A Critique of ‘The Dark Lord of Derkholm’ by Diana Wynne Jones

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Spoilers Below. I’m writing this review in good faith, as one author reviewing another’s book, trying to balance positives with negatives.

This is the third time I’ve read this book. However, the last time I read this was ~15 years ago, so I came into this mostly fresh. I knew all the twists and turns, but the actual art managed to pleasantly surprise me.

WHAT IS THE TARGET AUDIENCE? WHAT GENRES? WHAT MAJOR TROPES?

  • Middle Grade, 10 to 15 years old.
  • However, as an adult there’s still PLENTY to enjoy.
  • Chosen One/Quest Fantasy… Parody
  • Parody fiction
  • Critique on capitalism
  • Anticolonialist/decolonialist fiction
  • Funny. Not comedy, but funny.

MY EMOTIONAL RESPONSE/ FUN FACTOR

I loved this book growing up. I wanted to read this again, but I was afraid it would be visited by the suck fairy. Thankfully, this book is even deeper and better as an adult. As a child, I empathized with Blade and Kit most; as an adult, I empathize with poor harrassed Derk more.

I know I’m trite, but I confess that I’m a fan of Trad fantasy. You know, chosen one farmboys. I read two or three of them a year. They fill me with nostalgia, even when I read books which I know aren’t technically ‘good.’ This book sits squarely in that genre, but with inverted tropes. More on this later. However, suffice it to say that if you enjoy trad fantasy, ‘Dark Lord of Derkholm’ is required reading.

It’s not flawless, but I found myself giggling at moments.

I give this 5 stars, putting this in the top 15% of books I read.

WARNING! QUIT READING NOW UNTIL YOU FINISH READING THE BOOK!

BIASES STATED

To put this review/study in proper context, you must know my starting point.

As I said, I like this sort of book.

SIMILAR BOOKS/OTHER BOOKS IN THE SERIES

CONCEPT AND EXECUTION

Imagine a standard medieval fantasy kingdom. There’s a Dark Lord, a wizard mentor, a travelling party of adventurers. They go on a quest, they’re seduced by an evil enchantress, they’re attacked by bandits. In the end, the heroes slay the Dark Lord and go home.

This is not that world.

Imagine a boringly normal magical world, where wizards go to college, nations trade with one another, and there’s absolutely no Dark Lord. Everyone lives reasonably happy lives… until a portal opens from our world. A tourist company enslaves the magical world, forcing the world to give tourists a Dungeons and Dragons adventure.

The magical world must organize a fantasy adventure for a bunch of tourists, protecting the lives of the tourists even while the citizens of the magical world are killed en-mass for the entertainment of the tourists (You know how nameless city guards die in a lot of fantasy stories? That happens here. Only in this book, they’re average joes forced to die for tourist amusement). ‘The customer is always right’ is the ethos of the day, where tourists are treated like kings while the locals aren’t even treated as human.

This book could so easily be a horror novel, but it’s not. It strikes me as being most similar to the cultural critique of Pratchett, skewering how the tourism industry forces the locals at tourist destinations to bend over backwards. Using the medium of the standard ‘Chosen One Farmboy’ genre, this story sets out to explore human nature. This could very easily be an equal skewering of the ‘Farmboy’ genre, but it isn’t. It’s a loving parody of it.

I love this.

CHARACTERS, CHARACTERIZATION AND DIALOG

I don’t think I’ve ever empathized with any character as much as Derk. Derk is a harried wizard, who’s WAY in over his head. He’s vaguely incompetant at almost everything he does, making him a terrible choice to be this year’s Dark Lord. (If you’ve read Pratchett, think of him as an only slightly more useful Rincewind.) However, when it becomes time for the annual D&D tourist season, he’s chosen to be the Dark Lord.

As Dark Lord, he must organize several hundred adventuring parties travelling around the world. Derk (despite being the Dark Lord) makes sure all the adventurers have food and inns and weapons. He makes sure the Gandalf-like wizard guide shows up on time. He makes sure the tourists all are attacked (nonlethally) by various ghost and ghouls. And when the end of the adventure comes around, Derk must dress up like Sauron and let the tourists ‘kill’ him (really it’s all illusion magic so he isn’t hurt).

As I said, Derk is WAY in over his head. His only talent is with genetic engineering magic. Derk does his best to organize the pilgrim parties, trying to balance the need for the tourists to be happy and for the absolute minimum amount of collateral damage which happens because of the D&D questing adventures on the locals caught up in the way. But he fails, because after 40 years of these parties, all the locals are fed up and a rebellion is under way- a rebellion his own wife Mara is running. So Derk and Mara’s marriage is now on the rocks, and maybe destroyed.

Helping Derk are his griffon children. The griffons are his biological children; as a genetic engineering wizard, he took the DNA of himself and his wife, and combined it with birds and lions to create griffons. He has many kids: five griffons, two normal humans. When Derk is temporarily too sick to run the pilgrim parties, his teenaged children take over. Even when everyone is working their hardest, they’re barely able to hold things together.

Blade, Kit and Shauna are the primary children. I’ll be blunt, the weakest part of this book is the fact that it had too many children. Elda, Don, Collete and Lydia were less vital to the plot. I feel like they could have been combined together to create stronger characters. Don and Elda never really did anything special, while Collette and Lydia spent most of the time off-screen running errands.

I think Kit is the best-defined child character. He’s a griffon in the ‘moody teenager’ phase. If he could wear clothing he’d probably be goth. He’s surly and doesn’t like his human mom and dad, because as an almost-adult griffon he wants to go do his own thing but his parents won’t let him. I don’t blame him for disliking his parents; his parents named him Kit, short for his full name ‘Kitten,’ a name he now finds embarrassing due to the fact that he’s a house-sized griffon.

Kit is a sorcerer, but as a griffon he can’t go to human magic university, and he feels really peeved by that fact. He’s sort of stuck, feeling left out of society because of who he was born as. Over the course of the story, he comes into his own. He becomes the main planner and tactician behind the Dark Lord’s battles. He doesn’t need to be acknowledge by a human university, when he can teach himself.

And then we have Shauna. Just jumping right into the issue, she gets sexually assaulted at one point, which is weird. This book is elsewise written to be readable for someone 12 to 15 years old, but this one story beat. I don’t know what the author was thinking.

(Note that the SA itself was hidden within the subtext; when I read this for the first time as a child, I did not realize what happened to her. Only when I read it as a teenager fifteen years ago did I realize what happened.)

I don’t think the SA is handled particularly well, nor poorly; it simply exists, and the characters move past it fast. I don’t think it’s enough to put a reader off the book, but the book would have been better off if that page was deleted.

Otherwise, Shauna is a great character. She wants to go to bard school, but the whole ‘Dark Lord’ business throws a wrench in the gears. She winds up being expelled from Bardic College because of her association with the Dark Lord. On the rebound from this, she says FU to her former friends at Bardic School and starts dating one of the pilgrims.

She was the responsible older sister for the team, doing her best to keep her younger siblings in line, and help nurse Derk back to health. Shauna is one of the few people who can actually speak to Kit and get him to do anything, and she’s regularly feuding with her mom.

PACING AND STRUCTURE

I feel like this book was medium-to-fast paced. It never had a really slow section. The book is sped along by a sense of urgency caused by the ongoing tourist parties. The book feels a sense of tension based around the fact that the tourists must constantly be kept happy (by making sure they regularly get food and are attacked by evil minions), and if the heroes fail to keep the tourists happy the evil tourist company will destroy their planet. Every character interaction throughout the novel is filled with a sense of urgency.

The structure was good, not great. The author rather famously didn’t outline her books before writing them, so this is understandable. I believe it used the 7 Act Format.

  1. The Oracles, and meeting Mr. Chesney
  2. Beginning preparations, until Scales attacks
  3. The Kids work hard to keep dad alive after Scales attacks, and keep the D&D parties on track
  4. The Battles, and Blade gets his own D&D party
  5. The Battle Goes wrong, Kit dies, and everything shuts down.
  6. Derk hides back at home, and the pilgrim parties fall apart
  7. The Climax

If I were to critique this book, I think it needed to do more to feature the B-Plot. The book’s A-Plot was the heroes trying to make sure the D&D adventure parties go off flawlessly, while the B-Plot was Querida and Mara trying to make the D&D parties go so horribly wrong. The scope of the plot stayed glued to the heroes of the A-Plot so much we barely understood what was going on with the B-Plot.

When I recently read ‘the Judas Blossom’ by Stephen Aryan, one thing it did really well was having the political schemes. Point Of View character A did something, actively setting back character POV B. Character B then has to react to character A. There is interplay between the protagonists/antagonists; it felt like a chess game. I wanted something like that here, with Derk on one side and Mara/Querida on the other. For example, have Blade promise his D&D party that when they visit the Emir they’ll get to spend time with the harem of slave girls, only for Mara to go behind her son’s back and free the slave girls. Blade then has to scramble to make up for this failure.

This storybeat of ‘the freeing of harem slave girls’ is already a plot point in the book, but it’s so light it hardly felt real. I wanted Blade’s adventuring party to have to actively deal with more negative setbacks caused by Mara/Querida (aka ‘show, don’t tell’). Instead, we were ‘told, not shown’ about the chaos caused by Mara/Querida.

Further, I wanted Blade’s Adventuring party to begin earlier in the story, so it was more of a running theme instead of a capstone on the book. His adventuring party was such a small part of the book, but played such an important role to the end of the book, that it felt off-balanced.

PLOT, STAKES AND TENSION

I very much so enjoyed the plot.

The stakes felt light. We were constantly told that the main villain, Mr. Chesney, was holding the world hostage because he was in possession of an extremely powerful demon. Because of that demonic blackmail, the pilgrim parties must happen. However, we were never shown the demon using it’s power to punish someone who opposed Mr. Chesney. We were also never told about a time Mr. Chesney used the demon to punish someone. AKA there was neither ‘show, don’t tell’ and also no ‘tell, don’t show.’ It felt like a major plothole.

The tension, however, was quite tight. This is odd; usually stakes and tension go hand-in-hand. Not here. Because all the characters were constantly rushing around doing stuff, the tension felt taught as a bowstring.

AUTHORIAL VOICE (TONE, PROSE AND THEME)

This book takes a strong anti-capitalist exploitation/decolonialist perspective on the tourist industry. This entire world has been enslaved to provide entertainment for D&D adventurers from a different planet; such a situation is ripe for critiqueing the capitalist system. Here are examples:

  • Dragons have been forced to give up their gold hoards to Mr. Chesney, causing a vitamin deficiency among dragon kind because dragons need gold to live. This echoes how some 3rd world countries export foods during famines to more wealthy nations, letting their own people starve.
  • The dwarves are forced to pay annual tribute to Mr. Chesney, similar to how sovereign nations in India used to pay tribute to the Royal East India company.
  • A prince of the elves has been taken captive by Mr. Chesney, to force the elves into complying with the D&D adventures. Hostage taking has long been an aspect of politics of all sorts.
  • The Thieves Guild is making a fortune during the adventures by robbing the tourists of their high-tech gizmos, like phones and watches. This represents how a people can adapt to oppression.
  • With the opening of the portal and coming of the tourists, electricity and electric lights have started to spread in fantasyland, improving everyone’s quality of life. However, Mr. Chesney doesn’t like this because he wants fantasyland to remain as ‘traditional’ for the tourists, so he forces these houses to be torn down. This represents how outside forces can force a local culture to remain stagnant for the sake of tourism even when the actual locals want to industrialize and thus make more money.
  • The evil invaders mine a precious resource (aka magic) out of the ground and export it, profiting the locals not a whit… except for one or two quislings who cover things up. This is reminiscent of how companies like Nestle extract precious resources like water out of locations and ship it to other places, potentially upsetting the local ecology.

I could keep going, but you get the point.

Okay, time for me to feel a bit pretentious and talk about ‘decolonialist’/progressive/anticapitalist/yadayada fantasy literature for a hot minute.

‘Dark Lord of Derkholm’ is low key one of the best message stories I’ve ever read, and I’ve read a ton of them. It is probably the best gateway to the genre I’ve read for your average fantasy fan. What makes it so special is it’s warm attitude. SO MANY message fantasy books are grimdark; reading them feels like wading through sludge.

  • First off, what is decolonialist fantasy? It’s a book which discusses either directly or through the veil of worldbuilding the growth of Earth’s Empires starting in the 1500’s and their collapse of empires following WW2.
    • Examples include books like: ‘The Poppy Wars,’ ‘The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms,’ ‘A Master of Djinn,’ ‘Ring Shout,’ ‘Lovecraft Country,’ ‘Everfair,’ ‘Babel,’ ‘The Salt Roads,’ ‘The Unbroken.’ There are more, just ask if you want examples.
    • In short, it’s books about small, powerless people rebelling against powerful empires. Usually the protagonist is part of an oppressed minority fighting against a wealthy foreign power.
  • The messages in those books can be so heavy handed that the reader is left rolling their eyes at how on-the-nose the book is.
    • There’s a place for being blunt when telling message stories. But I’ve read A TON of these books. After I’ve read so many, reading on-the-nose books feels like a preschool teacher trying to teach a university student using preschool methods.
  • Or the message is lost because the grimdark protagonists are so villainous/morally grey that it becomes impossible to root for them.
    • I’m not preaching against having problematic main characters. Just as it’s bad to have racial/gender/sexual minorities to always be depicted as villains (see the Hayes Code), it’s also bad to always have minorities depicted as heroes. It’s bad to tokenize minorities into being always good, because it strips them of their humanity.
    • That said, when you have an antihero or outright villainous protagonist, it’s WAY too easy to fuckup telling a message story. If your hero does war crimes on behalf of a cause, it reflects on the cause they’re working for.
  • Or the message is obscured by layers of fantasy worldbuilding.
    • Say you want to talk about racism, but don’t want to explore it in the context of real-world racism. So you use fantasy races instead, like elves and orcs. This can work, but it’s easy to screw up.
    • Here’s an example from something I read a long time ago. Lets say you make elves and orcs different species, and can’t have children together. This one bit of worldbuilding instantly throws the dynamics of real world racism out the window. The more layers of unfamiliarity you add to the message, the less useful it becomes IRL.

In short, this genre is easy to do very wrong.

‘Dark Lord’ handles the same message with a lighter touch. Because this is fundamentally an inversion of the ‘Chosen One Farmboy’ genre instead of grimdark genre, the message is hidden behind ‘Quest Fantasy’ tropes. Reading this parody on the surface level, the reader thinks this is just a skewering of the ‘Orphan Farmboy’ genre. However as the story unfolds, you realize this book is really a skewering of capitalism and the colonialist mission which assholes like Mr. Chesney represent. The experience of reading this book is like eating a chocolate, only to find after taking a bite it unexpectedly has a rich nougaty center; ‘Dark Lord’ presents as one thing on the outside (fun, trad fantasy parody!) but is secretly something else in the middle (searing indictment of exploitative performative tourism).

‘Dark Lord’ is a story about a family struggling to stay together despite harsh circumstances. They’re forced to lean on one another for support to weather the storm of Mr. Chesney’s villainous demands. This is ultimately why they were victorious, and Mr. Chesney lost. Mr. Chesney tried to kill his son in this book, so his daughter could inherit his tourism empire. In the process, Chesney alienated both his daughter and son. Because he lost his children’s support, while Derk maintained his children’s support, Chesney lost control and wound up with a fate worse than death. That’s good theme work, subtle enough you might not notice it but important for the middle-grade audience this book is targeted at.

‘Dark Lord’ is a coming-of-age story for all seven of Derk’s children- and also for Derk himself. And that’s the secret sauce right there: this book wasn’t written to be a ‘message’ book. This book wasn’t written to focus on imperialism, racism and colonialism to the exclusion of pacing/plot/characterization. This was written as a coming-of-age, and a loving parody. The message stuff was an important factor in the book, like the scaffolding used to help build a home. But message wasn’t the ENTIRE BOOK. Trying to write an ENTIRE BOOK solely out of ‘message’ is like trying to build an entire cake out of marzipan; it looks pretty, but it tastes like cyanide.

‘Dark Lord’ reminds me of Pratchett because it was written with a moral framework in mind. HOWEVER the main selling point of ‘Dark Lord’ or Discworld is NOT the moral framework. You read them because the books are fun. Sugar makes the medicine go down. This book appears to be more ‘fluffy’ than a ton of other stuff in the decolonialist/progressive/yadayada genre on the surface, however underneath it has a TON of weight. I’m willing to read the heavy-handed message in this book precisely because it’s funny. Pratchett can be heavy-handed too, and people lap that shit right up.

SETTING, WORLDBUILDING AND ORIGINALITY

The setting wasn’t very original, and that was the point. This book was tropey, for the purpose of flipping the tropes over.

The Dark Lord is just a schlub. The griffons are normal people. The most powerful wizards in the world are all women, not men like Mr. Chesney expects. The dragons are all civilized, not monsters. The most dangerous, evil man in the world has the personality of an insurance adjuster.

AUDIOBOOK NOTES

The audiobook was okay, but not great. The narrator did a good to great job with all the human voices, but he voiced the griffons with the same voice. It was distracting. Either format is fine, but I think text is better.

LESSONS LEARNED

As an author, I want to improve my own writing/editing skills. To that end, I like to learn lessons from every story I read. Here’s what I learned from this story:

  • When writing a book with a strong ‘message,’ DO NOT make the whole book about the message. It gets boring fast.
    • This book excellently hid it’s message underneath layers of parody. The book was fun, and funny! Sugar makes the medicine go down.
    • It made the characters lovable on their own, so when they were faced with adversity from the ‘message’ (namely, predatory tourist practices from off-world), it made the ‘message’ seem all the more believable.
    • The book’s primary genre was ‘Chosen One Farmboy’ and ‘Parody.’ The message theming was going on in the background of every chapter, every scene, but it was subtle enough that it didn’t sound preachy.
    • In theory someone can write a book where the message is everything. But it’s hard; I’ve yet to see someone pull it off.
  • This, like Terry Pratchett’s Discworld, is a humorous setting. It uses the comedy of inverted ‘Chosen One’ tropes to tell a wonderful story while also exploring the human condition.
    • Laughter makes the medicine go down. Come for the fun, leave morally enriched.
  • Show, don’t tell
    • My strongest complaint about this book is that it needed to do more to organically introduce it’s ideas into the fabric of the story.
    • This book took a bird’s eye view of the evils of the D&D tourist parties largely, and barely went into the ground-level. It engaged at the ground level with Blade’s D&D group; I feel more of the book should have been devoted to that D&D group.

Here’s a link to all the lessons I’ve previously learned.

SUMMARY

This is one of the best books I’ve ever read.

Did you like this critique/review? Here are some more: The Rest of My In Depth Reviews

On a personal note, I’m open to editing books. I don’t like putting myself out here like this, but I’ve been told I should. Check my blog for details if interested.

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