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published 1994; paperback 1994, Del Rey
I like a heroine who doesn’t pull her punches. Or maybe she’s an anti-heroine, who can say? Kessallia, a delicate magic-bred princess, has a will of iron and isn’t afraid to be unpleasant. She isn’t above ditching the brave and stalwart hero when it seems expedient, either.
Pity the hero Leith, title character of Susan Dexter’s The Prince of Ill Luck, first book of Dexter’s Warhorse of Esdragon series. Not only has he gotten stuck betrothed to this woman (courtesy of a contest he wasn't aware of, which she expected no one to win) but he has, all his life, been the victim of an unshakable nasty curse that condemns him to mishap and dooms people around him to random disaster. Dexter manages to have her character whack himself in the head at least twenty times, and each time the experience is freshly, uniquely painful.
Poor guy. Even though cursed by barely sublethal clumsiness and an actively vengeful princess, he nonetheless manages to triumph, thanks to his own endurance and the aid of his wondrous horse, the fabled Valadan of Estragon. The horse doesn’t care much about Leith’s bad luck, but remains loyal and trusty and all those other clichés throughout. Other than being capable of high speed and a little bit of subvocal communication, Valadan is a very horsy horse, subject to all the inexplicable ways of horsedom and lacking any annoying powers or intrinsic goodness.
The best part of this novel is that none of the characters let up. There is no sudden metamorphosis on the part of the princess Kessallia after she falls in love; in fact, Kess becomes nastier than ever. Unfortunate Leith suffers as her Griselda for most of this novel, taking backchat, poisoning, and a set of truly nasty practical jokes with quiet courage and never a word of complaint. And when it comes down to making the most awful choice of his life, to set Kess free from her marriage contract to him, he accepts his fate unblinkingly, with the same quiet courage.
It takes a lot of courage on the author’s part to shy away from typical romance and keep characters true to their original conception, even while allowing them to grow and change. On the surface, this is entertaining farce, but under the humor lies pain and loneliness and courage. I loved this book.
Review by Becky Parkhurst
Reviewed February 2, 1997
ISBN 0-345-38065-7
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