This month I’m recommending an unusual Epic Fantasy series by much missed American author Carole Nelson Douglas (1944-2021). This five-book series is sometimes known as Kendric and Irissa or Irissa and Kendric (take your choice). The first two volumes, Six of Swords (1982) and Exiles of the Rynth (1984), were not given an over-arching title but the remaining three, Keepers of Edanvant (1987), Heir of Rengarth (1988) and Seven of Swords (1989) were labelled as The Sword and Circlet Trilogy. Currently, only Six of Swords is easily available as an ebook or in paperback but the Nelson Douglas Estate is planning to bring the remaining volumes back into print soon. I recently completed my own epic quest to track down second-hand copies of the whole series. If you love colourful invented worlds, it is a quest well worth undertaking.

The series begins in Rule, a world divided into six realms, such as the Rocklands, the Marshes and the nomadic island of Clymarind. Rule was once rich in magic and the home of many powerful sorcerers but now the magic seems to be fading. The world is still protected by six Wrathmen of the Far Keep – one swordsman from each of the realms – who serve the Circle of Rule. The smallest of the realms is Rindell of the Shrinking Forest, which is inhabited by a race of tall, long-lived people known as Torlocs who have a fearsome reputation for sorcery. Among the Torlocs, magical power is held by silver-eyed women known as Seers but now only two of these remain – the ancient Eldress Finorian and a young woman called Irissa of the Green Veil.

Irissa has grown up in failing community and is not yet fully trained in the use of her powers. All the men, including her father, were long ago sent away on mysterious missions. The only Torloc male she knows about is the Wrathman Thrangar, who is expected to visit Rindell soon. So when Irissa finds a fallen warrior in the forest she initially assumes that it is Thrangar, the leader of the Wrathmen. After Irissa helps the wounded warrior to retrieve his sword, he introduces himself as Kendric, the Wrathman of the Marshes. She takes him to the Keep of Rindell to seek healing from Eldress Finorian but when they get there the Keep appears to be fading. The Eldress warns them that Thrangar has been called out of time and the protections of Rule are breaking down because the Six are now Five.

Kendric had already been searching for the vanished Thrangar but their leader’s absence has made some of the Wrathmen suddenly turn on each other. Finorian announces that the Torlocs must now return to their original home, the green world of Edanvant, but that she has not been able to hold the Gate between worlds open long enough for Irissa to go with them. Before she disappears, Finorian tells Irissa that it is her destiny to journey through a collapsing world with Wrathman Kendric and urges her never to forget that she is a Torloc. Kendric is very wary of Torlocs but feels indebted to Irissa after she manages to use her powers to heal the wound that had nearly killed him. Irissa is determined to find another Gate which will let her pass through to rejoin the other Torlocs in Edanvant, while Kendric is set on discovering what new dangers are threatening his world. Forming a reluctant alliance, they journey together to the capital City of Rule accompanied by a mysterious white cat called Felabba.

In the capital, a new leader is trying to rid the world of magic, so Kendric and Irissa find themselves rejected and unwanted. They set out on a journey to locate and consult with Rule’s few remaining sorcerers and sorceresses. Some of these prove to be enigmatic allies and others treacherous enemies. Kendric, Irissa and Felabba fight against ancient evils and unexpected monsters in a world suddenly at war. The Torloc and the Warrior struggle to resolve their personal differences and learn to trust each other. Can this unlikely couple save Rule from catastrophe or find a Gate to another world before it is too late?

Whenever I visit a secondhand bookshop I enjoy choosing a Fantasy novel at random. I found Exiles of the Rynth in one of my favourite bookshops (Scrivener’s Books in Buxton, Derbyshire) last summer and therefore started to read the series in the wrong order. I must confess that if I had picked up Six of Swords first, I might have abandoned it after a few chapters. This was Nelson Douglas’s first attempt at Epic Fantasy and she seems to have struggled to find an appropriate literary style. Her archaic language and convoluted syntax do not make for easy reading. In addition, the relatively simple plot is surprisingly hard to follow because the motivations of her leading characters are hard to understand. However I’d urge you to be patient with Six of Swords because the style settles down and Kendric and Irissa’s story becomes increasingly compelling.

In the second volume, Kendric and Irissa are separated as they go through a Gate which leads them into a beautiful but largely hostile world dominated by the wielders of magical stones. By volume three, they have reached the Torloc homeworld of Edanvant but it is far from the paradise that Irissa was expecting. In Heir of Rengarth, Kendric and a pregnant Irissa and drawn into a dangerous new world where they confront an old enemy. The final volume continues the story into the next generation and features the children of Kendric and Irissa. All these books share some distinctive good features and one of these is the quality of the world-building. Nelson Douglas was a landscape artist among Fantasy writers. She had a rare talent for describing marvellous mountains, lakes, plains and forests under glowing otherworldly skies. These are sometimes contrasted with truly bleak or hellish landscapes which Kendric and Irissa have to cross to reach the extravagant architecture of Nelson Douglas’s imagined citadels of sorcerery.

Even better is the range of creatures which inhabit these landscapes. Nelson Douglas clearly loved inventing new species of animals. Some, such as the gentle crystal-horned lorryks and the furred and feathered fowlen prove unexpectedly helpful to the travellers; others, like the delicate translucent grassweavers, look beautiful but can be deadly. Kendric and Irissa also have to contend with vicious nocturnal swarms of Moonweasels, scaled swamp-monsters with rotting faces and a giant bird, the terrifying Empress Falgon. The most interesting creature they meet is the Rynx, who is part bird and part wolf and seems to have a double voice, gender and personality. The true nature of the Rynx is revealed in Volume III of the series but readers have to wait longer for answers to their questions about intriguing Felabba, or as Kendric calls her that scrawny, lizard-eating, prattling, sorcerous cat. For much of the series it is unclear whether Felabba is a helper or a hindrance. In an Afterword to Exiles of the Rynth, Nelson Douglas mentioned that Felabba was based on one of her own trio of white cats. Cats seem to have been one of this author’s greatest inspirations and she went on to write numerous novels and short stories about a feline PI called Midnight Louie (1992-2018). Seek these out if you are an ailurophile.

Another of Nelson Douglas’s passions was giving stronger roles to women in a variety of genres, including Sword and Sorcery. She was, for example, the first writer to create a series centred on Irene Adler rather than Sherlock Holmes (1990-2004). Irissa is a powerful but vulnerable heroine who goes through many ordeals and changes during her quest for a true homeland. The fiction market is currently saturated with stories dominated by heroines but this is a fairly recent development. Nelson Douglas was a pioneer and she felt what she was doing was important because of her belief that genre fiction subconsciously forms attitudes which shape society. The gender wars of the late 20th century are played out in this series, particularly in Keepers of Edanvant when Irissa discovers that the female and male Torlocs can no longer live together because of bitter power struggles. Reconciling her estranged parents and remaking Torloc society into one that is fair for all genders becomes another epic task for Irissa.

Nelson Douglas may have wanted to change the gender balance in Fantasy fiction but she refused to reduce all her male characters to weaklings or villains. She was keen to create worthy partners for her heroines. The complicated, ever-evolving relationship between Irissa and Kendric is the heart of the series and one of its main selling points. Nelson Douglas doesn’t deploy a standard slowburn Enemies into Lovers plotline. The couple sleep together quite early on in the story. For Kendric this is due to honest physical attraction but Irissa has a deeper and more devious motive and that causes long-lasting mistrust and pain. Through numerous quarrels and misunderstandings, they both struggle to establish a true relationship of equals.

I have been feeling lately that there is a shortage of inspiring heroes in contemporary Fantasy so I have to turn to earlier examples. At seven-feet tall, mighty brown swordsman Kendric, initially appears to be the type of musclebound Sword and Sorcery hero who might once have been played by Arnold Schwarzenegger. However it gradually becomes apparent that shrewd plain-speaking Kendric has a sensitive streak and a severe inferiority complex. He claims that he was only chosen to be a Wrathman because he was tall enough to wield the traditional sword but there turns out to be far more to it than that. Kendric is a slow but perceptive thinker rather than a natural actionman; so much so that I sometimes found myself wanting to yell at him to stop agonizing and just slay the monster. He is cleverer and more magical than he believes himself to be and outstandingly loyal to Irissa. So, if you are holding out for a hero, try following the adventures of brave Kendric and the sorceress he learns to love more than his life. Until next month….

Geraldine

April 2025