Join me as I review Dark Heart by Tina Daniell, live! Share your thoughts on this third novel in the Meetings Sextet series, released on January 1, 1992 by TSR Inc. You can buy a copy here: https://amzn.to/49AKdOY
About Dark Heart
A remarkable-warrior woman’s credo of “the sword is truth” becomes her triumph—and her downfall—in this third Meetings Sextet novel
At long last, the story of the beautiful dark-hearted Kitiara “Kit” Uth Matar . . . This compelling novel tells the story of the birth of her twin brothers—the warrior Caramon and the frail mage Raistlin—and Kit’s admirable role in their upbringing.
But her youthful mercenary deeds and increasing fascination with evil throw her into the company of a roguish stranger and band of adventurers whose fates are intermingled with her own. Haunted by the memory of her Solamnic father, she hunts him ceaselessly.
Review
Intro
Welcome to another DragonLance Saga review episode. It is Misham, Fleurgreen the 25th. My name is Adam and today I am going to give you my review of Dark Heart by Tina Daniell. I would like to take a moment and thank the DLSaga members, and invite you to consider becoming a member by visiting the link in the description below. You can even pick up Dragonlance gaming materials using my affiliate links. This is my perspective only, and if you have any thoughts or disagree with mine, I invite you to share them in YouTube chat.
Most of this story immediately flooded back to me as I started reading it. We begin with Kitiara Uth Matar and her father Gregor Uth Matar. He had brought her with him on a mercenary mission, and his insistence that she was a boy not a girl was to ease any concern from his partners. She saw him interact with lords and mercenaries, imprinting in her mind his worth, intellect and strength of arm. Then we flash forward to her waiting for her father to return and she runs across another mercenary who has clearly heard of her father but doesn’t know where he is. His name is Ursa Il Kinth. They bandy back and forth and he is impressed with this, still a child, Kitiara.
We flash forward again and Rosamun, Kit’s mother, has remarried to a woodcutter named Gilon Majere. Rosamun is suffering from fevers and trances that she cannot control. This is an aspect of magical talent that is never explored elsewhere, but it even bleeds over to Raistlin. I truly wish this was explored in future novels, as seeing the future would be a great story beat. But Rosamun is pregnant and calls for the midwife, Minna. Not that Mina, this one has two n’s. Kit rushes to the midwife’s home who is surprisingly defiant initially then races to the home and helps with the birth. This scene was read through blurry eyes. The process of birth can be horrid for the woman, but it is two of my favorite memories and most happy and proud experiences. Witnessing and aiding in the birth of my two children, then cutting the umbilical cord, and dancing and singing to them, while my wife was being tended to. It’s truly a magical experience, and one that is as close as any of us will be to being an actual god, through creation.
So Caramon comes first, and they are surprised that there is another baby, in breach. They work the baby out and it is sickly. Rosamun is passed out, and Minna tells Kit to be prepared to bury the baby in the morning, it’s not worth the effort Kit is putting into keeping it alive. This infuriates Kit who slaps Minna across the face, and I laugh out loud. Minna is beside herself and notices Gregor has returned from work to discover the situation, knowing nothing of the birth. He overheard the remark about the ill baby and told Minna they were even after she demanded to be able to punish Kit herself. This ingratiates Kit to her father in law, and she actually got to name Raistlin. Caramon was named after strong vallenwood, and Raist was named after a cunning character in the stories Gregor would tell Kit.
We flash forward to Kit helping raise the boys, newborns are NO JOKE! They take constant, constant attention, and Kit dealt with it along with her father, as Rosamun was incapacitated most of their youth. The boys grew and learned their talents, and Kit truly loved them as much as she was annoyed by them, as all siblings do and are. Then a spring festival came to town and Raist ran off to watch a stage magician. He studied his tricks and recreated them all, impressing his family. As Caramon was developing into a large strapping young lad, Raist continued to be sickly and his father was concerned.
He decided to take him to a local magical instruction school led by a mage named Morath. Raistlin was interrogated for a full day, impressing Morath, even though he refused to admit it. Raistlin was younger than the other students and he didn’t think he would be able to be instructed, but Morath was truly impressed. He decided to allow Raistlin to join the school through his own scholarship. This was of course completely reneged by The Soulforge, but I almost prefer this version better. I like that his father loved him and wanted to do right by his son, rather than some rando mage headhunter.
Raistlin has his first vision of the future here, and again, I truly wish they would explore it more! Kit overhears mercenaries talking about a plan and follows one who ends up being Ursa Il Kinth. She begs to join them, as she is ready to leave Solace and with Raist in school, she is not needed as much. Ursa refuses but says she should ask him next time she sees him, as a third times a charm. She tells Raist she’s leaving, but not when, and one night, she sneaks out of the house.
Kitiara races north and eventually finds Ursa and his companions, trailing them, and at night sneaks up to their camp, only to be discovered. She asks to join them, and they eventually accept as she is the right build for a decoy of their current job. They go over the particulars, and in the coming days set the trap. The group is going to ambush a wealthy Solamnic’s son, who is transporting payment for a road under construction. This road is being built as the son is going to marry the lord’s daughter, though the Lord Mantilla is none too happy about it. Kitiara is to appear as the kidnapped lord’s son and lure the inevitable rescue guards away. The band of ruffians cut her hair short and make a fake mustache from her hair. Then something that seriously bothered me happened.
It is stated in the text that at this moment, Kitiara is thirteen years old. A child. And yet, the author treats her like she is a woman. A ruffian who cuts her hair, a shapeshifter named El-Navarm from Karnuth, a land far to the east, comes on to her, and she ends up having sex with him. There is no reason for this scene. It dramatically changes Kitiara from owning her sexuality as a woman and weaponising it when she needs to, to instead being a victim of childhood rape, as children cannot give consent, even if they want to. Because they are children. She then uses this inevitable trauma repeating it throughout her life. I cannot express my frustration with this act, and I must have completely forgotten it or not realized she was still a child.
The job is pulled off without a hitch and Kitiara returns to the camp as expected, but no one is there but the corpse of the kidnapped lord’s son. He is mutilated as if by an animal. Ursa arrives and tells Kitiara it was the shapeshifter she pines over who killed the boy, and that they are not going to split the reward with her. He gives her the boys sword instead. Kitiara tries to fight, but she’s a child, and Ursa is a grown, trained mercenary. He leaves her bruised and unconscious. She travels looking for them, but ends up in a small town hungry and alone. She ends up working in a kitchen for food and meets a dwarf named Paulus and a boy named Mita. They become friends and when Kitiara is ready to leave, they both go with her. The innkeeper jumps them on the road with some Kagonesti elf mercenaries, but they defeat them, after Mita was killed. They part ways and Kitiara returns to Solace.
She stays longer than planned, but has no prospects on the horizon. Then a man named Patrick, a royal lord from Gwynneth arrives with his mute manservant slave Strathcoe. They ask her to guide them around town and Kitiara and Patrick hit it off. They become romantically involved, and he asks her to marry him. She accepts and says goodbye to her family, then heads off to the coast to his waiting ship. Kitiara is sixteen at this point. While I don’t think anyone should ever get married at sixteen, let alone be in any serious relationship, she is a woman per fantasy standards, so whatever. I don’t recall exactly the end, but this Patrick rubs me the wrong way, so we will have to see what comes. With only a third of the novel left I can’t help but wonder what the actual point of the novel is. Is it just watching the family grow up, or is it Kirara’s acceptance she will never find her father?
The final third of this novel truly delivered for me. No, Kitiara never found out exactly what happened to her father, but she pressed the captain of the ship as he seemed to know the name, and he said Gregor was killed by his men in treachery. Later she would learn that his men sold him out and he may or may not have been hanged in a town called Whitsett. No one from the town could recall exactly so the mystery was dropped by Kitiara. But a lot happened between those realizations. Kit notices Patrick slowly growing more despondent and ultimately after her talk with the captain, the first mate told her that Patrick did this every year, brought a to-be wife home, but never married her, believing she wouldn’t be good enough in his mothers eyes. This particular voyage ended drastically differently however.
There was a dark elf, how Kitiara knew he was a dark elf, I have no idea, as dark elves are not physically dark, they are simply outcasts. She noticed a dark elf eyeing her and Patrick, then one night she awoke to Strathcoe busting into her room with his throat slit. She ran to Patrick’s room and he was dead in bed. Knowing she would be blamed, she grabbed her belongings and leaped overboard, barely making shore alive. There she found some work with a farmer and went into town during a tournament. She entered at the last moment, fighting a tough as nails dwarf and they had a draw, splitting the pot. She was then approached by Ursa who was running from hunters. It turns out that his crew have been picked off one at a time, then brutally murdered. What we discover is that Lady Mantilla went insane after they killed her would be husband. She killed her father for setting up the murder, and sent assassins after his killers. It took years but they finally located most of them, and now that the sword was randomly discovered on Kitiara, they believed it was Patrick who killed her. Now he is dead and Kitiara and Ursa are the only two remaining.
They continue trying to evade their hunters together and take a job killing a slig that was terrorizing a town. Kitiara is introduced to another of Ursa’s compatriots an elf named colo. Together they hunt and kill the slig, then they are jumped by the assassins. Colo saves Kitiara but Ursa is captured. They evade capture for another day before hunting the assassins, and learning about Lady Mantilla in Estwilde. Both Kit and Colo decide to hunt her down to try and rescue Ursa, as Colo also tells how Ursa worked with Gregor, though she is not 100% sure. Kit puts this information aside, and they make the long trek to Lady Mantillas nightmare keep. Its described like Morgana’s castle in my imagination from the film Excalibur; Dead soldiers hanging from trees, dead landscape, the shell of a castle and a single tower left standing.
They enter and the lone surviving jailor is thrilled they have arrived as he is told he can go free if they do. The women split up to search for Ursa and Lady Mantilla. Colo finds Ursa locked up and beaten, and Kitiara finds Lady Mantilla. She is about Kit’s age but looks like a sea hag, described brilliantly! She had near dead knights serving her and a dead mage Kit is afraid of till she cuts his hands off and realizes he’s already dead. There is a bunch of back and forth that describes how Ursa was the one who betrayed Gregor and Colo comes in helping Kit fight the knights. Colo defeats one, but is killed, and Kit is trapped by magic but gives the lady her betrothed’s sword that Kit is using. The Lady is overcome with grief and emotion and as Kit runs to leave, she kills herself, releasing the magic of the castle.
Kit comes across Ursa who initially denies the charge of turning on her father, then admits to it and tries to kill Kit. She beats him, and leaves the keep, noting that the shapeshifter she encountered in panther form earlier has killed the jailer and gone free. She mounts her horse and travels to Whitsett to seek news of her father. She ultimately gives up searching, and grows a name for herself as a mercenary, taking the name Dark Heart. She then gets a letter outside Palanthas from Caramon talking about how Gilon has died and Rosemun is near death. Kit returns to Solace and stays long enough to see that she’s not needed and doesnt fit in. When Rosemun finally passes away, Kit leaves.
This was such a great look into Kitiara’s early life, and after reading more in the Lost Chronicles it makes me mad she dies in Legends. She is such a great character, so complex and full of contradictory emotions, that she deserves to be around longer, and not just as the love artifact of Lord Soth. If you enjoy Kitiara as a character, you have to read this, and if you just want a great adventure story with a female lead, read this book.
Outro
And that’s it for my review of Dark Heart by Tina Daniell. What did you think of Kitiara having sex at 13 years old? Do you like how her hunt for her father ended up? And finally, should we get more stories about Kitiara? Feel free to email me at info@dlsaga.com or leave a comment below.
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