Book Club Discussion: The Dark Lord of Derkholm

Welcome to the Speculative Chic Book Club! Each month, we invite you to join us in reading a book that is voted on by YOU, our readers. Following a short review, please feel free to discuss the book in the comments!

Darklord of Derkholm (2012)
Author: Diana Wynne Jones
Pages: 532 (kindle edition)
Publisher: HarperCollins

Why I nominated this for book club: As May was the month of moms, so June is the months of dads. I googled “dads in sci fi/fantasy” and this was the one everyone voted for, which I find pretty hilarious.

Premise:

Mr. Chesney operates Pilgrim Parties, a tour group that takes paying participants into an outer realm where the inhabitants play frightening and foreboding roles. The time has come to end the staged madness . . . but can it really be stopped? Master storyteller Diana Wynne Jones serves up twists and turns, introduces Querida, Derk, Blade, and Shona and a remarkable cast of wizards, soldiers, kings, dragons, and griffins, and mixes in a lively dash of humor. With all the ingredients of high fantasy, this unforgettable novel will delight fans old and new.

 

Obvious spoiler warning is obvious.

Discussion: 

About halfway through this book, I wasn’t entirely certain that I liked it. The gimmick was interesting, but I wasn’t really buying into the characters, and the whole schtick just felt like it might have been better as a novella. I can’t pinpoint exactly when that change for me, maybe around the time that Blade started leading his own Pilgrim Party? But it changed, and it changed big, and I ended up loving this book a whole lot.

I keep seeing it described as a parody and I’m not sure that’s the right terminology. The world that Mr. Chesney wants them to create is certainly a parody, but the world they’re actually inhabiting is pretty interesting, and at some point I wish we’d gotten more of a glimpse of what everyone’s life is like when the Pilgrim Parties aren’t happening. Still, I got enough when they described what their lives were really like, and am still really amused by the world created here.

I loved the overwhelming majority of the characters. Derk was hilarious as a main character. And I was happy, after I realized that I’d chosen a parody as the Father’s Day book, that he actually was such an interesting and cool character, and a really good dad. Incidentally, I wish they’d explained better at first why he had both griffin and human children that called him dad. That was really and truly confusing. And I was kind of troubled that I couldn’t tell from the prose if his wife is actually birthing these griffins. I mean I know that an egg was involved, but he also kept talking about whether or not Mara would mind being a mother to these other creatures and I just had a lot of questions.

This quote, for instance, was 33% of the way through the book:

 

“Forgive me if I ask impertinently, but how do two members of your race call the Dark Lord Father?”

“Because he is,” Kit said, rather astonished. “He bred us from eggs.”

 

I enjoyed the kids a lot, both human and griffin. Their interactions were great, and it was interesting to see the individual strengths of the griffins as they were designed have such a large impact on the story. Seeing them all squabble like children and then celebrate together in the end as really sweet.

And the end. I honestly couldn’t get sad when Kit died, because at first I wasn’t really sure that it had happened, I couldn’t believe Derk didn’t try to go into the water and verify that he was gone, and it seemed really strange to me that he’d give up so quickly. So I wasn’t really surprised when Kit showed up later and wasn’t actually dead, and if I were him I’d be kind of pressed that I was left at the bottom of a pond for a bunch of geese to rescue. But everyone’s reunion and the general wrap up scene were great, and really put a bow on the entire book.

If I had one complaint, it would be the sexual assault scene. I didn’t need it, I didn’t want it, and I really wasn’t into how the dragon “fixed” it.

In conclusion: Very enjoyable book, which makes sense because it’s Diana Wynne Jones, and most of the things she does are enjoyable.

2 Comments

  • kendrame June 22, 2018 at 1:18 pm

    I had forgotten how much I liked this book. I guess I’m really into big dysfunctional families, especially if they’re multispecies.

    Reply
  • kendrame June 24, 2018 at 12:41 am

    I would agree that it’s not quite a parody. Mr. Chesney is very clearly forcing the world and the characters to conform to a stereotype, but everyone else is standing back going “uh, that’s not really how the world works”. It’s more of a commentary on fantasy and the real world and considering it’s Diana Wynne Jones, yeah, duh.

    Reply

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