Category Archives: Terrence Dechantagne

Voyage of the Minotaur: Terrence

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Spoiler Alert

Terrence Dechantagne is really the star of this volume of Senta and the Steel Dragon.  He has a lot going on.  Yuah is chasing after him, as are a few other women.  Iolanthe is riding him constantly in an effort to make him stand up and become the man she thinks he is.  And his drug addiction is in high gear.

“Terrence’s Jungle Adventure” is one my favorite chapters in the entire series.  Here, Terrence gets to play Indiana Jones and chase the bad guys, fight his way though a temple filled with baddies and traps, and rescue the damsel in distress.  The fact that he does this right after scoring his fix just adds another dimension to him.

Terrence has some great moments in the other chapters as well, becomming a hero, hunting down and bringing a bad guy to justice, and saving children from several types of predators.  On the other hand he suffers some truly horrible injuries– physical and mental.  I remember reading the chapter of the great battle with the lizzies to a group of friends for the first time and feeling great satisfaction when they all stared at me in open-mouthed shock.

It may sound weird, but my favorite parts of this book are those scenes when Terrence falls apart.  He’s really like a Greek tragedy.  He’s fated to a sad end and it doesn’t matter how high he flies in the meantime, he’s going to fall in the end.

Terrence Dechantagne

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Spoiler Alert

I think all my character discussions for Senta and the Steel Dragon will have to carry a spoiler alert.  So much happens to all of them over the course of the series that, though I try not to, I might inadvertantly spill some secrets about one or two of them.  So, read this at your own risk.

Brechalon is a prequel.  I wrote it long after I had written books 1, 3, and 5, so it provides a look at some of the events of the past that are only hinted at in the other books.  I don’t know whether to recommend that you read it first or last.

Terrence Dechantagne is one of the major characters of the series.  As he appears in Brechalon, he is in the army, serving in the cavalry.  During the course of the story, he takes a furlough to spend time at home.  Terrence is a drug addict, addicted to the “See Spice,” white opthalium, a magical drug that transports him to a world where his troubles are all soothed away.  The ultimate cause of this addiction is his eyewitnessing the murder of his mother by his father when he was twelve.  Add to this, the generally unpleasant life that he has led since.

Terrence is a thoughtful man, a collector of rare books, but has been thrust into the position of a man of action and violence by the expectations of others.  His general self-loathing extends to anyone who cares about him.  In book 0, he is at his low point, spending most of his time under the influence.

Characters: Terrence Dechantagne

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Terrence is one of my favorite characters that I’ve written.  He is also as close to an anti-hero as I’ve written.  I originally conceived of him as a kind of Indiana Jones type guy who would carry the action for most of the Senta and the Steel Dragon series.  The truth is that he was rather boring that way.  He needed something, so I gave him an addiction.  Terrence is addicted to White Opthalium, a magical drug which takes him away to another world.  Once I started writing along this path, his character became much more interesting to me.  Here was a guy who is loved and admired by almost everyone except himself.  And because he hates himself, he becomes more and more antagonistic and hateful to everyone else.  People around him see him as a hero, but he can’t see himself as anything but a failure.