect that she was pagan herself), and she highly recommended the Deverry books to me.
Well, I was hooked on Daggerspell by the third page. As a rookie pagan, the religious philosophies of the book were very compelling to and ultimately influential for me. And such characters! There was Jill, who remains one of my favorite characters in any novel ever; Nevyn, who was wise and sad and stubborn; Cullyn, who I always felt sorry for, but I knew would reject my pity; and of course, Rhodry, who I proceeded to fall madly in love with.
As an adult, it's incredibly hard to explain all that Deverry meant to me at that time in my life. I had very few friends at that point, and middle school was hell. Deverry was my Perfect Fantasy Escape—a place where, among the characters who mattered—the women were strong, the men were good-looking, and all the cool people could do magic. Even better for me at that age, these were grown-up books where the characters were only slightly older than I was (take a moment to appreciate the fact that Jill is about the same age in the first two Deverry books as the main characters in the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants). They were eccentric role models, to say the least, but they were role models nonetheless. I had all the classic symptoms of twitterpation about Daggerspell: I had trouble sleeping for several nights because I was so obsessed with it, and I remember actually writing out some of my favorite passages on my body. It was slightly troubling to me that I couldn't just read it all the time.
Though I think I stumbled across these books at the perfect time in my life, it was a terrible time to be trying to read them because Darkspell was temporarily out-of-print, and there was no ebay back in those days. My camp counselor had warned me not to read the books out of order, so I was diligently though impatiently waiting to keep reading the series. My mom and I scoured the local used book stores, but finally, after weeks of waiting, my father searched diligently in a larger city and lo and behold! He came home with a book with a very creepy looking cover that turned out to be the second Deverry book!
Now I had another incredible character to adore: Salamander, who is still my favorite character in the series, and who I am hoping for a tremendous resolution for in the final book.
So I obsessively followed the lives of Jill and Rhodry throughout seventh grade, and I was delighted when the release of Days of Blood and Fire followed very closely on my completion of A Time of Omens. In eighth grade, I was one of the winners of a statewide book contest called “Oh the Characters You Will Meet,” when I wrote what was basically an obituary for Jill, who had just died in Days of Air and Darkness. At some point I acquired a silver rose ring and had it engraved with the name Arzosah (“Arzosah Sothy Lorezohaz” just wouldn't fit on any ring I ever found), and referred to it as my engagement ring to Rhodry. I also got tired of not being able to do other things while I was reading Deverry books, so I read all of them out loud on to tapes (they're still not available as audiobooks). I still have well over a hundred of hours of audio from Daggerspell to The Red Wyvern, and I listened to the books over and over again while I created many arts and crafts projects. In my spare time in middle school, I also wrote a really bad novel that was essentially a Deverry clone. If only the Internet had been more than a nebulous fantasy back then, I'm sure that I would have had a second life writing illicit Deverry fan fic1.
Throughout most of my adolescence, I was sort-of a Deverry apostle, lending the books to everyone I met, and encouraging them to read them. Indeed, it was probably a little hard to know me back then and not read them. By eighth grade, I had started to actually make some living friends, who were all also quite enamored with Deverry (so much so that my Shakespeare teacher—who I'm not sure ever read the books herself—jokingly complained that our “Shakespeare Club” felt more like a Deverry club). When I got to high school and found even more friends, we spent hours analyzing the characters and their relationships. (There was one memorable discussion where we tried to average out the time fictional characters knew someone before they slept with them, and we concluded that Rhodry was really pulling up the average).
Now you may notice this account changing from one where Deverry was my saving grace from social isolation and the characters were some of my best friends to one where Deverry became a means to foster friendships; and so it was. Though Harry Potter eventually proved to be a more ubiquitous literary bond in my friendship circle, Deverry saw me through the grimmest part of my adolescence and shaped who I became as an adult in ways that no other piece of literature has (and I have a B.A. in Literature). Somehow, my friendships with characters in Deverry were transformed into friendships with living, breathing people, but those friendships were in turn informed and affected by what happened in Annwyn.
Now I'm all grown-up, and almost exactly sixteen years later, I'm going to read the last Deverry book tomorrow. I still don't know what that's going to feel like, but I can feel it wrapping up some cycle with my teenage self like one of the Celtic knotwork bands that form the thematic foundations for the book.
One thing I'm pretty sure of is that no matter what age I am, I'll still want to sleep with Rhodry. Once he stops being a dragon...
[1:] Kit has asked us not to write fan fic so she isn't at risk of lawsuits, although I'm hoping she'll lift the ban after tomorrow... she's not really risking anything any more. [sidenote: she continues to ask us not to write any...]