An author of celtic fantasy, Katherine Kerr's works include:

as well as a number of other short stories and articles.


A bit of a review.

The first three sets of books above, that is: the Deverry Chronicles, the Westlands Series and the Dragon Mage, were written sequentially and are set in the fictional kingdom of Deverry and its surroundings. They are characterized by a blend of celtic and medieval folklore and history, kabbalistic magic ('dweomer'), a strong belief in destiny and reincarnation ('wyrd'), and a disjointed sequence of events, in which Kerr relates stories from past and present simultaneously.

The result is a truly unique setting for a series of fantasy novels. The unusual timeline is particularly striking: each book starts and ends with a continuation of the current story, but the middle is given to digression into a series of tales from Deverry's past which have shaped the happenings of the present.

What's more, the souls of Deverry's past are reincarnate in the present, so that each character's destiny, or wyrd, is decided by their actions in a past life. This adds a complexity and a depth of character to the books which is seen in few others, but downside is a loss of simplicity, and at times the connections between the characters and the relationships between the periods can be difficult to follow.

Having said that, the characters that appear throughout almost all the books, such as Jill, Rhodry Maelwaedd, Nevyn and Dallandra, are exactly the companions one could want for a journey through Kerr's world. Rereading any of the Deverry books is, for me, almost like visiting some old friends that I haven't seen in a while; the first series of books to give me this feeling since the Dragonlance chronicles.

Such a good series of eleven novels deserves more of a review than this, and I'm going to come back to it soon, I think. But what I'm trying to say is: if you haven't read Katherine Kerr's Deverry books, and you enjoy reading fantasy, then you should give them a try. If you have read them, I've suggested about 50 nodes - you know what to do.

As for the others: I only just found out that Katherine Kerr had written books other than the Deverry ones, so I can't say much about them yet, but rest assured I'll be looking for copies, and if they're worth the time I'll let you know.


Katherine Kerr currently lives in California, where she writes full time, and is working on a futuristic adventure story set on a planet named Snare.

Katherine Kerr currently maintains a homepage at http://www.sff.net/people/kathkerr/index.htp from which the details above have been taken, and more information is available at http://www.math.ttu.edu/~kesinger/deverry/deverry.html


Editor's note: As outlined by Lucy-S at SFF Net, the site referenced above has gone offline. As of March 2017, you can find Katharine Kerr at http://deverry.com.

Katharine Kerr was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1944 to a family which considered itself British-in-exile far more than American. Since she was taught to read on British books alone, these sentiments resulted in her inability to spell properly in either system, British or American, though fortunately there were no other lasting effects.

Just to compound the culture shock, the family moved to Santa Barbara, California, when Katharine was a schoolgirl. Already an avid baseball fan, her first reaction to the move was horror at discovering that the state had no major league teams, as the Giants and the Dodgers had yet to arrive. Her second reaction was an even greater horror upon realizing that in Southern California beaches are far more important than books. She vowed to leave as soon as possible, carrying out the threat in 1962, when she moved to the San Francisco Bay Area. Since then, she has left it only to visit relatives in the British Isles and currently lives in San Francisco itself.

After dropping out of Stanford University in the mid-Sixties to join several of the revolutions then in progress, Katharine worked at a number of low-paying jobs, including a stint in the Post Office, while she read extensively in the fields of classical archaeology and literature, Medieval and Dark Ages history, and modern fiction. (She can muddle along in Latin and several modern languages, including the speech of rock-and-roll musicians.) She lived with a number of cats and of course, attended baseball games. Eventually she had the good fortune to meet up with an old friend from secondary school, Howard Kerr, who loves cats, books, and baseball as much as she does. They were married in 1973.

In 1979 a friend gave Katharine what became known as "the fatal gift," her first fantasy role-playing game RPG. She became so intrigued with both gaming and the fantasy field as a whole that she began writing articles for gaming magazines, and for some time was a contributing editor to DRAGON magazine as well as contributing to gaming modules for both TSR, Inc, and Chaosium, Inc. Now, however, she is devoting herself exclusively to fiction, for the simple reasons that there are only twenty-four hours in a day, and she does require the normal amount of sleep.

Home Page: http://www.deverry.com/
Email: kathkerr@ix.netcom.com

Deverry and the Westlands: http://www.deverry.net/ (my fan site)

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