Letter of Recommendation: The Seven Citadels

Since I mentioned in my last festschrift post my favorite fantasy publisher, that reminded me of the series, which is Geraldine Harris’s Seven Citadels. There are 4 books in the series, which is now out of print, so you’ll have to find them on used sites: Prince of the Godborn, Children of the Wind, The Dead Kingdom, and The Seventh Gate. Harris is a trained Egyptologist, and that’s one of the strengths of the series–a really seriously thought out religious system, including how its moral strictures and customs have percolated through culture and caused rifts with surrounding cultures. She’s also better than most authors who try at writing about bratty teenagers who get shocked into realizing they have to grow up. The series follows Kerish Lo-Taan, a spoiled (and simultaneously neglected) royal prince of the semi-divine Godborn who, in order to save his own kingdom and perhaps the entire world from falling to pieces, has to embark on a quest to open seven doors with seven jeweled keys. In the process, he travels well outside the bounds of people’s knowledge and respect for the Godborn, and his own knowledge of himself. The writing and world-building are solid, but most importantly, this is the series that taught me that fantasy as a genre is ultimately about exploring the strange terrain of the human psyche.