Today we welcome a new geek! We are very pleased that Jennie will be sharing her thoughts with our readers, starting with an intriguing fantasy re-issue. Now read on…

P.C. Hodgell is not a well-known author, and her books have until quite recently been difficult to find. Luckily, Baen Books has re-issued her first two books in preparation for the publication of a fifth book in her Kencyrath series. The re-issue, The God Stalker Chronicles, is an omnibus volume of the first two books in the series: God Stalk and Dark of the Moon. Some parts of Hodgell’s world will be familiar to readers of epic fantasy, but her genius lies in her evocative and unique world and deftly-drawn and complete characters. Her butterflies are carrion-eaters. The unicorns? They grow ivory hides that both protect and eventually strangle them. And her hero is a lithe, honour-bound thief who never knows quite what to do with herself and frequently falls down flights of stairs. All of Hodgell’s books are punctuated by clever wordplay and sheer physical comedy. The main character, Jame, tumbles from great heights, literally and metaphorically, often enough that the reader has no trouble bonding with her and cheering for her success. She struggles when presented with the evidence that she is something more than she may appear, and she fights to work out the right way to act in the face of seemingly impossible choices.

In the first book, God Stalk, we are introduced to Jame as she stumbles out of “Perimal Darkness.” She has only spotty access to her memory of the immediate past, but she is carrying her father’s sword and ring and two “magic” items that belong to her people, the Kencyrath. She finds Tai-Tastigon: a city that offers her sanctuary and a new and strange understanding of the workings of the Three-Faced God that her people worship. She spends the time in the first book slowly discovering the city and herself. Both turn out to have unexpected darkness, labyrinths, and shining moments of light. Finally forced by cataclysmic events (of her own creation) to leave Tai-Tastigon, Jame sets out to find her older twin brother, Tori.

Dark of the Moon picks up here. This book has some chapters from Tori’s point of view, where we learn that his hold on the leadership of the Kencyrath is uncertain and may prove fatal. Abandoned to fight the Perimal Darkness alone, the Kencyrath have turned from their Three-Faced God and become mired in the world around them. They have become mercenaries for hire and abandoned their guardianship of the border with Perimal Darkling. It seems that Tori’s destiny twins and mirrors Jame’s. Where she is forced to search alone for answers, he must wield great armies and command; where she seeks to create her own code of honor, he feels that he must use the traditions of his people to solidify his position. As Jame makes her way across the world, often leaving destruction in her wake and always learning more about the history and eventual fate of herself and the Kencyrath, Tori gathers an army to fight what may be the Kencyrath’s last battle as a united people. Both of the twins struggle to find themselves and each other in the midst of their complicated and intertwined destinies.

Jame is a fascinating and unique character. She is a female anti-hero: an “unfallen darkling” that always endeavors to make the choice that will lead to the eventual victory of the Kencyrath over Perimal Darkling, but whose choices, past, and name are irrevocably tainted. Each of her choices has repercussions that echo down into the books that follow in the series. Charles de Lint wrote in an introduction to Hodgell’s Seeker’s Mask that “You come away from one of Pat’s books with your mind and heart humming.” These books have been few and far between, and it is fantastic that they have once again found a publisher that sees their worth.

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